On the Posterity of Cain

Philo of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

"And Cain went out from the face of God, and settled in the land of Nod, opposite Eden" (Gen. 4:16). We must now ask a question: whether we should understand certain things in the books translated by Moses in a more figurative sense, since the impression given at first sight by the words is far removed from the truth.

For if the Existent has a face, and one who wishes to abandon it can very easily move away to another place, why do we reject the impiety of Epicurus, or the atheism of the Egyptians, or the mythical fictions with which life is filled?

For a face is a part of a living creature, but God is a whole, not a part; so that it would be necessary to fashion for him the other parts as well—neck and chest and hands and feet, and again a belly and the generative organs, and the countless other multitude of parts, internal and external.

And human passions necessarily follow upon a human form, since these too are not superfluous or dispensable; rather nature fashioned all the parts that serve their owners' own needs and functions, fitting them accordingly. But the Existent needs nothing, so that if he has no need of the benefit that comes from parts, he could not have parts at all.

And from where does he go out? From the palace of the Ruler of all? But what perceptible house of God could there be except this cosmos, which it is impossible and unfeasible to leave? For the circle of heaven, embracing all things that come into being, holds them within itself. Indeed, even the elemental portions of those who have died are dissolved back into the powers of the universe out of which they were composed, the loan lent to each being repaid, at unequal appointed times, to the nature that made the loan, whenever it wishes to recover its own debts.

Moreover, one who goes out from some place leaves behind, in another place, that part of himself which remains. But it is a necessary consequence of this that some parts of the world would be left widowed of God—whereas he has left nothing empty or bereft of himself, but has filled all things through all things.

But if God has no face, inasmuch as he has transcended the particular characteristics of all created things, and does not dwell in any part, inasmuch as he contains all things and is not contained—and if it is impossible for any part of him to emigrate from the city of this world, since no part of him is left outside it—then it remains for us, reasoning in this way, to conclude that none of the things proposed is to be taken literally, and to make this our starting point for the path of allegory, dear to students of nature.

If it is difficult to depart from the face of a mortal king, how is it not utterly difficult to abandon the very appearance of God and go away, having resolved never again to come into his sight—which is the same as having the eye of one's soul, once maimed, become incapable of ever perceiving him again?

Now those who have submitted to this out of necessity, crushed under the force of an inexorable power, would deserve pity rather than hatred. But those who by voluntary choice turned themselves away from the Existent—surpassing even the very limit of wickedness (for what evil could be found equal to it?)—let them pay penalties that are not customary, but new and extraordinary. Indeed, one could not discover anything more novel or greater than the departure and flight from the Ruler of all,

the flight, that is. Now God casts Adam out, but Cain departs of his own will, Moses thereby showing us the form of each of the two manners—the voluntary and the involuntary. But the involuntary, since it is not established by our own resolve, will receive whatever cure is possible afterward: "for God will raise up another seed in place of Abel, whom Cain killed" (Gen. 4:25), for the soul

that has not turned itself away, a male offspring, Seth, "the watering." But the voluntary offense, since it comes about by deliberate purpose and forethought, will admit incurable ills forever. For just as deeds done with forethought are better than unintentional right actions, in the same way, among sins, the involuntary are lighter than the voluntary.

Cain, then, having removed himself from the face of God, will be met by avenging justice, punisher of the impious. But Moses will set before his disciples the most excellent precept: "to love God and to hearken to him and to cleave to him" (Deut. 30:20); for this, he says, is life—a life leading to prosperity and long duration. And it is with great emphasis that he calls us to the honor of the one thrice-desired and worthy of love, saying "cleave to him," thereby representing the continuous, unbroken, and uninterrupted character of that harmony and union which comes through kinship. Such, then, and of this kind, are the things he urges upon others.

But he himself so unceasingly longs to see and to be seen by him, that he beseeches him to reveal his nature clearly, hard as it is to conjecture (Exod. 33:13), so that he might at last, having received an opinion free of falsehood, exchange the most unshakable conviction for uncertain wavering. And though he presses his longing further, he will not relax it, but even knowing that he is in love with a thing hard to hunt down—rather, unattainable—he will nevertheless press on in the contest, relaxing none of his intense zeal, but employing everything within his own power toward attaining it, without excuse and without hesitation.

Indeed, he will already enter the darkness where God was (Exod. 20:21)—that is, into the innermost and formless conceptions concerning the Existent. For the Cause is not in darkness, nor in any place at all, but above both place and time; for having yoked to himself all things that have come into being, he is contained by nothing, but has mounted upon all things. And having mounted upon them, and being outside the created world, he has nonetheless filled the world with himself; for through . . . power, stretching to the very limits, he has woven each thing together with each, according to the principles of harmony.

So whenever a God-loving soul seeks to know what the Existent is in his essence, it comes to a formless and invisible search, from which it gains the greatest good: to grasp that God, in his being, is incomprehensible to everyone, and to see this very thing—that he is invisible.

It seems to me that the Hierophant, even before beginning this inquiry, had grasped its most essential point, judging by the words with which he beseeches the Existent to become the revealer and guide of his own nature. For he says: "show yourself to me" (Exod. 33:13), making it perfectly clear by this that not one of created beings is sufficient of

himself to be taught the being of God according to his existence. For this reason Abraham too, coming to the place which God had told him of, on the third day looked up and saw the place from afar (Gen. 22:3–4). What place? The one to which he came? And how could it be far off, if he had already arrived there?

But perhaps what is hinted at is something of this kind: the sage, ever eager to comprehend the Ruler of the universe, when he walks the path of knowledge and wisdom, first encounters divine words, in whose company he lodges as at a first stopping place, but having resolved to press on further, he holds back; for once the eyes of his understanding were opened, he saw more sharply that he had set out to hunt a thing hard to capture, one that ever withdraws and stands far off, outrunning its pursuers by an infinite intervening distance.

He rightly judges that all things beneath heaven, however swift they seem, would appear to stand still when compared to the motion of the sun and moon and the other stars. And yet the whole of heaven has come into being through God, and that which acts is always prior to that which comes into being; so that necessarily, not only the other faculties within us, but even the swiftest-moving of all, the mind, would fall short by an unbounded distance from grasping the Cause. But the stars, though themselves in motion, overtake the things that move; whereas God—the most paradoxical thing—though standing still, has outstripped all things.

And it is said that, being the same, he is at once nearest and farthest off: touching each thing by his creative and punitive powers, which are close to everything, yet having removed created being very far from his own nature according to existence, so that it cannot even be touched by the purest and most incorporeal reachings of the understanding.

With those who love God and seek the Existent, then, even if they never find him, we rejoice together—for the search for the beautiful is in itself sufficient to give joy beforehand, even if its end is not attained—but with self-loving Cain we grieve, who has left his own soul without any vision of the Existent, having willingly blinded the one faculty by which alone he was able to see.

It is worth considering also the region to which he is banished, once he has departed from the face of God: it is called Restlessness, the lawgiver thereby showing that the fool, given over to unstable and unsettled impulses, endures agitation and turmoil—like a heaving sea in a wintry storm of contrary winds—and has never so much as dreamed of calm or fair weather. And just as, when a ship is tossed at sea, it can neither sail on course nor ride at anchor, but drifting this way and that, tilts toward each side in turn and sways back and forth, so too the base person, possessed of a distracted and storm-tossed mind, unable to steer his own course without stumbling, is forever tossed about, rehearsing the overturning of his life.

The coherence of this sequence strikes me with no small amazement: for it happens that what draws near to that which stands still comes to desire rest, out of a longing for likeness to it. Now that which stands unswervingly is God, while that which is in motion is created being; so that he who draws near to God desires a state of rest, while he who withdraws from him, since he is drawing near to created being, which is subject to change, is carried along accordingly,

toward what is likely for it. For this reason it is written among the curses, "he will not give you rest, nor will there be any standing still for the sole of your foot," and shortly after, "your life shall hang suspended before your eyes" (Deut. 28:65–66). For it is the nature of the fool, ever moved contrary to right reason, to be hostile to stillness and rest, and to stand firmly and be grounded upon no settled conviction.

At one time, then, he holds one opinion, at another its opposite about the very same things, even when nothing new has happened concerning them—now great, now small, now enemy, now friend, and virtually every contradiction there is, all within the smallest span of time. And his whole life is, as the lawgiver said, suspended, having no unshakable foundation, but forever carried along by the pull of things dragging and counter-dragging against one another.

For this reason he says elsewhere, "Cursed by God is he who hangs on a tree" (Deut. 21:23) — because, though it was fitting to hang upon God, this man instead suspended himself from the body, which in us is a mass of wood, exchanging hope for desire, the greatest evil in place of the perfect good. For hope, being an expectation of good things from the God who loves to give, steadies the mind, whereas desire, engendering irrational cravings, comes from the body, which nature fashioned as a reservoir and territory of pleasures.

Let these men, then, hang as from the noose of desire. But Abraham the wise, since he stands firm, draws near to the God who stands firm; for he says, "he was standing before the Lord, and drawing near he said" (Gen. 18:22-23). For truly it is only for the unchanging soul that there is access to the unchanging God, and the soul so disposed stands, in the truest sense, near the divine power.

The oracle given to the all-wise Moses shows most plainly the utterly firm stability that belongs to the man of worth. The oracle is this: "But you, stand here with me" (Deut. 5:31). From this two things are established: first, that the Existing One, who moves and changes all else, is itself unmoved and unchanging; second, that it imparts a share of its own nature, of rest, to the man of worth. For just as, I think, crooked things are straightened by a true rule, so things in motion are checked and made to stand by the strength of that which stands.

In this instance, then, he commands another to stand with him. But elsewhere he says, "I will go down with you into Egypt, and I will bring you up at the end" (Gen. 46:4) — not "you with me." Why? Because rest and standing are proper to God, while change and all transitional motion belong to created being.

So then, when he calls someone to his own good, he says, "You stand with me," not "I with you"; for God will not stand, but stands forever. But when he comes toward what belongs to created being, he will most rightly say, "I will go down with you" — for the shifting of places suits you. Thus no one goes down with me — for I am not subject to change — but whatever is dear to me as rest will stand fast; yet with those who go down by way of transition — for transition is their brother and kinsman — I will go down in a manner of place, though I change no regions, I who have filled the whole with myself.

And this I do out of the pity that reasoning nature feels, so that the soul may be brought up out of the Hades of the passions to the Olympian region of virtue, with me as guide, who, having cut through the highway leading to heaven, have made it plain for all suppliant souls, so that they might not grow weary as they walk it.

Having shown, then, both the rest of the good man and the tossing of the fool, let us examine next what follows in the text. For it says that Nod, the tumult to which the soul was removed, lies opposite Eden. Symbolically, Eden is right and divine reason, and for this reason its name is translated "delight," because it takes joy and delight, before all others, in goods that are unmixed and undiluted, and moreover whole and complete, since the God who gives wealth rains down his virgin and immortal graces upon it. But by nature evil fights against good, the unjust against the just, the prudent against the foolish, and every form of virtue against every form of vice. Such is the meaning of Nod's being directly opposite Eden.

Having said this, he says next: "And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he was building a city, and he named the city after the name of his son Enoch" (Gen. 4:17). Is it not reasonable to be puzzled as to what wife Cain knew? For the birth of no other single woman besides Eve, fashioned from the rib, has been recorded up to this point.

And if someone should say that Cain came together with a sister, apart from the impiety of it, he would also be speaking falsely; for the text introduces the daughters of Adam as born later. What, then, must we say? He calls, I think, the wife of impious reasoning "opinion," the opinion that a man forms about things, just as countless philosophers have done, some proposing the same doctrines to life, others different ones. What, then, is the opinion of the impious man?

That the human mind is the measure of all things; a saying which they say a certain one of the ancient sophists, Protagoras by name, made use of — offspring of the madness of Cain. I infer this from the following: once the wife was known by him, she bore Enoch; and Enoch is translated "your grace."

For if man is the measure of all things, then all things are grace and gift of the mind, so that the eye has been granted seeing as a favor, the ears hearing, each of the other senses its own perceiving, and the reasoning faculty, in respect of speech, its speaking; and if these, then surely also thinking itself, in which there are countless conceptions, deliberations, forethoughts, apprehensions, sciences, arts, dispositions, and a numberless host of other faculties.

Why, then, do you go on solemnly discoursing about piety and the honoring of God, and think you know how to speak and hear of it? — if indeed you hold within yourselves the mind opposed to God, which, having fastened upon all human goods and evils by its own power, mixes both together for some, but sends others only the unmixed portion.

And so, should someone bring against you a charge of impiety, take courage in your defense, declaring that you were schooled by a most excellent guide and teacher, Cain, who counseled honoring what is near at hand before the distant cause; to whom, for other reasons, but especially for this, attention must be paid — that by clear deeds he demonstrated the strength of his doctrine, defeating Abel, the champion of the opposite opinion, and along with him removing that opinion out of the way.

But as for me and my friends, life among the impious would be less desirable than death among the pious; for those who die in the latter way, immortal life will receive, but those who live in the former way, eternal death.

Since Cain begot Enoch, and again a descendant of Seth is likewise named Enoch (Gen. 4:17; 5:18), we must examine whether these happen to be different persons or the same. And together with this let us also investigate the differences among the other cases of shared names. For just as with Enoch, so too Methuselah and Lamech are descendants of Cain, but no less descendants of Seth as well (Gen. 4:18; 5:21, 25).

One must know, then, that each of the names mentioned, when translated, has a double meaning. Enoch, as I said, is translated "your grace"; Methuselah, "sending forth of death"; and Lamech, in turn, "humbling." Now "your grace" is spoken by some in reference to the mind within us, but is also spoken by better men in reference to the mind of the universe.

Those, then, who declare that everything within thinking, perceiving, or speaking is a gift of their own soul, introducing an impious and godless opinion, let them be assigned to the race of Cain, who, though not even master of himself, dared to say — of himself and of all other things — that he possessed them as complete property. But those who do not appropriate to themselves whatever good exists in created being, but ascribe it to divine graces, being truly nobly born not from ancient wealth but sprung from lovers of virtue, let them be ranked under Seth as their founder.

Very hard to find is this race, since they flee an entangled and toilsome and knavish life, poured out and full of passions and vices. For those whom God, once they had found favor with him, transferred and translated from perishable to immortal kinds, are no longer found among the many.

Having distinguished, then, what is signified concerning Enoch, let us pass next to Methuselah, who was "sending forth of death." Two things are established from this phrase: one, according to which death is sent upon someone; the other, according to which it is sent away from someone. The one upon whom it is sent, that person surely dies; but the one from whom it is sent away lives and survives.

For Cain, then, the one who receives death is akin — he who is always dying to the life lived toward virtue; but for Seth, most closely related is the one from whom death is sent away and dying is walled off; for the man of worth has reaped the fruit of true life.

And indeed Lamech, being "humbling," is ambiguous; for either we are humbled when the tensions of the soul slacken through the diseases and infirmities that arise from irrational passions, or we humble ourselves out of zeal for virtue, withdrawing ourselves from swelling self-conceit.

The former kind arises from weakness, being a form of the many-shaped and many-varied leprosy; for whenever the appearance seems more lowly, its even and vigorous look having been broken, the lawgiver says that the grievous disease of leprosy has occurred (Lev. 13:3).

The other kind arises from strong endurance, and is followed by atonement in accordance with the perfect number ten; for it is commanded that souls be humbled on the tenth day of the month (Lev. 23:27), which is to put away arrogance, and the putting away of this achieves the remission of wrongdoings both voluntary and involuntary. This Lamech, then, humbled in this way, is a descendant of Seth and father of the righteous Noah; but the other kind is a sprout of Cain.

Next it would be fitting to examine why this same man is introduced as founding and building a city; for a city needs a multitude of people and a size to house them, whereas for the three who existed at that time some hillside or small cave would have been the most sufficient dwelling. And I say "three," though it is likely he was alone by himself; for not even the parents of the murdered man would have endured living in the same city as the killer, who to the guilt of manslaughter had added the crime of killing his own brother.

For it is plain to everyone not only strange but even absurd that one man should build a city. How could it be done? Not even the most obscure part of a house could be built without the use of other hands. Could the same man, at the same time, quarry stone, cut timber, work iron and bronze, throw a great circuit of walls around a city, build gateways and outworks, temples and sacred precincts and colonnades and dockyards and houses and all the other public and private structures that custom requires? And besides these, could he construct channels underground, widen alleyways, and build fountains and conduits and all else a city needs?

Perhaps then, since these things are out of tune with the truth, it is better, speaking allegorically, to say that Cain has resolved to construct his own doctrine like a city.

Since, then, every city is composed of buildings, inhabitants, and laws, its buildings for him are the demonstrative arguments with which, as from behind a wall, he fights off the assaults of his opponents—the persuasive inventions of fable-makers against the truth; its inhabitants are the companions of impiety, atheism, self-love, boastfulness, and false opinion, men who seem wise to themselves without knowing true wisdom, men who have compounded ignorance, lack of education, and stupidity together with their other sister and kindred banes; and its laws are lawlessness, injustice, inequality, licentiousness, insolence, madness, arrogance, immoderate pleasures, and unspeakable desires contrary to nature.

Of such a city each of the impious is discovered to be the builder in his own utterly wretched soul, until God, having taken counsel (Gen 11:6), works a sudden and great confusion upon their sophistic arts. And this will happen whenever they build not only a city but also a tower whose head will reach to heaven (Gen 11:4)—that is, an argument constructive of each man's own reasoning, which they advance as having for its head his own private notion, symbolically called heaven; for it is necessary that the head and end of every argument be the mind it signifies, for the sake of which lengthy discourses and speeches by learned men are accustomed

to be produced. They have advanced so far in impiety that they think fit not only to raise up such cities by themselves, but also to compel the virtue-loving multitude of Israel, having appointed overseers and teachers of evil works over them. For it is said that, mistreated by the overseers of the king of the land, they build three cities: Pithom, Rameses, and On, which is the City of the Sun (Exod 1:11).

These, in a more figurative sense, signify mind, sense-perception, and speech—the things that belong to us; for Pithom is speech, since persuading belongs to it, and its name is interpreted as 'mouth that presses out,' since the speech of the base man too practices pushing out and overturning what is good.

Rameses is sense-perception... for just as by a moth the mind is gnawed and eaten away by each of the senses, being shaken and torn apart; for impressions that come in against pleasure give birth to a painful and toilsome life.

On is called 'hill,' but symbolically it is the mind; for upon it the treasures of all reasonings are stored up. The lawgiver too bears witness, having called it City of the Sun; for just as the sun, when it has risen, plainly displays what was hidden by night, so the mind, sending forth its own light, causes all bodies and all things to be apprehended in clear radiance.

For this reason one would not err in saying that our mind is the sun of our composite being, which, if it does not rise in man, the small world, and shine forth its own light, pours out a great darkness over things and lets nothing appear beforehand.

This hill the practicer Jacob calls to witness in his dealings of justice with Laban (Gen 31:46–47), showing most doctrinally that the mind is a witness for each man of what he deliberates in secret, and conscience is an incorruptible and most truthful reprover of all things… it is built before these cities.

For he says that the spies came to Hebron, and there were Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the offspring of Anak; then he adds: 'And Hebron was built seven years before Tanis of Egypt' (Num 13:22). It is most natural to distinguish things that share a name. For Hebron is interpreted 'union,' and the union of the soul is twofold: either yoked to the body or fitted to virtue.

The soul, then, that subjects itself to bodily unions has as its inhabitants those just named; Ahiman is interpreted 'my brother,' Sheshai 'outside me,' and Talmai 'one hung up'; for it is necessary for souls that love the body to consider the body a brother, and to hold external goods in special honor; and all souls disposed in this manner are suspended from lifeless things, and, like those impaled, are nailed fast even unto death to perishable matter.

But the soul yoked to what is noble has obtained as its inhabitants men outstanding in the virtues, whom the double cave (Gen 23:9) has received in pairs—Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah, the virtues and those who possess them. This Hebron, guarding as treasure the memories of knowledge and wisdom, is older than Tanis and than all Egypt. For nature made the soul older than the body, that is, than Egypt, and virtue older than vice, that is, than Tanis—for Tanis is interpreted 'commandment of withdrawal'—judging the elder by dignity

rather than by length of time. For this reason too she calls Israel, though younger in time, 'firstborn son' (Exod 4:22) in dignity, showing that he who sees God, being of the most ancient origin, is honored, the very first offspring of the Unbegotten, brought forth from virtue which is hated among mortals, to whom the law grants, as to the eldest, a double portion of the birthright (Deut 21:17).

For this reason the seventh, though in order an offspring of the sixth, is in power the eldest of every number, differing in nothing from the unit. He himself will make this clear in the conclusion of the account of creation, saying: 'And God rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had made; and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his works which God began to make' (Gen 2:2–3).

Then he adds: 'This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth, when it came to be, on the day that God made heaven and earth' (Gen 2:4). These things happened on the first day, so that the seventh is referred back to the first unit and beginning of all things. We have dwelt on this at length in order to show more clearly the opinion which Cain thinks he must build up like some city.

The son of Enoch is called Gaidad (Gen 4:18), which is interpreted 'flock'—most fittingly; for it was fitting that the man who attributes everything to a mind unable even to grasp its own nature should beget irrational powers, herded together into a flock; for this is not the doctrine of rational men.

Now every flock that has no shepherd set over it necessarily suffers great misfortunes, since it is unable by itself to repel what harms it and choose what will benefit it. For this reason Moses too prays, saying: 'Let the Lord, God of spirits and of all flesh, appoint over this congregation a man who will go out before them and come in before them, who will lead them out and bring them in, and let the congregation of the Lord not be like sheep that have no shepherd' (Num 27:16–17).

For whenever the leader or guardian or father, or whatever one likes to call it, of our composite being—right reason—departs and abandons the flock within us, it is left untended and perishes, and great loss comes to its master; and the irrational, unguided creature, bereft of a herdsman to admonish and instruct it, is banished far from rational and immortal life.

For this reason Gaidad is said to have a son named Mahalalel (Gen 4:18), whose name, translated, means 'from the life of God.' For since the flock is irrational, and God is the fountain of reason, the man who lives irrationally must necessarily be cut off from the life of God. Now Moses defines living according to God as consisting in loving him; for he says, 'your life is to love him who is' (Deut 30:19–20).

As a paradigm of the opposite life he sets forth the goat that falls by lot; for he says, 'he shall set it alive before the Lord, to make atonement upon it, so as to send it away for dismissal' (Lev 16:10)—with very careful precision.

For just as no sensible person would approve of old men who abstain from pleasures merely because old age, that long and incurable disease, has slackened and loosened the sinews of their appetites, but would rather deem worthy of praise the young, who, though desire blazes at the height of their prime, have nonetheless furnished themselves abundantly with the extinguishing instruments that come from education's reasonings, and so have relieved the great blaze and seething of their passions—so too, for those who have no disease at all, such as tends to arise from a bad regimen, lesser praise follows, because they enjoyed good fortune involuntarily, through nature's good favor; but for those against whom the disease has arisen and stands opposed, greater praise follows, if indeed, bracing themselves, they are willing and able to bring it down.

For to have the strength to bring down, by austere effort, the alluring baits of pleasure carries the praise that belongs to voluntary achievements. If, then, none of these fortunate portions has fallen to us, but the diseases and infirmities marked for banishment still live within us, let us be zealous to overturn and cast them down; for to make atonement upon them is just this: to acknowledge that, though we have them alive and thriving within the soul, we do not yield, but standing against them we fight them off with all our strength, until we banish them utterly.

And what follows for the man who does not live according to the will of God, but death of the soul? This is named Methuselah, which, translated, is 'sending forth of death.' For this reason he is son of Mahalalel (Gen 4:18), who has abandoned his own proper life, upon whom dying is sent—the death of the soul, which is its irrational change under the influence of passion.

This passion, whenever it has conceived, bears, after harsh birth-pangs, incurable diseases and infirmities, by which the soul, writhing, is humbled and bent down; for each burden it brings presses upon her without end, so that she cannot even lift up her head. All this is named Lamech; for it is interpreted 'humiliation,' so that fittingly Lamech becomes the son of Methuselah (Gen 4:18)—an infirmity humbled and yielding, born of the irrational impulse that is the passion of death for the soul.

'And Lamech took to himself two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah' (Gen 4:19). Whatever a base man takes for himself is altogether blameworthy, as being defiled by a judgment hard to purify; for, conversely, the voluntary acts of good men are all praiseworthy. Therefore, whereas here Lamech, choosing wives for himself, chooses the greatest evils, elsewhere Abraham, Jacob, and Aaron, taking wives, come together with goods that are their own.

For of Abraham it says: "And Abraham and Nahor took wives for themselves; the name of Abraham's wife was Sarah" (Gen 11:29). And of Isaac: "Rise up and flee to Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father, and take yourself a wife from there, from the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother" (Gen 28:2). And of Aaron: "And Aaron took Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of Nahshon, for his wife" (Exod 6:23).

Isaac and Moses, on the other hand, do take wives, but not through themselves: Isaac is said to have taken his when he entered his mother's tent (Gen 24:67), while Moses had his daughter given to him by the man with whom he lodged (Exod 2:21).

These differences are pointed out by the lawgiver not as an incidental matter. For those who are still making progress and advancing as ascetics, the willing choice of the good is credited to them, so that even their labor should not go uncrowned; but for those who have been deemed worthy of a self-taught and self-learned wisdom, it follows that they do not take by their own agency, but receive, betrothed to them by God himself, the reasoning that is wisdom's consort, its knowledge.

But Lamech, cast out from human company, low and grovelling, takes as his first wife Adah, whose name means "testimony," having himself procured this marriage for himself. For he supposes that the ready and facile movement and outworking of the mind toward whatever it happens to hit upon shrewdly, with nothing hindering its easy grasp, is the first good for a human being.

"For what," he says, "could be better than that one's conceptions, thoughts, conjectures, guesses -- in short, one's counsels -- should, as the saying goes, walk on steady feet, so as to arrive at their goal without stumbling, the mind being attested in everything it has said?" For my part, if a person applies a mind sure and quick of aim only to what is good, I set this person down as blessed, taking the law as my teacher; for the law itself said that Joseph was a man who succeeded -- not in everything, but in whatever matters God graciously granted him to prosper in (Gen 39:2); and all the gifts of God are good.

But if someone employs the sure and ready aptitude of his nature not only toward what is noble but indifferently toward its opposites as well, let him be counted wretched. At any rate it is said, in the form of a curse, concerning the place of confusion: "nothing that they set their hand to do will be beyond them" (Gen 11:6); truly it is an incurable calamity for a soul to succeed at whatever it sets its hand to, even the most shameful things.

For my part I would pray that, if ever I should think of doing wrong, I might fail at the wrongdoing; and if I should live in an unmanly way, that I might fail at the dissipation; and if I should act with rashness and villainy, that I might come up entirely short of rashness and villainy. For it is no better for those who have set their mind on stealing, or committing adultery, or murder, not to see each of these projects fall short and come to ruin.

So reject Adah, O mind -- the woman who bears testimony to base men and is herself attested in their several undertakings. For if you think fit to keep her as your partner, she will bear you the greatest evil of all, Jubal (Gen 4:20), whose name means "one who alters." For if you delight in the testimony to whatever you happen upon, you will want to turn and overturn each thing, displacing the boundaries that nature has fixed for things.

Moses too is greatly vexed at such people and pronounces a curse, saying: "Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundary markers" (Deut 27:17). And by "neighbor" and "near" he means the good; for one need not fly up to heaven, he says, nor cross the sea in search of the good, since it stands near and close to each of us.

And he divides it, most naturally, into three: "for it is in your mouth," he says, "and in your heart and in your hands" (Deut 30:11-14) -- that is, in words, in counsels, in actions; for these are the parts of the good, out of which it is by nature composed, so that the lack of even one of them not only leaves the whole incomplete but utterly destroys it.

For what use is it to speak the best things while thinking and doing the most shameful? This is the way of the sophists: they spin out long speeches about prudence and endurance, wearing out the ears even of those most thirsty to listen, and yet in their counsels and in the actions of their life they are found to go badly astray.

And what use is it to think what one ought, but then to employ absurd deeds and words, harming through one's words those who hear and through one's deeds those who must bear them? Yet again, to act rightly without thought and reason is likewise blameworthy; for what occurs apart from these belongs to the class of the involuntary, and is in no way whatsoever praiseworthy.

But if someone has managed, as it were, to tune like a lyre all the notes of the good, and to render word harmonious with thought and thought with deed, such a person would rightly be considered perfect and truly well-attuned; so that the one who shifts the boundaries of the good is justly accursed, both in fact and in name.

These boundaries were not set up by our own generation, but by reasons older than us and than all that is of earth, and divine; as the law too has made clear, charging each of us not to counterfeit virtue's coinage in these words: "You shall not move your neighbor's boundary markers, which your fathers set up" (Deut 19:14), and elsewhere: "Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will say to you: when the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and the LORD's portion became his people Jacob, Israel the measured line of his inheritance" (Deut 32:7-9).

Now if I should ask the father who begot and raised me, or those who are his contemporaries but older than I am, whether God apportioned the nations, or scattered them, or settled them, will they answer me with any certainty, as though they had themselves witnessed that division? Surely not; rather they will say that they too, in their youth, made inquiry of their parents and of those still more ancient, and learned nothing clear -- for their elders had nothing to teach them either, and they in turn, having sought to become knowledgeable from others, remained acquaintances of the unknowing.

May it not be, then, that by "father" he means right reason, father of our soul, and by "elders" its companions and friends? These were the first to fix the boundaries of virtue, and it is to them that one should resort for learning and instruction concerning what is necessary. And the necessary matters are these: when God apportioned and walled off the nations of the soul, separating and settling apart those of like speech from those of a foreign tongue, and sowed and shot forth from himself the children of earth, whom Adam named sons, then he set the boundaries of virtue's offspring equal in number to the angels; for as many as are God's reasons, so many are the nations and kinds of virtue.

What, then, are the allotted portions of his angels, and what the share reserved for the ruler and leader of all? To the servants belong the virtues in their particular forms; to the leader belongs the chosen race, Israel. For the one who sees God, drawn by the most surpassing beauty, has been allotted and apportioned to the one seen.

How, then, should Jubal not be reproved -- he who, in the Greek tongue, is called "one who alters" or "one who remakes" the natures of things? For the most god-shaped beauties of prudence, endurance, justice, and the rest of virtue he would restamp with the opposite impressions -- of folly, intemperance, injustice, and all vice -- erasing

the marks earlier impressed upon them. For second seals, once set over the first, always destroy the impressions of what came before. But the law is so far from allowing bad things to be exchanged for good that it does not even allow good things to be exchanged for base ones -- not that it takes "base" to mean what is simply worthless (since it would be foolish not to give up bad things in exchange for acquiring better ones), but rather what is toilsome and laborious, which the Athenians, accenting the first syllable, call "ponera."

The ordinance runs thus: "Everything that comes under the rod as it is counted, the tenth shall be holy to the LORD. You shall not exchange good for bad; but if you do exchange it, both it and the thing exchanged for it shall be holy" (Lev 27:32-33). And yet how could what is bad become holy? But, as I said, what is meant here is the laborious, not the base, so that the sense is this: the good in its perfection is noble, but labor, being incomplete, is merely useful. If, then, you have gained the complete good, seek no longer for what is lacking; but if you still wish to go further and toil on beyond it, know that though you will seem to be exchanging one thing for one thing, in truth you will gain both.

For though each of the two is of equal worth, neither is wholly holy in every case. A holy thing is tested by three witnesses: a middling number, discipline, and a perfect number. Hence it is said: "Everything that comes under the rod as it is counted, the tenth shall be holy." For what is deemed unworthy of being counted is profane, not holy, while what has been numbered, as already approved, is proven. Thus the law says that the grain gathered by Joseph in Egypt could not be numbered, and adds: "for there was no number" (Gen 41:49), since the things that nourish the body and the passions of the Egyptians are not worthy of being counted at all.

The rod is a symbol of discipline; for without being made to feel shame and being rebuked in some matters, it is impossible to receive admonition and correction. And the number ten is the pledge of the perfection reached through progress, from which it is right to make a first offering to the one who begot us, the one who disciplined us, the one who brought to fulfillment what we had hoped for.

Let this suffice, then, concerning the one who alters and counterfeits the ancient coinage -- whom Scripture also calls the father of those who dwell in tents, keepers of cattle (Gen 4:20). Now cattle are the irrational senses, and cattle-keepers are those who love pleasure and passion, providing them with fodder -- the external objects of sense -- while standing far removed from true shepherds. For shepherds, in the manner of rulers, punish the flock's disorderly members, whereas these men, like hosts at a banquet furnishing lavish fare, grant impunity to wrongdoing; for insolence is bound at once to be born as the daughter of insatiable appetite and satiety.

He, then, is rightly called father who restamps and remakes all the noble things belonging to those who have devoted themselves wholly to the sensible and the lifeless; for if he had pursued the incorporeal and intelligible natures instead, he would have kept the boundaries fixed by the elders, who marked out, for the sake of virtue, each of its forms with its own proper stamp.

Scripture says that Jubal is the brother of Jobel (Gen 4:21). This name too, by way of symbol, is interpreted as "one who turns aside": it denotes the spoken word, uttered aloud. For this is by nature the brother of thought. And Scripture very fittingly named the word that diverts the mind that remakes things "one who turns aside"; for it happens, in a sense, to sway to and fro like the pan of a scale, or like a ship at sea tilting now to one side, now to the other under the force of a great swell; for the fool has learned to say nothing firm or steady.

But Moses holds that one must turn aside neither to the right nor to the left, nor at all into the territories of earthly Edom, but must pass by the middle road, which he calls, most fittingly, "the royal road" (Num. 20:17). For since God is the first and only king of all things, the road that leads to him, being a king's road, has rightly been named royal. Consider this road to be philosophy -- not the philosophy pursued by the sophistic crowd of men today (for these, having practiced the arts of argument, have called cunning against the truth "wisdom," applying a divine name to a worthless enterprise), but the philosophy that the ancient company of ascetics labored at, turning away from the tame deceptions of pleasure, and pursuing the practice of the good with refinement and rigor.

This royal road, then, which we have said is true and genuine philosophy, the Law calls the word and utterance of God. For it is written: "You shall not turn aside from the word that I command you today, to the right or to the left" (Deut. 28:14); so that it has plainly been shown that God's word is the same as the royal road, since he urges that we not turn aside either from the royal road or from the word -- as though they were synonyms -- but with an upright mind walk the straight path that leads onward, both the middle way and the highway.

"This Jubal," he says, "is the father who devised the harp and the lyre" (Gen. 4:21). Most fittingly he calls uttered speech the father of music and of all musical instruments; for nature, having fashioned the vocal instrument as the first and most perfect for living creatures, at once bestowed upon it all harmonies and all the kinds of melody, so that it might serve as a pattern already prepared for the instruments that were to be crafted by art.

For just as our ear, by tracing circles within circles, smaller within larger, was fashioned round like a lathe-turned sphere, so that the sound coming toward it should not be scattered and poured out abroad, but rather, gathered and compressed by the circles, should be poured, as it were, into the reservoirs of the mind -- and this at once became the model for the theaters found in prosperous cities, for the construction of theaters imitates most closely the shape of ears -- in just the same way, nature, in fashioning living creatures, stretched the windpipe like a musical rule, and weaving together the enharmonic, chromatic, and diatonic genera according to the countless varieties of conjunct and disjunct melodies, established it as a pattern for every musical instrument.

Whatever melodies flutes and lyres and the like produce fall as far short of the music of nightingales or swans as an image and imitation falls short of an archetypal model, a perishable form short of an imperishable kind. For the music of human beings deserves to be compared to none of the others, since it possesses a privilege all its own, by which it is honored: articulate clarity.

For the others, by inflecting their voice and by successive changes of pitch, merely please the ear; but a human being, fashioned by nature for speech no less than for song, draws in both faculties, hearing and mind, at once, charming the one with melody and turning the other toward its meanings.

For just as an instrument given over to one unskilled in music is discordant, but in the hands of a musician, through the art within him, becomes well-tuned, in the very same way speech, when moved by a base mind, is found discordant, but when moved by a serious one, altogether harmonious.

A lyre, or anything like it, is silent unless struck by someone; and speech too, unless struck by the governing mind, of necessity keeps still. And just as instruments are retuned according to the countless combinations possible in melody, so speech, becoming a kind of attuned interpreter of things, undergoes innumerable changes.

For who would converse with parents in the same manner as with children, being by nature a slave to the one and by birth a master over the other? Who would speak the same way to brothers and cousins, or in general to kin near and far? Who would speak the same to intimates and to strangers, or to citizens and to foreigners, who differ no little in fortune, nature, or age? For one must converse differently with an old man than with a young one, again differently with the eminent than with the humble, with the rich than with the poor, with the ruler than with the private citizen, with the servant than with the master, with woman as against man, and with the unskilled as against the craftsman.

And why should one enumerate the countless kinds of persons toward whom speech, turning, takes on now this shape, now that? For the particular character of the matters themselves stamps it according to their own features; for great things and small, many and few, private and public, sacred and profane, ancient and new, would not be expressed in the same manner, but in the manner fitting each, according to its scale, its dignity, and its magnitude -- at one time raising itself high, at another, on the contrary, drawing itself in and contracting.

And just as circumstances and persons occasion changes in speech, so too do the causes of events and the manner in which they occur, and further still the things without which none of this happens: times and places. Most beautifully, then, has Jubal, "turning speech," been called the father of the harp and the lyre -- naming the whole art of music from a part of it, as has been shown.

The offspring of Adah, then, and who she herself is, have been made clear; let us now examine Lamech's other wife, Zillah, and what she bears. Zillah is interpreted "shadow," a symbol of the goods of the body and of external goods, which in truth differ in nothing from a shadow. Or is not beauty a shadow, which blooms for a brief time and then withers? And is not bodily strength and vigor, which any chance illness dissolves? And are not the senses, and the precision belonging to them, which a foul-smelling discharge blocks, or old age, the necessary and common disease of all, maims? And further, are not wealth, reputation, offices, honors, and all that is reckoned among external goods, likewise all shadow?

One must lead the mind, as though by a stairway, up to the first principle of the universe. Men reckoned famous have gone to Delphi and there dedicated the record of their fortunate lives. Yet like fading paintings, these have not merely dissolved with the length of time, but have vanished under the sharp reversals of circumstance, and some have been swept away and made to disappear all at once, as though by the rush of a flooding torrent.

From this shadow, and from unstable dreams, is born a grandson, whom he named Tubal (Gen. 4:22), which is interpreted "the whole." For indeed those who have acquired that compound good sung by many, wealth-and-health together, seem to have everything attached to them, small things and great, and, in a word, all things.

And if independent authority should come their way as well, puffed up and lifted on high by shallow conceit, forgetting themselves and the perishable matter from which they came, imagining that they have obtained a nature greater than the human condition, they exalt and deify themselves through their honors, out of arrogance. Indeed some have already dared to say that they do not know the true God (Exod. 5:2), forgetting their own humanity, on account of the excess of bodily and external things, each one marking himself out by it.

Then he says that "this one was a hammer-forger, a worker in bronze and iron" (Gen. 4:22). For the soul of the man who is stirred up over bodily pleasures, or over external materials, is hammered as though upon an anvil, driven by the long and unending reaches of desire. One may see those who love the body always and everywhere setting nets and snares to hunt what they crave, while those who love money and reputation send forth the frenzy and longing they feel for these things to the ends of earth and sea, drawing in from every quarter, as though with nets, by their boundless cravings -- until the violent tension, straining beyond measure, snaps, and dragging down with it those who had been pulling, casts them headlong.

And all such people are craftsmen of war, and this is why they are said to work bronze and iron, the materials by which wars are waged. For if one examines the greatest quarrels, both of individual men and of cities in common, both those long past and those now existing and those yet to come, one will find they arise on account of a woman's beauty, or money, or reputation, or honor, or rule, or possessions, or in general whatever advantages belong to the body and to external things.

But for the sake of education and virtue -- the goods belonging to the best part within us, the mind -- no war, foreign or civil, has ever been waged; for these things are by nature peaceable, and in them good order, stability, and all the fairest forms are contemplated by the sharpest eyes of the soul, not by the dim eyes of the body; for the latter see only external appearances, while the eye of the mind, advancing within and penetrating deep, discerns what lies hidden in their very depths.

Nearly all the disturbances and factions among human beings arise, in truth, over nothing else but a shadow set against truth. For the fashioner of weapons of war, of bronze and iron, he named Tubal, son of Zillah, "the shadow" -- philosophizing not through arts of speech but through an outstanding beauty of thought. For he knew that every army, naval or infantry, faces the greatest dangers for the sake of bodily pleasures or for abundance of external things, none of which is attested as firm or stable by time, which puts everything to the test.

For they resemble superficial sketches that dissolve of their own accord. He says that the sister of Tubal is Naamah (Gen. 4:22), whose name is interpreted "fatness." For it follows upon those who pursue bodily comfort and the materials I have mentioned, that when they obtain something they crave, they grow fat. Such fatness, I for my part reckon not strength but weakness; for it teaches one to fall away from the honor of God, which is the soul's first and best power.

The Law bears witness to this in the greater song, speaking as follows: "He grew fat, he grew thick, he grew broad, and he abandoned God who made him, and forgot God his savior" (Deut. 32:15). For truly, those for whom life has flourished for a season no longer remember the eternal; indeed, they consider the season itself to be god.

For this reason Moses too bears witness, urging that we fight against the opposing opinions; for he says: "The season has departed from them, but the Lord is among us" (Num. 14:9); so that those who honor the life of the soul have the divine word dwelling and walking within them, while those who honor the life of pleasures possess an ephemeral and false opportuneness. These, then, swollen and stretched beyond measure by their flowing fatness and delight, have burst; but those who are fattened by the wisdom that nourishes souls devoted to virtue possess a firm and unshakable power, of which the fat of every sacrificial victim, wholly burnt, is the model.

For Moses says: "All fat belongs to the Lord, an everlasting statute" (Lev. 3:16-17), implying that the fatness of the mind is offered up to God and made his own, and for this reason is made immortal, while the fatness of the body and of external things is offered up to the season that is opposed to God, and for this reason withers away most quickly.

Concerning the wives of Lamech and their offspring, I think enough has been shown; let us now consider the rebirth, as it were, of Abel, who was treacherously slain. "Adam," it says, "knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore a son, and she named him Seth, saying: For God has raised up for me another seed in place of Abel, whom Cain killed" (Gen. 4:25). Seth is interpreted "watering."

Just as seeds and plants on earth, when watered, grow, sprout, and bear fruit abundantly, but wither when deprived of a flowing supply, so too the soul, as is plain to see, when it is irrigated with the drinkable stream of wisdom, sprouts and advances toward what is better. Now watering is, on the one hand, the act of the one who waters, and, on the other, the experience of the one watered.

Or would one not say that each of the senses is watered from the mind as from a spring, as it widens and stretches out its powers like channels? No one in his right mind would say that the eyes see, but that the mind sees through the eyes; nor that the ears hear, but that the mind hears through the ears; nor that the nostrils smell, but that the ruling faculty smells through the nostrils.

That is why it is said in Genesis: "A spring rose up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth" (Gen. 2:6). For since nature allotted the face as a distinguished part of the whole body to the senses, the spring rising from the ruling faculty, splitting into many channels like water-courses, directs them up to the face, and through them carries its powers to each of the organs of sense. In just this way the Logos of God waters the virtues; for he is the source and spring of noble actions.

The lawgiver makes this plain when he says: "A river goes out from Eden to water the garden; from there it divides into four heads" (Gen. 2:10). For the generic virtues are four: prudence, courage, self-control, and justice. Each of these is a ruler and a queen, and whoever acquires them is at once a ruler and a king, even if he has no abundance of any material wealth.

For "it divides into four heads" indicates not a separation of these virtues but the sovereignty and mastery of the virtues. These spring up, as it were, from a single root, from the divine Logos, whom he pictures as a river because of the ceaseless and continuous flow of drinkable words and doctrines,

with which he nourishes and makes grow souls that love God. What these are he teaches little by little as he proceeds, drawing his instruction from the arts found in nature. For he introduces Hagar filling a skin with water and giving the child to drink -- Hagar being the maidservant of Sarah, that is, of perfect virtue, and standing for secondary education -- most fittingly. For when she has come down to the depth of knowledge, which he calls a well, and has drawn up into her soul, as into a vessel, the doctrines and theorems she pursues, she thinks it right to nourish the child on what has nourished her.

He calls "child" the soul that has only just begun to reach for instruction and has now, in a sense, come into being for the purpose of learning; but when the child grows to manhood he becomes a sophist, whom he calls an archer; for at whatever goal he sets before himself as a mark, he shoots

his proofs unerringly, like arrows. But Rebecca is found watering the disciple no longer for progress but for perfection. How, the Law itself will teach. "For the virgin," it says, "was very fair to look upon, a virgin whom no man had known. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. And the servant ran to meet her and said, Please give me a little water to drink from your jar. And she said, Drink, my lord. And she quickly let down her jar upon her arm and gave him to drink until he stopped drinking, and said, I will draw water for your camels also, until they have all had their fill. And she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, and ran again to the well to draw water for the camels" (Gen. 24:16-20).

Who would not marvel at the precision of the lawgiver in everything? He called Rebecca a virgin, and a very fair virgin, because the nature of virtue is unmixed, guileless, and undefiled, and alone among things that come into being is both beautiful and good; from this the Stoic doctrine sprouted, that the good alone is beautiful.

Of the virtues, some are perpetual virgins, others have changed from women into virgins, as Sarah did; for "it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women" (Gen. 18:11), when the happy race, Isaac, began to be conceived. But the perpetually virgin virtue, he says, is altogether unknown by any man; for it is not permitted to any mortal to defile, in truth, its incorruptible nature -- no, not even to know clearly what it is; and if anyone should manage to know it, he does not cease to hate it and thrust it away.

That is why he naturally introduces Leah as hated (Gen. 29:31); for those whom the charms of the pleasures that belong to Rachel, that is, sense-perception, draw along, Leah, who stands outside the passions, cannot endure, and so, being spurned, they hate her. But her estrangement from what comes into being wrought for her a kinship with God, from whom, having received the seeds of prudence, she travails and brings forth thoughts noble and worthy of the Father who begot them. If you too, O soul, imitate Leah and turn away from mortal things, you will of necessity turn toward the incorruptible One, who will pour upon you the whole springs of the beautiful.

Rebecca, it says, went down to the spring to fill her jar, and came up. For from where is it likely that the mind thirsting for prudence should be filled, except from the wisdom of God, the unfailing spring, to which the earnest disciple, going down, comes up again by a certain kinship? For those who have come down from empty conceit, the Logos that receives virtue and takes them up raises them on high through good repute. It is for this reason, I think, that God converses with Moses thus: "Go, go down, and come up" (Exod. 19:24), since everyone who measures his own lowliness becomes more exalted in the judgment of truth.

It is observed with great precision that Hagar carries a skin for drawing water, while Rebecca carries a jar, because she who dances in the circle of general education needs, as it were, certain bodily vessels of sense -- eyes, ears -- for the reception of theorems (for from seeing much and hearing much comes to lovers of learning the benefit that comes from knowledge); but she who is filled with unmixed wisdom needs no bulk of leather at all -- for she who loves the incorporeal has learned by reasoning to strip off entirely the skin, the body -- but only a jar, which is a symbol of the vessel that has room, in the manner of water, for the great volume that the ruling faculty holds. Whether this happens to be the membrane of the brain or the heart, let those skilled in such things philosophize.

Seeing her, then, who has drawn from wisdom, the divine spring, the sciences, the lover of learning runs up and, meeting her, becomes a suppliant, so that he may heal his thirst for learning. And she, having been taught the most venerable of lessons, freedom from envy and love of giving, at once holds out the stream of wisdom and urges him to drink his fill all at once, while also calling the servant "lord." This is the most doctrinal point of all: that the wise man alone is free and a ruler,

even if he has countless masters of his body. Most rightly, when he said, "Give me a little water to drink," she does not answer in the corresponding manner, "I will give you to drink," but says, "Drink"; for this showed the divine wealth, which is poured out for all who are worthy and able to use it, whereas the other would have been a promise to teach; and nothing that comes from a promise belongs properly to virtue.

With great art, indeed, he characterizes the manner of instruction of one who teaches and benefits: "she quickly," he says, "let down her jar upon her arm"; through "quickly" he shows the readiness for doing good that appears in her, which arises from a disposition from which envy has been shot far away; and through "let down upon her arm" he shows the intimate and attentive inclination of the teacher toward the learner.

For foolish are those teachers who attempt to give instruction not in proportion to the capacity of their pupils but in proportion to their own excessive attainment, not knowing how far display differs from teaching. For the one who makes a display, exploiting without restraint the abundance of his present condition, brings out into the open, like the works of painters or sculptors, what has been labored over at home for a long time, hunting after the praise of the many; whereas the one who undertakes to teach, like a good physician, looking not to the greatness of his art but to the capacity of the patient, brings forward and gives not all that his knowledge has provided -- for that is boundless -- but only so much as the ailing person needs, aiming at due measure.

That is why Moses also says elsewhere: "You shall surely lend to the one in need as much as he needs, according to what he needs" (Deut. 15:8), teaching through the second clause that not everything is to be given to everyone, but only what is appropriate to the need of those who lack; for it would be absurd to give an anchor or oars or a rudder to a farmer, or a plow and a mattock to a helmsman, or a lyre to a physician and surgical instruments to a musician -- unless we must also bring costly food to those who thirst and abundant strong wine to those who hunger, for the sake of showing off both wealth and inhumanity, making a mockery of others' misfortunes. But the measure in his gifts is taken up for the sake of due proportion, a most beneficial thing; for, says right reason, do not give as much as you are able, but as much as the one in need is able to receive. Or do you not see that God too does not

utter oracles of perfection proportioned to his own greatness, but always in proportion to the capacity of those who are to be benefited? For who could have contained the power of God's words, which surpass all hearing? This is what those who said to Moses seem to have understood most truly: "You speak to us, and let not God speak to us, lest we die" (Exod. 20:19); for they knew that they had nothing in themselves worthy of God legislating in assembly.

For not even if he wished to display his own wealth could the whole earth, land and sea made dry together, contain it -- unless we suppose that the bringing of rains and the other things in the world at set seasonal periods happens not continuously because of their scarcity and shortage, but rather not for the providence of those in need, whom the continuous enjoyment of the same gifts would be likely to harm rather than help.

That is why he holds back the first gifts always, before those who have received them are sated and grow wanton, and stores them up, giving in their place others afterward, and third gifts in place of second, and always new ones in place of older ones, sometimes different gifts, sometimes the same ones again. For what has come into being is never without a share in the graces of God -- since otherwise it would have been utterly destroyed -- but it is unable to bear their full and unstinting flow. That is why, wishing us to have benefit from what he gives, he measures out his gifts in proportion to

the strength of those who receive them. Rebecca, then, is also to be praised, who, following the ordinances of her father, let down the vessel of wisdom from a higher place onto her arm, and offered to the disciple, from the jar, as much of the teaching as he was able to receive.

Along with the rest, I am also struck with amazement at her lack of stint. For though asked for only a little drink, she gives much, until she has filled the whole soul of the learner with drinkable theorems. For it says, "She gave him to drink until he stopped drinking" -- a most admirable lesson in benevolence toward humanity; for if someone is in need of more but out of shame approaches and asks for little, we should not give only what he says, but also those things, held back in silence, of which he is truly in need.

But it is not enough for the disciple, for complete enjoyment, merely to grasp whatever the teacher sets forth, unless memory is also added. That is why she, displaying her generosity, when she has filled him by giving him drink, promises also to draw water for the camels, which we say symbolically represent memories; for that animal chews the cud, grinding its food fine, and when it has knelt down and taken on the heaviest load, it rises up lightly with great vigor.

So too the soul of the lover of learning, when the weight of theorems has been laid upon it, does not become the more humbled but, rising up, rejoices; and from the rumination and, as it were, the grinding fine of the food first laid down there arises the memory of the theorems.

Seeing that the nature of the boy was receptive to virtue, she emptied out the whole jar -- that is, the whole knowledge of the teacher -- into the soul of the learner. For sophists, out of love of money and envy together, stunt the natures of their pupils, keeping silent about much that ought to be said, hoarding up the payment for themselves for later,

Seeing that the boy's nature was well disposed to receive virtue, she emptied the whole jar into the trough — that is, poured all the teacher's knowledge into the soul of the learner. For sophists, out of love of money together with envy, stunt the natures of their acquaintances, and keep quiet about much of what they ought to say, husbanding their fee-earning capital for themselves for later.

Virtue is an ungrudging and generous thing, ready, as the saying goes, to help with hand and foot and every power, never shrinking back. So whatever she knew, having poured it out as into a reservoir — the mind of her acquaintance — she comes again to the well to draw upon the ever-flowing wisdom of God, so that the old things too might be watered, through memory, together with the knowledge of newer ones; for the wealth of God's wisdom is boundless, bringing forth new shoots upon the old, so that it never ceases growing young again and flourishing.

That is why those who have supposed they could reach the limit of any branch of knowledge whatsoever are utterly foolish; for the appearance of being near is very far removed from the goal, since none of the things that have come into being is perfect in regard to any subject of learning, but falls as short as a wholly infant child, just beginning to learn, falls short of a white-haired

guide, both in age and in skill. One must inquire into the reason why he waters the boy from the spring but the camels from the well. Perhaps, then, the stream is the same [...] the one who irrigates the sciences is the sacred word, while the well is akin to memory; for what he has already made deep is drawn up, as it were from a well, by recollection.

Such people, then, must be commended for the good fortune of their nature; but there are some in training for whom the road leading to virtue, thought at first rough, steep, and difficult, God, the benefactor of all, has once more made a highway, turning the bitterness of toil into sweetness.

We will explain in what manner he changed it. When he led us out of Egypt, out of the passions of the body, and we were traveling the desert path of pleasure, we encamped at Marah, a place with no drinkable stream, but altogether bitter (Exodus 15:23); for still the delights that come through eyes and ears, and again of the belly and what comes after the belly, echoed within us and thoroughly enchanted us with their resounding.

So whenever we wished to break free of them entirely, they dragged us back, embracing and entwining us, weaving their spells and thoroughly bewitching us, so that, yielding to their continual taming, we grew estranged from toil as something very bitter and troublesome, and resolved to run back to Egypt, the refuge of a wanton and unrestrained life — had not the Savior, quickly taking pity, cast into the soul, like a sweetening piece of wood (cf. Exodus 15:25), a love of labor in place of a hatred of labor.

For he knew, being the craftsman, that none of the things that exist can be mastered unless an intense longing is added to it. Whatever pursuits people undertake, without an affinity for them, do not reach their fitting end; but once love is added, and a fusion with the thing desired, they are brought to perfection in the highest degree.

This is the nourishment of the soul in training: to take up labor as the sweetest thing in place of bitter — a nourishment it is not lawful for all to share, but only for those for whom the golden calf, the Egyptian idol that is the body, has been burned in fire, ground fine, and sown upon the water. For it is said in the sacred books: "Moses took the calf and burned it with fire and ground it fine and sowed it upon the water, and gave it to the sons of Israel to drink" (Exodus 32:20).

For the lover of virtue, set ablaze by the radiant vision of the beautiful, burns up the bodily pleasures, then cuts them small and grinds them fine, using the reasoning that proceeds by division, and teaches in this way that among bodily goods are health, or beauty, or precision of the senses, or wholeness together with mighty strength and vigor — all of which are common even to the accursed and the utterly impious, and which, if they were truly good, no worthless person would ever have had a share in.

But these men, however thoroughly wicked, are at least human beings, sharing the same nature as the good, and so have a share in these goods. But as it is, even the most untamed of wild beasts make use of these "goods" — if indeed they are truly good — more than rational beings do.

For what athlete could be made equal to the strength of a bull or the might of an elephant? What runner to the swiftness of a puppy or a young hare? The sharpest-sighted of men is quite dim-eyed compared to the vision of hawks or eagles. In hearing and in smell the irrational animals have far surpassed us, so much so that the donkey — thought to be the dullest of creatures — would, if brought in to be judged, show our hearing to be deaf, and the dog would show the human nose to be a superfluous feature, by the surpassing speed of its scent-tracking; for its scent reaches so far that it can rival the range of the eyes.

And why should one go on at length, running through each case? This has already been agreed upon among the most esteemed of the sages of old, who said that nature is a mother to irrational creatures but a stepmother to human beings, having observed the bodily weakness of the latter and the surpassing strength in all things of the former. Rightly, then, did the craftsman grind the calf fine — that is, dividing into parts the things in which the body excels — and showed that all of them stand far removed from the good in the true sense, and differ in nothing from things sown upon water.

That is why the account holds that the ground-up calf was sown upon the water — a symbol that no genuine plant of the good can ever sprout in perishable matter. For just as seed cast into the current of a river or the sea could never display its own powers — it is impossible for a shoot to spring up, even a low one if not a very tall one, or to bear fruit in its proper season, unless it takes hold with roots, as with anchors, of some firm ground, since the great and violent rush of the water outstrips all the seed's vital forces before they can take effect — in the same way, whatever advantages are said and sung of the vessel of the soul perish before they can even take root, since the substance of the body is forever flowing away.

For how would diseases and old age and utter corruption befall it, if there were not a continual draining away of streams perceptible only to reason? These, then, our hierophant deems unworthy to give as drink, by burning up the pleasures, by grinding and dissolving the whole system of bodily goods into fine and useless dust, holding that from none of them has the good in the true sense ever sprouted and flowered, just as it does not from seeds sown upon water.

Bulls and rams and goats, which Egypt holds in honor, and all the other idols fashioned of perishable matter, are considered gods only by hearsay, not being so in truth — all of them falsely named. For while the souls of the young are still tender, those who regard life as a tragedy and are lovers of vanity stamp counterfeit impressions upon them, making use of the ears as their instruments. Pouring over them a mythical nonsense and fusing it into their minds to the point of fashioning gods, they force men of such disposition never to become men, but to remain forever effeminate.

The calf, at any rate, is not fashioned from the whole of women's finery, but from the earrings alone (Exodus 32:2), the lawgiver teaching us thereby that nothing made by hand is a god, either to sight or in truth, but only by hearsay and by being reckoned so — and moreover by the hearsay of a woman, not of a man; for it is the work of a nerveless and truly effeminate soul to accept such nonsense.

But that which truly exists happens to be apprehended and known not through the ears alone, but by the eyes of the mind, from the powers at work throughout the world and from the ceaseless, unfailing procession of its unimaginable works. Hence it is said in the greater song, in the person of God: "See, see, that I am" (Deuteronomy 32:39), since he who truly exists is grasped more by direct apprehension than established by demonstration in words.

But saying that "the existent" is visible is not strictly accurate; it is a figure of speech applied to each of his powers, which is what is visible. Indeed here he does not say "see me" — for it is impossible for the one who exists as God to be comprehended at all by that which belongs to becoming — but rather, "see that I am," that is, "look upon my existence." For a man's power of reasoning suffices to advance only as far as learning that the Cause of all things is and exists; but to press further, to inquire into his essence or quality, is a folly as old as the world.

For not even to Moses, wise in all things, did God grant this, though he made countless entreaties; instead the oracle came to him: "you shall see what is behind, but you shall not see my face" (Exodus 33:23). And this meant: everything that comes after God is apprehensible to the man of worth, but God himself alone is inapprehensible — inapprehensible, that is, by a direct and straightforward approach (for through this his essential nature would have been disclosed), but apprehensible through the powers that follow and attend him; for these make known not his essence but his existence, from what is accomplished by him.

The mind, then, having begotten Seth as the beginning of a good disposition, a certain first form of virtue — the "watering" — now indulges in a noble and holy youthful exploit. For it says: "God has raised up for me another seed in place of Abel, whom Cain killed" (Genesis 4:25). It is said with careful precision that none of the divine seeds falls to the ground, but all of them rise upward, away from the things of the earth.

For the seeds cast by mortals toward the generation of animals or plants are not all brought to completion; one may be content if those that perish are not more numerous than those that survive. But God sows nothing incomplete in souls; rather his seeds are so timely and perfect that they immediately bring with them the full abundance of their own proper fruits, each according to its kind.

In calling Seth "another seed" that had sprung up, he has not made clear other than which one. Is it other than the murdered Abel, or other than Cain the killer? But perhaps the offspring differs from each in a different way: from Cain, as an enemy — for the thirst for virtue is most hostile to a wickedness that has deserted to the other side — but from Abel, as a friend and kinsman; for it is other, yet not alien, being the thing just beginning as against the perfect, and the thing tending toward becoming as against that which is beyond becoming.

For this reason Abel, having left the mortal behind, has departed, having migrated to the better nature; whereas Seth, being the seed of human virtue, will never abandon the human race, but will receive a first increase reaching to the perfect number ten, in which righteous Noah is established; a second and better increase, from his son Shem, ending in another ten, of which the faithful Abraham bears the name; and a third and more perfect week of tens, running from him to Moses, wise in all things — for this man is the seventh from Abraham, no longer circling, like an initiate, outside the sacred ring, but

rather spending his days within the inner sanctuary itself, like a hierophant. Consider the advances toward improvement of a soul insatiable and unsated for what is good, and the boundless wealth of God, who has granted to some as a beginning what was the end for others. For the limit of the knowledge belonging to Seth became the beginning of righteous Noah; and Abraham begins to be schooled in what completes Noah's perfection; while the highest wisdom of Abraham is the very first exercise of Moses.

But the two daughters of Lot — counsel and assent — of him who has been thrown down and made to totter through weakness of soul, wish to bear children by the mind of their own father (Genesis 19:32), setting themselves against the one who says: "God has raised up for me..." For what the Existent was to him, they claim the mind is able to secure for themselves — introducing a doctrine fit for a drunken and deranged soul; for it is the work of a sober and prudent reasoning to confess God as maker and father of the universe, but the work of one fallen under drunkenness and wine-madness to consider himself the creator of each of his own human affairs.

So then, wicked resolves will not come into intercourse with the father until they have poured over him the great unmixed wine of folly and drowned whatever understanding was in him. For it is written that "they gave their father wine to drink" (Genesis 19:33); so that when they do not give him drink, they will never receive lawful seed, but when he is soaked through and reeling, they will conceive, and will make use of blameworthy birth-pangs and accursed offspring.

This is why Moses fenced off their impious and unclean offspring entirely from the divine assembly. For he says, "Ammonites and Moabites shall not enter the assembly of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 23:3). These are the descendants of the daughters of Lot, who supposed that everything is begotten from sense-perception and mind, male and female, as if from a father and a mother, and took this to be the true cause of generation.

We, however, even if we should ever accept this reversal, should also, like swimmers rising up out of a wave, take hold of repentance, a firm and saving thing, and not let go until we have made our way entirely through the surging sea, the current of that reversal.

as also Rachel, who at first had asked for the mind as the cause of her bearing children, and having heard, "Am I in the place of God?" (Genesis 30:2), took the words to heart, and having learned her lesson made a most sacred recantation. For it is written as Rachel's recantation, a prayer dear to God: "May God add to me another son" (Genesis 30:24). No fool can make this prayer, since fools hunt only their own pleasure and count everything else broad laughter and mockery.

The sponsor of this doctrine is Onan, kinsman of Er of the leather. For "this man, knowing," it says, "that the seed would not be his own, when he went in to his brother's wife, spilled it upon the ground" (Genesis 38:9), having overstepped the bounds of self-love and love of pleasure.

I would say to him, then: if you procure your own advantage, you will overturn all the best things, if you gain nothing from them—honor to parents, care for a wife, the raising of children, the blameless use of household servants, the management of a house, oversight of a city, the confirming of laws, the guarding of customs, reverence toward elders, fair speech concerning the dead, fellowship with the living, piety toward the divine in word and deed. For you overturn and pour out all these things, sowing for yourself and nursing gluttonous, unrestrained pleasure, the beginning of all

evils. Rising up against this, the priest and servant of the one and only good, Phinehas, guardian of the bodily openings and passages, so that none of them might go astray and run riot—for his name is interpreted "muzzle of the mouth"—took the spear, that is, having sought out and searched into the nature of what truly exists and found nothing more venerable than virtue, he stabbed and destroyed by reason that birth which hates virtue and loves pleasure, and the very places from which those counterfeit, deranged luxuries and dissipations had sprung.

For the law says that it was done through the woman's womb (Numbers 25:7–8). Having thus quelled the sedition within himself and turned away from his own pleasure, having emulated the zeal of God, the first and only one, he has been honored and crowned with the two greatest prizes, peace and priesthood: with the one, because it is a brother to peace, both in name and in deed.

For the mind that has been consecrated, being his minister and servant, must of necessity do all the things in which the Master delights; and he delights in the confirming of good order and stability, and in the overthrow of wars and seditions—not only those that cities wage against one another, but also those within the soul. And these are greater and harder to bear, since they maltreat the more divine element within us, reason, whereas weapons only ever reach as far as harm to bodies and possessions, and can never harm a healthy soul.

For this reason cities would do well if, before bringing arms and engines of war against one another for enslavement and utter destruction, they persuaded each of their citizens to put down the great, manifold, and continual sedition within himself. For this, if the truth must be told, is the archetype of all wars, and once it is removed, not even those wars fashioned in its imitation will any longer come into being; instead the human race will have the use and enjoyment of deep peace, taught by the law of nature to honor virtue, to honor God, and to hold fast to his service. For this is the fountain of happiness and a long life.

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