Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily XVIII/Chapter 15

by Anonymous

Chapter XV.—Matthew XI. 25 Discussed.

And Simon, being vexed at this, said:  “Blame your own teacher, who said, ‘I thank Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, that what was concealed from the wise, Thou hast revealed to suckling babes.’”^[1]  And Peter said:  “This is not the way in which the statement was made; but I shall speak of it as if it had been made in the way that has seemed good to you.  Our Lord, even if He had made this statement, ‘What was concealed from the wise, the Father revealed to babes,’ could not even thus be thought to point out another God and Father in addition to Him who created the world.  For it is possible that the concealed things of which He spoke may be those of the Creator (Demiurge) himself; because Isaiah^[2] says, ‘I will open my mouth in parables, and I will belch forth things concealed from the foundation of the world.’  Do you allow, then, that the prophet was not ignorant of the things concealed, which Jesus says were concealed from the wise, but revealed to babes?  And how was the Creator (Demiurge) ignorant of them, if his prophet Isaiah was not ignorant of them?  But our Jesus did not in reality say ‘what was concealed,’ but He said what seems a harsher statement; for He said, ‘Thou hast concealed these things from the wise, and^[3] hast revealed them to sucking babes.’  Now the word ‘Thou hast concealed’ implies that they had once been known to them; for the key of the kingdom of heaven, that is, the knowledge of the secrets, lay with them.

Footnotes

1. Matt. xi. 25; [Luke x. 21; comp. Recognitions, iv. 5].
2. The passage does not occur in Isaiah, but in Ps. lxxviii. 2.  The words are quoted not from the LXX., but from the Gospel of Matthew (xiii. 35), where in somemss. they are attributed to Isaiah.  See Uhlhorn, p. 119.
3. The words in italics are omitted in the mss.; but the context leaves no doubt that they were once in the text.