Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] You are equally led astray by the mere sound of names, when you seize on "the strength of Damascus," "Samaria's spoils," and "the Assyrian king" as though these portended a warrior-Christ belonging to the Creator — failing to notice what the prophecy sets down beforehand: that before the child can even say "father" and "mother," he will carry off Damascus's might and seize Samaria's plunder in the face of the Assyrian king. [2] For you must first look at what the demonstration of age allows — whether it could even present a grown man as Christ, let alone a commander. Was the infant, presumably, going to summon men to arms with his wailing, announce battle not by a trumpet-blast but by the shake of a rattle, and take aim at the enemy not from a horse or a chariot or a city wall, but from the neck or back of his nurse or nanny — subduing Damascus and Samaria, so to speak, between the nursing-breasts? [3] It is another matter if, among the Pontic tribes of some barbarous nation, infants burst into battle — anointed, I suppose, facing the sun, then armed in swaddling-clothes and paid their wages in butter, boys who know how to hurl a lance before they can tear meat with their teeth. But if nowhere does nature allow this — to soldier before one can live, to take up the strength of Damascus before one knows the words "father" and "mother" — it follows that the utterance must be read as figurative. "But," he says, "nature does not allow a virgin to give birth either, and yet the prophet is believed." And rightly so. [4] For he built up faith in an incredible matter by giving the reason: that the thing would come to pass as a sign. "Therefore," he says, "the Lord in person shall grant you a token: look, a maiden shall conceive in the womb and shall bring a son into the world." But a sign given by God, unless it were some monstrous novelty, would be no sign at all. Indeed, when the Jews on occasion dare to lie to us in order to bring us down, pretending that the scripture speaks not of a virgin but of a young woman who will conceive and bear, they are refuted on this very point: nothing ordinary — a young woman's pregnancy and delivery — could possibly look like a sign. So it is rightly believed that the virgin-and-mother was appointed as a sign; the warrior-infant, however, is not believed in the same way, for here there is no logic of a sign at work. But once the sign of the new birth has been recorded, from that point a further stage of the infant's life is announced — one who will eat butter and honey. [6] This too is not meant as a sign — it belongs to infancy, not to a refusal of evil — but as the one destined to take Damascus's strength for himself and win Samaria as spoil before the Assyrian king. Keep the limits of age in view, and look for the sense of the prophecy — better, restore to the gospel of truth what you have subsequently stripped from it, and the prophecy will be understood exactly as it is proclaimed once the excision is undone. Let those Magi from the east remain, then, presenting to the infant Christ in his cradle their gifts of gold and frankincense, and let the infant lay hold of Damascus's strength with no battle fought and no weapon lifted. [7] For besides the fact that everyone knows the strength of the East — that is, its power and resources — customarily consists of gold and spices, it is certainly the Creator's practice to make gold stand for the power of other nations too, as through Zechariah: "And Judah shall encamp before Jerusalem and shall gather together all the might of the peoples round about — gold and silver." [8] And of that gift of gold, David too says at the time: "And gold out of Arabia shall be presented to him"; and again, "Sheba's and Arabia's kings will bring him their offerings." For the East generally had Magi as its kings, and Damascus was formerly reckoned to Arabia, before it was reassigned to Syrophoenicia by the division of the Syrias — and it was its strength that Christ then received, receiving its emblems, namely gold and spices; while the spoils of Samaria were the Magi themselves, who, once they had recognized him and honored him with gifts and, kneeling, worshiped him as God and King on the testimony of the star that pointed him out and led them, became, in effect, Samaria's plunder — plunder taken from idolatry itself — by, plainly, coming to believe in Christ. [9] For he marked idolatry by the name of Samaria, since it was disgraced on account of the idolatry into which it had then fallen away from God under King Jeroboam. Nor is this anything new for the Creator — to use, figuratively, the transfer of names drawn from a comparison of crimes. For he also calls the rulers of the Jews "rulers of Sodom," and calls that very people "the people of Gomorrah." And elsewhere the same one says, "Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite," because of a like impiety — the very people he had once even called his own sons: "I have begotten and raised up sons." [10] So too Egypt is sometimes understood in him as the whole world, under the reproach of superstition and cursedness. So too Babylon, even in our own John, is a figure for the city of Rome — being likewise great, proud in her dominion, and the destroyer of God's saints. By this same usage, then, he also labeled the Magi with the title "Samaritans," stripped, as we have said, of the idolatry they had shared with the Samaritans. And by "against the king of the Assyrians," understand "against Herod" — against whom, in fact, the Magi did resist at that time, by not reporting back concerning the Christ whom he sought to seize.
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