{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-5894","native_reference":{"book_number":10,"chapter_from":25,"chapter_to":25,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":23,"verse_to":23},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: We must now take a look at the history of the city of God, as it takes its course from this point on among the descendants of Abraham. In the period from Isaac's birth to his seventieth year, when his first children were born, there is one memorable fact: He asked God that his wife, who was barren, might bear him a child. God heard the prayer, and she conceived twins who leaped while still in her womb. She was troubled by the disturbance, and, asking the Lord, she received this answer: \"Two nations are in your womb; two people shall stem from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.\"This is interpreted by the apostle Paul as an obvious proof of the working of grace: \"For before the children had yet been born or had done anything of good or evil,\" the younger was chosen, through no merits of his own, and the older rejected. So far as original sin goes, both were equal. As for personal sins, neither had any.<br/><i>— City of God 16.35</i></p><p><b>Caesarius of Arles</b>: How then do the wicked serve the good? As persecutors serve the martyrs; as a file or hammer, gold; as a mill, wheat; as ovens, the baking of bread: those are consumed, so that these may be baked. How, I say, do the wicked serve the good? As chaff in the furnace of the goldsmith serves gold …. Therefore the wicked should not boast or extol themselves when they send tribulations to the good. For while they are persecuting the good in their bodies, they are killing themselves in their hearts. If the misfortune of an evil person affects a good person, the iniquity has already caused his own soul to decay. Therefore if in an evil spirit someone who is inflamed with the fury of wrath tries to stir up a good man, it is still doubtful whether the good man can be consumed with rage, but there is no doubt that the evil man is already glowing with anger. Perhaps that good man who is full of spiritual vigor and the refreshment of the Holy Spirit will not get excited, even if the fire of persecution is inflicted; but without any doubt the one who tried to arouse him cannot fail to burn with passion. Esau and Jacob were born of the one seed of Isaac, just as Christian people are begotten of our Lord and Savior's one baptism and one womb of the church. However, just like Esau and Jacob, these people are divided into two parts because of their moral differences. For from the fruits of their works one part is known to be carnal, the other spiritual. For this reason, then, Scripture says, \"The elder shall serve the younger,\" because the number of the wicked is always greater than that of the good. So just like those two children in the womb of Rebekah, so these people will struggle in the womb of the church until judgment day, as we said above, while the proud resist the humble, while adulterers persecute the chaste, while drunkards whose number is infinite rail at the sober, while the envious rival the good, while robbers desire to destroy those who give alms like the irascible do the peaceable, and while the dissolute attempt to drag down to earth those who have a taste for heavenly things.</p><p><b>Caesarius of Arles</b>: Good souls want to win over the evil, but the wicked long to destroy the just. It is the desire of the good that those who are bad be corrected, while the destruction of the good is the pursuit of the wicked. There is one class of the pious, another of the impious. The class of the good are raised up to heaven through humility, while the class of the wicked are plunged into hell through pride. For all those members of the Catholic church belong to Esau who are inclined toward earthly possessions, love the earth, desire the earth and place all their hopes in the earth. Whoever wishes to serve God in order to increase in honors or receive material profits is known to belong to Esau, that is, to earthly happiness. For in Esau carnal souls are understood, while spiritual ones are truly in Jacob. These are the two people whom the apostle clearly mentions when he distinguishes the carnal and the spiritual. As he says, \"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are immorality, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, jealousies, anger, quarrels, factions, parties, envies, drunkenness, carousing and suchlike.\" Behold the fruits of the people who belong to Esau. In the following passage the same apostle adds the fruits of those who belong to Jacob, saying, \"But the fruit of the Spirit is: charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faith, modesty, continence.\" Behold the spiritual works belonging to blessed Jacob, that is, to people who are pious.<br/><i>— SERMON 86.2</i></p><p><b>Caesarius of Arles</b>: The fact that we read \"One people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger\" we do not see fulfilled according to the letter in Esau and Jacob. For Scripture does not mention that Esau served blessed Jacob bodily. Therefore we ought to inquire how this is to be understood spiritually, or how the elder shall serve the younger, for if this were not to happen holy Scripture would not mention it. Therefore if one pays careful attention, one will know how the elder people shall serve the younger in the case of Christians and Jews. The greater and older people of the Jews are proved to serve the younger, that is, the Christian people, for like servants of the Christians they are known to carry the books of the divine law throughout the world for the instruction of all nations. Therefore the Jews were scattered in every land, so that when we want to invite some pagan to faith in Christ by testifying that Christ was announced by all the prophets, and he resists and says that the holy books of the divine law were written by us rather than the Holy Spirit, we may thus have a means of refuting him with positive arguments. To such a person we may say, \"If a doubt arises in you concerning my books, behold the books of the Jews, apparently our enemies, which I certainly could neither have written nor changed. Read them over, and when you have found in them the same thing as in my books, 'Be not unbelieving but believing.' \" In this way the elder people is known to serve the younger, for through their books the people of the Gentiles are invited to belief in Christ.<br/><i>— SERMON 86.3</i></p><p><b>Cosmas Indicopleustes</b>: Eighthly, a second time through Isaac and Rebecca, when twins were born, it was said: The elder shall serve the younger, thereby again showing there are two states, one of bondage and the other of freedom.<br/><i>— The Christian Topography, Book 6</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: The Lord therefore said to her: \"two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be separated from your belly. And people shall overcome people, and the elder shall serve the younger.\" How \"people has overcome people,\" that is, the Church the synagogue, and how \"the elder serves the younger,\" is known even to the Jews themselves, though they do not believe. Concerning these things therefore, which are plain and very well worn to all, I think it superfluous to speak. Let us add this, if it please, which may be able to edify and instruct each one of us who hears these things. I think that this can be said also of each one of us, that \"two nations and two peoples\" are within us. For both a people of virtues is within us and no less a people of vices is within us: \"for from our heart proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, thefts, false testimonies,\" but also \"deceits, contentions, heresies, envyings, revelings, and things similar to these.\" Do you see how great a people of evils is within us? But if we deserve to speak that voice of the saints: \"from your fear, O Lord, we conceived in the womb, and we brought forth, we made the spirit of your salvation upon the earth,\" then another people also is found within us, begotten in the spirit. For \"the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, self-control, chastity\" and things similar to these. You see another people, which is itself also within us; but this one is the lesser, that one the greater. For always the evil are more numerous than the good, and vices more numerous than virtues. But if we be such as Rebekah was, and deserve to have conception from Isaac, that is, from the Word of God, in us too \"people shall overcome people and the elder shall serve the younger\"; for the flesh shall serve the spirit, and vices shall yield to virtues.<br/><i>— HOMILIES ON Genesis 12.3</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: MYSTICAL SENSE OF THE ANSWER MADE TO REBEKAH. — In the answer that the Lord gives to Rebekah: There are two nations in your womb and two peoples shall be separated from your belly, and one people shall excel the other, and the greater shall serve the lesser . According to the spiritual sense, the carnal men of the people of God are signified by the eldest son, and spiritual men by the younger son, because, as the Apostle says: Yet that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: afterwards that which is spiritual (1 Cor. 15:46). These words are still understood in the sense that Esau is the eldest people of God, that is, the Israelites according to the flesh, while Jacob signifies his own spiritual descent. History in turn complements this answer made by God when it relates that the people of Israel, that is to say Jacob, the younger, overcame the Idumeans, that is to say, the nation which came from Esau, and made them inferior in the time of David (Cf. 2 Sam. 8:13-14; 1 Kgs. 11:15). The Idumeans remained long in this state, until King Jehoram, under the reign of which they revolted and issued themselves to the yoke of the Israelites, according to Isaac's own prophecy, when he blessed the younger instead of the eldest (Cf. Genesis 27:26, 39-40). Since all this he told the eldest, when he also blessed him after having blessed his brother. [<br/><i>— QUESTIONS ON GENESIS, Q. 72 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"cf17f78657543811d0368ac55022c84cd05b895e2f3aa4ec60fd229332069c66","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":5894,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"45af55801707a95b90aee3e73a7e52bec62c601ffd1a9c232b05f2c9b957b99e","translator":null,"work":null}