Commodian — Carmen de Duobus Populis 361–400

Which death the Lord drank, having suffered, rising from hell. Therefore he also did not will to show plainly what he was, but said he was a Son sent by the Father. So he himself had handed himself over to be called by the prophets, that God on earth should be the Son of the Most High. This he himself also utters, when he was humble in flesh, and witnesses to the Father, to confirm prophetic mouths. From Israel we read such a man rises, and he is a man, he says, and who knew him among them? Jeremiah says. This is our God, equal; after these things he was also seen on earth and lived among humans. But Isaiah: You are God, and we did not know; and God is in you, and besides you no other is held. And who would come at the prophets’ setting by the law? Sing to the Lord, the name is God to him who comes! And the forty-fourth psalm says of him: I will be exalted among the nations with a great name. And elsewhere we read: Today I have begotten you, son; Ask, and I will give you, and you will have nations as heirs. Certainly it already appears who God is and who is in him, and in whose name we nations everywhere should believe: It was said to my Christ, whose right hand I hold — let the nations hear, and let him rule the nations. What need of more, when the matter is so openly proven, when that people which is taxed already rejoices in him? But those miserable ones who dress up empty tales and smear him as a magician would have shut their beaks when the singers sang. What shall I call them, before they had been scattered — whom not even exile’s necessity itself broke? If a magician had been present, why then were the prophets singing one to come from heaven, that he himself be the hope of the nations? If they announce falsely of themselves that they lose the land — which came about from them — so will things about him also be false. But because they are always spurned, since they were bloody, they rebel against their own Lord by calling him a magician. They also refuse to hear what the seers said against them — that they would not understand wholly under that very end. God himself described them: With shut breast let them not see with eyes nor understand with hardened heart; for he thickened the heart of this unjust people. ****** He drank death and rose. Son sent by the Father — our God seen on earth. Smearing ‘magician’ is shut-heart rebellion, not exegesis.