Tertullian — Against Marcion 13

You are equally led away by the sound of names, when you so understand the riches of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria , and the king of Assyria, as if they portended that the Creator's Christ was a warrior, not attending to the promise contained in the passage, For before the Child shall have knowledge to cry, My father and My mother, He shall take away the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of Assyria. Isaiah 8:4 You should first examine the point of age, whether it can be taken to represent Christ as even yet a man , much less a warrior.

Although, to be sure, He might be about to call to arms by His cry as an infant; might be about to sound the alarm of war not with a trumpet, but with a little rattle; might be about to seek His foe, not on horseback, or in chariot, or from parapet, but from nurse's neck or nursemaid's back, and so be destined to subjugate Damascus and Samaria from His mother's breasts! It is a different matter, of course, when the babes of your barbarian Pontus spring forth to the fight. They are, I think, taught to lance before they lacerate; swathed at first in sunshine and ointment, afterwards armed with the satchel, and rationed on bread and butter!

Now, since nature, certainly, nowhere grants to man to learn warfare before life, to pillage the wealth of a Damascus before he knows his father and mother's name, it follows that the passage in question must be deemed to be a figurative one. Well, but nature, says he, does not permit a virgin to conceive, and still the prophet is believed . And indeed very properly; for he has paved the way for the incredible thing being believed , by giving a reason for its occurrence, in that it was to be for a sign. Therefore, says he, the Lord himself shall give you a sign ; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son. Isaiah 7:14 Now a sign from God would not have been a sign, unless it had been some novel and prodigious thing.

Then, again, Jewish cavillers, in order to disconcert us, boldly pretend that Scripture does not hold that a virgin , but only a young woman , is to conceive and bring forth. They are, however, refuted by this consideration, that nothing of the nature of a sign can possibly come out of what is a daily occurrence, the pregnancy and child-bearing of a young woman . A virgin mother is justly deemed to be proposed by God as a sign , but a warlike infant has no like claim to the distinction; for even in such a case there does not occur the character of a sign. But after the sign of the strange and novel birth has been asserted, there is immediately afterwards declared as a sign the subsequent course of the Infant, who was to eat butter and honey.