Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] This interpretation of ours will be reinforced when, elsewhere too, in reckoning Christ a warrior on the strength of certain words for weapons and expressions of that sort, you are shown to be wrong by comparison with the rest of the sense. "Gird your sword," says David, "upon your thigh." But what do you read of Christ just above? "Fairer in beauty than the sons of men, grace is poured out on your lips." [2] I laugh, if the one he was girding with a sword for war is the one he was flattering about the comeliness of his form and the grace of his lips! So too, when he goes on to add, "and stretch forth, and prosper, and reign," he appended "for the sake of truth and gentleness and justice." For who accomplishes those things with a sword, and not rather their opposites — deceit and harshness and injustice, the very stock-in-trade of warfare? Let us look, then, at whether this is not some other sword, one whose working differs entirely. [3] For the apostle John too, in the Apocalypse, pictures a blade issuing from God's mouth, two-edged and honed keen — and this must be taken as the divine utterance: two-edged, on account of the two covenants, Law and Gospel; keen through its wisdom, opposed to the devil, equipping us to face down the spirit-enemies of wickedness and every lust, and severing us even from those dearest to us for the sake of God's name. [4] But should John not persuade you, there is our shared teacher Paul, who girds our loins with truth and the breastplate of uprightness, and fits our feet with readiness to carry the good news of peace — not of combat — telling us to raise up faith as a shield, by which every burning missile the devil hurls can be doused, and to don salvation as a helmet, and to wield the Spirit's blade, which, in his words, is God's own utterance. [5] This is the very blade the Lord himself came to cast upon the earth — not peace. If this is your own Christ, then he too counts as a soldier. If he is no soldier, yet still wields a sword taken figuratively, then it was equally permitted for the Creator's Christ in the psalm to be girded, without any warlike business, with the figurative sword of the word — a Christ to whom the aforesaid comeliness and grace of the lips fit well, the very one who was then already being girded upon the thigh in David's time, one day to cast that sword upon the earth. [6] For this is what is meant by "stretch forth, and prosper, and reign" — stretching the word over all the earth for the calling of all nations, prospering by the success of the faith, by which it was received, and thenceforth reigning, in that he conquered death by resurrection. "And your right hand shall lead you on wondrously," he says — namely, the power of spiritual grace, by which the recognition of Christ is brought about. [7] "Your arrows are sharp" — his precepts flying everywhere, and his warnings and his exposures of the heart, piercing and transfixing every conscience. "The peoples shall fall beneath you" — worshiping, that is. So the Creator's Christ is mighty in war and bearer of arms in this way, and even now he goes on gathering plunder — no longer Samaria's alone, but drawn from every nation. Recognize, then, that the spoils too are figurative, just as you have already learned the weapons are allegorical. And so, since both the Lord speaks and the apostle writes in this figurative manner, it is not without warrant that we use interpretations of this kind — examples of which even our opponents themselves admit — and thus, to that very extent, the Christ of Isaiah will be the one who has come, precisely insofar as he was not a warrior, because no such figure is foretold by Isaiah.
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