The Prophets in Hades

Has He crushed Hades? Has He not opened the gate to Thomas, but instead opened the gates of the kingdom to men, while leaving the gates of the tomb and the seals unopened? How is the one who is free among the dead reckoned among the dead? How does the unsetting light come to be in the darkness and the shadows of death? Where does He go? Where is the one who is unable to be held by death taking place? What is the purpose, what is the path, and what is the plan of His descent into Hades? Perhaps He goes down to bring down the condemned Adam, our fellow-slave.

Truly, He goes to seek the first-formed one as a lost sheep. In any case, He intends to visit those sitting in the darkness and the shadows of death. In any case, God goes to loose the captive Adam and the co-captive Eve of sorrows, and her daughter, whence also His Son has been shown to be her son. But let us descend together, let us travel together, let us hasten together, let us run together, let us send forth together, let us hymn together, and let us speed together, seeing the reconciliations of God toward men, the release of the condemned happening from a good Master.

For the one naturally loving mankind goes to lead out from the prisoners of the age with much courage and authority, those dwelling in tombs, whom the bitter and insatiable death had tyrannically cast down, and whom, having plundered from God, had also heaped up, to free them and to number them with those dwelling above. There is the captive Adam, the first-formed, and the firstborn of all the condemned below. There is Abel, the first-born, and the first-righteous shepherd, a type of Christ the Shepherd of the unjust slaughter. There is Noah, the type of Christ, the builder of the great ark of God's Church, who saved all the beastly nations from the flood of ungodliness through the dove, the Holy Spirit, and banished the gloomy raven from this. There is Abraham, the Christ-father sacrificer, who together with the sword offered a most complete sacrifice to God, the mortal-dying. There the captive...

Isaac, the former bondservant of Christ, who became a type under Abraham, is above. There Jacob is in Hades, down below, just as before Joseph was down below, above. There Joseph is the bondservant, who came to be in Egypt, in the prison as a type of Christ, both bondservant and master. There Moses is in darkness below, who was once in the ark in darkness above. There Daniel is in Hades in the pit, who was once in the pit of the lions above. There Jeremiah is as in a pit of mire, in the pit of Hades and of the corruption of death. There, in the receptacle of the fishes of Hades, he lies as a type of Jonah, of the eternal and pre-eternal Jonah of Christ, who lives for an age, and for the ages of ages and forever.

And still there is David the God-father, from whom Christ came according to the flesh. And why do I mention David and Jonah and Solomon? There also is the great John, the greater than all the prophets, as if in the dark womb he were proclaiming Christ to all those in Hades; the twofold forerunner, and herald of the living and the dead; he who, having been sent from the prison of Herod to the universal prison, is among those just and unjust who have slept from eternity. And all the prophets and the just were secretly offering unasked supplications to God from there, asking for deliverance from that most painful and descending, hostile, gloomy darkness, and from the all-night darkness.

One said toward God: Hear my cry, my voice, from the belly of Hades. Another said: Out of the depths I have cried to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice. And another: Shine your face, and we shall be saved. And another: You who sit upon the cherubim, appear. And another: Awaken your power and come to save us. And another: Let your mercies, Lord, hasten to us. And another: Save my soul from the lowest Hades. And another: Lord, bring up my soul from Hades. And another: Do not abandon my soul to Hades. And another: Let it ascend from...