Antiquities — Book 4

Josephus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1. A battle against the Canaanites fought without Moses' consent, and its defeat. 2. The sedition of Korah and the people against Moses and his brother over the priesthood. 3. What befell the Hebrews in the wilderness over thirty-eight years. 4. How Moses defeated Sihon and Og, kings of the Amorites, destroyed their entire army, and allotted their land to two and a half tribes of the Hebrews. 5. Moses' constitution, and how he vanished from among men. This book covers a period of thirty-eight years.

Life in the wilderness wore the Hebrews down, unpleasant and harsh as it was, and made them impatient to test themselves against the Canaanites even though God forbade it. They were unwilling to keep still and obey Moses' commands, believing that they could defeat their enemies without his eager help. They accused him of scheming to keep them destitute, so that they would always need his assistance, and set out to make war on the Canaanites, arguing that God helped them not as a favor to Moses but out of concern for the nation as a whole—because of the ancestors he had watched over and because of their virtue—that he had granted them freedom in the past and would always stand by them as an ally when they were willing to labor for it. They claimed they were capable of mastering these nations on their own, even if Moses tried to turn God against them. On the whole, they said, it suited them better to be their own masters, and not, having rejoiced at escaping the arrogance of the Egyptians, to now put up with Moses as a tyrant and live according to his will, deceived by the claim that the divine reveals the future to him alone out of favor toward him—as though they were not all descended from Abraham, and God had singled out just one man among them as the source of all foreknowledge, so that everyone else must learn what was coming only from him. They would show themselves sensible, they said, by condemning his arrogance and trusting God directly to win the land he had promised them, if only they were willing—rather than heeding a man who forbade it for his own reasons under God's name. Weighing their hardship, then, and the desert life that made their present state seem all the worse, they set out to fight the Canaanites, taking God as their general and not waiting for the lawgiver's cooperation.

Once they had decided this was their best course, they attacked the enemy. The Canaanites, undaunted by their assault or their numbers, met them bravely, and many of the Hebrews died; the rest of the army, its formation broken, fled in disorder back to the camp. Utterly disheartened by this unexpected disaster, they expected nothing good to come, reasoning that they had suffered this too through God's anger, for rushing into war ahead of his will.

Moses, seeing his people stricken with panic at the defeat, and fearing that the enemy, emboldened by victory and reaching for greater gains, would now come against them, judged it necessary to lead the army further from the Canaanites into the wilderness. The people put themselves back in his hands, since they understood that without his foresight their affairs could not prosper. He broke camp and led the army into the desert, expecting that there they would settle down and not come to grips with the Canaanites again until God gave them the right occasion for it.

But what tends to happen with large armies, especially in times of misfortune—that they become hard to control and hard to persuade—happened to the Jews as well. Being six hundred thousand strong, they were, even in good times, unlikely to submit easily to their betters because of their sheer numbers; now, under hardship and misfortune, they grew still more exasperated with one another and with their leader. A sedition seized them the like of which we know among neither Greeks nor barbarians, one that came close to destroying them all, though Moses saved them from that danger, bearing no grudge even though he had come close to being stoned to death by them. Nor did God neglect to spare them from disaster: although they had insulted their lawgiver and the commandments he had delivered to them through Moses, God rescued them from the calamities their sedition would have brought had he not taken thought for them beforehand. I will now relate the sedition and Moses' subsequent measures, after first setting out its cause.

A certain Korah, a Hebrew outstanding both in lineage and in wealth, an able speaker and most persuasive with crowds, saw Moses established in surpassing honor and was consumed with envy—all the more since he happened to be of the same tribe and a kinsman of his—resentful that he himself, being no lesser in birth and enjoying greater wealth, deserved this glory more justly than Moses did. Before the Levites—his fellow tribesmen—and especially before his relatives, he loudly declared it outrageous that Moses, hunting glory for himself, had contrived this position and, acting unjustly, allowed it to be overlooked under the pretext of God's authority: that contrary to the laws he had given the priesthood to his brother Aaron, not by a common vote of the people but by his own decision—bestowing honors like a tyrant on whomever he pleased. This, Korah said, was worse than outright force: to commit an injustice unnoticed is worse than robbing men of their power by open compulsion against their will and knowledge, for whoever is conscious he does not deserve what he takes persuades others to let him have it and so has no need to use force outright; whereas those who cannot gain honor by just means, wishing to appear good, will not resort to open force, but are quite capable of wrongdoing by cunning. It was in the people's interest, he said, to punish such men while they still supposed themselves undetected, rather than let them grow into open, unmistakable enemies by allowing them to gain power first. What reasonable account, after all, could Moses give for handing the priesthood to Aaron and his sons? If God had decided to grant this honor to someone from the tribe of Levi, then he, Korah, being of the same lineage as Moses and surpassing him in wealth and in age, would more justly obtain it; and if it belonged instead to the eldest of the tribes, then by rights the honor should go to the tribe of Reuben, and be held by Dathan, Abiram, and Phalaos, who were the eldest men of that tribe and powerful through their abundance of wealth.

In saying this, Korah wanted to appear to be looking out for the common good, but in fact he was working to divert the people's honor to himself. He spoke this way to his fellow tribesmen with malicious intent dressed up in fine words. As the speech spread gradually to more and more people, and his hearers added their own voices to the slanders against Aaron, the whole camp became infected with them. Two hundred and fifty men of the foremost rank rallied to Korah, eager to strip Moses' brother of the priesthood and disgrace him. The people too were roused, and set out to stone Moses; they gathered in disorderly assembly amid uproar and confusion, and standing before the tent of God they shouted that the tyrant had come, and demanded that the people be freed from his slavery, for he issued harsh commands under the pretext of God's authority. If God himself, they said, were the one choosing who should be priest, he would advance the man who deserved it, not confer the honor on someone inferior to many others; and if he had decided to grant it to Aaron, the decision to bestow it ought to rest with the people, not be left to his brother's discretion.

Moses, who had long foreseen Korah's slander and now saw the people inflamed, was not afraid. Confident in the soundness of his own judgment in these matters, and knowing that his brother had received the priesthood by God's choice and not through any favor of his own, he came to the assembly. He addressed no words at all to the crowd, but cried out to Korah as loudly as he could—for he was skilled generally, and especially gifted at addressing crowds.

"Korah," he said, "both you and each of these men"—he meant the two hundred and fifty—"seem to me worthy of honor, and I do not deny the whole assembly an equal honor, even if they fall short of what you possess in wealth and other distinction. And as for the priesthood I gave to Aaron—it was not because he surpassed others in wealth, for you outstrip both of us in the size of your fortune; nor was it because of noble birth, for God made that common to us all by giving us the same forefather; nor did I give my brother, out of brotherly affection, an honor that in justice belonged to someone else. Indeed, even if I had no regard for God and the laws, and simply bestowed the honor as a favor, I would not have passed myself over to give it to another, since I am nearer to myself than my brother is, and more closely bound to my own interest than to his. It would hardly have been sensible for me to expose myself to danger by breaking the law simply to hand someone else the prosperity that comes with it. No—I am above such wrongdoing, and God would not have allowed himself to be treated with contempt, nor would he have left you ignorant that in obeying him you do him a favor. He himself chose the one who was to serve as his priest, and so freed us of responsibility in this matter.

"And so that no one might think Aaron received it as a gift from me rather than by God's judgment, I now lay the office open, to be contested by anyone who wishes it—not because I claim it has already been decided in his favor and simply ask that this be ratified for him now, valuing the prize above seeing you free of sedition, even though I hold it with your own consent. For we did not sin in accepting what God gave us, even against your will; refusing an honor God himself was granting would have been impious, and yet it would be utterly unreasonable to insist on holding it forever without God confirming to us the security of that possession. God himself, then, will judge again whom he wants to offer sacrifices on our behalf and preside over our worship; it would be absurd for Korah, in his desire for the office, to strip God of the authority to decide to whom he grants it. Put an end, then, to this sedition and the disturbance it has caused. Tomorrow morning, let each of you who lays claim to the priesthood bring a censer from home with incense and fire, and come forward. And you, Korah, leave the judgment to God and await his verdict on the matter; do not set yourself above God. Come, then, prepared to be judged on this question of the prize. I think it will cause no offense if Aaron too presents himself to be judged alongside you, since he is of the same lineage and cannot be faulted for anything he has done in the office of priest. You will offer incense, then, gathered together in full view of all the people, and whichever of you offers the sacrifice that God judges more pleasing will be appointed priest for you—this will clear me of the slander that I gave my brother the honor as a favor."

When Moses had said this, the people's turmoil and their suspicion of Moses subsided, and they assented to his proposal, for it was—and seemed—fair to the people. So for the time being they broke up the assembly, and on the following day they gathered again to attend the sacrifice and the judgment it would render on the contest for the priesthood. The assembly was turbulent, the crowd on edge with expectation of what was to come—some taking pleasure in the prospect that Moses might be shown guilty of wrongdoing, others more prudent, hoping to be rid of trouble and disorder, since they feared that if the sedition continued, the good order of their whole condition might be destroyed. The whole crowd, naturally delighted to shout down those in authority, made an uproar, swayed this way and that by whoever spoke to them.

Moses sent servants to Abiram and Dathan, ordering them to come as agreed and wait for the sacrifice. When they replied that they would not obey his messengers and would not stand by while Moses grew ever greater at the expense of the whole people through his wrongdoing, Moses, on hearing their answer, asked the elders to accompany him and went to Dathan and his companions, not thinking it beneath him to go to those who had shown him such contempt. They followed without objection. Dathan and his group, hearing that Moses was coming to them with the leading men of the people, came out with their wives and children and stood before their tents, watching to see what Moses meant to do; their servants stood by them too, ready to defend them if Moses used any force. When Moses drew near, he raised his hands to heaven and cried out in a voice loud enough to be heard by the whole crowd.

"Master," he said, "of heaven and earth and sea: you are the most reliable witness to everything I have done, that all of it happens by your will, and that you have provided the means for what was done, taking pity on the Hebrews in all their troubles. Come and hear these words of mine, for nothing done or even thought escapes you, and so you will not begrudge me the truth, setting their ingratitude before it. As for the events older than my own birth, you know them more exactly than I—not by hearsay, but because you were present and saw them happen; but as for what follows, which they know clearly and yet unjustly suspect, be my witness. I had established for myself a quiet life, through my own manly effort but by your counsel, one that Reuel my father-in-law had left me, and I gave up the enjoyment of that good fortune to devote myself to hardship on their behalf. Formerly I bore great toil for their freedom, and now for their safety, setting my own zeal against every danger. Now, then, since I am suspected of wrongdoing by men who owe their very survival to my labors, it would be fitting that you yourself—who showed me that fire at Sinai, and made me then a hearer of your own voice and a witness of all the wonders that place let me see; you who ordered me to go to Egypt and make your will known to them; you who shook the prosperity of the Egyptians and gave us escape from bondage under them, making even Pharaoh's rule seem smaller than my own—you who...

who made the sea into a road for us when we had no notion how to cross, who turned the parted water back to crash down on the Egyptians and destroy them, who granted safety from weapons to men who had none, who made bitter springs run sweet for us when we were dying of thirst, and who contrived a drink for us out of the rocks when we were entirely without resource, who preserved those who could find no food on land by sending it from the sea, and who sent down from heaven a food never heard of before, who put into my mind the framing of laws and the ordering of our commonwealth—come now, master of all things, be my judge and an incorruptible witness, that I never took a bribe from any Hebrew against justice, never condemned a poverty that deserved to prevail because of someone's wealth, never governed to the harm of the community, and never come here with designs most alien to my own practice—that it was not I but you who commanded that the priesthood be given to Aaron, and that I did this not as a favor of my own. Show now as well that everything is governed by your providence and that nothing comes to its end by chance but by a will that presides over it to the last, and that you care for those who benefit the Hebrews. Go after Abiram and Dathan, who condemn you of insensibility, as though you were being defeated by my cunning. Make plain the punishment that falls on them for raging so against your glory—not by removing them from life in the common way, nor letting them be seen to have departed this world as men who die by the ordinary law of nature, but let the earth open around them, together with their households and everything they possess on the ground they walk on. For this would be a demonstration of your power before everyone, and a lesson in self-control for those who hold such unholy opinions about you. In this way I would be found a good servant of what you command. But if the accusations made against me are true, then keep these men untouched by any harm, and let the destruction I have called down upon them fall instead on me. And once you have exacted justice from the man who wished to wrong your people, watch over harmony and peace for the rest of your time, and preserve the multitude that follows your commands, keeping it unharmed and free of any share in the punishment of those who have sinned. For you yourself know that it is not just for all the Israelites together to pay the penalty for the wickedness of those men."

When he had said this, weeping, the earth was suddenly shaken, and as the ground heaved like a wave stirred up by the force of wind, the whole people was seized with fear. Then, with a harsh, grinding crash, the earth gave way beneath their tents and drew down into itself everything that belonged to them. When they had vanished so completely that no one could tell they had ever been there, the gaping earth closed together again and settled, so that no trace of what had happened was visible to those who looked on. They perished in this way, made an example of God's power. One would grieve not only for their disaster, terrible enough in itself, but also because their own relatives rejoiced at what had happened to them; forgetting their kinship, they confirmed the verdict at the very sight of the event, and thinking that Dathan's company had died as guilty men, they felt no sorrow at all.

Moses now called forward the men who were competing for the priesthood, so that a trial might be held to determine which of them God preferred to receive as priest, choosing whoever's sacrifice he accepted more gladly. Two hundred and fifty men assembled, men honored among the people both for their fathers' merit and for their own, by which they had even surpassed their fathers. Aaron and Korah came forward as well, and before the tabernacle all of them burned incense in censers, whatever each had brought. Then fire blazed up, of a kind no one had ever recorded as kindled by human hands, nor as rising from the earth through some undercurrent of heat, nor struck out by the friction of wood in a violent wind, but such as would be lit when God commands it—bright and utterly consuming. By it all of them perished, the two hundred and fifty and Korah as well, the fire rushing upon them so that even their bodies vanished entirely. Aaron alone was spared, untouched by the fire, because it was God who had sent him to burn what needed burning.

When these men had perished, Moses, wishing their punishment to be preserved in memory and learned by those who would come after, ordered Eleazar, Aaron's son, to place their censers beside the bronze altar, so that it would serve as a reminder to future generations of what these men suffered and of the fact that they should not think the power of God could be deceived. And Aaron, no longer holding the high priesthood merely by Moses' favor as it had seemed, but now by a judgment of God made manifest, enjoyed the honor securely from then on, together with his sons.

The sedition, however, did not stop even after this, but grew and spread all the more, taking on a cause more bitter than before, one that made it likely the trouble would never end but would linger on indefinitely. For the people, now convinced that nothing happened apart from God's providence, refused to believe that these events had occurred without some favor shown by God to Moses, and accused him of causing God's anger to fall so heavily—not so much because of the wrongdoing of the men punished, as because Moses had contrived it. Those men, they said, had been destroyed though they had done nothing wrong except to be zealous for the worship of God, while the man who had cost the people the destruction of such men, the very best among them, not only went unpunished but had also secured the priesthood for his brother beyond dispute; for no one else, they said, would ever again lay claim to it, seeing how badly the first claimants had fared. And further, urgent appeals came even from the relatives of the men who had perished, asking that something be done to diminish Moses' pride of place, since this, they thought, would be safe for them.

Moses, who had for some time been hearing the disturbance building, fearing that the people might again attempt some upheaval and that something great and dangerous might come of it, gathered the multitude in assembly. He did not undertake to defend himself against what he had been hearing, so as not to provoke the people further, but told the tribal leaders only to bring the names of the tribes inscribed on staffs, for the man to whom God gave a sign upon the staff would receive the priesthood. So they agreed, and the others brought their staffs, and Aaron brought his inscribed “Levi,” and Moses placed them in the tabernacle of God. The next day he brought the staffs out again; they were recognizable because the men who had brought them, and the people as well, had marked them beforehand. The others they saw remained in the same form in which Moses had received them, but from Aaron's staff they saw shoots and branches had grown, and ripe fruit as well—almonds, since the staff had been made from wood of that kind. Astonished at the strangeness of the sight, even those who had felt hatred toward Moses and Aaron gave up such feelings and began to marvel at God's judgment concerning them, and from then on, acclaiming what God had decreed, they agreed that Aaron rightly held the high priesthood. And so, confirmed three times over by God's own choice, he held the honor securely, and the sedition of the Hebrews, after raging for a long time, was ended in this way.

Since the tribe of Levi had been excused from war and military service in order to attend to the service of God, Moses, so that want or the need to seek life's necessities should not make them neglect the temple, ordered—by the will of God—that once the Hebrews had taken possession of Canaan, they should assign the Levites forty-eight good and fine cities, and, marking off the land in front of them to a distance of two thousand cubits from the walls, grant it to them as well. In addition, he required the people to give the Levites and priests a tenth of their yearly produce. This is what the tribe receives from the people; but I have thought it necessary also to explain what is given privately to the priests by everyone. Of the forty-eight cities, Moses ordered the Levites to yield thirteen to the priests, and to set apart for them a tenth of the tithe they themselves receive each year from the people. He also required the people to bring firstfruits to God from all the produce that grows from the earth, and, among the four-footed animals reckoned fit for sacrifice, the firstborn, if it is male, to be given to the priests for sacrifice, so that they and their households might eat of it in the holy city. As for animals not customarily eaten according to ancestral law, their owners were to pay the priests a shekel and a half, and for a firstborn human child, five shekels; the priests were also to receive the firstfruits of the sheep-shearing, and those who bake bread were to provide them a portion of the loaves. And whoever consecrates himself by making a vow—these are called Nazirites, who let their hair grow and do not drink wine—when they dedicate their hair, they must offer it as a sacrifice, giving the shorn locks over to the priests. And those who dedicate themselves to God under the name “corban”—a word which, in the Greek tongue, signifies “gift”—if they wish to be released from this service, must pay the priests money: a woman thirty shekels, a man fifty. Anyone whose means fall short of the fixed amount may leave it to the priests to assess as they judge fit. Those who sacrifice at home for their own feasting, and not out of religious obligation, are required to bring the priests the stomach, the jaw, and the right foreleg of the victim. This was the extent of the provision Moses devised for the priests, apart from what the people give them when sacrificing for sins, as we have explained in the book before this one. He also ordered that the priests' male servants, daughters, and wives should all share in everything given to the priests, except the sacrifices offered for sin, for these only the male priests may consume within the temple, and on the same day.

When Moses had settled these matters after the sedition, he set out with the whole army for the borders of Idumea, and sent envoys to the king of the Idumeans asking that he grant them passage, promising to give whatever pledges the king wished that no harm would be done, that the army would pay for its provisions, and that they would even agree to pay for water drawn from his land. But the king, displeased with what Moses asked and unwilling to grant passage, led out his army under arms and advanced to meet Moses, intending to stop them if they dared to force their way through. Moses, since God had advised him against being the one to begin a battle, withdrew his forces and led them around through the desert.

At that time his sister Miriam's life came to its end, in the fortieth year after they had left Egypt, on the first day of the month of Xanthicus, reckoned by the moon. They buried her at public expense, with great honor, on a mountain called Sin, and when the people had mourned for thirty days, Moses purified them in this way: he had the high priest lead a young red heifer, unblemished, that had never known the plow or farm labor, a short distance from the camp to a place of complete purity, sacrifice it there, and sprinkle its blood seven times with his finger toward the tabernacle of God. Then, while the whole heifer was burning as it lay, hide, entrails and all, they threw cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool into the fire; a pure man then gathered up all its ashes and deposited them in a place of complete purity. Those defiled by contact with a corpse would then put a little of the ashes into a spring, dip hyssop in it, and sprinkle themselves with this water from the spring on the third and the seventh day, and after that they were clean. He also ordered that this same rite be performed once they had come into their allotted portions of land.

After this purification had been carried out for the mourning over the general's sister, Moses led the army away through the desert and through Arabia, arriving at a place the Arabs regard as their capital, formerly called Arce but now named Petra. There, on a high mountain that surrounds the place, Aaron went up—Moses having told him that he was about to die—in full view of the whole army, for the place sloped so that all could see. He stripped off his high priestly robes and gave them to his son Eleazar, to whom the high priesthood now passed by right of age, and died there while the multitude watched him, in the same year in which he had lost his sister, having lived in all one hundred and twenty-three years. He died on the first day of the month, reckoned by the moon, that the Athenians call Hecatombaeon, the Macedonians Loos, and the Hebrews Ab. The people mourned for him thirty days.

When this had passed, Moses took the army from there and came to the river Arnon, which rises in the mountains of Arabia, flows through the whole desert, and empties into the Dead Sea, marking the boundary between the land of Moab and the land of the Amorites. This is a fertile land, capable of supporting a great multitude of people from its produce. Moses sent word to Sihon, king of this region, asking passage for his army under whatever pledges Sihon might wish, so that no harm would come to his land or to those living under his rule, and offering that they would pay a fair price for whatever they needed from the market, even for water, if the king was willing to sell it. Sihon refused, and armed his own forces, standing fully ready to prevent the Hebrews from crossing the Arnon. Moses, seeing the Amorites disposed to make war on them and deciding he should not tolerate being held in contempt, and wishing to free the Hebrews from the inaction and the hardship it had caused—hardship that had earlier led them to sedition and was now again wearing on them—asked God whether he granted them leave to fight. When God signaled that they would have the victory, Moses himself grew confident for the contest and roused his soldiers, now urging them to enjoy the pleasure of fighting, since the divine allowed them to indulge it. They, seizing the freedom they had longed for and taking up their arms, went eagerly to the task. The Amorite, as they advanced, was no longer the man he had been, but was himself struck with terror, and the

The Hebrews and their army, which had shown itself eager for the fight only moments before, were now revealed to have been afraid all along. They could not withstand the first clash, turned to face the Hebrews only briefly, and then fled, thinking their safety lay in flight rather than in battle, since they trusted in the strength of their cities. But that trust did them no good once they were driven into those cities as a herd; the Hebrews, seeing that the enemy had given way, pressed the attack at once.

As soon as they saw them break, the Hebrews fell upon them, stripped away their order, and threw them into panic. Some, torn from the rest, fled toward the cities; others did not tire of the pursuit but chose to add fresh exertion to what they had already endured. They were the best slingers among the Hebrews, skilled with every kind of missile weapon, and their light armor made them quick in the chase, so that they ran down the enemy and caught even those who had gotten furthest away with their slings and arrows.

There was great slaughter, and those who escaped suffered from their wounds; indeed they suffered more from thirst than from anything the enemy did, for it was summer and they were desperate to drink. The greater number of them rushed headlong to a river, and as those who had kept together in flight gathered there, the Hebrews surrounded them and struck them down, killing them all with javelins and arrows together. Among the dead was their king, Sihon himself.

The Hebrews stripped the corpses, took plunder, and found great abundance from a land still full of its produce; the army moved through it freely, foraging even as the cities themselves were captured, for there was no one left to resist them, since every fighting man had perished. Such was the disaster that overtook the Amorites, a people who had shown neither wisdom in counsel nor courage in action, and the Hebrews took possession of what had been theirs.

There is a region lying between three rivers that is, by its nature, something like an island: the Arnon bounds it on the south, the Jabbok marks its northern side and, flowing into the Jordan, lends that river its own name, while on the west the Jordan itself runs around the territory.

While matters stood thus, Og, king of Gilead and Gaulanitis, attacked the Israelites, bringing an army with him. He had hurried to help Sihon as an ally and a friend, but found that Sihon had already perished, and even so decided to give battle to the Hebrews, believing he would prevail and wishing to put their courage to the test. His hope failed him: he himself died in the battle, and his entire army was destroyed with him.

Moses crossed the river Jabbok and advanced through Og's kingdom, overthrowing its cities and killing all their inhabitants, who surpassed every other people of that region in wealth, owing to the richness of their land and the abundance of their goods. Og himself was a man of a size and beauty such as few possess, and he was also valiant in combat, so that his deeds matched the advantages of his stature and good looks. Proof of his strength and size survives in a bed of his, taken from Rabbath, capital of the Ammanites: it was made of iron, four cubits wide, and more than twice that in length, longer by a full cubit besides.

His fall brought benefit to the Hebrews not only for the moment but for the future as well, for even in dying he became the cause of good things for them: they took over sixty cities, magnificently walled, which had paid him tribute, and both privately and as a people they grew rich from the great plunder. Moses then made camp, and leading the army to the Jordan, pitched it opposite the great plain of Jericho, a prosperous city, good for growing palms, and rich in balsam.

The Israelites now began to think highly of themselves and pushed their appetite for war beyond measure. After only a few days, Moses first offered sacrifices of thanksgiving to God and feasted the people, then sent out part of the armed men to ravage the land of the Midianites and besiege their towns.

The cause of the hostility toward them was this. Balak, king of the Moabites, had inherited friendship with the Midianites from his fathers and an alliance with them; and when he saw the Israelites growing so great, he was thrown into deep anxiety about his own affairs, for he had not learned that God had forbidden the Hebrews to meddle with any other land besides that of the Canaanites, which they had already gained. So he resolved to act by negotiation, more hastily than wisely.

He did not think it right to make war on men who, flushed with success, had just recovered from misfortune with even greater boldness, but reasoned that if he could prevent them from growing further great, he should send envoys to the Midianites on their behalf. The Midianites, since there was a certain Balaam from the Euphrates, the best seer of that age and well disposed toward them, sent, along with Balak's envoys, men of note from among their own people to urge the seer to come and pronounce curses that would utterly destroy the Israelites.

When the envoys arrived, Balaam received them hospitably as guests, gave them a feast, and then inquired of God's intention as to the request the Midianites were making. God stood in his way, and Balaam went out to the envoys, showing them his own eagerness and readiness to grant what they sought, but making clear that God opposed his purpose — God, who had raised him to such renown through his gift of truth and prophecy. He told them that the army they were asking him to come and curse enjoyed God's favor, and he advised them, for this reason, to abandon their hostility toward the Israelites and be reconciled.

With these words he dismissed the envoys. But the Midianites, since Balak pressed the matter hard and kept bringing urgent entreaties, sent to Balaam a second time. He, wishing to do the men some favor, asked God again, but God, indignant at the renewed attempt, ordered him not to refuse the envoys. Balaam, not supposing this a deceitful command from God, set out with the envoys.

On the road, as a divine angel confronted him at a narrow place enclosed by two walls, the donkey on which Balaam was riding, perceiving the divine spirit standing in the way, swerved aside against one of the walls, feeling nothing of the blows Balaam gave it in his anger at being crushed against the wall. When the angel pressed still closer and the donkey, being struck, sank down, it uttered, by God's will, a human voice, reproaching Balaam as unjust: he had no complaint against it from all its earlier service, yet he struck it blows, not understanding that it was, by God's own purpose, being kept from a task the animal itself had been eager to perform.

While he was still disturbed at the donkey's human voice, the angel appeared to him plainly and rebuked him for the blows, since it was not the beast's fault but its own — the angel's own — that had blocked the road, doing so against the wish of God. Balaam, terrified, was ready to turn back, but God urged him forward on the journey already begun, instructing him that whatever came into his mind he was to speak as a sign from God.

So, on God's command, he came to Balak. The king received him splendidly and asked him, once he had been brought up onto one of the mountains, to observe how the Hebrew camp was arranged. Balak himself came with him, bringing the seer up with royal attendance and great honor to a mountain that stood above the enemy's camp, sixty stadia away. When Balaam looked down on them, he ordered the king to build seven altars and bring forward as many bulls and rams.

When the king had quickly provided what was asked and the animals had been offered as whole burnt sacrifices, Balaam, seeing the manner of sign given him, declared:

"Happy is this people, to whom God grants possession of countless blessings and gives his own providence as an ally and guide in everything. There is no nation of men among whom you will not be judged, by virtue and by zeal for the best and purest ways of life, to be superior, and you will leave this legacy to children better than yourselves, since God watches over you alone among men and, from wherever you may be, will make you the most fortunate of all beneath the sun.

"The land to which he himself has sent you, you will hold, and it will remain in service to your children forever; the whole earth and sea will be filled with the fame of your name, and you will be enough to furnish every land in the world with settlers from your own stock. Marvel, then, blessed army, that from a single father you have become so numerous. Yet the land of the Canaanites will hold only the small remnant of you now present; know that the whole inhabited world lies before you as your dwelling place forever, and your multitude will live on islands and on the mainland in numbers beyond even the count of the stars in heaven.

"To so great a people, God will not refuse abundance of every good thing in peace, and victory and mastery in war. May the sons of your enemies find themselves so seized by desire for war against you, and grow so bold as to come to arms and meet your hands, that not one of them returns victorious, or so as to gladden his children and his wife. So great is the surplus of courage granted to you by God's providence, who has power both to diminish what is excessive and to supply what is lacking."

Such were the things he uttered in prophecy, not master of himself but overcome, in speaking them, by the divine spirit. Balak was indignant, and charged him with breaking the agreement on which he had received, from the allies, great gifts to come and curse their enemies, and instead singing their praises and pronouncing them the most blessed of men. Balaam answered:

"Balak, do you think it is within our own power to be silent or to speak on such matters, when the spirit of God takes hold of us? He sends forth whatever words and utterances he wishes, with none of it known to us beforehand. I remember well what you and the Midianites, in your entreaty, eagerly brought me here to do, and for the sake of which I made this journey; and it was my prayer to do nothing to wrong your wish. But God is more powerful than what I had resolved to grant you, and those who suppose they can foreknow human affairs by their own power are altogether weak — unable to say only what the divine dictates, and unable to force his will, since once he has entered, nothing in us remains our own any longer.

"For my part, then, I did not set out either to praise this army or to recount the blessings God has devised for their race; rather, it was he, being favorably disposed toward them and eager to grant them a happy life and eternal renown, who put into me the report of such words. But now — since it is my earnest wish to do a favor both for you and for the Midianites, whose request it would not be fitting for me to refuse — come, let us raise other altars once more and offer sacrifices like the previous ones, in case I might be able to persuade God to allow me to bind these men under curses."

Balak agreed, but though Balaam sacrificed twice, God would not grant him the curses against the Israelites; and when he sacrificed a third time, other altars again being raised, even then he did not curse the Israelites, but fell upon his face and foretold the sufferings that would come upon kings and upon the most notable cities, some of which had not yet even begun to be inhabited, together with things that had already happened to men in earlier times, by land or by sea, insofar as I can recall them. From the outcome of all these things, exactly as he foretold them, one may judge what is still to come.

Balak, enraged that the Israelites had not been cursed, sent Balaam away without granting him any honor. But as he was departing, once he had reached the crossing of the Euphrates, he sent for Balak and the leaders of the Midianites and said:

"Balak, and you Midianites who are present, since I must grant you a favor even against the will of God: the race of the Hebrews can never be overtaken by utter destruction, neither by war, nor by plague, nor by famine of the earth's produce, nor by any other unforeseen cause that might destroy them; for God's providence watches over them, to save them from every evil and to allow no such disaster to befall them as would destroy them all. Whatever misfortunes come upon them will be few and brief, ones under which they will seem humbled only to flourish again, to the terror of those who inflicted the harm.

"But if you desire to win some victory over them for a short time, you may obtain it in this way. Take your daughters, the most beautiful among them, adorn their loveliness to still greater effect, and send them near to the Israelite camp, capable by their beauty of overcoming the restraint of any man who looks on them, and instruct them to consent to lie with the young men who desire them. Once they see the young men mastered by their desire, let the women leave them, and when they beg them to stay, let them not agree, until they have persuaded the men to abandon their ancestral laws and the God who established them, and to worship the gods of the Midianites and the Moabites; for only so will God grow angry with them."

Having given them this counsel, he departed. The Midianites sent their daughters as he had advised, and the young men of the Hebrews, captivated by their beauty, came and spoke with them, begging them not to grudge them the enjoyment of their loveliness or the intimacy of their company. The women received their words gladly and consorted with them.

But once they had bound the young men to themselves by desire, and while that desire was still at its height, they began to make as if to leave. Deep despair seized the young men at the women's withdrawal, and they clung to them, begging them not to abandon them, but to remain there as their wives, promised mistresses of all they possessed. This they swore, calling God to witness their promises, weeping and doing everything to make themselves objects of pity to the women.

The women, seeing them thus enslaved and utterly overcome by intimacy, began to say to them: "Bravest of young men, we have ancestral homes and an abundance of possessions, and the goodwill and affection of our parents and kin, and we came here lacking none of these things for ourselves —

"We did not come here for commerce, nor did we welcome your attentions in order to trade on the beauty of our bodies. We took you for good and just men and were persuaded to honor such guests as you with hospitality of this kind. And now, since you say you feel affection for us and grieve that we are about to leave, we for our part do not turn away your entreaty. Taking a pledge of your goodwill — the only thing we count of any worth — we shall be glad to spend our lives with you as wives. For we fear that once you have had your fill of our company you may afterward abuse us and send us back in disgrace to our parents." They asked to be excused for taking this precaution. When the young men agreed to give whatever pledge the women wished and, overcome by passion for them, objected to nothing, the women said, "Since this is now settled between us, your customs and manner of life are utterly alien to everyone else — your food is peculiar to yourselves and your drink is not shared with others. If you wish to live with us, you must worship our gods as well; there can be no other proof of the goodwill you now profess and will go on professing than to bow down to the same gods as we do. No one could find fault if, in the land to which you have come, you turn to the gods native to that land, especially since our gods are open to all, while yours admit no one else to their worship." They told the men, then, that they must either think as everyone else thought or go and look for some other inhabited world in which to live alone by their own laws.

The young men, carried away by their passion for the women, thought this excellent advice, gave themselves over to what was proposed, and transgressed their ancestral ways. Believing now that there were more gods than one, they set about sacrificing to them according to the local custom of the people who had settled them there, took pleasure in foreign foods, and in everything, to please the women, kept doing the very opposite of what their own law commanded — until the lawlessness of the young men had by now spread through the whole army, and a far worse sedition than the earlier one fell upon them, along with the danger that their own ancestral customs would be utterly destroyed. For once the young had had a taste of foreign customs, they gorged themselves on them insatiably, and even some of the leading men, distinguished through their fathers' virtues, were corrupted along with the rest. Zambrias, the leader of the tribe of Simeon, keeping company with Chosbia, a Midianite woman, daughter of Sour, one of the rulers there, and acting at the woman's bidding, did what would please her in defiance of what Moses had ordained.

While matters stood thus, Moses, fearing that something worse might happen, gathered the people into an assembly. He named no one, not wishing to drive to desperation those who, by remaining unidentified, might still repent, but said that they were acting unworthily both of themselves and of their fathers in preferring pleasure to God and to the life lived in accordance with him. It was fitting, he said, while there was still time and it was still possible for them to do well, to change their course; courage, rightly understood, lay not in defying the laws but in not yielding to desire. Besides, he said, it made no sense that men who had shown self-control in the wilderness should now, in the midst of prosperity, run riot, or that what want had gained for them should be lost through abundance. By saying this he tried to set the young men right and lead them to repent of what they had done.

Zambrias rose after him and said, "As for you, Moses, keep to the laws you yourself have taken such pains over, laws whose authority you owe to the simplicity of these people. If they were not of such a disposition, you would long ago have learned by your own punishment that the Hebrews are not so easily deceived. You will not find me obedient to your commands, tyrannically given as they are. Up to now you have done nothing but use the pretense of laws and of God to work mischief, reducing us to slavery while securing power for yourself, and robbing us of the pleasure and the freedom of action over our own lives that belong to free men who have no master. You would prove yourself harsher toward the Hebrews than the Egyptians were, if you claim the right to punish, according to the laws, each man's pursuit of what pleases him. It would be far more just for you yourself to suffer punishment, since you have set out to destroy what is by common consent held to be right among every people, and have built up your own strangeness in defiance of the opinion of all mankind. As for me, I should rightly be deprived of what I am now doing only if I had judged it to be good and yet hesitated afterward to avow it openly. You say I have taken a foreign woman as my wife — you shall hear the truth of my conduct from my own mouth, as from a free man, for I never intended to conceal it. I sacrifice to the gods to whom it is my custom to sacrifice, holding it right to seek the truth for myself from many sources, rather than live as under a tyranny, with the whole hope of my entire life hung upon one man alone. And no one shall have more authority than I do to declare his own judgment about what I do."

When Zambrias had said this about his own wrongdoing, and some others had spoken to the same effect, the people kept quiet, both from fear of what might follow and because they saw that the lawgiver did not wish to carry his indignation further by open confrontation — for he was on guard lest many, imitating the license of Zambrias's words, should throw the multitude into confusion. And so the assembly broke up on these terms. The trial of this evil would have gone much further had not Zambrias met his death, and in the following manner. Phinehas, a man superior to the other young men in every respect and surpassing his contemporaries in the dignity of his father — for he was the son of Eleazar the high priest — was deeply grieved at what Zambrias had done, and resolved to exact justice from him by his own hand before the outrage, emboldened by impunity, could grow stronger, and to prevent the lawlessness from spreading to still more, since those who had begun it went unpunished. So far did he surpass others in daring and in courage of both soul and body that, once he had taken on any dangerous task, he would not withdraw from it until he had fought it through and won the victory. He went to the tent of Zambrias and killed both him and Chosbia, striking them with his sword. All the young men who had any claim to virtue and love of honor, following the daring example of Phinehas, killed those who had incurred the same charge as Zambrias.

Many of the offenders perished, then, at the hands of these brave men, but all the rest were destroyed as well, for God sent a plague upon them for this sin, and those relatives who, though bound to restrain the offenders, had instead urged them on to wrongdoing died as guilty in God's sight along with them. In all, no fewer than fourteen thousand men perished from the ranks. Roused to anger by this cause, Moses sent the army out to destroy the Midianites. We shall report shortly on their campaign against them, but first we must go back and relate something we passed over, for it is right not to leave unpraised the lawgiver's judgment in this matter. Balaam, who had been engaged by the Midianites to curse the Hebrews and, though he could not do this by divine providence, had instead suggested a plan by which, once the enemy put it into effect, the multitude of the Hebrews very nearly perished through the practices in which some of them fell sick — this same Balaam Moses honored greatly, recording his prophecies, even though it was open to him to claim this credit for himself and appropriate the glory attaching to them, since no witness would have survived to expose him. Instead he gave Balaam the credit and judged him worthy of being remembered for it. Let anyone who wishes to think otherwise about this judge for himself as he sees fit.

Moses, then, concerning the matters I mentioned earlier, sent an army against the land of the Midianites, twelve thousand men in all, choosing an equal number from each tribe, and appointed as their general Phinehas, whom we mentioned a little earlier as the man who had upheld the laws for the Hebrews and punished Zambrias for transgressing them. The Midianites, learning in advance that an army was marching against them and would soon be upon them, gathered together and secured the passes into their country by which they expected the enemy to come, and awaited them there. When the Hebrews arrived and battle was joined, an incalculable number of the Midianites fell, past all counting, together with all their kings — there were five: Ochus, Sures, Robees, Ures, and fifth, Recemus, whose city, bearing his name, holds the whole dignity of the land of the Arabs and is called to this day, by every Arab, Recem after the king who founded it, though the Greeks call it Petra. Once the enemy had been routed, the Hebrews plundered their land, took a great deal of booty, and put the inhabitants to death together with their women, sparing only the virgins, for Moses had so ordered Phinehas. He returned bringing back the army unharmed and abundant spoil: fifty-two thousand cattle, seventy-five thousand sheep, sixty thousand donkeys, and an immense quantity of gold and silver vessels used in their households, for in their great prosperity they lived very luxuriously. Also brought back were about thirty-two thousand virgins. Moses divided the spoil, giving one-fiftieth of one portion to Eleazar and the priests, one-fiftieth of the other portion to the Levites, and distributing the rest to the people. For the rest of the time they lived in prosperity, an abundance of good things having come to them through their valor, with nothing grim to hinder their enjoyment of it.

Moses, now grown old, appointed Joshua as his successor, both in prophecy and, whenever occasion should require, as general, God himself having commanded that the leadership of affairs be entrusted to him. Joshua had received a complete education in the laws and in matters concerning God, Moses himself having instructed him.

At this time two tribes, that of Gad and that of Reuben, together with half the tribe of Manasseh, being prosperous in great numbers of livestock and in everything else, took counsel together and asked Moses to grant them the land of the Amorites, which had been won by the spear, as their special portion, since it was good for raising cattle. Moses, supposing that fear of battle with the Canaanites lay behind this and that they had found a plausible excuse in their concern for their livestock, called them thoroughly base and accused them of having invented a respectable pretext for cowardice: they wished to live at ease and enjoy luxury while everyone else labored to win the land they were asking for, refusing to join in the remaining struggles for the land that God had promised to give those who crossed the Jordan, once they had subdued the enemies he had appointed for them. They, seeing him angry and understanding that his anger at their request was just, defended themselves, saying that it was not from fear of danger nor from any softness in the face of hardship that they had made the request, but so that, having left their spoil in a safe place, they might go into the struggles and battles unencumbered; and they said they were ready, once they had built cities for the protection of their children, wives, and possessions, to go along with the army, if he granted it. Moses, pleased with this answer, called together Eleazar the high priest, Joshua, and all the leading men, and agreed to give them the land of the Amorites on condition that they fight alongside their kinsmen until everything was settled. Having received the land on these terms and built strong cities, they placed their children, wives, and all else that would have hindered them in their labors within these cities.

Moses also built the ten cities that were to bring the total number to forty-eight, of which he designated three for those fleeing on account of unintentional homicide, and fixed the length of exile as lasting until the death of the high priest in whose time a man had committed the killing and fled. After the high priest's death, return was permitted, though the relatives of the man killed had the right to kill the slayer if they caught him outside the boundaries of the city to which he had fled — no one else was permitted to do so. The cities appointed as places of refuge were these: Bosara, on the borders of Arabia; Arimanon, in the land of Gilead; and Golan, in Batanea. Once they had also gained possession of the land of the Canaanites, three further cities, among the cities of the Levites, were to be assigned for the refuge of exiles, Moses having so directed.

When the leading men of the tribe of Manasseh came to Moses and told him that a man of some standing among their tribesmen, Salphaad by name, had died leaving no male children but only daughters, and asked whether these daughters were to receive the inheritance, he replied that if they were to marry men of their own tribe, they should take their inheritance with them to their husbands, but if they married into another tribe, they should leave the inheritance within their father's tribe. And he ordained that in every such case the inheritance should thereafter remain within the tribe.

When the forty years lacked thirty days of being completed, Moses gathered an assembly by the Jordan, at the place where the city of Abila now stands, a place planted with palm trees, and when the whole people had come together, he spoke as follows: "Fellow soldiers, sharers in this long hardship, since it has now pleased God, and my old age of one hundred and twenty years now completed, that I must depart from life, and since I am forbidden by God to be your helper and ally in what remains to be done beyond the Jordan, I have thought it right, even now, not to abandon my zeal on behalf of your prosperity, but to secure for you an enduring enjoyment of these good things, and to leave myself a memory among you amid an abundance of still greater blessings. Come, then, let me set before you the manner in which you yourselves may prosper and leave to your children an enduring possession of good things, and so depart from life. I deserve to be trusted, both because of my past zeal on your behalf and because souls at the point of death commune with all virtue. Sons of Israel, the one cause of the acquisition of good things for all men is God's favor; for he alone is able both to give these things to the worthy and to take them away from those who sin against him. If you offer yourselves to him such as he himself wishes — and I, who know his mind clearly, urge you to do so — you, who are blessed and enviable among all peoples, will never meet with misfortune or come to an end; rather, the possession of the good things you now have will remain secure, and you will swiftly gain possession of what you do not yet have. Only" —

"Obey these, and prefer no other arrangement to the laws now before you, and do not, out of contempt, abandon the reverence you now hold toward God for some other way. If you do this, you will prove the most valiant of all in fighting your battles and be caught by none of your enemies; for with God present to help you, it is reasonable to look down on everything else. Great rewards for virtue lie before you for your whole life, once you have gained it: virtue itself is, first, the most honorable of goods, and then it grants you abundance of the rest as well, so that, practicing it toward one another, you will make your life a blessed one, be judged beyond dispute more glorious than the foreign nations, and secure your good repute among those who come after. You could attain all this if you become obedient to, and guardians of, the laws which I have set in order for you at God's dictation, and if you study their meaning closely.

"I myself depart rejoicing over your blessings, entrusting you to the moderation and good order of the laws and to the constitution of the state, and to the virtues of the commanders, who will take thought for your advantage. And God, who has led us until now, by whose will I too became useful to you, will not stop his providence here, but for as long as you yourselves wish to keep him as your protector, remaining in the practices of virtue, for so long you will enjoy his forethought. The best counsels, by following which you will have happiness, will be given you by the high priest Eleazar and Joshua, and the council of elders, and the officers of the tribes; listen to them without resentment, knowing that all who know how to be governed well will also know how to govern, once they come into authority themselves. And do not consider liberty to mean taking offense at whatever your leaders think fit to have you do; for now you regard insolence toward your benefactors as free speech—a habit which, if you guard against it in future, will serve your affairs better. Never again feel the resentment you often dared to show toward me; you know how many times I risked death at your hands rather than at the enemy's. I have not brought this up to reproach you—I did not think it right, on the point of leaving life, to depart bearing a grudge, nor was I angry when I suffered these things at the time—but so that this very memory should make you more prudent in the future, and so that you should not, through wealth, grow insolent toward your leaders, wealth which will surround you in abundance once you have crossed the Jordan and taken possession of Canaan. For if you are led on by it to contempt and to neglect of virtue, you will lose the goodwill of God as well; and having made him your enemy, you will be overpowered in arms and stripped once more of the land you will have won, amid the greatest disgrace, and scattered throughout the world you will fill both land and sea with your servitude. And when you come to feel the effects of this, repentance will do you no good, nor will the memory of the laws you failed to keep. So, if you wish these blessings to remain yours, leave not one of your enemies alive once you have conquered them, but judge it best to destroy them all, lest, tasting something of their way of life, you corrupt the ancestral constitution. I further urge you to tear down all their altars, groves, and temples, however many they have, and to consume by fire their race and its very memory; for only so will the security of your own blessings stand firm for you. And so that your nature may not, through ignorance, turn away from the better course toward the worse, I have composed for you both laws, at God's dictation, and a constitution, the order of which, if you preserve it, will make you judged the happiest of all people."

Having said this, he gave them the laws and the arrangement of the constitution written down in a book. They wept and pressed him at length with questions, remembering the dangers he had faced and the zeal he had shown for their safety, and despairing of the future, since there would be no other leadership like his, and since they thought God would show less providence for them once Moses, the one who had interceded for them, was gone. They grieved too, in remorse, over the times they had spoken to him in anger in the wilderness, so that the whole people broke into tears, and this display of feeling for him proved more powerful even than words of comfort. Moses tried to console them, and, judging himself worthy of their tears, led them away and urged them to make use of the constitution. And so, for that time, they parted.

I wish first to describe the constitution, since it corresponds to the worth of Moses's virtue, and, in setting it out, to give those who read it the means of learning what our institutions were from the beginning, rather than turning to the account others give of them. All that has been written stands as he left it; we have added nothing of our own for the sake of ornament, nor anything beyond what Moses left behind. The one innovation we have made is to arrange each matter by category; for it was left by him scattered as it was written, just as each point was learned from God on its own occasion. For this reason I judged it necessary to make this distinction beforehand, so that none of our own people who come upon the writing should find fault with us as having gone astray. The order of our laws bearing on the constitution is as follows. Those laws he left that are common to us and concern our dealings with one another I have deferred to the account of customs and their reasons, which, with God's help, it is my purpose to compose after this present work.

"When you have gained possession of the land of Canaan and, having leisure to enjoy its goods, choose thereafter to found cities, if you do these things you will act as friends to God and your happiness will stand secure. Let there be one holy city, in the finest part of the land of Canaan and made conspicuous by its excellence, which God shall choose for himself through prophecy; and in it let there be one temple, and one altar of unhewn stones, but fitted together as picked from the field, which, plastered over, should be handsome and clean to look upon. The ascent to it must not be by steps, but by an earthen ramp built up with a gentle slope. In no other city shall there be either altar or temple; for God is one, and the race of the Hebrews is one. Whoever blasphemes God shall be stoned, hung up for the day, and buried without honor and out of sight. Let those from the ends of the land held by the Hebrews gather three times a year at the city appointed for the temple, to give thanks to God for benefits already received and to entreat him for those to come, and, meeting and feasting together, to grow affectionate toward one another; for it is good that men of the same race, sharing the same way of life, should not be strangers to each other, and this will come about for them through such mingling, as sight and converse plant the memory of it in them—whereas, remaining apart from one another, they will come to be reckoned wholly foreign to each other. Let there also be, besides the tithe you have ordained to be given to the priests and Levites, a tithe of the produce set apart for you, which may be sold in your own districts but is to serve for the feasts and sacrifices in the holy city; for it is right that you should enjoy, in honor of the giver, a portion of what the earth yields, which God granted you to possess. Sacrifices are not to be paid for out of a harlot's wages, for God takes no pleasure in anything born of outrage, and such a gift is no better than the shame it brings upon the body; nor, likewise, is anything to be sacrificed to God from a fee taken for the mating of a dog, whether a hunting dog or a sheepdog. Let no one blaspheme the gods which other cities honor, nor plunder foreign temples, nor take any object dedicated to any god, whoever he may be. Let none of you wear a garment woven of wool and linen together, for that has been reserved for the priests alone.

"When the multitude has gathered at the holy city for the sacrifices, once every seven years, at the coming of the feast of Tabernacles, let the high priest stand on a raised platform, from which he can be heard, and read the laws to all; and let neither women nor children be kept from hearing, nor even the slaves, for it is good that, once inscribed on their souls and kept in memory, they should never be able to be erased. In this way they will commit no wrong, since they will not be able to plead ignorance of what the laws prescribe; and the laws themselves will have great force against wrongdoers, since these have had foretold to them what they will suffer, and have had inscribed on their souls, through hearing, what is commanded them, so that the choice set before them is always present within them—a choice which, if they disregard it, leaves them guilty of the wrong and the author of their own punishment. Let the children too learn first of all the laws, the finest lesson and the cause of happiness. Twice each day, at its beginning and when the hour turns toward sleep, let all bear witness to God of the gifts he granted them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, since thanksgiving is by nature owed both as repayment for what has already come to pass and as encouragement for what is still to come; and let them inscribe on their doorposts the greatest of the benefits God has done them, and let each display on his arms whatever can signify the power of God and the goodwill he bears them, inscribed upon the head and the arm, so that his eager care for them may be seen from every side.

"Let there be appointed in each city seven men who have practiced virtue and zeal for justice above others; and to each such office let two assistants be given from the tribe of the Levites. Let those allotted to judge in the cities be held in every honor, so that none may be free to speak ill of them or show insolence in their presence, out of a deference toward men of standing that keeps people, in effect, from showing contempt for God. Let the judges have full authority to pronounce as seems right to them, unless someone can show that they took money to pervert justice, or bring some other charge by which it is proven that they did not judge rightly; for it is not fitting that they should render their judgments openly either to gratify gain or out of regard for rank, but that they should set justice above everything. In acting otherwise, God himself would be held in contempt, and made weaker than those to whom, out of fear of their power, a man assigns the verdict as already decided; for the strength of God is justice, and whoever grants that as a favor to men of rank makes them more powerful than God. If the judges cannot see their way to a verdict on the matters brought before them—and many such cases arise among men—let them refer the case to the holy city, where the high priest, the prophet, and the council of elders shall assemble and pronounce what seems right. Let no single witness be believed, but three, or at the least two, whose testimony is made trustworthy by their past lives. Let there be no testimony from women, on account of the frivolity and boldness of their sex; nor let slaves testify either, because of the ignobility of their spirit, since it is likely that, whether for gain or out of fear, they would not testify truly. If anyone is convicted of bearing false witness and is believed, let him suffer whatever the one he testified against was to have suffered.

"If a murder has been committed in some district and the doer is not found, nor is anyone suspected of having killed out of hatred, let the people search for him with great diligence, offering rewards for information; and if no one comes forward, let the magistrates of the cities near the district where the murder was committed, together with the council of elders, assemble and measure the distance from the place where the corpse lies. Whichever city proves nearest, let its officials buy a heifer and bring it to a ravine, to ground unsuited to the plow or to planting, and there cut the tendons of the heifer's neck; and taking water for the washing of hands, let the priests, the Levites, and the elders of that city, over the head of the heifer, cry aloud that their hands are clean of the murder, that they neither did the deed nor were present when it was done, and let them call upon God to be merciful and to let no such dreadful thing befall the land again.

"Aristocracy, then, and the life lived under it, is best; and let no longing for another form of government take hold of you, but cherish this one, and, keeping the laws as your masters, do all things according to them; for it is enough that God be your leader. But if a longing for a king should come upon you, let him be of your own race, and let him have care for justice and for the rest of virtue at all times. Let him yield the greater part of his judgment to the laws and to God, and do nothing apart from the high priest and the opinion of the council of elders; let him not take many wives, nor pursue an abundance of money or of horses, since, once he has these in plenty, he will grow arrogant toward the laws. And should he show eagerness for any of these things, let him be prevented, so that he does not become more powerful than is good for you. Let it not be permitted to move the boundaries of land, whether one's own or that of others with whom you are at peace; let a man guard against removing them as he would a fixed decree of God, set for all time, since from this arise wars and civil strife, as those who covet more wish to press beyond their boundaries; and those who shift a boundary are not far from also transgressing the laws.

"If a man has planted land, and the trees bear fruit before four years have passed, let him neither bring first-fruits from it to God nor use it himself, for it was not brought forth by them in due season, but forced out of nature before its time, and so is fit neither to be offered to God nor used by its own owner. In the fourth year let him harvest the whole yield, for then it is ripe, and, gathering it, let him bring it to the holy city, and there, together with the tithe of his other produce, consume it in feasting with his friends, together with orphans and widowed women. From the fifth year on, let the owner be free to enjoy the fruit of the trees for himself. Land planted with vines is not to be sown with grain as well; let it be content to nourish this one crop and be spared the labors of the plow. Let land be plowed with oxen, and let no other animal be yoked together with them, but let each kind of beast be put to...

the plowing. Let the seed be pure and unmixed, and let no one sow two or three kinds together, for nature does not delight in the union of things unlike. Nor let anyone put together animals of different kinds, for fear that this small and trivial beginning might, through imitation, spread contempt for the proper order even to human affairs. Nothing of this sort should be permitted, lest some distortion of the constitution creep in by way of such precedents; the laws leave nothing, even the smallest matters, unattended, since they know how to provide for a people's blamelessness in everything.

Those who reap and gather in the harvest should not glean it clean, but should leave some of the sheaves for those who lack the means of life, as a godsend for their sustenance. Likewise, at the grape harvest, they should leave the gleanings of the vine for the poor, and of the olive crop leave something to be gathered by those who have none of their own to draw on. The owners will not gain so much from harvesting their own crops down to the last measure as the gratitude they will win from the needy, and God will make the earth more eager to bring forth its fruits for those who take thought not only of their own advantage but also of feeding others. Nor should men binding sheaves for threshing muzzle the oxen on the threshing floor, for it is not just to keep from the fruit those who labored alongside in producing it. Nor, when fruit is ripe, should travelers on the road be prevented from picking it; rather they should be allowed to eat their fill as if it were their own, whether they are natives or strangers, the owners rejoicing to let them share in the season's bounty—only they may carry none of it away. Nor, at the vintage, should those bringing the grapes to the winepress stop passersby from eating some as they go; for it is unjust to grudge those who desire a share of goods that have come into the world by God's will, at the very time when the season is at its height and hastening to pass.

This would be pleasing to God, even if out of shame some hesitate to touch the fruit and must be urged to take it—Israelites as partners and, by kinship, as owners in their own right; and foreigners who have arrived from elsewhere are entitled to the guest-gifts of what God has provided them in their season. What a person allows others to take out of kindness should not be reckoned a loss, since God supplies abundance of good things not for the owners alone to enjoy but so that they may generously share with others as well, wishing in this way to make known, through great surplus given to others besides, his own goodwill toward the people of Israel and his provision for their prosperity. Whoever acts against these rules shall receive thirty-nine lashes of the public scourge, though a free man, and shall bear this most shameful punishment for having enslaved himself to gain and dishonored his own standing. For it is fitting that you, who have known hardship in Egypt and in the wilderness, should take thought for others in like circumstances, and that you who have found prosperity through God's mercy and providence should extend that same mercy, out of a like experience of suffering, to those in need now.

Of the two tithes which I have already said are to be paid each year, one goes to the Levites, the other toward the festal banquets; a third, in addition to these, is to be set aside every third year for distribution to those in want—widowed women and orphaned children. Whatever of the season's produce first comes to hand for each person, let them bring it to the Temple, and having blessed God for the land that bore it, which he granted them to possess, let them perform the sacrifices the law commands them to offer, and give the firstfruits of these to the priests. When a man has done this, and has brought all the tithes together with those for the Levites and for the festal banquets, and is about to return home, let him stand before the sanctuary and give thanks to God for having freed them from the outrage of the Egyptians and given them a good and abundant land to enjoy, calling him to witness that he has paid the tithes according to the laws of Moses, and asking God to be gracious and merciful to him always and to all the Hebrews in common, preserving the good things he has given them and adding to them whatever more he can bestow.

Let men marry, when they come of age for marriage, free-born virgins of good parentage. He who does not intend to take a virgin should not join himself to a woman already living with another, corrupting her and wronging her former husband. Slave women are not to be married by free men, even if some are driven to it by passion; they should master their desire out of a sense of propriety befitting their standing. Nor, further, should marriage be contracted with a prostitute, whose sacrifices at the wedding God would not accept because of the degradation of her body; for children will have free and upright characters, inclined to virtue, only if they are not born of shameful unions or of a couple who came together out of unfree desire rather than freedom. If a man, having betrothed a woman as a virgin, afterward finds she is not such, he may bring suit, accusing her himself and using whatever evidence he has for proof, while the girl's father, or her brother, or whoever after these is judged nearest of kin, shall speak in her defense.

If the girl is judged in the trial not to have done wrong, she shall live with her accuser, who shall have no power to send her away, except if she gives him serious grounds which he could not even answer. But whoever brings a charge and slander rashly and recklessly shall pay a fine, receiving forty lashes less one, and shall pay fifty shekels to her father. But if he proves the young woman corrupted, then, if she is of the common people, for not having guarded her virginity chastely until lawful marriage, she shall be stoned to death; but if she is of priestly descent, she shall be burned alive.

If a man has two wives, and one is held in great honor and affection—whether for love, or beauty, or some other reason—while the other is held in less regard, and the son born of the beloved wife, though younger than the son born of the other, claims the rights of the firstborn because of his father's affection for his mother, so as to receive a double portion of the paternal estate—for this is what I have ordained in the laws—this shall not be allowed; for it is unjust that the one who is older by birth should be deprived of what is owed him because his mother is less favored in his father's regard than the other.

Whoever seduces a girl betrothed to another—if he persuaded her and gained her consent to the seduction—shall die together with her; for both are equally wicked, the one for persuading her to submit willingly to the most shameful act and to prefer it to free and lawful marriage, the other for letting herself be persuaded, out of pleasure or gain, into disgrace. But if he happens upon her alone and forces her, with no one present to help her, he alone shall die. He who seduces a virgin not yet betrothed shall marry her himself; but if the girl's father does not wish to give her to him in marriage, he shall pay fifty shekels as the price of the outrage.

If a man wishes to divorce the wife who lives with him, for whatever reason—and there could be many such reasons among men—he must certify in writing that he will never again live with her; only in this way will she gain the right to live with another man, for before this it is not permitted. But if she is mistreated by that second husband as well, and after his death the first husband wishes to marry her again, she may not return to him. If a man dies leaving his wife childless, his brother shall marry her, and shall name the child born of this union after the dead man, to raise him as heir to the estate; this will also benefit the public good, since households will not die out and property will remain with kinsmen, and it will bring relief to the women in their misfortune, as they will remain joined to the nearest of their former husbands' kin. But if the brother does not wish to marry her, the woman shall go before the council of elders and declare that although she wished to remain in the household and bear children by him, he refuses to accept her, thereby dishonoring the memory of his dead brother.

When the council of elders asks him for what reason he is unwilling to marry her, whether he gives a slight reason or a weighty one, let him state it; then the woman shall untie her brother-in-law's sandals and spit in his face, saying that he deserves this treatment from her for having dishonored the memory of the departed. He shall leave the council bearing this reproach for the rest of his life, and she may marry whomever of her suitors she wishes. If a man takes captive a virgin or a married woman, and wishes to live with her, he may not first touch her bed and have intercourse with her until she has shaved her head, put on mourning dress, and lamented her relatives and friends who fell in the battle, so that having satisfied her grief for them she may then turn to feasting and marriage; for it is right and just, in taking her to bear children, to have regard for her wishes, rather than to pursue one's own pleasure alone and neglect what is owed to her feelings.

When thirty days of mourning have passed—for wise women find these sufficient for tears over their dearest ones—then he may proceed to the marriage. But if, once his desire is satisfied, he comes to disdain having her as a wife, he shall no longer have the power to enslave her, but she shall go wherever she wishes, free to do so. As for young men who despise their parents and do not give them due honor, whether out of shame or out of arrogant self-assurance, treating them with contempt—first let the fathers admonish them with words, for fathers are competent judges over their sons, saying that they did not come together for pleasure's sake, nor to increase their wealth by pooling what each possessed, but in order to have children who would care for them in old age and from whom they would receive what they need; that when the son was born, they raised him with joy and the deepest gratitude to God, sparing nothing that seemed useful for his welfare and education in the best things.

"But now, since forgiveness must be granted for the offenses of the young, let it be enough that you have already shown so little regard for the honor due us, and turn now to more prudent conduct, reflecting also that God is harsh toward those who dare such things against their parents, since he himself is father of the whole human race and feels himself dishonored along with those who bear the same title, when they do not receive from their children what is owed them; and the law becomes an implacable punisher of such offenses—may you never have to experience it." If by these means the young man's stubbornness is cured, let him be released from the reproach of his past faults; for in this way the lawgiver will have done well, and the fathers will count themselves fortunate in never seeing a son or daughter punished.

But if their words and the instruction they give prove to have taught the son nothing about self-control, and he makes the laws his implacable enemies by persisting again and again in outrages against his parents, then, led out of the city by these same parents with the crowd following, he shall be stoned, and having lain all day exposed to the sight of all, shall be buried at night. In the same way shall be dealt with all others condemned to death under the laws by whatever means. Enemies too are to be buried, and not even one corpse should lie deprived of burial beyond what justice requires in exacting punishment.

No Hebrew shall be permitted to lend to another Hebrew at interest, neither in food nor in drink; for it is not just to make profit from the misfortunes of one's own countryman, but rather, in helping him in his need, to consider as one's gain his gratitude and the reward that will come from God for such kindness. Those who have received either money or any produce, wet or dry, when their affairs prosper by God's favor, should repay their creditors gladly, bringing it back as though depositing what was their own, to be had again should they themselves ever be in need. But if the borrowers show no shame about repayment, the creditor should not go to the debtor's house to seize a pledge before a judgment has been rendered in the matter, but should ask for the pledge from outside, and the debtor should bring it out himself, raising no objection to the one who comes to him supported by the law.

If the man from whom the pledge is taken is well off, the lender may keep it until repayment; but if he is poor, the lender must return it before sunset, especially if the pledge is a cloak, so that he may have it to sleep in, since by nature God shows mercy to the poor. A millstone and the tools that go with it may not be taken as a pledge, so that people are not deprived of the very instruments for preparing their food, nor suffer some worse misfortune through want.

For kidnapping a man the penalty shall be death; whoever steals gold or silver shall repay double. A man who kills someone caught stealing from his house shall go unpunished, even if the thief was caught breaking through a wall. Whoever steals livestock shall pay fourfold the value as penalty, except for an ox, for which he shall pay fivefold. He who cannot afford to pay the fine imposed shall become a slave to those against whom the judgment was given. A man sold to a fellow countryman shall serve six years, and in the seventh shall be released free; but if, having had children by a slave woman in his master's household, he wishes because of his affection and attachment to his own to remain a slave, then, when the year of jubilee arrives—the fiftieth year—he shall be freed, taking with him his children and his wife as free persons as well.

If a man finds gold or silver on the road, he should seek out the one who lost it and, having announced the place where he found it, return it, not supposing that profit gained from another's loss is a good thing. The same applies to livestock a man comes upon wandering in the wilderness; if the owner is not found at once, he should keep it with him, calling God to witness that he does not intend to keep what belongs to another. One must not pass by animals in distress, fallen in the mud in bad weather, but should help save them, treating the effort as one's own concern. One should also show the way to those who do not know it, and not, seeking a laugh for oneself, hinder another's need by misdirection. Likewise, no one should curse a deaf man or one who is absent.

If someone strikes another in a fight, without using iron, and the man dies at once, let the killer be punished with the same fate he inflicted. But if the injured man is carried home and, after being ill for several days, then dies, the one who struck him is innocent; but if he recovers and has spent a great deal on his medical care, the striker must repay everything the sick man spent during his confinement and whatever he gave the physicians. If a man kicks a pregnant woman and she miscarries, he is to be fined by the judges, on the ground that he has diminished the population by destroying what was in her womb, and money is also to be given to the woman's husband by him. But if she dies from the blow, he too must die, the law demanding that he pay a life for a life.

No Israelite may possess a drug that causes death or any other harm; if a man is found in possession of one, he is to be put to death, suffering the very thing he had prepared to inflict on those against whom the drug was made. Whoever maims another is to suffer the same, being deprived of the very member he deprived another of — unless the injured man is willing to accept money instead, the law making the sufferer himself the arbiter of a value for what has happened to him, and permitting this if he does not wish to be too harsh.

An ox that gores with its horns is to be slaughtered by its owner; but if it kills someone on the threshing floor, it is to be stoned to death and judged unfit even for food. And if the owner is shown to have known its temper beforehand and failed to guard against it, he too must die, as responsible for the death of the man killed by the ox. If the ox kills a male or female slave, it is to be stoned, and the owner of the ox must pay thirty shekels to the master of the slave killed. But if an ox is struck in this way and dies, both the dead ox and the one that struck it are to be sold, and their owners are to divide the price between them.

Those who dig a well or a cistern must take care to keep it covered with boards, not in order to keep anyone from drawing water, but so that no one is in danger of falling in. Whoever's animal falls into such a pit, left uncovered, and is killed, must pay its value to the owner. Roofs, too, must have a parapet around them, which, serving in place of a wall, will keep people from rolling off and being killed.

Whoever receives a deposit must guard it as something sacred and holy, and no man or woman should be so bold as to defraud the one who trusted him, even if he stood to gain an untold amount of gold, thinking there is no one to expose him. For, in general, every man ought to act rightly out of regard for his own conscience, and, content with himself as witness, do everything that will win him praise from others — but above all he should regard God, from whom no wrongdoer is hidden. If, without any scheming, the one entrusted with the deposit should lose it, let him come before the seven judges and swear by God that nothing was lost through his own will or wrongdoing, nor through his making use of any part of it, and so let him depart without blame. But if he made use of even the smallest part of what was entrusted to him and happened to lose the rest, let him be condemned to repay everything he received. The same rule applies to wages: whoever withholds the pay of those who work with their own bodies is to be hated for it. A poor man's wages must never be withheld by those who know that God has given him this in place of land and other property; nor should payment be delayed, but it must be paid out on the very same day, since God does not wish the laborer to go without the benefit of what he has toiled for.

Children are not to be punished for the wrongs of their fathers; rather, because of their own virtue, they deserve pity all the more for having had wicked fathers, rather than hatred for having sprung from base ones. Nor, indeed, should fathers be held to account for the sins of their sons, since the young, in their arrogance about being taught, disregard much of our instruction.

Avoid the Galli and shun association with them, since they have deprived themselves of their manhood and of the fruit of childbearing which God gave to men for the increase of the race; drive them away as men who, on the occasion of the slaughter of their children, have in addition destroyed the very cause of it. For it is clear that, their souls having become effeminate, they have transformed their bodies to match — and so too with anything regarded as monstrous by those who see it. It is not permitted to make eunuchs, whether of men or of any other living creatures.

Let this, then, be for you a peaceable ordering of the laws for your commonwealth; and may God graciously grant that its order remain free of faction, and may there never be a time that alters any of these things or turns them to their opposite. But since it is inevitable that human affairs fall into troubles and dangers, whether unwilled or chosen, come, let us add a few further regulations concerning these as well, so that, knowing beforehand what must be done, you may be well provided for when safety is needed, and not, seeking at the moment what must be done, fall unprepared into the crisis.

"May God grant that you possess, unmolested by war, the land he has given you, since you scorn hardship and have trained your souls to virtue, and may he grant this to you as its possessors, with neither foreigners campaigning against it to your harm, nor civil strife taking hold of you — strife under which, acting contrary to your fathers, you would destroy what they held dear — and may you continue to use the laws which God, having judged them good, has handed down to you. Whatever act of war you undertake, now among yourselves or later among your children, let it be carried out beyond your own borders. When about to make war, send an embassy and heralds to those who are deliberately your enemies; for before resorting to arms it is good to use words with them, showing that, though you have a large army and horses and weapons, and before all these a God who is gracious and your ally, you nevertheless ask not to be forced to make war on them, nor, by taking what is theirs, to acquire gain you do not wish for. And if they are persuaded, it is right for you to keep the peace; but if, trusting in their own strength, they choose to do wrong, lead an army against them, using God as your supreme commander, and electing as his lieutenant one man who excels in valor; for a multitude of commanders is bound to be an obstacle to swift action and naturally harms those who resort to it. Lead an army purged of all whose bodies lack strength and whose souls lack courage, having weeded out the cowardly, so that they do not, by turning to flight in the midst of the action, help the enemy. Let those who have recently built houses, who have not yet had a year's enjoyment of them, and those who have planted but not yet tasted the fruit, remain at home, as well as those newly betrothed or newly married, lest, longing for these things and clinging to life in order to enjoy them, they turn cowardly toward the women. Once you have made camp, take care that you do nothing improper."

"When besieging a city and lacking timber for building siege engines, do not strip the land by cutting down its cultivated trees, but spare them, considering that they exist for the benefit of mankind, and that a tree, if it could find a voice, might justly plead with you that, having done nothing to cause the war, it should not suffer unjustly, since, had it the power, it would have moved elsewhere. Once you have prevailed in battle, kill those who resisted you in arms, but spare the rest to pay you tribute, except for the nation of the Canaanites; these must be utterly wiped out, household and all. Above all, guard in your battles against a woman wearing a man's equipment or a man wearing a woman's dress."

Such, then, was the constitution Moses left behind; and he handed down the laws, already written forty years before, about which we shall speak in another work. On the following days — for he kept the assembly in continuous session — he pronounced blessings on them, and curses on those who would not live according to the laws but would transgress what was laid down in them. Then he read to them a poem in hexameter verse, which he also left behind in a book kept in the temple, containing a prediction of things to come, according to which everything has happened and continues to happen, he having erred from the truth in nothing. These books, then, he handed down to the priests, along with the ark, in which he had placed the Ten Words written on two tablets, and the tabernacle. He charged the people, once they had conquered the land and settled in it, not to forget the outrage of the Amalekites, but to march against them and exact vengeance for the wrongs they had done them while they were still in the wilderness; and, once they had taken the land of the Canaanites and destroyed all its population as was fitting, to set up an altar facing the rising sun, not far from the city of Shechem, between two mountains, Gerizim on the right and the one called Ebal on the left, and to divide the army by six tribes to stand on each of the two mountains, with the Levites and priests along with them.

Those stationed on Gerizim were first to pray for the best blessings on those who were zealous in the worship of God and the keeping of the laws and who did not disobey what Moses had said, while the others were to say "Amen"; and then, when these in turn offered their prayers, the first group was to say "Amen" to them. Next, in the same way, curses were to be pronounced on those who would transgress, each side echoing the other's words to confirm what was said. Moses himself wrote down the blessings and the curses, so that their memory should never be lost through time, and at his death he had them inscribed on the altar, on either side, where, he says, the people stood and offered sacrifice and burnt offerings, and after that day brought no other offering there, since it was not lawful. This, then, is what Moses ordained, and the Hebrew nation continues to this day to act in accordance with it.

On the next day he gathered the people, together with their wives and children, into an assembly, so that even the slaves were present, and made them swear an oath to keep the laws and to become exact reckoners of God's purpose, allowing nothing — neither favoring kinship, nor yielding to fear, nor supposing any other cause whatsoever to be more powerful than the keeping of the laws — to lead them to transgress them; but if any of their own blood should attempt to confound and overthrow their constitution, or any city should do so, to defend the laws, both together and individually, and, once they had prevailed over such people, to tear them up from their foundations, and, if possible, leave not even the ground of the reckless offenders; but if they were too weak to exact the penalty, to make it clear that this at least was not happening by their own choice. And the people took the oath.

He also taught them how their sacrifices might be more pleasing to God, and how, when they went out to war, they should use the stones as a sign, as I have already explained. And Joshua also prophesied, in Moses's presence.

Then, reviewing everything he had done for the people's safety, in war and in peace alike, in framing the laws and in furnishing the good order of their commonwealth, he foretold, since the divine had revealed it to him, that if they transgressed in their worship of him, they would experience misfortunes: their land would be filled with the weapons of enemies, their cities razed, the temple burned down, and, sold into slavery, they would serve men who would show no pity for their misfortunes, and they would repent of this to no useful purpose. "Yet God, who created you, will restore the cities to your citizens, and the temple as well; and this loss of them will happen not once, but many times."

Having urged Joshua to lead the army out against the Canaanites, since God would cooperate in whatever he undertook, and having acclaimed the whole multitude, he said: "Since I am going to our forefathers, and God has appointed this day for my departure to them, I acknowledge, while I am still alive and present with you, my gratitude to him for the providence he has shown you — not only in delivering you from your troubles, but also in the gift of better things — and because, in all my labor and in all the thought I gave, with all my mind, to your improvement, he struggled alongside me and showed himself gracious to you in everything. Indeed it was he, rather than I, who gave the direction of your affairs and granted their successful outcomes, using me as his lieutenant and servant in the things by which he wished to benefit our people. In return for this, I thought it right, as I depart, to bless in advance the power of God, who will care for your future as well, myself rendering this debt owed to him, and leaving it in your memory that it is fitting for you to revere and honor him and the laws, in return for all he has given and, remaining gracious, will continue to give — the finest gift you can guard. As for a lawgiver made human, he is a formidable enemy to those who insult his laws and treat them as vain; may you never experience the anger of God on account of laws neglected, laws which he himself begot and gave to you."

When Moses had said this, near the end of his life, and had prophesied to each of the tribes, together with blessings, the things that in fact came to pass, the people broke into tears, so that even the women, beating their breasts, showed the grief they felt for him at his coming death. The children, too, wept still more, as being too weak to master their sorrow, since even at their age they understood his virtue and his great deeds. There was, as it were, a contest of grief between the young and the old: the older, knowing what kind of guardian they were being deprived of for the future, mourned on that account, while the younger grieved both for this reason and because it fell to them to be parted from him before they had properly tasted his virtue. One could gauge the extremity of the multitude's wailing and lamentation from what happened to the lawgiver himself: for though he had been persuaded, throughout his whole life, that one should not be downcast in the face of approaching death, since this happens by the will of God and the law of nature, he was overcome, by what the people were doing, into weeping himself.

As he made his way from there, to the place where he was to vanish from sight, all followed him in tears, and Moses, waving his hand to those farther off, bade them remain quietly where they were, while to those nearer he appealed in words not to make his departure one of tears by following him. They, judging that they should grant him this too — to go off as he wished — restrained themselves, weeping among one another. Only

The council escorted him on his way, along with the high priest Eleazar and the general Joshua. When he reached the mountain called Abarim — a height lying opposite Jericho, from which one can look out over a very great expanse of the finest land of the Canaanites — he sent the council back. While he was still embracing Eleazar and Joshua and speaking with them, a cloud suddenly stood over him, and he vanished into a ravine.

He wrote of himself in the sacred books that he had died, for fear that, because of the surpassing excellence of his character, people might dare to say that he had withdrawn to the divine. He lived in all a hundred and twenty years, a third of which, less one month, he spent as leader. He died in the last month of the year, on the new moon of the month the Macedonians call Dystrus and we call Adar.

He surpassed in understanding all men who have ever lived, and made the best use of whatever he conceived. He was gifted in speech and in addressing crowds, and, above all else, master of his passions, so much so that his soul seemed to hold none of them at all, and he seemed to know their very names only from observing them in others rather than experiencing them himself. As a general he ranked among the few, and as a prophet he had no equal, so that whatever he uttered seemed to be the very voice of God speaking through him.

The people mourned him for thirty days, and no grief of such magnitude ever gripped the Hebrews as when Moses died. Nor was he missed only by those who had known him personally; even those who simply read his laws felt his loss keenly, reckoning from them the surpassing measure of his virtue. Let this account of the end of Moses suffice for us.

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