Augustine of Hippo

He then adds: "After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and fixed it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost." Who has the power of so adjusting what he does, as this Man had of arranging all that He suffered? But this Man was the Mediator between God and men; the Man of whom we read in prophecy, He is man also, and who shall acknowledge Him? for the men who did such things acknowledged not this Man as God. For He who was manifest as man, was hid as God: He who was manifest suffered all these things, and He Himself also, who was hid, arranged them all. He saw, therefore, that all was accomplished that required to be done before He received the vinegar, and gave up the ghost; and that this also might be accomplished which the scripture had foretold, "And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink," He said, "I thirst:" as if it were, One thing still you have failed to do, give me what you are. For the Jews were themselves the vinegar, degenerated as they were from the wine of the patriarchs and prophets; and filled like a full vessel with the wickedness of this world, with hearts like a sponge, deceitful in the formation of its cavernous and tortuous recesses. But the hyssop, whereon they placed the sponge filled with vinegar, being a lowly herb, and purging the heart, we fitly take for the humility of Christ Himself; which they thus enclosed, and imagined they had completely ensnared. Hence we have it said in the psalm, "Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed." For it is by Christ's humility that we are cleansed; because, had He not humbled Himself, and became obedient unto the death of the cross, His blood certainly would not have been shed for the remission of sins, or, in other words, for our cleansing.

(Tr. cxix.) He who appeared man, suffered all these things; He who was God, ordered them: After this Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished; i. e. knowing the prophecy in the Psalms, And when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar to drink, (Ps. 68) said, I thirst:As if to say, ye have not done all (minus): give me yourselves: for the Jews were themselves vinegar, having degenerated from the wine of the Patriarchs and the Prophets. Now there was a vessel full of vinegar: they had drunk from the wickedness of the world, as from a full vessel, and their heart was deceitful, as it were, a spunge full of caves and crooked hiding places: And they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.

The hyssop around which they put the spunge full of vinegar, being a mean herb, taken to purge the breast, represents the humility of Christ, which they hemmed in and thought they had circumvented. (ὑσσώπῳ περιθέντες) For we are made clean by Christ's humility. Nor let it perplex you that they were able to reach His mouth when He was such a height above the ground: for we read in the other Evangelists, what John omits to mention, that the spunge was put upon a reed.

(Tr. cxix) viz. what prophecy had foretold so long before.

(Tr. cxix) Then as there was nothing left Him to do before He died, it follows, And He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost, only dying when He had nothing more to do, like Him who had to lay down His life, and to take it up again.

(Tr. cxix) For who ever had such power to sleep when he wished, as our Lord had to die when He wished? What power must He have, for our good or evil, Who had such power dying?

The spirit is to be preferred to the body. The death of the spirit means that God has abandoned it, but the death of the body means that the spirit has abandoned it. The punishment in the death of the body lies in this, that the spirit abandons the body unwillingly because it has willingly abandoned God. Therefore, the spirit must abandon the body, even though it does not want to, because by its will it has abandoned God. Nor may it abandon the body when it wants to, unless it inflicts some form of violence on itself by which the body itself is destroyed. The spirit of the Mediator has shown how it was not any punishment for sin that brought about the death of his flesh because he did not abandon it unwillingly. Rather, the spirit left because he willed it to, and it left at the time in the manner that he wanted it to leave. For since he is so commingled with the flesh by the Word of God as to be one with it, he says, “I have the power to lay down my life, and I have the power to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I therefore lay it down of myself, and I take it up again.”

A suggestive word was made use of by the evangelist, in not saying pierced, or wounded His side, or anything else, but "opened;" that thereby, in a sense, the gate of life might be thrown open, from whence have flowed forth the sacraments of the Church, without which there is no entrance to the life which is the true life. That blood was shed for the remission of sins; that water it is that makes up the health-giving cup, and supplies at once the layer of baptism and water for drinking. This was announced beforehand, when Noah was commanded to make a door in the side of the ark, whereby the animals might enter which were not destined to perish in the flood, and by which the Church was prefigured. Because of this, the first woman was formed from the side of the man when asleep, and was called Life, and the mother of all living. Truly it pointed to a great good, prior to the great evil of the transgression (in the guise of one thus lying asleep). This second Adam bowed His head and fell asleep on the cross, that a spouse might be formed for Him from that which flowed from the sleeper's side. O death, whereby the dead are raised anew to life! What can be purer than such blood? What more health-giving than such a wound?

Certainly the words that the Septuagint has translated, “They shall look on me because they insulted me,” stand in the Hebrew, “They shall look on me whom they pierced.” And by this word the crucifixion of Christ is certainly more plainly indicated. But the Septuagint translators preferred to allude to the insult that was involved in his whole passion. For in point of fact they insulted him both when he was arrested and when he was bound, when he was judged, when he was mocked by the robe they put on him and the homage they did on bended knee, when he was crowned with thorns and struck with a rod on the head, when he bore his cross and when at last he hung upon the tree. And therefore we recognize more fully the Lord’s passion when we do not confine ourselves to one interpretation but combine both and read both “insulted” and “pierced.” When, therefore, we read in the prophetical books that God is to come to do judgment at the last, from the mere mention of the judgment, and although there is nothing else to determine the meaning, we must gather that Christ is meant. For though the Father will judge, he will judge by the coming of the Son. For he himself, by his own manifested presence, “judges no one but has committed all judgment to the Son.” For as the Son was judged as a man, he shall also judge in human form.