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🎧 Dialogue with Trypho
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Chapter 105: The Psalm also Foretells the Crucifixion and the Topic of Christ's Final Prayers on Earth.

"And the part of the Psalm that follows—'But You, Lord, do not take away Your assistance from me; pay attention to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword, and my only-begotten from the hand of the dog; save me from the lion’s mouth, and my humility from the horns of the unicorns'—was also information and prediction of the events that would happen to Him. For I have already shown that He was the only-begotten of the Father of all things, being uniquely begotten as Word and Power by Him, and later becoming man through the Virgin, as we have learned from the writings. Moreover, it is also predicted that He would die by crucifixion. For the passage, ‘Deliver my soul from the sword, and my only-begotten from the hand of the dog; save me from the lion’s mouth, and my humility from the horns of the unicorns,’ indicates the suffering by which He would die, namely, by crucifixion. I have already explained to you that the ‘horns of the unicorns’ are a representation of the cross. And the prayer that His soul should be saved from the sword, the lion’s mouth, and the hand of the dog, was a request that no one should take possession of His soul: so that, when we reach the end of life, we may make the same request to God, who can prevent any shameless evil angel from taking our souls. And that souls survive, I have demonstrated to you with the example that the soul of Samuel was summoned by the witch, as Saul requested. It seems also that all the souls of similar righteous men and prophets came under the power of such beings, as can be inferred from what happened with that witch. Therefore, God through His Son teaches us, for whom these things seem to have been done, always to strive earnestly, and at death to pray that our souls do not fall into the hands of any such power. For when Christ was surrendering His spirit on the cross, He said, ‘Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit,’ as I have also learned from the writings. He urged His disciples to surpass the pharisaic way of living, warning them that if they did not, they could not be saved; and these words are recorded in the writings: ‘Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’"

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