Sacred Texts  Christianity  Early Church Fathers  Index  Previous  Next 

Chapter CXXXII.—How great the power was of the name of Jesus in the Old Testament.

“Yet after this you made a calf, and were very zealous in committing fornication with the daughters of strangers, and in serving idols. And again, when the land was given up to you with so great a display of power, that you witnessed 2462 the sun stand still in the heavens by the order of that man whose name was Jesus (Joshua), and not go down for thirty-six hours, p. 266 as well as all the other miracles which were wrought for you as time served; 2463 and of these it seems good to me now to speak of another, for it conduces to your hereby knowing Jesus, whom we also know to have been Christ the Son of God, who was crucified, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, and will come again to judge all men, even up to Adam himself. You are aware, then,” I continued, “that when the ark of the testimony was seized by the enemies of Ashdod, 2464 and a terrible and incurable malady had broken out among them, they resolved to place it on a cart to which they yoked cows that had recently calved, for the purpose of ascertaining by trial whether or not they had been plagued by God’s power on account of the ark, and if God wished it to be taken back to the place from which it had been carried away. And when they had done this, the cows, led by no man, went not to the place whence the ark had been taken, but to the fields of a certain man whose name was Oshea, the same as his whose name was altered to Jesus (Joshua), as has been previously mentioned, who also led the people into the land and meted it out to them: and when the cows had come into these fields they remained there, showing to you thereby that they were guided by the name of power; 2465 just as formerly the people who survived of those that came out of Egypt, were guided into the land by him who had received the name Jesus (Joshua), who before was called Oshea.

Footnotes

[Another Americanism. Greek, θεάσασθαι.]

The anacoluthon is in the original.

See 1 Sam. v.

Or, “by the power of the name.” [1 Sam. vi. 14. Joshua in English version.]