Tertullian — Commentary on Scripture

Psalms 116:15

“For the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those who hope in his mercy, to deliver their souls from death,” even eternal death, “and to nourish them in their hunger,” that is, after eternal life. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all.” “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” “The Lord keeps all their bones; not one of them shall be broken.” The Lord will redeem the souls of his servants. We have adduced these few quotations from a mass of the Creator’s Scriptures; and no more, I suppose, are needed to prove him to be a most good God, for they sufficiently indicate both the precepts of his goodness and the firstfruits of it.

AGAINST MARCION 2.19

Psalms 118:22-23

For Jesus tells them [the disciples] that “the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected,” before his coming, at which his kingdom will be really revealed. In this statement he shows that it was his own kingdom that his answer to them had contemplated and that was now awaiting his own sufferings and rejection. But having to be rejected and afterwards to be acknowledged and taken up and glorified, he borrowed the very word rejected from the passage where, under the figure of a stone, his twofold manifestation was celebrated by David—the first in rejection, the second in honor. “The stone,” he says, “that the builders rejected is become the headstone of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing.” Now it would be idle, if we believed that God had predicted the humiliation, or even the glory, of any Christ at all, that he could have designed his prophecy for any but him whom he had foretold under the figure of a stone and a rock and a mountain.

AGAINST MARCION 4.35

Psalms 118:22-23

Thus we find from this passage also, that Christ possessed a body of flesh, such as was able to endure the cross. “When, therefore, he came and preached peace to them that were near and to them which were afar off,” we both obtained “access to the Father,” being “now no more strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God” (even of him from whom, as we have shown above, we were aliens and placed far off), “built on the foundation of the apostles”—[the apostle added] “and the prophets”; these words, however, the heretic erased, forgetting that the Lord had set in his church not only apostles but prophets also. He feared, no doubt, that our building was to stand in Christ on the foundation of the ancient prophets, since the apostle himself never fails to build us up everywhere with [the words of] the prophets. For whence did he learn to call Christ “the chief cornerstone” but from the figure given him in the psalm: “The stone that the builders rejected is become the head [stone] of the corner”?

AGAINST MARCION 5.17

Psalms 132:17-18

For Joshua was to lead the people into the land of promise, not Moses. Now he called him an “angel,” on account of the magnitude of the mighty deeds that he was to achieve (which mighty deeds Joshua the son of Nun did, and you yourselves have read about) and on account of his office of prophet announcing the divine will. Just as the Spirit, speaking in the person of the Father, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future “angel,” through the prophet: “Behold, I sent my angel before your”—that is, Christ’s—“face, who shall prepare your way before you.” Nor is it a novel practice to the Holy Spirit to call those “angels” whom God has appointed as ministers of his power. For the same John is called not merely an “angel” of Christ but also a “lamp” shining before Christ. For David predicts, “I have prepared the lamp for my Christ”; and so Christ, coming “to fulfill the prophets,” referred to him [John] [when speaking] to the Jews. “He was,” he says, “the burning and shining lamp,” being the one who not only prepared his ways in the desert” but, by pointing out “the Lamb of God,” enlig…

For Joshua was to lead the people into the land of promise, not Moses. Now he called him an “angel,” on account of the magnitude of the mighty deeds that he was to achieve (which mighty deeds Joshua the son of Nun did, and you yourselves have read about) and on account of his office of prophet announcing the divine will. Just as the Spirit, speaking in the person of the Father, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future “angel,” through the prophet: “Behold, I sent my angel before your”—that is, Christ’s—“face, who shall prepare your way before you.” Nor is it a novel practice to the Holy Spirit to call those “angels” whom God has appointed as ministers of his power. For the same John is called not merely an “angel” of Christ but also a “lamp” shining before Christ. For David predicts, “I have prepared the lamp for my Christ”; and so Christ, coming “to fulfill the prophets,” referred to him [John] [when speaking] to the Jews. “He was,” he says, “the burning and shining lamp,” being the one who not only prepared his ways in the desert” but, by pointing out “the Lamb of God,” enlightened the minds of people by his proclaiming, so that they understood him to be that Lamb whom Moses was accustomed to announce as destined to suffer.

AN ANSWER TO THE JEWS 9

Psalms 135:15-16

“I am the Lord your God. You shall not make for yourselves idols fashioned by the hand, neither set up a graven image. Nor shall you set up a remarkable stone in your land [to worship it]: I am the Lord your God.” These words indeed were first spoken by the Lord by the lips of Moses, being applicable certainly to whomsoever the Lord God of Israel may lead forth in like manner from the Egypt of a most superstitious world and from the place of human slavery. But from the mouth of every prophet in succession sounds forth also utterances of the same God, augmenting the same law of his by a renewal of the same commands, and in the first place announcing no other duty in so special a manner as being on guard against all making and worshiping of idols; as when by the mouth of David he says, “The gods of the nations are silver and gold: they have eyes, and see not; they have ears, and hear not; they have a nose, and smell not; a mouth, and they speak not; hands, and they handle not; feet and they walk not. Like to them shall be they who make them and trust in them.”

SCORPIACE 2