Wood upon His Bread: The Holy Flesh That Could Not Take Away Sin and the Lamb Who Does
Old Testament: Jeremias 11:15, 19
What is the meaning that my beloved hath wrought much wickedness in my house? shall the holy flesh take away from thee thy crimes, in which thou hast boasted? ... And I was as a meek lamb, that is carried to be a victim: and I knew not that they had devised counsels against me, saying: Let us put wood on his bread, and cut him off from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more.
New Testament: Hebrews 10:4, 10; John 1:29; Luke 22:19
For it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sin should be taken away. ... In the which will, we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once. ... Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world. ... And taking bread, he gave thanks, and brake; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me.
The connection
Jeremias hears the Lord put a question to His own people: "shall the holy flesh take away from thee thy crimes, in which thou hast boasted?" (Jeremias 11:15). The flesh of the sacrifices was holy, and God Himself had commanded it. The question is whether it could take away sin still loved and boasted of, and the answer expected is no. Hebrews gives that answer outright: "it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sin should be taken away" (Hebrews 10:4). The old sacrifices were "a shadow of the good things to come" (10:1), and what the shadow could not do is done by a body: "we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once" (10:10). Four verses after the question, the same chapter shows whose body. "I was as a meek lamb, that is carried to be a victim ... saying: Let us put wood on his bread, and cut him off from the land of the living" (Jeremias 11:19). John the Baptist points Him out: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). And at the Supper He takes bread and says, "This is my body, which is given for you" (Luke 22:19). Tertullian reads the wood as the Cross and the bread as the Body, and says that Christ Himself explained the old figure when He called the bread His own body (Against Marcion IV.40). Lactantius: "the wood signifies the cross, and the bread His body; for He Himself is the food and the life of all who believe" (Divine Institutes IV.18). St Athanasius and St Ambrose also read the meek lamb of the verse as Christ. The Catechism teaches that Christ's sacrifice is unique, completing and surpassing all the sacrifices before it (CCC 614).
Moral sense
Jeremias's hearers brought holy flesh to the altar while holding on to the sin they boasted of. The danger is sharper with the true Flesh than with the shadow: "whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread" (1 Corinthians 11:27-28). The Flesh offered on the Cross does take away sin, and the one who receives it comes with his sins confessed, not boasted of.
Anagogical sense
The plotters said, "let his name be remembered no more" (Jeremias 11:19). Heaven remembers nothing else: "The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction" (Apocalypse 5:12). The wood they put on His bread stands at the end as the tree of life, whose leaves are "for the healing of the nations" (22:2).
The Fathers
Tertullian, Against Marcion IV.40: "He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: 'I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread,' which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body." Lactantius, Divine Institutes IV.18: "Now the wood signifies the cross, and the bread His body; for He Himself is the food and the life of all who believe in the flesh which He bare, and on the cross upon which He was suspended." St Gregory the Great, Moralia III.28: "For "to put the wood into the bread," is to apply the trunk of the cross to His body in affixing Him thereto."
Warrant
Patristic. Hebrews 10:4 answers the question of Jeremias 11:15 without citing it, and no Father found comments on verse 15 itself. The tier rests on verse 19, which Tertullian (Against Marcion III.19 and IV.40), Lactantius (Divine Institutes IV.18), St Justin (Dialogue with Trypho 72), St Athanasius (On the Incarnation 35), St Ambrose (On the Christian Faith IV.12) and Rufinus (On the Creed 22) read of Christ, and in which Tertullian and Lactantius read the bread as His Body. Joining the two verses of the one chapter is the entry's own reading, from Dunk's question on verse 15. Checked in the Greek: the Septuagint of 11:15 asks whether vows and holy flesh aphelousin, will take away, thy wickedness, and Hebrews 10:4 says it is impossible for blood aphairein hamartias, to take away sins, with the same verb. At 11:19 the lamb is arnion, the Apocalypse's word for the Lamb, and the wood is xylon, the word St Peter uses for the Cross (1 Peter 2:24). John 1:29 has amnos and airo, a different noun and verb, so it joins by sense rather than by word. The bread is in the Septuagint (arton) and the Vulgate (panem); the Hebrew lechem can also mean fruit, and many modern versions read the tree with its fruit, but the Fathers read bread and the Douay follows them. Several of the Fathers turn this verse against the Jews; those lines are left out of the entry.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 614.
The verses
Jeremias 11:15 · Jeremias 11:19 · Hebrews 10:4 · Hebrews 10:10 · John 1:29 · Luke 22:19
