Letter 42: The Lord called himself bread — and the name is fitting on two levels.
On the meaning of "Put your hand under my thigh."
What sense does this carry: "Put your hand under my thigh"? "Put your hand under my thigh, and I adjure you by the God of heaven and earth" [Genesis 24:2-3] -- so Abraham, as he was dying, commanded his household servant. For he saw with purity of mind that Christ our Lord and Master, the God of heaven and earth, was about to be made flesh from those who would come out of his own loins; he saw that He was about to take hold of the seed of Abraham, as a prophet, beholding the things that lay ahead.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
Τίνα ἔννοιαν ἔχει τὸ, «Ὑπόθες τὴν χεῖρά σου
ὑπὸ τὸν μηρόν μου.»
«Ἀπόθες (42) τὴν χεῖρά σου ὑπὸ τὸν μηρόν μου,
καὶ ἐξορκίζω σε τὸν θεὸν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς,»
ἐντείλατο τελευτῶν ὁ Ἀβραὰμ τῷ οἰκέτῃ, τῶν ἐκ
τῶν μηρῶν αὐτοῦ μέλλοντα σαρκοῦσθαι θεὸν τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς τὸν Κύριον ἡμῶν καὶ Δεσπότην
Χριστὸν, καθαρότητι διανοίας ὁρῶν μέλλοντα τοῦ
σπέρματος Ἀβραὰμ ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι, ὡς προφήτης
καὶ βλέπων τὰ ἔμπροσθεν.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern isidore pelusium workflow v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/PatrologiaGraeca (PG vol.78)
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