Allegory and Prophecy

He keeps the law; for it has ceased. Regarding the weak elements, having said this, he did not accuse them as evil, but as those unable to grow rich and sufficient for piety.

In Galatians 4:12, he says, 'Do not think that I have a different kind of grief toward you and because of this I rebuke you'; for the passion of pain constantly forces the form of the word to change, now to rebuke and now to exhort, and sometimes to accuse and sometimes to lament. Thus, he teaches there what he writes: that he writes through fatherly affection—for he says, 'I have not been wronged by you'—but also for healing, because I was most worthy.

In Galatians 4:15–18: What then is the blessedness? Instead of 'no one.' Or thus: to keep the law or to live by faith? And since he said that those others desire you not out of zeal, so that they might have perfection for themselves by not keeping the law, but they zeal for you, he brought forward that I say these things not out of envy toward them; for it would have been better if they also had been perfected by using faith, and it would have been permitted for them to zeal for and imitate us. And you therefore do such things which make you zealots, so that all may imitate you, and not when I come you become ashamed of such people, but even in my absence you correct yourselves.

In Galatians 4:23–24, he used the name now, not the power of allegory. For allegory does not consist in spoken words, but introduces certain other things appearing from the sequence of meanings according to the substance, such as 'love me from the mouth of loves' in the Song of Songs; for there is neither love nor hair nor belly nor testicles nor anything else, but others are introduced through others, and this is the principal kind of allegory. There also the history is confessed, and it has been demonstrated that it is a type of what is to come. Thus, prophecy through works is now called allegory. For of the prophecies, some are through words only, such as 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb,' some are through works only, such as 'Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,' and some are through both works and words, such as that which was said toward Jeremiah: 'Take a new girdle and put it on; then bury it by the Euphrates, and when it has leaked through time and become worn out, take it from there.' For until this point, the prophecy is through works, but from then on through words; for in this way I also girded the sons of Israel, and in this way I helped them, and in this way I lead them away to Babylon as captives, and from there I bring back and restore them, having been made mad and destroyed. Now then, the prophecy through...