But you, with your mean exposition of these things, pronounce God guilty of every form of weakness, when you take them in such bald literalness without examining the force of the sayings. For even Moses would in this way be judged as a transgressor of the Law, for he himself gave charge that no likeness of anything should be made, either of the things in heaven or of those on earth or in sea. Yet afterwards he himself made a brazen serpent, and set it on a kind of sign and bade them that were bitten look unto it. And they were saved when they looked away to it.
Shall then the serpent be thought to have saved the people at that time, (the serpent) which, as I have already said, God cursed at the first, and will slay with the great sword, as Isaiah cries aloud? And shall we accept such things so unintelligently, as your teachers say is right, and not rather as symbols? And shall we not find a reference to the image of the crucified Jesus in the sign, when even Moses, by the stretching out of his hands together with him who was surnamed by the name of Jesus, caused your people to gain the day?
For in this manner we shall cease to be at a loss about the actions of the Lawgiver. For it was by no forsaking of God for a beast, by which (men’s) transgression and disobedience had its beginning, that he persuaded the people to be of good hope. And all this took place, and was spoken by the blessed prophet, with much thought and inner meaning. And there is nothing of all that has been said or done by, in fact, all the prophets which any can rightly blame, if you have the true knowledge that was in them.
But if all your teachers give you only such expositions as why male camels are not mentioned in such a place, or what the so-called female camels really are, or why so many measures of fine wheat, and so many measures of oil are (to be used) in the sacrifices, and all this in a mean and grovelling way, but never dare to mention or expound the great points which really deserve enquiry; or even charge you not to listen at all to us as we expound them, and not to enter into any converse with us, will they not hear with justice the words that our Lord Jesus Christ said of them: Whitened sepulchres, on the outside appearing beautiful, and within full of dead men’s bones, tithing the mint, and swallowing the camel, blind guides?
Except therefore you despise the precepts of them that exalt themselves and desire to be called Rabbi, Rabbi,Matthew 23:7 and you approach the words of the prophets with such a mind and purpose that you suffer at the hands of your fellows what also the prophets themselves suffered, you cannot get anything at all useful from the prophetic writers.