at another, bringing down judgment upon the Sodomites; and again, when He becomes visible,[1] and directs Jacob on his journey, and speaks with Moses from the bush.[2] And it would be endless to recount [the occasions] upon which the Son of God is shown forth by Moses. Of the day of His passion, too, he was not ignorant; but foretold Him, after a figurative manner, by the name given to the passover;[3] and at that very festival, which had been proclaimed such a long time previously by Moses, did our Lord suffer, thus fulfilling the passover. And he did not describe the day only, but the place also, and the time of day at which the sufferings ceased,[4] and the sign of the setting of the sun, saying: "Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any other of thy cities which the Lord God gives thee; but in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose that His name be called on there, thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, towards the setting of the sun."[5]
2. And already he had also declared His advent, saying, "There shall not fail a chief in Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until He come for whom it is laid up, and He is the hope of the nations; binding His foal to the vine, and His ass's colt to the creeping ivy. He shall wash His stole in wine, and His upper garment in the blood of the grape; His eyes shall be more joyous than wine,[6] and His teeth whiter than milk."[7] For, let those who have the reputation of investigating everything, inquire at what time a prince and leader failed out of Judah, and who is the hope of the
- ↑ See Gen. xviii. 13 and xxxi. 11, etc. There is an allusion here to a favourite notion among the fathers, derived from Philo the Jew, that the name Israel was compounded from the three Hebrew words אישׁ דאח אל, i.e. "the man seeing God."
- ↑ Ex. iii. 4, etc.
- ↑ Feuardent infers with great probability from this passage, that Irenæus, like Tertullian and others of the fathers, connected the word Pascha with πάσχειν, to suffer.
- ↑ Latin, "et extremitatem temporum."
- ↑ Deut. xvi. 5, 6.
- ↑ The Latin is, "lætifici oculi ejus a vino," the Hebrew method of indicating comparison being evidently imitated.
- ↑ Gen. xlix. 10–12, LXX.
