The divine Scripture designates under the name anointed not only those who are brought forward for unction but also those whom the God of the universe has singled out with a view toward [fulfilling] a required function. Thus, referring to the patriarchs who lived before the law, he has said, Touch not my anointed ones.^[1] Here, in any case, he has given to Cyrus the title anointed, in order to announce that it is [God] who has chosen him as king in such a way as to defeat the empire of the Babylonians, to make an end to the captivity of the Jews and to [re]construct the temple of God.

What is most clear is the power of the prophecy or the prophetic preaching. We should look at each of the lines to see clearly what seems obscure. For it calls Cyrus Christ and not as if he were one of the saints, who could bear this name, but it functions to mean that he bears the name as anointed by God, in that God was in the habit of anointing those called to the kingdom even if they were not saints or worshipers. For we find the holy prophets saying to those who have received this, The Lord has anointed you king over Israel.^[1] So Cyrus is the anointed one, anticipating Christ as king. Only through God has he triumphed and been brought to this triumphal song so as to reflect that since he is called anointed, that is, by chrism and selection, he is called by God to the kingdom . . . so that you might know. . . . I am the Lord God who calls your name, the God of Israel, for the sake of Jacob my servant/son and Jacob my chosen. I, God alone, have called you for this, and I have honored you with radiance, that you will be civil to my servant Israel. I have called you and have crowned you with glory, even though you do not know that I am the Lord and that there is no God other than me.^[2]

Thus says the Lord God to my Christ [the] Lord, whose right hand I have held, that the nations may hear him, ‘the powers of kings will I burst asunder; I will open before him the gates, and the cities shall not be closed to him.’ This very thing we see now fulfilled. For whose right hand does God the Father hold but Christ’s, his Son? All nations have heard of him, that is, people of all nations have believed. Their preachers, the apostles, are pointed to in the psalms of David: Into the entire earth, he says, is gone out their sound, and to the ends of the earth their words.^[1] For on whom else have nations the world over believed but on the Christ who has now already come? . . . In all these places the name of the Christ has already come to reign. He is the one before whom the gates of all cities have been opened and to whom none are closed, before whom iron bars have been crumbled and brazen gates opened. There is a spiritual sense affixed to these expressions. The hearts of individuals, having been blockaded in various ways by the devil, are now unbarred by the faith of Christ. This promise has already been evidently fulfilled, inasmuch as in all these places there are people who live believing in the name of Christ.

I maintain in accord with the Scriptures that God can extend the low-lying regions and the open plains, as he has said, I will go before you and make level the mountains. The very force of water can also make its bed deeper by the violent movements of the waves and by the impact of the surf of that wild element that day by day stirs up the bottom of the sea, drawing forth sands from its very depths.

By all that is about to be said, he has taught that he has invested Cyrus as king, he has given him the necessary sovereignty to direct his empire with good will and so that the disposition of difficult matters is mitigated and facilitated. This is what the phrase means: I will level mountains, and I will break to pieces brazen doors.

Let us not fear punishment. By this faith we shall escape punishment. . . . This is the correct attitude of the servants of God to be. For if those who were brought up under the old dispensation, when death was not yet slain,^[1] or his brazen gates broken down or his iron bars cut into pieces so nobly encountered their end, how destitute of all defense or excuse shall we be, if, after having had the benefit of such great grace, we attain not even to the same measure of virtue as they did, now when death is only a name, devoid of reality. For death is nothing more than a sleep, a journey, a migration, a rest, a tranquil haven, an escape from trouble and a freedom from the cares of this present life!

To one who believes, a promise is given by God: I will give you hidden treasures, unseen ones. When we have been deemed worthy of knowledge face to face, we shall see also the depth in the storehouses of God.

The higher and profounder spiritual meaning is the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge,^[1] which the Holy Spirit speaking through Isaiah calls dark and unseen and concealed treasures. These treasures require for their discovery the help of God, who alone is able to break in pieces the gates of brass by which they are shut in and concealed and to burst the iron bolts and bars that prevent us from entering in and reaching all those truths written in veiled language in Genesis concerning the various races of souls and the seeds and generations named there, whether closely akin to Israel or widely separated from his posterity.

Who is the person whose heart has never been made to burn,^[1] as the Scriptures have been opened, with the pure words of God that have been tried in a furnace;^[2] who has not, by a triple inscription^[3] of them on the breadth of his heart, attained the mind of Christ,^[4] or been admitted to the treasures that to most people remain hidden, secret and dark, to gaze on the riches therein and become able to enrich others, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.^[5]

I will give you the treasures of darkness. . . . This is the way [Isaiah] referred to hell. Even if it was hell, it still preserved the sacred souls and precious vessels, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is why Isaiah called it a place of treasures, even if in darkness, because the Sun of justice had not yet penetrated there with its rays or with any message on the resurrection.

Then the word of God will precede us and first humble the powerful of our earth—that is, these same harmful passions that we wish to subdue and that claim dominion for themselves and a most cruel tyranny in our mortal body—and it will make them submit to our investigation and our exposure. And, breaking open the gates of ignorance and smashing the bolts of the vices that shut us out from true knowledge, it will lead us to our concealed secrets and, according to the apostle, it will, once we have been enlightened, reveal to us the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of hearts.^[1]

[Cyrus] also was a slave to the error of idolatry. Even though he had received kingship from the God of the universe and obtained such great assistance from him, he had not known the dispenser of these benefits. God had nevertheless deemed him worthy, despite his error, of all these benefits. He had appointed him as an instrument of chastisement to the Babylonians and of the liberation of Israel. However, I have found some copies that bear this text: Meanwhile, Israel, you have not known me. But I have not found the presence of the word Israel, either in the Hebrew text or with the other interpreters or in the Hexapla version [Origen’s compilation] of the Septuagint. And it is justifiably so, for it is not Israel that he is accusing of scorning him, but Cyrus. Then he also indicates the cause of the liberation of the Jews.

And inasmuch as this Son is undivided and inseparable from the Father, so is he to be reckoned as being in the Father, even when he is not named. The fact is, if he had named him ex-pressly, he would have separated him, saying in so many words, Beside me there is none else, except my Son. In short, he would have made his Son actually another, after excepting him from others.

The prophets were not denying the Son (God forbid!), but they wished to cure the Jews of their weakness and, meanwhile, to persuade them to give up their belief in the many gods that did not exist.

Ever desiring to become more completely known to us and to incite our minds to his worship, he said, I am the Lord who made the light and created the darkness, that we may not think that some other unknown One was the artificer of those alternations whereby the nights and days are regulated; but rather, and with greater truth, we may acknowledge God as their Creator.

For since we are accustomed to use the word evil to speak of calamities, and not only of thefts and adulteries, so the prophet allows this usage. On this basis the prophet can say, There is no evil in the city that the Lord has not done.^[1] This too, by means of Isaiah, God has made clear, when he said, I am God who makes peace and creates evil, again naming calamities evils. This evil also Christ hints at, thus saying to the disciples, Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,^[2] that is to say, the affliction, the misery. It is manifest then on all sides that he here calls punishment an evil, even as we commonly do, affirming at the same time that God brings these on us. This affords us the greatest view of his providence. For the physician is not only to be commended when he leads forth the patient into gardens and meadows, nor even into baths and pools of water, nor yet when he sets before him a well-furnished table, but when he orders him to remain without food, when he oppresses him with hunger and lays him low with thirst, confines him to his bed, making his house a prison, depriving him of the very light and shadowing his room on all sides with curtains. When he cuts, and when he cauterizes and when he brings his bitter medicines, he is equally a physician.

I make good things and ‘create’ evil things. For to create means to order and arrange. And so in most manuscripts it is written, I make good things and order evil things. To make is to give being to something that did not exist at all, but to order is to arrange something that already exists in such a way that it becomes greater and better. Thus, when God says, I order evil things, he means those things that fall away, that tend to non-being, and not those that have attained their end. For it has been said that, owing to the divine providence, nothing is permitted to reach a state of non-being.

In the same way also we explain the expressions, I, who make peace and create evil; for he calls into existence corporeal or external evils, while purifying and training those who would not be disciplined by the word and sound doctrine. This, then, is our answer to the question, How is it that God created evil?

From my works they will learn; for when I needed to inflict pain on my people for their repentance and discipline, I gave them up to warfare as if handing them over to darkness and wrath on account of their wickedness. Once they have turned and received help, [God] will deem it right to restore them, and it follows that the light of peace and of all good things will rise on them, but in my judgment also the things of wrath. So learn this lesson from me. As I am the creator of light and the leader of peace, likewise am I of dark things and those things considered painful. The evil things have been reckoned to the many whose creator inflicts evil on them. He does so whenever his righteous judgment appoints such, according to the various ways they deserve evil as judgment on their sins.

Now (like many other persons nowadays, especially those who have a heretical proclivity), while morbidly brooding over the question of the origin of evil, Marcion’s perception became blunted by the very irregularity of his researches. When he found the Creator declaring, I am he that creates evil, Marcion had already concluded from other arguments that satisfy only twisted minds that God is the author of evil. So Marcion now applied to the Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil, and then presumed that there ought to be another god, after the analogy of the good tree producing its good fruit. Accordingly, finding in Christ a different disposition—one of a simple and pure benevolence, differing from the Creator—Marcion readily argued that in his Christ had been revealed a new and strange divinity; and then with a little leaven he leavened the whole lump of the faith, flavoring it with the acidity of his own heresy.

These things have thus been clearly shown to you to be in some cases bad, some good and some in between, . . . the inspired author is saying the in-between things are not really bad but are thought to be by the general run of people—things like captivity, servitude and exile. Now, it is necessary to explain the reason for this statement. Loving as [God] is and quick to show mercy, while slow in exercising retribution and punishment, God sent prophets so as to avoid consigning the Jews to punishment, intending to frighten them in word, so as not to punish them in deed. . . .

Observing this and wishing to undermine the reform that was the result of such a threat, the devil sent down false prophets, and in contradiction of the prophets’ threats of captivity, servitude and famine, false prophets preached the opposite—peace, prosperity and enjoyment of countless good things. Hence, the genuine prophets also mocked the false by saying, Peace, peace—and where is peace? This every scholar knows, that everything happened just as the prophets had foretold against the false prophets, who were undermining the people’s zeal. So when they undermined the people in this way and corrupted them, God said through the prophets, I, God, am making peace and creating evils. What sort of evils? Those mentioned—captivity, servitude and the like. Not fornication, licentiousness, avarice and anything else like that. . . .

Do not let the false prophets undermine you; God can give you peace and consign you to captivity, which is the meaning of making peace and creating evils. For you to learn that this is true, let us make a precise examination of the individual expressions. After saying before, I am the one who brought light and darkness into being, he then went on to say, making peace and creating evils. He cited two opposites first, and two opposites after that, for you to learn that he is referring not to fornication but to calamities. I mean, what is set as the opposite of peace? Clearly captivity, not licentiousness or fornication or avarice. So just as he cited two opposites first, so too in this case; the opposite of peace is not fornication, or adultery, or licentiousness or the other vices, but captivity and servitude.

He calls light here the happy events—the cessation of slavery, the liberation and the return—and darkness the sad happenings—the siege, the subjection, the enslavement. It is I, he says, who am the author of these two series of events, of these and of those. It is I who made use of Nebuchadnezzar to inflict the chastisement and who have chosen Cyrus as the instrument for the liberation. And just as I am the creator of the light and of darkness, and [just as] I have produced each of them so that they are used for humankind, I have inflicted bondage on Israel in its interest, and I have made the gift of freedom by reason of my benevolence. Who make peace and create evil. He has clearly taught what he has meant under the name of darkness and of light: it is peace that he has called light and the events that seem bad darkness. So [God] has called them evil, not because they are evil by nature but because people considered them thus. For we have the habit of saying, Today is a bad day for me, not because the day itself is changed to some other nature but because in the course of that day some events happened that produced sorrow.

Rejoice, O heavens, from above, that is, rejoice over the salvation of the nations. The angels are delighted at the repentance of a single sinner. And the clouds will rain down righteousness. The clouds, which rain down righteousness, are the apostles and the priests who justify through the absolution, which they give by means of baptism. Let the earth open, that salvation may be multiplied. Justice, symbolized through the earth, is poured on the mind of the nations, and salvation shall multiply in every region. And let it cause righteousness to spring up also. In the salvation of the nations also their justice is multiplied, and salvation and justice spring up and grow at the same time.

And let the clouds rain righteousness. On the occasion of making previous threats, he has said, I will command the clouds to rain no rain on it,^[1] and . . . it was the prophets who were referred to in this way. Here, therefore, the text invites the prophets to present, as a kind of rain, the discourse dealing with right-eousness. In fact, those recognized as prophets after the return from exile were Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. And let the earth bring forth and blossom with mercy, and bring forth right-eousness likewise. For it is fitting likewise that the people who benefit from such watering offer fruits in consonance with the watering. Thus, the rain provides discourse regarding righteousness; therefore, he demands from them the fruits of righteousness and mercy. For he has called the people who inhabit the earth the earth. I am the Lord who created you. It is I who likewise from the beginning have brought you into existence.

Though this saying is deep and shrouded in much obscurity, you will nonetheless come to understand how true and useful it is. I think it is necessary first to explain briefly the thrust of the ideas. This way it will become more accessible to my listeners and easier to understand. Therefore, the God of all redeemed Israel from Egypt and rescued them from the errors of polytheism and the deceit of the demons, and brought them through the law of Moses to the dawn of the true knowledge of God. He taught them to worship one God and adore one Lord. Then, by means of types and shadows, he wanted to raise them to those things that are still better and more perfect, namely, the things that are in Christ. The law was a tutor, and it stayed until the time of correction, that is, the time of the coming of our savior Jesus Christ when he set aside the shadow of the commandments of the law and the types found in the text, and introduced the people on earth to the beauty of worship in spirit and truth openly and without disguise. But the Jews were quite vexed by this, and because they were still clinging to the types, they resisted Christ, accusing him of transgressing the Mosaic legislation.^[1] . . .

Accordingly, since they deemed as unacceptable the benefit that comes from the preaching of the Gospel, although it would have brought them from the inane shadows to spiritual fruitfulness, it says to them: Will the plowman plow the earth all day? O foolish people, he is saying, the farmer furrows the soil with the plow, but he does not do so forever, nor does he spend the whole time of farming doing the work of the plow. He furrows the soil not simply for the sake of doing so, but that it may be ready to receive the seed when it is sown in it, and thus be productive. Therefore, previously I worked all your hearts, overgrown with thickets and dry as a wasteland as they were, using the law of Moses like a plow; and like a farmer who furrows the land, I prepared them to receive the sowing of good seeds. Now, the sower of every good thing is my Son. Accept, therefore, what comes from him, and cease from your constant love and affection for the plow, which is the law. You see, his purpose in plowing, as I said, was not for you to have that (for what profit would there be in that?) but so that you may produce the fruits of truth. Since we have been refashioned spiritually in Christ, that is to say, we have been transformed, some from the [pagan] error to the knowledge of the truth and to a holy life that comes form Christ, who is the Savior of us all, others from circumcision to adoption of the gospel teachings and into a newness of worship that is no longer marked by the dreariness of types but instead is resplendent with the striking beauty of spiritual worship. Both we and they have been enriched with rebirth in Christ through water and the Spirit.

Likewise, the common Jewish people rejected the grace that was given them and found it unacceptable; for they resisted, as I have said, the teachings of Christ. . . .

For I desire to refashion you, he says, into something better, to remake you into something superior through a spiritual birth which, of course, is the one through water and the Spirit; but you foolishly resist my plans. Did the clay, he says, ever reproach the potter for not having a skillful hand, or for not knowing how to give shape to what he holds in his hands? Nor, he says, does the one who is about to be born put a question to his own father, ‘Will you give birth?’ How is it, then, that you, who are like clay in the potter’s hands, and do not know at all how your spiritual rebirth will take place, are not afraid of being cantankerous? And why do you not realize you ought to leave it to me, as to a craftsman and father, how to do these things?^[1] . . .

Therefore, it is necessary to [yield] to what God says. He himself knows the way of his own works, and what he fashioned is not subject to prying, and what transcends our understanding should be given the honor of unquestioning faith.

One must also understand that the prophet Jeremiah was sent to the house of the potter to see him at work. When the clay collapsed and was reshaped into a different vessel, God said to him: Can I not do with you as this potter has done, O house of Israel? Behold, just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand.^[2] Paul, also, explains that we are transformed spiritually into a holy and utterly good life, when he says: And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed in to the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit^[3]; through whom we are also born again, not any longer of corruptible seed, but through the word of the living God who endures forever.

Just as the potter models anew the vase of broken clay, [God] says, for my part, I will make you better than at first. Will the plowman plow the earth all day?^[1] This comes back to saying it is not effective to use chastisement continually, for the cultivator does not keep tearing up the soil without ceasing. Woe to him who disputes with the One who formed him! Shall the clay say to the potter, What are you doing that you do not work, nor have hands? Shall the thing formed answer him that formed it? Since there were many in that epoch, and now likewise, who concern themselves ill-advisedly with divine providence and who attempt to study inquisitively the cause for the occurrence of wars, of periods of sterility of the soil, of premature deaths and of all the things of this nature, it is understandable that he should first of all deplore those who demand an accounting from the Creator of the universe. He, then, has skillfully closed their mouth by the image of the clay and the potter: the clay does not demand an accounting from the one who worked it regarding his rest or his work. In the same way is it no more fitting to occupy yourself rudely with divine matters, for you are precisely the clay. But there is between me and the potter the greatest difference there could be: the potter, though he is the creator of the utensil of clay, is nevertheless, on his part, the firstborn of the clay, whereas I possess an uncreated nature. Yet the clay does not say a word but supports the modeling that the potter wishes to impose on it, while you pay no attention to my providence.

For we, who do not know at all what the future has in store and see merely our present circumstances, misjudge what will profit us. God . . . sees what is to come as if it were present. These prophecies are addressed, however, to those who make themselves God’s judges. To them may also fittingly be cited those words of Scripture, shall the clay say to the potter and so forth.

How shall we not shun a person who legislates in opposition to the laws of God and issues decrees in opposition to the works of providence, whereas he dares not breathe a word against human laws? Therefore, leaving such exaggerations, or, to speak more truly, blasphemies, on one side, let us demonstrate the error of denying particular providence while acknowledging universal and general providence.

How do we think, except as in the way that the prophet also foretells of God, that he has done the things that are going to be? For he does not say, Who will do the things that are going to be, but who did the things that are going to be. Therefore, [God] both did them and is going to do them. For neither have they been done if he did not do them, nor are they going to be done if he will not do them. Therefore, [God] did them by predestining them; he is going to do them by working.

By predestination God indeed foreknew that which he himself was going to do. Thus it was said, He has made that which shall be.^[1] Furthermore, [God] can foreknow even those things that he himself does not do, such as whatever sins there may be. There are certain things that are sins and at the same time punishment for sins, so that it is written, God delivered them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting.^[2] This is not the sin of God, however, but the judgment of God.

There is no doubt that human wills cannot resist the will of God, who has done whatsoever he pleased in heaven and on earth,^[1] and who has even formed the things that are to come.^[2] Nor can the human will prevent [God] from doing what he wills, seeing that even with human wills, he does what he wills, when he wills to do it.

He who made the things that will be,^[1] therefore, the things that were to be done, he willed them to be spoken of as if done, because these things which come about changeably in time, he has made firm with the unchangeable eternity of his plan. Therefore, in those things as well, in which the effect of the work has not yet come to be, the plan of the Creator remains firm from eternity.