Sequence - (5)
We continue:
8. Ioseph exit de cisterna,
Christus redit ad superna
post mortis supplicium.
'Joseph gets out of the cistern,
Christ returns to the upper world,
after the punishment of death.'
The reference is to Joseph being flung into a dry well by his brothers:
'miseruntque eum in cisternam veterem, quae non habebat aquam'. (Genesis 37:24)
His rescue from the pit by Midianite merchants is seen as a type of the
resurrection, no doubt via several psalms which offer the image of being
drawn up out of a pit as a metaphor for salvation.
e.g. Psalm 39(40), 3
Et eduxit me de lacu miseriae et de luto faecis.
The origin, perhaps, of our phrase 'to be in the shit'?
'superna' is the upper world, i.e. this one as opposed to the underworld of
the dead, of which Jacob, the father of Joseph, says, 'Descendam ad filium
meum lugens in infernum'. It is a reference to the Resurrection, as we
might expect in an Easter sequence, rather than to the Ascension.
'supplicium' can mean 'prayer, supplication' or 'punishment, execution'.
The latter meaning is more obviously the one meant, but the word is cleverly
chosen because Christ's death is also a prayer for the salvation of mankind.
Oriens.
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