Against Marcion 3.13

You are likewise led by the sound of names when you take “the power of Damascus,” “the spoils of Samaria,” and “the king of the Assyrians” as if they portended that the Creator's Christ would be a warrior, not noticing what Scripture puts first: “For before the child knows how to call father and mother, he will take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians.” You should first look at the indication of age, whether it can present Christ as yet a man, let alone a general. No doubt the infant was to summon men to arms with his wailing and give the signal for battle not with a trumpet but with a rattle, and mark out the enemy not from horse or chariot or wall but from the neck or back of his nurse or carrier, and so subdue Damascus and Samaria instead of the breast! It is another matter if among you people of Pontus the infants of a barbarous nation burst into battle, first oiled, I suppose, in the sun, then armed with swaddling clothes and paid in butter, who know how to throw a lance before they know how to lick. Indeed, if nature nowhere allows this, to serve as a soldier before becoming a man, to take the power of Damascus before knowing the words for father and mother, it follows that the statement must be seen as figurative. “But nature does not allow a virgin to give birth either,” he says, “and yet the prophet is believed.” And rightly; for he laid the groundwork for belief in an incredible thing by giving the reason, that it was to be a sign: “Therefore,” he says, “the Lord will give you a sign: behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son.” But a sign from God would not have been a sign unless it were some wondrous novelty. Finally, the Jews, whenever they dare to lie in order to throw us down, as though Scripture says not that a virgin but that a young woman will conceive and bear, are refuted by this: that an everyday thing, the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman, can have no appearance of a sign. The virgin mother, then, appointed for a sign, will rightly be believed; but the warrior infant not equally, for the ground of a sign does not operate here. Rather, after the sign attached to the new birth, the next stage of the infant is then declared in another place, as one who is to eat honey and butter (and this is surely not for a sign, for it belongs to infancy too), and also to take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. Keep to the measure of his age and look for the sense of the prophecy; indeed, give back to the gospel of truth what you took from it as a later arrival, and the prophecy is understood as clearly as it is reported fulfilled. For let those magi of the East stand firm, honoring the newborn infancy of Christ with gold and incense, and the infant has taken the power of Damascus without battle and weapons. For besides what is known to everyone, that the power of the East, that is its strength and resources, used to abound in gold and spices, it is certainly the Creator's way to make gold the power of other nations too, as through Zechariah: “And Judah will stand forth at Jerusalem and will gather all the strength of the peoples round about, gold and silver.” And of that gift of gold David too says: “And there will be given to him of the gold of Arabia”; and again: “The kings of the Arabs and of Sheba will offer him gifts.” For the East generally held magi to be kings, and Damascus was formerly reckoned part of Arabia, before it was transferred to Syrophoenicia when the Syrias were divided; whose power Christ then took by taking its tokens, namely gold and spices. And the spoils of Samaria were the magi themselves, who, when they had recognized him, honored him with gifts, and on bended knee worshiped him as God and king, under the witness of the star that pointed the way and led them, became spoils of Samaria, that is of idolatry, by believing, of course, in Christ. For he marked idolatry by the name of Samaria, as disgraced for the idolatry by which it had then fallen away from God under King Jeroboam. Nor is this new for the Creator, to use a figurative transfer of names on the ground of comparable crimes. For he calls the rulers of the Jews rulers of Sodom, and the people itself the people of Gomorrah; and likewise elsewhere, “Your father,” he says, “was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite,” on account of like impiety, though he had once called them his own sons: “Sons I have begotten and raised up.” So too Egypt is sometimes understood by him as the whole world, under the charge of superstition and curse. So too Babylon, in our John as well, is a figure of the city of Rome, as likewise great, proud in its empire, and warring down the saints of God. It is by this usage, then, that he titled the magi too with the name of Samaritans, stripped of what they had held in common with the Samaritans, as we said, idolatry. And by “against the king of the Assyrians” understand “against Herod,” whom the magi indeed opposed at that time by not reporting to him about Christ, whom he was seeking to seize.