Augustine of Hippo

What then is guile? Guile is when one thing is done and another pretended. When there is one thing in intention and another in deeds, it is called guile. So guile in the proper sense is reprehensible, just like rock in the proper sense. If you said Christ was a rock in the proper sense, it would be a blasphemy, just as if you said Christ was a calf in the proper sense it would be blasphemy. In the proper sense a calf is a beast; in the figurative sense it is a victim in a sacrifice. In the proper sense a stone is compacted earth; in the figurative sense it is firmness. Guile in the proper sense is deceit; in the figurative sense.… Every figurative and allegorical text or utterance seems to mean one thing materially and to suggest another thing spiritually. So he called this figurative sense by the name of guile. At long last then, what does it mean, “He came with guile and stole your blessing”? The reason it says “He came with guile” is that what was being done had a figurative sense. Isaac, after all, would not have confirmed the blessing on a guileful, deceitful man who more justly would deserve a curse. So it wasn’t a case of real guile, especially since he did not in fact lie when he said, “I am your elder son Esau.” For that one had already made a bargain with his brother and sold him his rights as firstborn. So he told his father that he had what he had bought from his brother; what that one had lost had passed to this one. The title of firstborn had not been eliminated from Isaac’s household. The title of firstborn was still here—but not with the one who had sold it. Where else was it but with the younger brother? Because he knew the symbolic mystery in all this, Isaac confirmed the blessing and said to this other son, “What am I to do for you?” He answered, “Bless me too, father; you do not only have one blessing.” But Isaac knew only of one.

“And Esau said, ‘Rightly is his name called Jacob.’ ” Tripping up is what Jacob means. And not even tripping up is empty of meaning, because it is to be taken figuratively, like guile. Jacob, you see, was not yet so malicious as to plan to trip his brother up, when he was given his name. He was called a tripper-up when as his brother was being born he held his foot with his own hand. That is when he was called “Tripper-up.” Now tripping up the materialistically minded is the very life of the spiritually minded. All the materialists are tripped up when they envy the spiritual people in the church, and they thereby become worse. Listen to the apostle saying this very thing, especially because he there mentions the smell that Isaac talked about here, saying, “Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of an abundant field, which the Lord has blessed.” So the apostle says, “We are the sweet smell of Christ in every place,” and he says, “For some indeed the smell of life, for life; for the others the smell of death, for death. And for this who is sufficient?” Sufficient, that is, to understand how we can be the smell of death for the death of other people, without any fault of ours. Spiritual people walk their ways, knowing nothing except how to live a good life. And those who are spiteful about their innocent lives commit grave sins, which is why God will punish them. And thus a person who is a sweet smell for life to others becomes to them a smell for death. For the Lord himself was the first to become a sweet smell for life to believers and a bad smell for death to persecutors. Because so many people had believed him, the Jews were full of spite and committed that enormous crime of killing the innocent one, the saint of saints. If they had not done this, the sweet smell of Christ would not have meant death for them. So Esau was tripped up in his father’s blessing.

But why was it after being “roughly handled” that Isaac gave his blessing? For in the last resort what Isaac said to Esau was spoken under constraint and force: “Behold, your dwelling will be by the fruitfulness of the earth and by the dew of heaven.” And in case you should imagine yourself for that reason to be good—“You shall live by your sword and be servant to your brother.” But in order that you shouldn’t despair of yourself, since you can after all correct yourself—“But the time will come when you will put off and undo the yoke from your neck.” There you are, he will receive of the fruitfulness of the earth and of the dew of heaven. But when Isaac is roughly handled, he throws this blessing at him. He does not give it to him. Doesn’t it happen now in the church with evil people who want to cause trouble in the church that they are tolerated for the sake of peace, that they are admitted to share in the common sacraments? And sometimes it is public knowledge that they are evil, but for some reason or other they cannot be convicted of it. No proof or conviction can be obtained so that they may be corrected and removed from office, excluded, excommunicated. If someone presses charges, it sometimes comes to the disruption of the church. The church leader is forced in effect to say, “Here you are with the fruitfulness of the earth and the dew of heaven; make use of the sacraments; you are eating judgment to yourself, you are drinking judgment to yourself. “Whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself.” “You know that you are being admitted to the sacraments for the sake of the peace of the church; all you have at heart is stirring up trouble and causing divisions. That is why you will live by the sword. For as to what you receive from the dew of heaven and the fruitfulness of the earth, you won’t live by that. That gives you no delight; you do not see that the Lord is sweet. If this did give you delight, if you did find the Lord sweet, you would imitate the Lord’s humility instead of the devil’s pride.” So although he receives the mystery of the Lord’s humility from the dew of heaven and the fruitfulness of the earth, he does not set aside the pride of the devil (may I have nothing to do with him!) who always takes pleasure in quarrels and dissension. “Yes, you may have this communion in the dew of heaven and the fruitfulness of the earth, but all the same you are living by your sword, and either rejoicing in the quarrels and dissension, or being scared out of your wits by them. So change yourself, and take the yoke from your neck.”

Again, Jacob was in no sense the creator of the piebald colors of the flocks he managed, just because he put the peeled and parti-colored rods in the drinking troughs for the ewes to gaze at as they conceived. Nor for that matter were the ewes creators of the piebald effects in their young, just because the vivid impressions of piebaldness they received from look-ing at the particolored rods remained embedded in their souls. And so [these impressions] could not help having a sympathetic effect on their bodies, which were animated by these souls thus affected, so that the impression was passed on to color the progeny in their sensitive and impressionable beginnings. That soul and body should thus psychosomatically react upon each other is due to those archetypal harmonies of reason which live immutably in the very wisdom of God, something that is not localized within the limits of space. While this wisdom is unchanging in itself, it does not hold itself aloof from anything that is, even in a changing mode of existence, because there is nothing that was not created by it. That the ewes gave birth to lambs and not to rods is due to the unchangeable and invisible disposition of God’s wisdom by which all things were created. And that the lambs conceived were colored as an effect of the particolored rods was due to the souls of their pregnant mothers being affected from the outside through their eyes and having inside them their own proper “program” of embryo formation which they received from their Creator, whose power was active at the inner roots of their being.

Believing Jews and unbelieving Jews. Where were they first condemned? In the first of them, in the father of all of them, Jacob himself, who was also called Israel. Jacob means “supplanter” or “heel”; Israel means “seeing God.” When Jacob returned from Mesopotamia with his children, an angel wrestled with him, representing Christ; and while he wrestled, though the angel surpassed Jacob in strength, he still seemed to succumb to him, and Jacob to prevail. In the same sort of way the Lord Christ too succumbed to the Jews; they prevailed when they killed him. He was overcome by superior strength; precisely when he was overcome, he overcame for us. What’s that—when he was overcome, he overcame for us? Yes, because when he suffered, he shed the blood with which he redeemed us.So then, that is what is written: Jacob prevailed over him. And yet Jacob himself, who was wrestling, acknowledged the mystery involved. A man, wrestling with an angel, prevailed over him; and when he said, “Let me go,” the one who had prevailed said, “I am not letting you go, unless you bless me.” O grand and splendid mystery! Overcome, he blesses, just as having suffered, he sets free; that is when the blessing was completed. “What are you called?” he said to him. He replied, “Jacob.” “You shall not be called Jacob,” he said, “but you shall be called Israel.” The imposition of such a great name is a great blessing. “Israel,” as I said, means “seeing God”; one man’s name, everyone’s reward. Everyone’s, provided they believe and are blessed, Jews and Greeks. Greeks, you see, are what the apostle calls all nationalities, the reason being that the Greek language has such prestige among the nations. “Glory,” he says, “and honor”—they are the apostle’s words—“glory and honor and peace to everyone doing good, to Jew first and Greek; wrath and indignation, trouble and distress on every soul doing evil, to Jews first and Greeks.” Good for good Jews, bad for bad ones; good for good Gentiles, bad for bad ones.

Jacob’s withered thigh stands for bad Christians, so that we find in him blessing and limping. He is blessed with respect to those who live good lives; he limps with respect to those who live bad lives. But each kind is still included in one man. They will be separated and set apart later. This is what the church is longing for in that psalm: “Judge me, O God, and distinguish my case from an unholy people.” Yes, of course, because the Gospel says, “If your foot is a scandal to you, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God having one foot, than with two feet to go to the everlasting fire.” So these bad people have to be cut off in the end. For the time being the church is lame. It puts one foot down firmly; the other one, being crippled, it drags. Look at the pagans, brothers. Sometimes they find good Christians serving God, and they admire them and are attracted and believe. Sometimes they notice those who are living bad lives, and they say, “Look at these Christians!” But those who live evil lives belong to the hollow of Jacob’s thigh that was touched, and they have withered. Yet the touch of the Lord is the hand of the Lord, chastising and giving life.

Now, as I said just a little while ago, Jacob was also called Israel, which was the name generally borne by the people descended from him. This name was given him by the angel who wrestled with him when Jacob was on his way back from Mesopotamia. This angel obviously presents a type of Christ. For the fact that Jacob “prevailed over” him (the angel, of course, being a willing loser to symbolize the hidden meaning) represents the passion of Christ, in which the Jews seemed to prevail over him. And yet Jacob obtained a blessing from the very angel whom he had defeated; thus the giving of the name was the blessing. Now “Israel” means “seeing God,” and the vision of God will be the reward of all the saints at the end of the world. Moreover, the angel also touched the apparent victor on the broad part of his thigh and thus made him lame. And so the same man, Jacob, was the same time blessed and lame—blessed in those who among this same people of Israel have believed in Christ and crippled in respect of those who do not believe. For the broad part of the thigh represents the general mass of the race. For in fact it is to the majority of that stock that the prophetic statement applies, “They have limped away from their paths.”

Those just people also were saved by their salutary faith in him as man and God who, before he came in the flesh, believed that he was to come in the flesh. Our faith is the same as theirs, since they believed that this would be, while we believe that it has come to pass. Hence the apostle Paul says, “But having the same spirit of faith, as it is written: ‘I believed for which cause I have spoken,’ we also believe for which cause we speak also.” If, then, those who foretold that Christ would come in the flesh had the same faith as those who have recorded his coming, these religious mysteries could vary according to the diversity of times, yet all refer most harmoniously to the unity of the same faith. It is written in the Acts of the Apostles that the apostle Peter said, “Now therefore why do you make trial of your God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus just as they will.” If, therefore, they, that is, the fathers, being unable to bear the yoke of the old law, believed that they were saved through grace of the Lord Jesus, it is clear that this grace saved even the just people of old through faith, for “the just man lives by faith.”

But “Mary,” the other sister of Lazarus, “took a pound of perfume made from costly, pistic, aromatic nard. She anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the ointment fragrance.” We have heard what happened; let us search out the hidden meaning. You, whoever wishes to be a faithful soul, together with Mary anoint the Lord’s feet with costly perfume. That perfume was justice, and so it was a full pound. However, it was perfume made from costly, pistic, aromatic nard. What does “pistic” mean? We might believe it to be some place in which this was costly perfume; and yet this is not an idle phrase and is quite well consonant with the mystery. The Greek word means “faith.” You were seeking to work justice: “the just man lives by faith.” Anoint Jesus’ feet by living well. Follow the Lord’s footsteps. Wipe with your hair. If you have more than enough, give to the poor, and you have wiped the Lord’s feet. For hairs seem to be the body’s superfluity. For you they are superfluous, but for the Lord’s feet they are necessary. Perhaps on earth the Lord’s feet are in need. For about whom except about his members will he say in the end, “When you did it for one of the least of mine, you did it for me”? You spent your superfluity, but you gave service to my feet.