While almost all of the works in this vault use Victorian translations, due to the only English translation of this commentary being in copyright, it was machine-translated (by Claude, 2026) from the public-domain Latin. It has not been checked by a human translator.
Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, written about 353–356, before his exile to the East. Chapter 23: On the tribute and the image of Caesar, on the wife of the seven brothers, on the greatest commandments, and on the son of David.
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Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk, and so on. The Pharisees are often stirred up, and cannot find an occasion of accusing Him in what is past: for no fault could fall upon His deeds and words. But out of malice they stretch themselves to every inquiry for finding an accusation. For He was calling all men away from the vices of the world and from the superstitions of human religions to the hope of the heavenly kingdom. So they try, by the terms of the question they put, whether He would offend against the power of the world: whether, that is, tribute ought to be paid to Caesar. He, knowing the inward secrets of their thoughts — for God sees all that is hidden within men — bade a penny be brought Him, and asked whose was the inscription and the image. The Pharisees answered that it was Caesar’s. He said to them that the things which are Caesar’s must be rendered to Caesar, and the things which are God’s to God.
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O answer full of wonder, and perfect resolution of a heavenly saying! He so balanced everything between contempt of the world and the offence of wronging Caesar, that He set free minds devoted to God from all human cares and duties, when He decreed that the things which were Caesar’s should be rendered to Caesar. For if nothing of his remains with us, we shall not be bound by the condition of rendering to him what is his. But if we brood over his goods, if we use the right of his power, and put ourselves, like hirelings, under the management of another’s property, it is no grievance or wrong that what is Caesar’s should be rendered to Caesar; but we must render to God the things that are His own: body, soul and will. For we have these from Him, as their source and as their increase: and so it is fitting that men render themselves wholly to Him to whom they remember they owe both their origin and their advance.
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The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and the rest. The Sadducees stand outside faith in the resurrection. And because the Lord preached it, they put forward, with a will to make it work, a cavil against divine things: that He should answer whose wife the one wife of seven brothers would be in the resurrection.
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And indeed the general opinion holds that nothing is contained in the prophetic Scriptures about the conditions of the resurrection. But the Lord says, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. So it is written; and doubt ought to cease, which so great an authority condemns. For many are wont to bring forward this same cavil: in what form the female sex will rise, and whether it will be remade with the very functions of its nature and body. We, indeed, touch rashly on a place passed over by almost everyone; but we point out only this: that what was put to the Lord was whose wife out of the seven she was to be reckoned; and that the Lord rebuked them for erring, not knowing the Scriptures and the power of God, for they neither marry, nor are given in marriage. And indeed it would have been enough, against the Sadducees who thought so, to have cut off the notion of bodily enticement, and, the functions ceasing, to have taken away these empty joys of bodies; but He added, but are as the angels of God. Since, then, the mystery of the Scriptures and the might of the divine power show that they will be like the angels, as is the authority in the Scriptures for our thinking about angels, such must be the sense of our hope in the resurrection about women. And these things He gave in answer to the question put about the conditions of the resurrection.
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And about the resurrection itself He spoke thus against their unbelief: Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For this word came to Moses when these holy patriarchs had long been at rest. So those whose God He was, had God. But they could have nothing if they were not; for it is in the nature of the thing that that must needs be to which something else belongs. And so to have God belongs to the living; since God is eternity, and it does not belong to things that are dead to have what is eternal. And how shall they be denied to be, and to be always going to be, to whom eternity declares that it belongs?
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But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, and the rest. The Pharisees follow the Sadducees in tempting Him. The latter had fittingly been answered about the resurrection, so that they were convicted that faith in the resurrection to be hoped for is contained in the very Law from which they had come. But the Pharisees boasted that they had the knowledge of the Law, which, set forth as a likeness of things to come, contained the image of the truth that was to follow. And they ask which was the greatest commandment in the Law: not seeing that the meditation of the Law had been made perfect in Christ. And indeed the ignorance of these insolent men is answered in the very words of the Law: an answer which embraced in itself the whole teaching of the truth. For it is the proper office of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring the knowledge of God and to give understanding of His name and power. For He had come as One sent, and, brought forth out of eternity, He was carrying out the things that were pleasing to God. So He answered that the first commandment is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. For He was doing nothing else than what the Law contained: because the precepts of the Law contained the figure of the things He Himself was to do. He reminds them, then, of that knowledge which they boasted they had in the Law, that God Almighty is to be loved with the whole affection of mind, heart and soul: so that the commandments of the Law given before might confirm His own warning.
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Then He added: This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. And the commandment that follows, being “like”, signifies that in both there is the same duty and the same merit. For neither the love of God without Christ, nor the love of Christ without God, can be profitable. So the one without the other brings no advance towards our salvation. And therefore on these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets: because the Law and all prophecy were assigned to Christ’s coming, and His coming, by fulfilling them, gave the understanding of knowing God. For we have often pointed out that by the neighbour no other is to be understood than Christ. For since we are forbidden to put father, mother and children before the love of God, how is the love of a neighbour a commandment like that of loving God? Or will anything be left that could be made equal to the love of God? Unless it is that the likeness of the precept required an equal love in loving the Father and the Son.
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And that they might be convicted by the words of the Law itself, and a plainer understanding of the neighbour opened, He asks what they thought of Christ, whose son He would be. They answered, David’s. He said to them, how then was He called Lord in the Spirit by David, who was to be his son; and how was it said by him, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? It was indeed true that Christ was to be begotten of the seed of David: but the likeness of the name, by which the Lord spoke to the Lord, and by which He set Him at His right hand until He put all His enemies under His feet, signified the unity of substance by the sharing of the name, judgment by the invitation to sit beside Him, and power by the subjection of all things: so that they might remember that in Him who sprang from David was contained the substance of eternal power and might and origin, and that God would abide in man.