Prudentius
Nicene & Post-Nicene · AD 325–500 · d. AD 410 · 59 passages across 15 books
Commentary
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
That at earth’s dawn the Father not alone
Nor without Christ his new creation formed.
“God fashioned man,” he says, “and gave to him
The face of God.” What but to say that he
Was not alone, that God stood by God’s side
When the Lord made man in image of the Lord?
And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:
the dove is now bringing
Back to the ark in her beak
the budding green branch of an olive.
For the raven, held captive by gluttony,
clung to foul bodies,
While the dove brought back
the glad tidings of peace that was given.
And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.
With deep ravines and wooden crags, and strives
To waylay some by fraud and secret wiles,
To vanquish others by his giant arms
And spread his deadly triumphs far and wide.
And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan.
Covered the pastoral roof of the ancient seer; in this hospice
Sarah laughed at the joy of bearing a child in her old age
And at the faith her venerable husband could have in the marvel.
Abraham purchased a field wherein he might bury his wife’s bones,
Inasmuch as justice and faith on the earth dwell as strangers:
This is the cave for which he expended a great sum of money,
To prepare a fit resting place for his wife’s holy ashes.
And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.
Escaped proud Pharaoh’s foolish law,
And as the savior of his race
Prefigured Christ who was to come.
A cruel edict had been passed
Forbidding Hebrew mothers all,
When sons were born to them, to rear
These virile pledges of their love.
Devoutly scornful of the king,
A zealous midwife found a way
To hide her charge and keep him safe
For future glory and renown.
And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
Who of the Virgin took a mortal frame.
The human form that not yet in the flesh
Appeared to Moses wore a brow like ours,
Since God, who would by power of the Word
Assume a body, made the face the same.
Flames rose and seemed to burn the thorny bush.
God moved amid the branches set with spines,
And tresses of the flames swayed harmlessly,
That he might shadow forth his Son’s descent
Into our thorny members sin infests
With teeming briers and fills with bitter woes.
For tainted at its root that noxious shrub
Had sprouted from its baneful sap a crop
Of evil shoots beset with many thorns.
The sterile branches suddenly grew bright
As God enkindled with his mighty power
The leafy boughs, nor harmed the tangled briers.
He touched the scarlet berries, blood-red fruits,
And grazed the twigs that grew from deadly wood,
Shed by the tortured bush with cruel pangs.
And command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place, where ye shall lodge this night.
Left dry when waters backward flowed,
He raised and firmly set in place,
The type of Christ’s apostles twelve.
But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.
Our hand’s control, when conquering Achan fell.
Renowned for bloodshed, proud of leveling walls,
He fell a victim to the enemy’s gold
When from the dust he gleaned the stuff accursed
And snatched the mournful plunder from the ruins.
His tribe did not avail, nor his descent
From Judah, founder of the race of Christ
And patriarch blessed in his noble scion.
Let those who imitate his race accept
A similar form of death and punishment.
And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails.
When he killed the wild beast, from its mouth there flowed streams of honey,
And from an ass’s jawbone comes forth a fountain of water:
Folly with water overflows and virtue with sweetness.
Samson catches three hundred foxes and arms them with firebrands,
Which he ties to their tails, and he lets them go into the cornfields
Of the Philistines to burn their crops: thus the fox of false doctrine
Cunningly scatters the flames of heresy over our vineyards.
But now the LORD my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent.
O leaders, that which Solomon achieved,
The peaceful scion and the unarmed heir
Of a warlike realm, whose father’s weary hand
Was sullied by the ardent blood of kings.
The blood effaced, a temple is upraised
And golden altar, house sublime of Christ.
Jerusalem then by its temple crowned,
Received its God, now that the wandering ark
On the marble altar found repose.
In our camp let a sacred temple rise,
that God may in its sanctuary dwell.
What profits it to have repelled the hosts
Of earthborn vices, if the Son of man
From heaven descending, enter the body cleansed,
But unadorned and not a temple fair?
Thus far we have engaged in fierce conflict:
Now let white-vestured Peace perform its tasks,
And youth unarmed build up a sacred house.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
All that he grasps with imperious hand:
All that the sky and the earth and the sea
Yields from the air and the waves and the fields,
This he subjects to me, me to himself.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
It is one that no artisan has built,
A structure not of riven fir or pine,
Nor reared with blocks of quarried marble fair.
Its massive weight no columns high support
Beneath the arches of a gilded vault.
By God’s Word it was formed, not by his voice,
But by the everlasting Word, the Word made flesh.
This temple is eternal, without end,
This you attacked with scourge and cross and gall.
This temple was destroyed by bitter pains.
Its form was fragile from the Mother’s womb,
But when brief death the Mother’s part dissolved,
The Father’s might restored it in three days.
You have beheld my saving temple rise
On high, surrounded by an angel throng.
The everlasting gates uphold its roof;
Through lofty towers the glorious stairs arise,
And at the top appears a shining path.
To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, Maschil. We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old.
His spirit and thought, the way of his designs,
Which made not by his hand or spoken word,
Breathed from the Father’s heart, declared his will.
NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
Against which vanity may strike,
A sign unto the faithful, scandal to the lax,
The one it fells, the other guides.
The blind one feels his way with slow uncertain step
And runs into what’er he meets.
The lamp of faith alone must shine before our feet,
That footsteps may unswerving be.
The foe assails and carries off the wanderers
Who in the darkness go astray,
A demon who devours the wheat speeds on the way
For pilgrims passing to and fro,
A thief who tampers with the fertile fields of Christ
By sowing in them barren oats.
A demon who devours the wheat spread on the way
For pilgrims passing to and fro,
A thief who tampers with the fertile fields of Christ
By sowing in them barren oats.
He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries.
The orbs presiding over day and over night,
The winds and tempests, lightnings, showers of rain and clouds,
The polar stars, the star of evening, heat and snow,
The fountains, hoarfrosts, precious veins of ore and streams,
One in their might one both the Father and the Son,
And that one splendor generated by one light
With all the Godhead’s plenitude of brightness shone.
In God one undivided being operates,
And by one power was created all that is,
The rugged cliffs and level plains and mountain dells,
Wild beasts, the fowl of air and reptiles, all that swim,
The beasts of burden, cattle, oxen, mammoth brutes,
The flowers and shrubs, the vines, the herbs and woodland groves,
All plants that shed their fragrance, plants that food supply.
Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise him in the heights.
all you angels sing his praise,
Let the mighty hosts of heaven sing in
joyous praise of God;
Let no tongue of humanity be silent,
let all voices join the hymn.
When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth:
The sky and light and all besides;
All by the Word’s almighty power
Were fashioned, for the Word was God.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
“Ascend to heaven, banish cares of earth.
For far as earth is distant from the sky
And heaven from the world below, so far
Are your vain thoughts from my eternal thoughts,
Ill from good, sin from virtue, dark from light.
I counsel you to shun all passing things
And deem as nought all to corruption prone,
For it is destined to return to nought.
All earth brings forth and holds, at dawn of time
I made; I decked with splendid ornaments
The shining world and formed the elements,
But willed that the enjoyment be confined
Within due bounds, as far as mortal frame
And fleeting human life may have the need,
Not that humanity, by unbridled passion ruled,
Should reckon good alone things sweet and vain,
Which I have preordained to pass with time.
Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:
dwelling in sepulchral caves,
Bound with cruel and grinding fetters and
with raging frenzy torn,
Rushes forth and kneels in worship, as the
saving Christ draws near.
And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.
Seize upon the sordid foulness of a herd of filthy swine
And into the muddy waters plunge themselves with maddened beasts.