Philo of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Having previously discussed what the lawgiver said about drunkenness and the nakedness that follows it, let us now begin to fit the next discourse to what has been said. The oracles continue with words like these: "And Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him" (Gen. 9:24).
It is agreed that sobriety benefits not only souls but bodies as well. It wards off the diseases that arise from excessive fullness, sharpens the senses to their keenest edge, and does not allow whole bodies, weighed down, to collapse, but lifts and lightens them and calls every part back to its proper activity, breeding readiness in all of them. In short, sobriety produces as many goods as drunkenness produces evils. Since, then, even for bodies—
for which the drinking of wine is congenial—sobriety is most profitable, how much more so for souls, to which all perishable nourishment is alien? For to a sober mind, what among human things is greater? What reputation, what wealth, what power, what strength—what of all the things that are marveled at? Let only the eye of the soul gain the strength to be opened wide throughout its whole extent, with no part of it clouded over as by a flood or shut fast; for then, seeing most keenly, gazing upon understanding and prudence themselves, it will meet with the images perceived by the mind, whose vision, enchanting the soul, will no longer allow it to turn toward any object of sense. And why do we marvel,
if to the sober and most keen-sighted eye of the soul nothing among created things is of equal worth? For indeed the eyes of the body and the light perceived by sense have been valued by all of us beyond measure; certainly many who have lost their sight have willingly cast away life as well, judging death to be a lighter evil than blindness.
By as much, then, as the soul is superior to the body, by so much is the mind better than the eyes. And if the mind is unharmed and unscathed, oppressed by none of the wrongs or passions that produce the frenzy of drunkenness, it will renounce sleep, which breeds forgetfulness and reluctance toward what must be done, and will embrace wakefulness toward all things worthy of contemplation, roused by memories that rise up, and following these with the deeds that correspond to what has been recognized.
Such, then, is the character of the sober man. But when Scripture speaks of a "younger son," it does not record an age in years, but reveals a disposition of character devoted to novelty-mongering. For how else could he have forced himself either to look upon what should not be seen, contrary to law and justice, or to blurt out what ought to be kept silent, or to bring into the open what could be kept veiled at home and not overstep the boundaries proper to the soul, unless he were meddling in newfangled things, laughing at what befalls others when he ought to be grieving, and mocking what called for sober restraint and anxious foreboding of what was to come?
Indeed, in many places of the legislation, Scripture calls those advanced in years "young," and conversely names those not yet old "elders," looking not to length of years or to a brief or very long span of time, but to the powers of a soul moving well or badly.
At any rate, Ishmael, though he had already lived some twenty years—reckoned in comparison with Isaac, who was perfect in virtues—Scripture calls a "child." For it says, "He took loaves and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, and put them on her shoulder, and the child," when Abraham sent them away from his house; and again, "she cast the child under a fir tree," and "let me not see the death of the child" (Gen. 21:14–16). And yet Ishmael was circumcised at thirteen years of age, before the birth of Isaac (Gen. 17:25); but around the time of weaning, when Isaac ceased to be nourished by milk, because he brought to bear the equality of childish games, the bastard was banished together with his mother, along with the legitimate son.
But even so, though already a young man rather than a child, he is called the sophist set in opposition to the wise man; for Isaac has been allotted wisdom, and Ishmael sophistry, as we shall show when we characterize each in its own discussion. For the relation that a wholly infant child has to a full-grown man is the same relation that the sophist has to the wise man, and that the encyclical branches of learning have to the sciences concerned with the virtues.
And indeed, in the greater Song, whenever the whole people turned to novelty, Scripture calls them by the name proper to a foolish and infant age, "children": "The Lord is righteous and holy; his blameworthy children have sinned against him; a crooked and perverse generation—is this how you repay the Lord? So foolish a people, and not wise" (Deut. 32:4–6).
Scripture has therefore plainly called "children" those men who bear blemishes in their souls and who stumble repeatedly through folly and senselessness in the actions of a rightly lived life—looking not to the bodily ages proper to children, but to the irrationality of the mind, which in truth is infantile.
So too Rachel—bodily beauty—is recorded as younger than Leah, the beauty of soul; for the one is mortal, the other truly immortal, and all things prized by sense fall short of that one beauty of soul alone. In keeping with this, Joseph too is always called "young" and "youngest." For indeed, when he tends the flock together with his bastard brothers, he is called "young" (Gen. 37:2); and when his father blesses him, he says, "My son, grown great, youngest, return to me" (Gen. 49:22).
This is he who champions all the power concerned with the body, and the flatterer-free companion of the abundance of external things—he who has not yet found the good that is older and more honorable than the elder soul, though perfect. For if he had found it, he would have fled all Egypt without turning back. As it is, he prides himself above all on nourishing and nursing it; and whenever the one who sees beholds its warlike and ruling part sunk and destroyed in the sea, he sings a hymn to God.
"Young," then, is the character not yet able to shepherd together with its legitimate brothers—that is, not yet able to rule and govern the irrational nature that belongs to the soul, but still ranked among the bastard elements, which are honored in appearance, and are numbered among goods before the legitimate ones, though not truly so.
"Youngest," on the other hand, even if it makes progress and growth toward the better, is reckoned by the perfect man—who considers the noble the only good—as still merely a beginning. For this reason, exhorting it, Scripture says, "Return to me," which is equivalent to saying: reach for a more mature judgment; do not chase after every novelty; cherish virtue at last for its own sake alone; do not, like a foolish child dazzled by the brilliance of chance happenings,
let yourself be filled with deception and false opinion. It has now been shown that Scripture is accustomed often to call "young" not with an eye to bodily prime, but to the soul's love of novelty. We shall now show that it likewise names "elder" not the one worn down by old age, but the one worthy of honor and respect.
Who, then, among those acquainted with the most sacred books is unaware that the wise Abraham is introduced as almost the shortest-lived of all his ancestors? Of those, I think, who lived the longest, not one is called "elder," but he alone is recorded as "elder." At any rate the oracles say, "Abraham was elder, advanced in years, and the Lord blessed Abraham in all things" (Gen. 24:1).
This, it seems to me, is the explanation of the reason why the wise man was called "elder": for when, by the providence of God, the rational part of the soul is well disposed and reasons soundly not in one respect only but in every undertaking, then, employing a more mature judgment, it is itself, surely, more elder.
So too it is customary to call "elders" those who sit in council with the God-loving man, having attained the number of ten weeks of years; for it is said, "Gather to me seventy men from the elders of Israel, whom you yourself know to be elders" (Num. 11:16).
Therefore Scripture has deemed worthy of the title "elders" not those regarded as old men by the common run of people, like priests appointed by chance, but those whom the wise man alone recognizes. For those whom he, like a skilled money-changer, rejects from the currency of virtue are all counterfeit novelty-mongers in soul; but those whom he chooses to acknowledge as genuine are, by necessity, both approved and elder in understanding.
There is, moreover, one ordinance of the law that will appear, to those able to understand it, to have shown each of these things I have mentioned more clearly still: "If a man has two wives, one loved and one hated, and both the loved and the hated bear him children, and the firstborn son is the son of the hated wife, then on the day he allots his possessions to his sons, he shall not be able to give the right of the firstborn to the son of the loved wife, disregarding the firstborn son of the hated wife; but he shall acknowledge the firstborn son of the hated wife, to give him a double portion of all that is found to be his, because he is the beginning of his children, and the right of the firstborn belongs to him" (Deut. 21:15–17).
You have doubtless already observed that Scripture never calls the son of the beloved wife "firstborn" or "elder," but often calls the son of the hated wife so—even though it has shown, right at the start of the ordinance, that the birth of the one came first and that of the son of the hated wife came later: "If the loved and the hated wife bear children." And yet, in the judgment of right reason, the offspring of the former, even if longer-lived, is reckoned younger, while the offspring of the latter, even if later in the order of birth, has been deemed worthy of the greater and elder portion. Why is this?
Because we say that of the two women, the loved one is a symbol of pleasure, and the hated one a symbol of prudence. For the great mass of men love the company of the former to excess, since from its very beginning she offers enticements and charms drawn from herself, from the origin of birth to the very last old age; while they hate to an extraordinary degree the austerity and solemn dignity of the latter, just as foolish children hate the most beneficial but least pleasant guidance of the parents who raise them.
Both give birth: the one to the character in the soul that loves pleasure, the other to the character that loves virtue. But the pleasure-loving character is imperfect and truly a child forever, even if it reaches the utmost span of many years; while the virtue-loving character, in the council of the elders of prudence even from its earliest years—to use the common phrase—is ranked as ageless.
For this reason Scripture has spoken with great emphasis concerning virtue, hated by the many, when it was born, saying that "this is the beginning of children"—being surely first in rank and leadership—and "the right of the firstborn belongs to him," by the law of nature, not
Following him, then, and, like an archer releasing his arrows skillfully at a target set before him, he brings in Jacob accordingly — younger than Esau in birth, since folly is our companion from our earliest age, while zeal for the good comes late — but older in power. That is why Esau relinquishes the birthright, and Jacob rightly lays claim to it.
In harmony with this is also what is said, after much careful reflection, about the sons of Joseph: when the sage, moved by inspiration, does not lay his hands directly on the heads of those standing before him in the straightforward way, but crosses them, so that his left hand touches the one who seems to be the elder, and his right hand the younger (Genesis 48:13-14).
By birth the elder is called Manasseh, the younger Ephraim; and if these names are translated into the Greek tongue, they will be found to be symbols of forgetting and remembering. For Manasseh is interpreted "out of forgetfulness" — that is, in other words, remembrance; for the one who comes to remember what he had forgotten thereby departs from forgetfulness. Ephraim, on the other hand, means "fruit-bearing," a name most fitting for memory, since the fruit most beneficial, and truly nourishing, for souls is the unforgettable held in memories without interruption.
Memories, then, keep company with those already grown to manhood and settled in character, and for this reason they were reckoned the younger, since they arise late; whereas forgetfulness and remembrance attend each of us almost side by side from our earliest age — for which reason the privileges of time are found with them, and they are ranked on the left hand by the sage who marshals them in order. But the memories of virtue will share in the privileges of seniority, since the God-loving man, welcoming them with his right hand, will judge them worthy of the better portion beside himself.
The righteous man, then, once sober and having learned all that "his younger son had done to him," pronounces the harshest curses. For indeed, whenever the mind becomes sober, it perceives at once, as a natural consequence, all that the vice which makes things new had previously been working within it — things which, while drunk, it had been powerless to grasp.
But whom exactly he curses is worth examining; for this too is one of the things deserving inquiry, since it is not the son who appears to have sinned whom he curses, but that son's own son — his own grandson — who has, at least for the present, shown no wrongdoing, whether small or great.
For the one who, out of officious curiosity, wished to see his father naked, and saw him, and laughed, and blurted out what ought to have been kept discreetly silent, was Noah's son Ham; but the one who bears the blame for another's wrongdoing and reaps the curses is Canaan. For it is said, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant, a slave of slaves, shall he be to his brothers" (Genesis 9:25). What, then, as I said, has this one done wrong?
Now those who are accustomed to hold strictly to the explicit and ready-made interpretations found in the laws have perhaps examined this question on their own terms; but let us, obedient to the right reason that guides us, expound the interpretation that necessarily belongs here, first laying down some preliminary points.
Disposition and motion differ from one another: the one is a state of rest, while motion is a kind of transference, of which there are two kinds, the one involving change of place, the other revolving about the same place. To disposition, then, corresponds a settled state; to motion corresponds active operation.
What is meant will become clearer through a familiar example. A carpenter, a painter, a farmer, a musician, and the other craftsmen, even when they are at rest and engaged in none of the activities of their crafts, are nonetheless customarily called by these very names, since they possess, deep within themselves, the experience and knowledge proper to each craft.
But whenever the carpenter takes wood as his material and works it, and the painter mixes his proper colors and sketches on his panel the forms he has in mind, and the farmer in turn cuts furrows in the earth and casts in the seed, and grafts in cuttings and saplings of trees, and at the same time waters and channels the necessary nourishment to what has been planted and undertakes all the other tasks of farming, and the musician in turn fits meters and rhythms and every form of melody to pipes and lyres and the other instruments — though he is also able, apart from instruments made by hand, to use nature's own instrument, through a voice attuned to every note — and each of the other craftsmen, if he sets his hand to work, then of necessity other names, proper to their respective skills, are added to the earlier ones: to the carpenter, "carpentering"; to the painter, "painting"; to the farmer, "farming"; and to the musician, "piping" or "playing the lyre" or "singing" or doing something similar. To whom, then, do blame and praise attach?
Is it not to those who are active and doing? For those who succeed reap praise, and those who fail reap blame instead; but those who possess knowledge alone, without doing anything, having received the riskless privilege of inactivity, remain at rest.
The same argument, then, applies also to matters of folly, and in general, to matters of virtue and vice alike. Countless people have become prudent, self-controlled, courageous, and just in soul, through a good natural endowment, guidance according to law, and unwearied and most untiring labors — yet they were unable to display openly the beauty of the images in their minds, on account of poverty, or obscurity, or bodily illness, or the other misfortunes that beset human life.
These, then, have possessed their goods as though bound and confined; but others there are who have used all of theirs as things loosed, set free, and unrestrained, having received the most abundant materials for display.
The prudent man displays it in the management of private and public affairs, in which he shows understanding and good counsel; the self-controlled man, in taking blind wealth — terrible at raising a man to profligacy and inciting him to it — and making it see; the just man, in holding an office through which he will be able, without hindrance, to render to each person what is due; and the man trained in piety, in the care of a priesthood, of sacred precincts, and of the holy rites performed within them.
Without these opportunities, virtues still exist, but they are virtues unmoved and kept at rest, like silver and gold stored away in the earth's hidden recesses, of no use at all.
Again, then, on the contrary side, one may see countless people who are cowardly, undisciplined, foolish, unjust, impious in their minds, yet unable to display the disgrace of each vice openly, for lack of opportunities to sin — but whenever a great and mighty flood of power descends upon them, they fill land and sea, to their farthest limits, with untold evils, leaving nothing, small or great, unpunished, but overturning and destroying everything in a single onrush.
For just as the power of fire lies quiet in the absence of fuel, but blazes up in its presence, so too all the powers of the soul that look toward virtue or vice are quenched by lack of opportunity, as I said, but are kindled by opportune abundance from fortune.
For what purpose, then, have I said all this, except for the sake of teaching that Noah's son Ham is the name of vice at rest, while his grandson is the name of vice already in motion? For Ham is interpreted "heat," and Canaan "tossing" or "agitation."
Heat in the body signifies fever, and in souls, vice; for just as, I think, the onset of fever is a disease not of one part but of the whole body, so vice is a sickness of the whole soul. But at times it is at rest, and at times in motion; and its motion he names "tossing" or "agitation,"
which in the Hebrew tongue is called Canaan. No lawgiver sets a penalty against wrongdoers who are at rest, but only against those who are in motion and engaged in acts of injustice, just as no reasonable man would wish to kill any venomous creature that was not about to bite; for it is the savagery of soul, which by nature rages murderously against all, that must be removed by reason.
Reasonably, then, the righteous man appears to lay his curses on his grandson Canaan; "appears," I say, because in reality it is on Ham's son that he curses him, through that grandson; for Ham himself, once moved to sin, becomes Canaan. The underlying reality is one vice, of which the one aspect is seen in a settled state, the other in motion; and the settled state is older than the motion, so that what is in motion stands in the relation of offspring to what is at rest.
That is why Canaan is set down by nature as the son of Ham — agitation as the offspring of rest — so that the saying uttered elsewhere may also hold true: "rendering the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation" (Exodus 20:5); for it is upon the results, as though they were offspring of the reasonings behind them, that punishments proceed, in accordance with those reasonings, if no punishable act intervenes, since the offenses would otherwise escape notice.
For this reason, too, in the law concerning leprosy, the all-wise Moses declares its motion and its further spreading and flow to be unclean, but its rest to be clean; for he says, "if it spreads on the skin, the priest shall pronounce it unclean; but if the bright spot remains in its place and does not spread, he shall pronounce it clean" (Leviticus 13:22-23) — as though the quiet and fixed state of vices and passions of the soul (for these are hinted at through leprosy) were not blameworthy, while its motion and spreading were properly liable to blame.
Something similar, and more clearly marked, is contained also in the oracles addressed to Cain; for it is said to him: "You there, you have sinned; be still" (Genesis 4:7) — meaning that sinning, since it consisted in being moved and active in accordance with vice, was liable to blame, while being still, since it meant being healed and at rest, was blameless and salutary.
The same thing is contained, even more suggestively, in the oracles addressed to Cain. For it is said to him: “You there, you have sinned; be still” (Gen 4:7) — sinning being liable to blame, since it consists in being moved and acting in accordance with vice, while being still is blameless and salutary, since it consists in being healed and at rest.
These points, I think, have now been adequately stated. Let us look at the curses, and the meaning they carry: “Cursed,” he says, “is Canaan; a servant-boy he shall be to his brothers”; and “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and Canaan shall be a slave to them” (Gen 9:25–26).
We said earlier that Shem is named after the good, called so not as one particular kind of name but as the name for his whole class, insofar as the good alone is nameable and worthy of fair speech and good repute, whereas evil, conversely, is nameless and of ill repute. With what blessing, then, does he deem worthy the one who has received a share of the good found in nature?
With what? A most novel and extraordinary one, which no mortal is able to bestow — a blessing from which, almost as from an ocean, the abundant and unfailing springs of noble things flow forth in flood and overflow. For he calls the Lord and God of the cosmos and of all things in it “God” in a personal sense, as a special favor to Shem.
And see what extremity this does not surpass. For having obtained this, he becomes almost equal in honor to the cosmos itself; for when the one presiding over and caring for both is the same, then the things placed under his stewardship are of necessity immediately equal in honor.
Perhaps, too, he lavishes even more upon his gifts. For through the titles “Lord” and “God” he is proclaimed master and benefactor of the sense-perceptible cosmos, but of the intelligible good he is only savior and benefactor, not master or lord; for the wise person is a friend to God rather than a slave.
For this reason he also says plainly, concerning Abraham: “Shall I hide from Abraham my friend what I am about to do?” (Gen 18:17). And whoever holds this inheritance has advanced beyond the bounds of human happiness; for he alone is truly noble, having God inscribed as his father and having become his only adopted son — not rich, but wealthy beyond all wealth, delighting always only in goods that are abundant and genuine, not aged by time but ever renewed and youthful;
not merely held in repute, but truly glorious, reaping praise not counterfeited by flattery but confirmed by truth; alone a king, receiving from the ruler of all the uncontested mastery of dominion over everything; alone free, released from the harshest of mistresses, empty glory, which — proud and towering — the liberating God cast down from its citadel on high.
For one who has been deemed worthy of goods so many, so extraordinary, and given all at once, what is fitting to do but repay the benefactor with words and songs and hymns? This, it seems, is what is hinted at through “blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem”: since for the one whose inheritance is God, it is fitting only to bless and praise him — this being the one thing he is capable of offering in return — while being utterly powerless to render anything else that is truly due.
This, then, is what he prays for Shem. But let us see what he prays for Japheth: “May God make room for Japheth,” he says, “and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan become their slave” (Gen 9:27).
For the one who considers the noble alone as the good, his end is compact and drawn together — for though the things concerning us are countless, it is yoked to the one governing faculty, the mind — whereas for the one who fits it to three kinds of goods, those of the soul, of the body, and of external things, since it is broken up into many dissimilar parts, it is spread wide.
Fittingly, then, he prays that breadth be added to this one, so that he might be able to make use both of the virtues concerning the soul — prudence, self-control, and each of the others — and of those of the body — health, keen perception, strength and vigor, and their kindred qualities — and further, of the external advantages as well, whatever leads to wealth and reputation and the enjoyment and use of the necessary pleasures.
So much, then, for breadth. But we must consider whom he prays to dwell in the tents of Shem, for he has not stated it plainly. It is possible to say that it is the ruler of all things. For what house among created things could be found more worthy of God than a soul completely purified, one that considers the noble alone to be good, and ranks everything else — all that is commonly reckoned good — in the status of bodyguards and subjects?
God is said to dwell in a house not as in a place — for he contains all things while being contained by none — but as one who exercises providence and care over that particular region in a special way; for on every master of a house, care for that house is of necessity fastened.
Let everyone, then, to whom the God-beloved good has rained down, pray to God to obtain as its inhabitant the ruler of all, who, lifting up this small structure — the mind — from earth on high, will join it to the very limits of heaven.
And indeed, the literal narrative seems to harmonize with this. For Shem has been laid down as, so to speak, the root of nobility of character, and from it the wise Abraham grew up as a tree bearing cultivated fruit, whose own offspring — the self-taught, self-instructed kind, Isaac — was the fruit; and from him, in turn, the virtues gained through toil were sown, of which the athlete is Jacob, trained in wrestling against the passions, employing angels as his trainers — that is, divine reasons.
This Jacob is the founder of the twelve tribes, which the oracles declare to be “a royal house and a priesthood of God” (Exod 19:6), in accordance with the blessing given to the first Shem, in whose tents was the prayer that God might dwell; for surely the house of a king is a royal house, truly sacred and alone inviolable.
Perhaps, however, the substance of the prayer refers also to Japheth himself, that he may make his dwelling in the tents of Shem. For it is good for one who considers the advantages of the body and of external things to be goods to pray to run back up to the good of the soul alone, and not to miss true opinion for his whole lifetime by supposing that things common even to the most accursed and worst of people — health, or great wealth, or the like — are goods, since the unfalsified portion of goods is assigned to no worthless person; for by nature the good has no fellowship with evil.
For this reason it is treasured up in the soul alone, whose beauty none of the foolish share in. This, indeed, is what the prophetic word wrote the man of worth as praying, when he says to one of his own acquaintances, “Turn back to me” (Gen 49:22) — so that, returning to his own way of thinking, embracing the noble as the sole good, he might outrun the opinions of those who think otherwise about the good. Let him, then, dwell in the tents of the soul of the one who says that the noble alone is good, merely sojourning as a resident alien among those of the others, in which the goods of the body and of external things are also held in honor.