Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
He concludes his argument about the temporal and earthly Kingdom of the saints after the resurrection with various testimonies from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel, and with the parable of the watchful servants, to whom the Lord promises that he himself will minister.
Isaiah, too, plainly announced that such joy would come at the resurrection of the just, saying: 'The dead will rise, and those who are in the tombs will rise, and those who are in the earth will rejoice. For the dew that comes from you is healing for them.' Ezekiel voices the identical thought: 'See, I will throw open your graves and lift you out of them, so as to bring my people up from their tombs; I will place my spirit inside you, and you shall live, and I will settle you upon your own soil, and you shall recognize that I am the Lord.' And elsewhere he says much the same: 'So says the Lord: I will collect Israel out of every nation where they were dispersed, and I will show myself holy among them before the eyes of the surrounding peoples; they shall settle on their own soil, the land I gave my servant Jacob, dwelling there in hope, building homes and planting vines, dwelling in hope once I have judged all who treated them with contempt among the neighboring nations; and they shall recognize that I am the Lord who is their God, and the God their fathers worshipped.' We already showed above that the Church stands as Abraham's offspring; and for that reason — so it may be understood that it is within the new covenant that God draws together, out of every nation, those destined for salvation, raising up sons for Abraham even from bare stones — Jeremiah says: 'See, days are approaching, declares the Lord, when it will no longer be said, "As the Lord lives, who led the sons of Israel up out of the northern land" — instead he will bring them back from every place into which they had been scattered, to the very soil he gave their forebears.'
Since every creature, by God's own will, is destined to expand and flourish, bearing and sustaining fruits of this kind, Isaiah declares: "On every lofty mountain and every high hill, streams of water will run in the day appointed, on that day when multitudes come to ruin, when ramparts crumble down. And the moon's brightness will match the sun's radiance, sevenfold as daylight itself, on the day he binds up his people's wound and cures the hurt they have suffered." This hurt or wound is none other than that by which mankind was laid low at the outset through Adam's transgression — namely death — which God will remedy by raising us from among the dead and giving back to us the possession belonging to the fathers, as Isaiah states elsewhere: "You shall place your confidence in the Lord, and he will lift you above the whole earth, and nourish you with the possession that belonged to Jacob your father... this they ministered to them." This is likewise what the Lord himself declared: "Fortunate are those servants whom the master, upon arriving, discovers alert and watching. Truly I tell you, he himself will put on his apron, seat them at table, and come and wait on them personally. Even should he arrive during the middle watch of the night, or come upon them still so occupied in the third watch, happy are those servants, for their master will seat them and serve them himself." John states this same idea in his Apocalypse: "Fortunate and set apart is the one granted a share in the resurrection that comes first." Isaiah likewise foretold the season in which these events would occur: "And I asked," he writes, "for how long, Lord? Till towns lie empty, stripped bare of any inhabitant, and dwellings stand without a soul in them, and the countryside becomes a wilderness." Following this, God will send mankind into a far country, and the remnant left behind will grow numerous across the land. Daniel states this identical truth: "And rule and dominion and the majesty of every realm beneath the whole sky was granted to the holy ones belonging to God Most High, whose reign endures without end, and to whom every power shall bow in service and obedience." And so that no one should imagine this pledge concerns some other era, it was declared to the prophet: "But as for you, go your way and take up your appointed place at the close of the age."
Now that these pledges were made known not merely to the prophets and the patriarchs, but equally to the assemblies drawn together out of the Gentile nations — whom the Spirit also names "islands," both since they lie amid the turbulent sea and withstand the storm of blasphemous speech, and because they serve as a haven of rescue for those in danger, a shelter for lovers of the deep, striving to flee the Bythos, that is, the abyss of error — Jeremiah speaks in this manner: "Hear the Lord's word, you nations, proclaim it among the distant islands; say: He who dispersed Israel shall bring him together again, and watch over him as a shepherd watches his flock. And should he come during the middle watch of the night, he will wait upon them himself." (Concerning this phrase, "during the middle watch of the night," the ancient Latin rendering agrees with Irenaeus in a number of manuscripts, as does Bede afterward along with other Latin writers, and an even earlier Greek father, Methodius, in the appendix to the newest volume of Combefis's Bibliotheca Patrum, where Luke's words are quoted without this phrase; yet it can be gathered from what follows immediately that the phrase was dropped not by Methodius himself but by a later copyist, for he continues thus:) his hand shall rescue him from one who was mightier than himself. They shall arrive, and exult upon Mount Zion, and come toward the good things — the region of grain and new wine and fruit, of herds and flocks — and their being shall become like a well-watered garden, and hunger shall trouble them no longer. Then young women will delight amid the gathering of young men, and elders will share the delight, and I will turn their grief into gladness, granting them comfort, and I will fill the souls of the priests, Levi's sons, to overflowing, and my people will have their fill of my bounty. We have already established in the earlier book that every one of the Lord's disciples belongs to the priestly line of Levi, having desecrated the sabbath within the temple, yet remain guiltless. Promises of this sort, then, quite plainly point toward a banqueting of this present creation within the kingdom belonging to the righteous, which God pledges that he himself will supply.
Further, regarding Jerusalem and its future ruler, Isaiah declares: "Thus the Lord speaks: Happy is he who possesses offspring in Zion and relatives dwelling in Jerusalem. See, an upright king is coming to reign, and leaders will govern with fairness." And touching the manner in which it will be rebuilt, he says: "Look, I will set your stones in carbuncle, and lay your foundations with sapphire, and fashion your parapets from jasper, your gates of crystalline stone, your surrounding wall of precious stones, and all your children shall be taught by God, and your offspring shall live in abundant peace, and you shall be established through righteousness." And elsewhere he likewise states: "See, I turn Jerusalem into gladness, and my people into delight: the sound of weeping shall never again be heard within her, nor any cry of distress. No longer will there be an infant whose days are few, nor an aged man who fails to complete his years — for the young shall live a hundred years, while the sinner who dies at a hundred shall be counted cursed. They will construct dwellings and live in them themselves; they will set out vineyards and themselves eat what they yield, and drink the wine. They will not build for another to occupy, nor plant for another to consume. For as long as a tree endures, so long shall my people's days extend; the fruit of their toil shall never wear away with age."