On the Confusion of Tongues

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

What has been said on these matters will suffice. We must next examine, and not carelessly, what Moses philosophizes concerning the confusion of tongues. For he speaks as follows: "And the whole earth was one lip and one voice for all. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and settled there. And a man said to his neighbor, 'Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire.' And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. And they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose head will reach to heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves before we are scattered over the face of the whole earth.' And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, 'Behold, one race and one lip for all; and this they have begun to do, and now nothing they undertake to do will be beyond them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that none may understand the speech of his neighbor.' And the Lord scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city and the tower. Therefore its name was called Confusion, because there the Lord confused the languages of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the face of all the earth" (Gen. 11:1-9).

Those who are displeased with our ancestral constitution, and who constantly practice fault-finding and accusation of its laws, seize upon this passage and others like it as stepping-stones for their godless... concerning the ordinances, as though these did not contain the true canons of truth itself.

"Look," they say, "the books you call sacred contain myths too, at which you are accustomed to laugh when you hear others relating them." Yet why should one gather up the instances scattered here and there throughout the legislation, as though at leisure and taking the opportunity for slander, instead of recalling only what lies immediately at hand and ready to grasp?

One such objection resembles the story composed about the sons of Aloeus, whom Homer, the greatest and most esteemed of poets, says conceived the plan of heaping up and piling together the three loftiest mountains, hoping thereby to make the road to heaven easy for those wishing to ascend, once they had been raised to the ethereal height. The verses concerning them run thus: "They were eager to set Ossa upon Olympus, and upon Ossa Pelion with its trembling forest, that heaven might be scaled" — Olympus, Ossa, and Pelion being the names of mountains.

In place of this, the Lawgiver introduces a tower, built by the men of that time, who in their folly and vanity together wished to touch heaven. For is this not a terrible derangement of mind? Even if the parts of the whole earth were built up upon a small foundation laid down beforehand, and raised in the manner of a single column, it would still fall short of the ethereal sphere by countless intervals — especially according to those inquiring philosophers who have agreed that the earth is the center of the universe. There is another story, akin to this one, recorded by the myth-makers, concerning the common speech of animals.

For it is said that in ancient times all living creatures — those of the land, the water, and the air — had a common tongue; and just as now Greeks converse with Greeks and barbarians with barbarians who share the same language, so too in that time all creatures conversed with one another about whatever they did or suffered, so that they grieved together at misfortunes and rejoiced together whenever some advantage came their way.

For, reporting their pleasures and displeasures to one another through their shared speech, they shared joy and shared distress alike, and from this was found their likeness of character and of feeling — until, having become sated (as often happens) with the abundance of the good things present to them, they were carried away into a longing for what could not be attained, and laid claim to immortality, asking for release from old age and for the perpetual vigor of youth, declaring that among them one creature already, the serpent, had obtained this gift: for by sloughing off its old age it grows young again from the beginning. And they thought it monstrous that the better should be left behind by the worse, or that all should be outdone by one alone.

For this presumption, however, they paid the fitting penalty: they were made at once to speak in different tongues, so that from that time on they could no longer understand one another, because of the diversity into which the single common language, once shared by all, was cut.

But he who brings his account nearer to the truth separated the mute creatures from the rational ones, so that the possession of common speech should be attested of men alone. Yet this too, they say, is mythical. And indeed they say that the cutting of speech into countless forms of dialects — which he calls the confusion of tongues — came about for the healing of wrongdoing, so that men, no longer understanding one another, might not act together in injustice, but, being in a manner deaf to one another, might, through cooperation, undertake the same tasks only in separate groups.

But this does not appear to have happened for their benefit. For even so, no less, though divided among nations and not using a single dialect, both land and sea have often been filled with countless evils. For it is not the languages but the like-mindedness of souls bent toward wrongdoing — their shared zeal for injustice — that is the cause of acting unjustly together.

For indeed those who have had their tongues cut out signify by nods, by glances, and by the other postures and movements of the body no less than by the utterance of speech whatever they wish; and besides, a single nation, though sharing not only one tongue but also one set of laws and one manner of life, has often advanced to such a pitch of wickedness that it has been able to commit offenses equal to the sins of the whole of mankind.

And through the very unfamiliarity of dialects, countless persons, not foreseeing the future, have been caught unprepared by their attackers, just as, conversely, through knowledge of a common tongue, men have been able to ward off threatening fears and dangers. So that a shared community of language is more beneficial than harmful, since even now the inhabitants of each region, especially the native-born, owe their freedom from evils to nothing so much as to their common speech.

And indeed, if any man should learn several languages, he is at once held in high esteem among those who know them, as being already a friend, bringing no small token of fellowship in his familiarity with their words — from which, it seems, comes the freedom from fear of suffering anything irremediable. Why then should the possession of a common tongue, as the cause of evils, have been abolished among men, when it ought rather to have been established as most beneficial...

...of all things? Now those who compose and craft such tales will be refuted, on the particular point, by those who, without contentiousness, offer the ready answers to whatever is continually sought, drawn from the plain writing of the laws itself — not countering with sophistries from elsewhere, but following the thread of the sequence, which does not allow one to stumble, but readily removes whatever obstacle stands in the way, so that the course of the argument may proceed without a fall.

We say, then, that by the words "the whole earth was one lip and one voice," is signified the concord of countless great evils — all that cities inflict upon cities, nations upon nations, and lands upon lands, and all the impieties men commit not only against one another but against the divine as well; and yet these are the wrongdoings of multitudes. But we may also observe, in a single man, the indescribable multitude of evils, especially...

...whenever he possesses that discordant, unmelodious, and unmusical concord. Who does not know the evils of fortune — when poverty and disrepute combine with diseases or disabilities of the body, and these again are mixed together with sicknesses of a soul deranged by melancholy, or by extreme old age, or by some other grievous misfortune that has arisen...

...and blended together? For even one alone of the things named, when it stands forcibly against a man, is enough to overturn and cast down even one who is greatly exalted. But when all at once, as though by a single command, at the same time and in a single mass, everything falls upon him — the evils of body, of soul, and of external circumstance — what cruelty could surpass this? For when the bodyguards fall, the one they guard must fall as well.

Now the bodyguards of the body are wealth, good repute, and honors, which set it upright, raise it aloft, and make it appear splendid; while their opposites — dishonor, disrepute, poverty — crash down upon it like enemies.

Again, the bodyguards of the soul are hearing, sight, smell, and taste, and the whole company of the senses, and further, health, strength, power, and vigor; for standing upon these as upon well-fortified houses, firmly established, the mind walks about and dwells within them, delighting that it is hindered by nothing from exercising its own impulses, but has open before it smooth and public highways leading through all things.

But opposed to these bodyguards stand their enemies: the maiming of the sense-organs and disease, as I said, with which the understanding too has often been on the point of perishing together. And these misfortunes, though grievous and harsh in themselves, are far lighter when compared with those that come about by deliberate purpose.

What then is the concord of voluntary evils? Let us again examine this in turn. Our soul, being threefold, is said to be allotted, in one part, mind and reason; in another, spirit; and in another, desire. And each part is diseased both in itself individually and, all together, in relation to one another, whenever the mind reaps whatever folly, cowardice, licentiousness, and injustice have sown; whenever spirit brings to birth its frenzied and distracted furies and whatever other evils it labors to produce; and whenever desire sends forth in every direction those ever-fickle, childish passions which fasten themselves upon whatever bodies and objects come their way.

For then, just as in a ship, when sailors, passengers, and helmsmen conspire together in some derangement of mind for its destruction, those who plot against the vessel itself are destroyed along with it no less than the rest — so too the heaviest of evils, and almost the only incurable one, is the conspiracy of all the parts of the soul together toward wrongdoing, when none is able to remain sound, as in a public calamity, so as to heal those who suffer, but even the physicians fall sick along with the ordinary people, gripped, in a calamity that afflicts all alike, by the pestilential disease.

Of this affliction, the great flood recorded by the Lawgiver is a symbol: the cataracts from heaven pouring down in violent torrents the streams of wickedness itself, and the springs from the earth — I mean from the body — pouring up the many great streams of each passion, which, meeting and mingling together with the former, churn and whirl about, engulfing in successive eddies every region of the soul that receives them.

"And the Lord God saw," he says, "that the wickednesses of men had multiplied upon the earth, and that everyone was contriving evil in his heart carefully all his days" — and he knew man, I mean the mind, together with the creeping things and birds around him and the whole irrational multitude of untamed beasts, by which he had done irreparable wrong, and resolved to punish it (Gen. 6:5). And the punishment was the flood.

For there was an eager pursuit of sins, and a great rush toward wrongdoing, with nothing to hinder it, but all things breaking forth fearlessly into an unstinting supply for those most ready for enjoyment — and not without reason. For it was not one single part of the soul that had been corrupted, so that it might be preserved safe by the health of the rest, but no part of it remained free from disease or uncorrupted. For seeing that everyone, he says, contrives every thought, and not merely one, the incorruptible judge decreed the fitting...

These are the ones who formed an alliance with one another at the salty ravine. For the place of vices and passions is hollow, rough, and ravine-like — truly salty, and bearing bitter birth pangs — which the wise Abraham, knowing it worthy neither of oaths nor of treaties, destroys. For it is said, "All these agreed together at the salty ravine; that is, the Sea of Salt" (Genesis 14:3).

Or do you not see those barren of wisdom and blind in understanding — which by rights ought to have seen keenly — Sodomites in speech, from youth to old age, the whole people together running in a circle around the house of the soul, so that they might outrage and destroy the sacred and holy words lodged there as guests, though these words are its guards and watchmen, and so that no one at all might either resist wrongdoers or resolve to shun doing any wrong?

For it is not that some do and others do not — "all the people," as it says, "surrounded the house together, both young and old" (Genesis 19:4), conspiring against the divine and sacred words, whom it is customary to call angels.

But Moses, the spokesman of God, will meet them with great boldness as they come streaming along, and will check them — even if, having set up the boldest and most fearsome word among themselves as king, they run headlong in a single rush, swelling their own forces and overflowing like a river. For it says, "Behold, the king of Egypt comes to the water; and you shall stand and meet him at the bank of the river" (Exodus 7:15).

So the base man goes forth toward the massed onrush of wrongdoings and passions, which are likened to water; but the wise man, first of all, receives as a prize from God, who always stands, a kinship with God's own unswerving and unwavering power toward all things — for it is said, "But you, stand here with me"

(Deuteronomy 5:31), so that, stripping off wavering and doubt — the dispositions of an unstable soul — he may put on the firmest and most stable disposition, faith. Then, standing still — the most paradoxical thing of all — he goes to meet them; for it says, "You shall stand, meeting them"; and yet meeting is observed in motion, while standing still is observed in stillness.

But he speaks not of contraries, but of the things that most closely follow nature. For to whomever it is natural for the mind to be at rest and settled without wavering, it falls to him to stand opposed to all who delight in disturbance and surge, while he himself is able to bring calm

to those tossed about by a storm of their own making. And it is fitting indeed that this opposition be set up at the bank of the river; for the lips are the boundaries of the mouth, and the tongue is a kind of fence, through which the stream of speech is carried when it begins to descend.

Speech is used both by those who hate virtue and love passion, as an ally for introducing spurious doctrines, and, in turn, by the earnest, both for the refutation of these and for the unopposed mastery of better and truly good things.

But whenever, having shaken out every sail of contentious doctrines, they are overturned by the opposing rush of arguments and perish, the wise man, justly and fittingly, having formed a most sacred chorus, will sing tunefully the song of victory:

For he says, "Israel saw the Egyptians" dead not somewhere else but "at the bank of the river" (Exodus 14:30), meaning by death not the separation of soul from body, but the destruction of unholy doctrines and words, which they employed through mouth and tongue and the other organs of speech.

The death of speech is silence — not the silence which the more decent practice as a symbol of modesty (for this too is a power, sister to the power exercised in speaking, which stores up until the right moment the things that must be said), but the silence which those who have grown weak and given up, overcome by the strength of their opponents, endure unwillingly, no longer finding any hold.

For whatever they grasp flows away, and whatever they step on gives way beneath them, so that they are forced to fall before they can even stand — just as it is with the screw, the water-drawing instrument. For in its middle are certain steps, on which the farmer, whenever he wishes to water his fields, treads, but necessarily slips as he goes around; and so, to keep from continually falling, he grips with his hands some firm support nearby, and, having wound his whole body around it, hangs suspended from it — so that he uses his hands in place of his feet, and his feet in place of his hands; for he stands upon his hands, the organs of action, and performs the action with his feet, on which it is normal to stand.

Many, unable to overpower by force the persuasive inventions of the sophists, because they have not been thoroughly trained in argument, given their continual practice in deeds instead, take refuge in alliance with the one who alone is wise, and beg him to become their helper — just as one of the disciples of Moses, praying in his hymns, said, "Let the deceitful lips be struck dumb" (Psalm 30:19 [31:18]).

But how could they fall silent, unless they were muzzled and made obedient by him alone who also possesses reason itself? Gatherings that lead to sin, then, must be fled without turning back, while the pact of peace with the companions of prudence and knowledge must be made firm.

For this reason I have marveled at the harmonious concord of those who say, "We are all sons of one man; we are peaceable" (Genesis 42:11). For how, I would say, noble ones, could you not be vexed by war and love peace, since you are all inscribed as having one and the same father — not a mortal one but an immortal one, a man of God, who, being the Word of the eternal, is of necessity himself imperishable?

For those who have set up many first principles for the race within the soul, having given themselves over to the evil that is called polytheism, and who turn each to the honors of a different god, have created feuds and factions, both civil and foreign, filling the whole of life from its beginning to its end with wars that know no truce.

But those who rejoice in a single race and honor one father, right reason, and who have marveled at the harmonious and altogether musical concord of the virtues, live a fair and calm life — not, however, an idle and ignoble one, as some suppose, but one exceedingly manly and sharply honed against those who attempt to break treaties and are forever bent on confounding oaths. For it happens that those who are peaceable by nature are also warlike, standing arrayed against those who overturn the stability of the soul.

Testimony to my argument is given, first, by the disposition of the mind of every lover of virtue, which is arranged in just this way, and then also by a member of the prophetic band of revelers, who, inspired, cried out: "O mother, how great a thing you bore me, a man of strife and a man of loathing to all the earth! I have not lent, nor have they lent to me, yet my strength has not failed because of their curses" (Jeremiah 15:10).

But not every wise man is an implacable enemy to every base man, employing the equipment of triremes or siege-engines or weapons or an army for his defense, but rather reasonings.

For whenever he observes the war that is continual and troublesome to all people, waged in the very midst of a peace that knows no war — a war that is common, not confined to nations and lands, or cities and villages alone, but stirred up even within each household and each individual person — who is there who does not exhort, rebuke, admonish, and chasten, not only by day but also by night, since his soul cannot rest, because it is by nature a hater of evil?

For all the things that are done in war are done also in time of peace: they plunder, they seize, they enslave, they pillage, they sack, they commit outrage, they maltreat, they corrupt, they violate, they murder by stealth, and outright, if they are the stronger, they kill.

For each of them, having set before himself wealth or reputation as his goal, and shooting all the actions of his life at it as if they were arrows, disregards equality, pursues inequality, turns away from partnership, is eager to have alone the whole of everyone's possessions, hates mankind and hates his fellows, feigns goodwill, is a companion of spurious flattery, an enemy of genuine friendship, a foe of truth, a champion of falsehood, slow to help, quick to harm, most ready to slander, hesitant to come to another's defense, clever at deception, most given to perjury, most untrustworthy, a slave

to anger, yielding to pleasure, a guardian of evils, a destroyer of goods. These and things like them are the prized treasures of that joyless, much-admired "peace," which the idol-bearing mind of every fool gapes at in wonder and worships. And since every wise man rightly finds these things a burden, he is accustomed to say to his own mother and nurse, wisdom: "O mother, how great a thing you bore me" — not in bodily strength, but in the might of his hatred of evil — a man of loathing and strife, peaceable by nature, but for this very reason also warlike against those who defile the much-contested beauty of peace.

"I have not lent, nor have they lent to me" — for neither did they make use of my goods, nor did I make use of their evils, but, in accordance with the writing of Moses, "I have not taken the desire of a single one of them" (Numbers 16:15). For the whole race of desire, though they have stored it up within themselves as the greatest benefit, is in fact an overwhelming harm.

"I did no one good, nor did anyone do me good" -- for neither did they make use of my goods, nor I of their evils, but as Moses' text says, "I have not taken what any of them desired" (Numbers 16:15). They had stored up for themselves the whole class of desire as though it were the greatest benefit, when in truth it was an overwhelming harm.

"Nor did my strength fail before the curses that were pronounced against me," but by the most sovereign power of the divine doctrines fixed within me I was not bent even though ill-treated, but stood my ground vigorously against those who would not be purified from their own faults.

"For God set us up as a contradiction to our neighbors," as is also said somewhere in the Hymns (Psalm 79:7 LXX), meaning all who reach after right judgment. But it is not by nature that they have become contradictors -- all who have ever held the zeal for knowledge and virtue, contending against the neighbors of the soul, refuting the pleasures that dwell within, refuting also the desires that share our lodging, and fears too, shaming the whole crowd of passions and vices, and refuting also every sense-perception -- as to what it saw, as to what it heard, the smells concerning vapors and the tastes concerning flavors, and further the touches concerning the properties peculiar to the powers in bodies that impinge upon it, and indeed the spoken word too, concerning the matters it resolved to expound.

For what, or how, or why sense-perception perceived, or reason interpreted, or passion disposed -- this it is fitting to search out, not carelessly, and to test and refute each of the errors.

But the man who contradicts none of these, and instead nods assent to them all in succession, without realizing it deceives himself and builds up, as fortifications against his own soul, oppressive neighbors -- whom it is better to have as subjects than as rulers. For if they hold command they will do much great harm, since folly reigns among them; but if they are made to obey, they will dutifully perform what is needed, no longer stiffening their necks as before.

So it is with those who have learned not to obey, but rather have taken the rule not merely by knowledge but by power as well: all the reasonings that serve as bodyguards and champions of the soul will come to one mind, and, approaching the eldest among them, will say: "Your servants have taken the count of the men of war who are with us, and not one of them is missing" (Numbers 31:49) -- but rather, just as musical instruments are perfectly tuned to every note, so we have sounded together with every instruction, uttering no discordant or off-key word, nor performing any such deed, so that the other chorus, the unmusical one, is shown to be wholly voiceless and dead, laughed to scorn -- that chorus that worships the nourishment of the body, Midian, and her offspring, the fleshly mass named Baal-Peor (Numbers 25:3).

For we are the race of the "chosen ones" of the one who sees God, "Israel," of whom "not one voice was in discord" (Exodus 24:11), so that the instrument of the whole, the entire cosmos, might be played musically in harmonies.

For this reason Moses too says that peace was given as a prize of honor to the most warlike reasoning, which is called Phinehas (Numbers 25:12), because, having taken up zeal for virtue and having waged war against vice, he cut off an entire lineage... it is left, then, for those who wish -- peering closely and examining accurately, employing sight, which is a clearer witness than hearing -- to be persuaded that mortal nature is full of unbelief, hanging as it does from mere seeming alone.

Wonderful, then, is the harmony just described, but most wonderful of all, surpassing every harmony, is the common harmony of all, in accordance with which the whole people is represented as speaking with one accord: "All that God has said, we will do and we will hear" (Deuteronomy 5:27). For these no longer obey a word that leads the way,

but rather God, the leader of the whole, through whom they arrive at the deeds even before they meet with the words. For whereas others, once they have heard, then act, these -- and this is the most paradoxical thing -- say that, seized by divine possession, they will act first and hear afterward, so that they may not seem to act from teaching and instruction, but may meet the noble deeds with a mind that works of its own will and needs no bidding. And having acted, they say they will hear, so that they may judge what has been done, whether it accords with the divine words and sacred exhortations.

Those, on the other hand, who have conspired together in wrongdoing are said to have "set out from the east" and to have "found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there" (Genesis 11:2) -- said in a most natural sense. For there are two kinds of rising in the soul, the better and the worse: the better, whenever the light of the virtues rises like the rays of the sun; the worse, whenever the virtues are overshadowed and the vices rise instead.

An example of the former kind is this: "And God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east" (Genesis 2:8) -- not of earthly plants, but of heavenly virtues, which the Planter caused to rise up out of the incorporeal light that is his own, virtues that were to remain forever unquenched.

I have also heard one of the companions of Moses utter an oracle of this kind: "Behold, a man whose name is the Rising" (Zechariah 6:12) -- a most strange title indeed, if you suppose it spoken of one composed of body and soul; but if you understand it of that incorporeal one who differs in nothing from the divine image, you will agree that the name "Rising" was assigned to him most fittingly.

For this one the Father of the universe caused to rise as his eldest son, whom elsewhere he calls firstborn; and the one who was begotten, imitating the ways of his father, shaped the forms he saw, looking to the archetypal patterns set before him by that father.

Of the worse rising, on the other hand, a clear example is what is said concerning the man who wished to curse the one praised by God. For he too is represented as dwelling toward the rising, of a kind that, though bearing the same name as the former, is opposite to it and at war with it: "from Mesopotamia,"

he says, "Balak summoned me, from the mountains of the east, saying: Come, curse for me the one whom God does not curse" (Numbers 23:7-8). Balak is interpreted as "without mind" -- most fittingly. For how could it not be terrible mindlessness to hope to deceive Being itself, and to think to turn aside, by human sophistries, the most steadfast purpose of God?

For this reason he dwells in Mesopotamia, his understanding submerged, as it were, in the very depths of a river's midstream, unable to swim up and lift its head. And this passion is a rising of folly and a sinking of sound reasoning.

Those, then, who fit together this discordant harmony are said to move "from the east." Which kind of east, then, is it -- that of virtue, or that of vice? If it is that of virtue, a complete separation is implied; but if it is that of vice, it is a certain united motion, just as it is with the hands, which move together not each on its own separately, but in a kind of harmony with the whole body.

For the region of vice is a beginning and a starting point for the base man toward activities contrary to nature; but all who have emigrated from virtue and made use of the starting points of folly, having found the most fitting place, settle there -- a place called, in the tongue of the Hebrews, Shinar, but in Greek, "shaking-off."

For the whole life of the base is torn apart and convulsed and shaken, forever stirred up and disturbed, storing up within itself not a single trace of genuine good. For just as, of things that are shaken off, whatever is not held fast by some binding force falls away entirely, so too, it seems to me, the soul of one who has conspired to do wrong has been shaken clean in just this way: it casts off every form of virtue, so that not even a shadow or an image of it appears in it at all.

The body-loving race of the Egyptians, at any rate, is represented not as fleeing from the water but as fleeing "under the water," that is, under the onrush of the passions; and whenever the passions run beneath them, they are shaken and thrown into confusion, casting off the steady and peaceful element of virtue while taking up in its place the turbulent element of vice. For it is said that God "shook off the Egyptians into the midst of the sea as they fled under the water" (Exodus 14:27).

These are the ones who do not even know Joseph, the many-colored conceit of life, but instead practice sins openly, storing up not even a trace or shadow or image of nobility of character: "there arose,"

he says, "another king over Egypt," who did not know even Joseph (Exodus 1:8), the very last and youngest of the goods perceived by sense -- and this king abolished not only perfections but even advances toward them, not only the clarity that comes through sight but even the teaching that comes to be through hearing, saying: "Come, curse Jacob for me, and come, curse Israel for me" (Numbers 23:7) -- which is as much as to say, "Come, destroy both, the soul's sight and its hearing," so that it may neither see nor hear anything true and genuinely noble. For Israel is a symbol of sight, and Jacob a symbol of hearing.

The mind of such men, then, casts off the whole nature of the good, shaken free of it, so to speak, in a certain manner; while, conversely, the mind of the good, laying claim to the unmixed and undiluted form of the goods, shakes off and casts away instead the base things.

Observe, then, what the Practicer says: "Put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments, and arise and go up to Bethel" (Genesis 35:2-3), so that, even should Laban demand a search, the idols might not be found anywhere in the whole household (Genesis 31:35) -- but rather, things that have real subsistence and true existence, enrolled as citizens in the mind of the wise man, which the self-taught race of Isaac also inherits as its portion; for he alone receives from his father the things that truly exist (Genesis 25:5).

Observe too that it does not say that they came to the plain in which they settled, but that they found it -- having searched and examined in every way and sought out the region most suited to folly. For indeed every fool does not receive evils from another but discovers them by seeking them himself, not content with only those things toward which base nature of itself proceeds, but adding to them, from his own evil craftsmanship, finished exercises in wickedness.

And indeed, after lingering there only a short time, he would move on. But now he claims even to remain settled there permanently; for it is said that, having found the plain, they settled in it as in a native land, not as sojourners in a foreign one. For it would have been less grievous, on encountering their sins, to regard those sins as alien and, as it were, foreign, rather than to suppose them to be one's own and akin; for those who merely stay a while as visitors would, even so, eventually depart again, but those who settle there permanently were bound to remain for good.

For this reason all the wise, in Moses' account, are represented as sojourners; for their souls never send out a colony away from heaven, but, out of love of contemplation and love of learning, they are accustomed to travel abroad into earthly nature.

So then, once they have lingered in bodies and beheld through them all things perceptible and mortal, they return again to that place from which they first set out, regarding as their homeland the heavenly region in which they hold citizenship, and as a foreign land the earthly region in which they have sojourned; for to those who send out a colony, the land that receives them becomes their homeland in place of the mother-city, whereas for those who merely travel abroad, the land that sent them forth remains their home, the place to which they also long to return.

Therefore Abraham fittingly, having risen up from the dead life of vanity, says to the guardians and stewards of the dead, "I am a sojourner and stranger among you" (Gen. 23:4); "but you are natives of the land," who have preferred the dust and clay of the soul, and have deemed worthy of the seat of honor a man named Ephron, whose name is interpreted "dust."

And fittingly the ascetic Jacob too laments his sojourn in the body, saying, "The days of the years of my life, in which I have sojourned, have been few and evil; they have not reached the days of my fathers, in which they sojourned" (Gen. 47:9).

And to the self-taught one too such an oracle was given: "Do not go down into" passion, that is "Egypt, but settle in the land that I shall tell you" (Gen. 26:2) — in unshowable and incorporeal wisdom — "and sojourn in this land," the visible and perceptible substance, so as to show that the wise man sojourns, as in a foreign body perceptible to sense, but truly dwells, as in a homeland, in the intelligible virtues, which God speaks of as not differing from divine words.

Moses too says, "I am a resident alien in a foreign land" (Exod. 2:22), regarding his stay in the body as exceptionally foreign — not merely, as resident aliens do, but supposing it worthy of estrangement rather than, on the contrary, of intimacy.

But wishing to display this unity of voice and speech not so much in names and words as in the fellowship of unjust deeds, the base man begins to build a city and a tower, as it were a citadel for the tyrant Vice, and he calls on all his fellow-devotees to take part in the work, having first prepared suitable material: "Come,"

he says, "let us make bricks and bake them with fire" (Gen. 11:3) — which is equivalent to saying that all the contents of our soul now lie heaped together and confused, so that no clear impression of any single form appears.

It is fitting, therefore, taking passion and vice as a kind of formless and unqualified substance, always to cut them, down to their smallest and most particular parts, into the qualities appropriate to them, both for a clearer grasp of them and for the use and enjoyment that comes with experience — which seems to beget still more pleasures and delights.

"Come forward, then, all you reasonings, like councillors, into the council-chamber of the soul, as many of you as have conspired for the destruction of justice and every virtue, and let us take careful thought and deliberate how, once we have set our hand to the work, we may bring it to success."

Now the strongest foundations of this success will be these: to give shape to what is formless, to mark off each thing individually by types and figures and outlines — not things that wobble and totter, but things firmly fixed, made akin to the nature of the square, which cannot be shaken — so that, like a brick, being immovably and firmly set, it may support what is built upon it.

Of all these things the god-opposing mind, which we say is king of Egypt, that is, of the body, is found to be the craftsman; for Moses represents him too as delighting in buildings constructed of brick.

For whenever someone blends together the liquid substance of water and the solid substance of earth, as they dissolve and decay, and produces from the two a third thing between them, which is called clay, he does not cease cutting it into portions and fitting to each of the pieces its proper shape, so that they may become more compact and more manageable;

for in this way what is being made would readily reach completion. In imitation of this process, men of depraved nature, whenever they blend the irrational and excessive impulses of the passions with the most grievous vices, cut what has been mixed into pieces and mold and shape them — these ill-starred men — pieces by which the soul's siege-wall will be raised aloft: sense-perception into sight and hearing, and again taste, smell, and touch; passion into pleasure and desire, fear and grief; and the class of vices into folly, licentiousness, cowardice, injustice, and all the others

akin and related to these. Some go so far in excess that they have not only anointed their own souls for this purpose, but have also forced and compelled those who are better, who belong to the seeing race, to make bricks and build fortified cities (Exod. 1:11) for the mind that seems to reign as king — wishing thereby to show that the good is enslaved and that vice is more powerful than good disposition, and that prudence and every virtue are subject to folly and to every vice, so that they are forced by necessity to serve whatever their master commands.

For behold, he says, even the eye of the soul, the most radiant and purest and sharpest-sighted of all, by which alone it is possible to see God, whose name is Israel, once bound in the bodily nets of Egypt, endures the heaviest commands, so as to work brick and everything made of earth with the most laborious and unwearying toils; and under these it fittingly suffers pain and groans, keeping this one thing stored up as a treasure amid its miseries — to weep over its present condition;

for it is rightly said, "the sons of Israel groaned because of their labors" (Exod. 2:23). And who among those of sound mind, seeing the deeds of the many and the excessive zeal that men commonly devote either to money-making or to reputation or to the enjoyment of pleasures, would not be greatly downcast and cry out to the only saving God, that he might lighten their burdens, and, paying a ransom and a price of deliverance, might set the soul free into liberty?

What, then, is the most secure liberty? What is it? The service of the one who alone is wise, just as the oracles attest, in which it is said, "Send out my people, that they may serve me" (Exod. 8:1).

It is the special mark of those who serve the Existing One neither to fashion nor to compound bodies like bricks — such as the works of cupbearers or bakers or cooks, or any other earthly things — but to ascend in their reasonings to the ethereal heights, having set Moses, the God-beloved race, before them as guide of the way.

For then they will behold the place which is manifest, where the unswerving and unchangeable God stands, "and what is beneath his feet, as it were a work of sapphire brick, and like a form of the firmament of heaven" — the perceptible world, which he intimates through these words (Exod. 24:10).

For it is fitting for those who have entered into fellowship with knowledge to long to see the Existing One; but if they cannot, then at least to see his image, the most sacred Logos, and after that the most perfect of his works among perceptible things, this world; for to philosophize was nothing other than to strive to see these things accurately.

He says that the perceptible world is, as it were, God's footstool, for the following reasons: first, so as to show that the cause that made it is not found within what has come into being; and next, in order to establish that not even the whole world employs a free and self-liberated motion, but that God the pilot has mounted it, steering and guiding all things safely with a helmsman's hand — using, according to the true account, neither feet nor hands nor any other part belonging to things in the realm of becoming, at all (for "God is not as man," Num. 23:19), but this figure is introduced solely for the sake of teaching us, who are unable to step outside ourselves, but who form our apprehensions concerning the Unbegotten from what happens within our own experience.

It is altogether beautiful, moreover, to speak by way of comparison of the world as being like a brick; for it seems to stand still and be fixed, as a brick does, according to the impressions of sense-perception, and yet it makes use of the swiftest motion, one that outruns all particular motions.

For by day the eyes of the body receive an impression of the sun, and by night of the moon, as though they were standing still; and yet who does not know that the swiftness of their circling motion is unmatched, seeing that they circle the whole heaven in a single day? In just this way the whole heaven itself, though it seems to stand still, revolves in a circle, its motion being grasped by the invisible and more divine faculty, which perceives through reasoning...

They are represented as baking the bricks with fire — a symbol for strengthening their passions and vices with a hot and highly active reasoning, so that they might never be overthrown by the guardsmen of wisdom, who continually mount their engines against them for their overthrow.

This is why it is added, "And the brick became stone for them" (Gen 11:3). What was loose and diffuse, belonging to a movement without reason, was compressed into a resistant and solid nature — condensed and hardened by powerful arguments and the firmest proofs — the grasp of their doctrines having in a sense grown to manhood, whereas in childhood it flows away, because the soul's moisture is not yet able to fix and preserve the impressions stamped upon it. "And bitumen served them for mortar" (Gen 11:3) — not, conversely, mortar for bitumen.

For the base think that the weak prevail over the better, and that what dissolves and flows can be made firm out of themselves, so that they may plant their feet on solid ground and shoot their arrows at virtue. But the Earth-born and Father of all good things will not allow what is bound to win out into indissoluble security, by refusing to give a stable foundation to a fluid ambition, thereby exposing its work as nothing but soft clay.

For if the clay had become bitumen, perhaps that earthly, perceptible substance, which is in continuous flux, would forever have won its way into a secure and unchangeable power. But since, on the contrary, the bitumen turned into clay, one need not despair; for hope, hope indeed, is that the firm foundations of vice will be broken through by the might of God.

So too the just man, even in the great and mutual flood of life, not yet able to see the things that truly exist with the soul alone, apart from sense-perception, secures "the ark" — I mean the body — by coating it "within and without with bitumen" (Gen 6:14), thereby giving stability to the impressions and activities that come through it. But when the evil has abated and the flood has held back, he will go forth, and, using a bodiless understanding, will lay hold of truth.

For the excellent character, planted and named from the beginning of his birth — Moses by name — who dwelt in the world as in a city and a homeland, having become a citizen of the cosmos, was once bound within the body that had been smeared over, as it were, with "bitumen and pitch" (Exod 2:3), a body that seems to receive and contain securely the impressions of all things that lie beneath sense-perception. He weeps (Exod 2:6) over the binding of a bodiless nature, pressed by longing for it; and he weeps too over the wandering and deluded mind of the many, wretched as it is, which, hanging upon false opinion, has supposed that something stable and secure exists within itself, or altogether among created things, unchangeable — when that which is fixed, constant, and ever the same is set up as a monument only in God.

The words "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose head shall reach to heaven" (Gen 11:4) suggest the following thought. The lawgiver holds that cities are not only those built upon the earth, whose materials are stones and timber, but also those which men carry about, founded within their own souls. And these latter are, as one would expect,

archetypes, since they have obtained a more divine construction, while the former are copies, being composed, as it were, of perishable matter. There are two kinds of city, the better and the worse. The better is that which practices democracy, a constitution that honors equality, whose rulers are law and justice — such a constitution is a hymn to God. The worse is the counterfeit of it, like debased and adulterated coinage — mob-rule, which admires inequality, in which injustice and lawlessness hold sway.

The excellent are enrolled as citizens of the former constitution, while the multitude of the base have girded themselves with the other, the worse one, loving disorder over good order and confusion over settled stability.

The fool, not content to rely on himself alone, thinks it fit to use accomplices for wrongdoing. He urges on sight, he urges on hearing, and he calls upon every sense to be marshaled at once under his command, each bringing everything useful for his service. He also rouses and sharpens the naturally untamed mass of the passions, so that, having acquired training and practice, it may become unbearable.

Having summoned these as his allies, the mind says: "Let us build ourselves a city" (Gen 11:4) — that is, let us fortify our own possessions and wall them about with strength, so that we may not easily be captured by those who assail us. Let us divide and distribute, as it were by tribes and townships, each of the powers within the soul, allotting some to the rational portion and some to the irrational.

Let us choose as rulers those capable of procuring wealth, reputation, honors, pleasures — everything from which they are able to provide. Let us set justice, the cause of poverty and disrepute, out of the way, and let us write laws that will secure the advantage of the stronger for those who are always able to carry off more than others.

And let the "tower" be constructed as a kind of acropolis, a most secure royal seat for tyrant vice — whose feet tread upon the earth while its head reaches toward heaven, mounting to such a height through sheer arrogance.

For in truth it does not stop at merely human wrongdoing, but runs on to attack even the heavenly realm, putting forward arguments of impiety and atheism whenever it maintains either that the divine does not exist, or that it exists but exercises no providence, or that the cosmos never had a beginning of its coming into being, or that, having come into being, it is carried along by unstable causes as chance dictates — sometimes erring, sometimes without fault — as tends to happen with ships and chariots.

For it sometimes happens that a voyage and a race are guided rightly even without helmsman or charioteer. But providence acts not seldom but constantly — human providence often, divine providence unfailingly and always rightly, since to err is by common agreement foreign to a divine power. It is these deranged minds who symbolically construct, as it were, a tower out of their argument concerning vice — wanting nothing else than to leave behind their own ill-famed name.

For they say: "Let us make a name for ourselves" (Gen 11:4). O excessive and unrestrained shamelessness! What are you saying? You who ought to conceal your own wrongdoings in night and deep darkness, and to have contrived a veil for them — if not true, then at least a pretended sense of shame — either for the sake of favor with more decent people, or as an escape from the penalties owed for acknowledged sins — you advance instead to such a pitch of boldness that you not only display yourselves in the light and beneath the brightest sun, fearing neither the threats of better men nor the inexorable justice that comes from God upon those who act so impiously, but you even think it right to send messengers of your own crimes everywhere as rumor, so that no one may remain uninitiated or unhearing of your deeds — O wretched and utterly polluted in your presumptions!

What sort of name, then, do you long for — is it not the one most fitting to what is being done? Is it, then, one thing only? One perhaps in kind, but countless in its species — which, even if you stay silent, you will hear named by others. Recklessness, then, is the offspring of shamelessness; outrage comes with violence; violence with murder; corruption goes together with adulteries; boundless desire with immoderate pleasures; despair with rashness; injustice with villainy; theft with plunder; false oaths with lying speech; impieties with lawless acts.

These, and others like them, are the names that belong to such things. It is indeed a fine thing to boast and pride oneself on the reputation hunted from these — things one ought rather to hide in shame! And yet some take great pride in them, as though they had reaped from being thought such men by all some invincible strength — men whom the justice that attends God will punish for their great presumption, even though perhaps they are not merely divining but actually foreseeing their own destruction. For they say: "before we are scattered" (Gen 11:4), I will take thought

for name and reputation. So I would say to them: do you know, then, that you will be scattered? Why then do you sin? But perhaps this reveals the character of fools, who, though the greatest of punishments hang over them — not obscurely but often quite openly — nevertheless do not hesitate to do wrong. The best-known punishments are those thought to be hidden, which happen in fact to fall from God.

For all the most base take up some notion that wrongdoing will not escape the divine, nor will they be strong enough entirely to evade paying the penalty. For how else do they know that they will be scattered?

And indeed they say, "before we are scattered" — but conscience within convicts them, and pricks sharply at the atheism they so studiously cultivate, dragging them, unwilling as they are, into agreement that all human affairs are watched over by a better nature, and that justice stands as an incorruptible avenger, hostile to the unjust deeds of the impious and to the arguments that plead on their behalf.

But all these are descendants of a wickedness that is always dying yet never dead, whose name is Cain. Is it not also that Cain, having begotten a son whom he called Enoch, is depicted as founding a city of the same name (Gen 4:17), building in a certain way the things that are begotten and mortal, upon the overthrow of those things allotted a more divine construction?

For Enoch is interpreted as "your grace." Each of the impious in mind supposes that he grants himself both his apprehensions and his thoughts, his eyes the power of seeing, his ears the power of hearing, his nostrils the power of smelling, and to the other senses their proper functions, and further still to the organs of voice the power of speech — while God either does not exist at all, or does not exist as the first cause.

For this reason he lays up for himself the firstfruits of what he has cultivated, while he is said to bring to God only the ordinary fruits that come after — even though a sound example stands close at hand. For his brother offers in sacrifice the firstborn, not the second offspring, of the flock, acknowledging that the more senior causes of things that come to be are established in accordance with the most senior of causes.

But to the impious man it seems the opposite — that the mind is sovereign over what it deliberates, and sense-perception likewise sovereign over what it perceives; for he judges that the body decides without error and without falsehood in the one case, and the mind in the other, over everything.

What could be more open to censure than these claims, or more thoroughly refuted by truth? Has not the mind itself, in countless instances, been convicted of unsound thinking, and have not all the senses been caught bearing false witness -- not before irrational judges, whom one might expect to be deceived, but in the very court of nature herself, whom it is impossible to bribe?

And indeed, since the standards of judgment within us, both mind and sense-perception, are prone to error, we must admit the logical consequence: that God rains down thoughts on the one and perceptions on the other, and that what occurs is not the doing of the parts within us, but is entirely the gift of him through whom we ourselves came to exist.

Children who inherit the portion of self-love from their father are eager to build it up together until it reaches heaven, until Justice -- who loves virtue and hates wickedness -- comes forward and tears down the cities they have fortified against the wretched soul, and the tower whose name is disclosed in the book that records these judgments.

As the Hebrews say, it is Phanuel; in our language, "turning away from God." For the stronghold built up through the persuasiveness of arguments was constructed for no other purpose than to turn and incline the mind away from the honor due to God. What could be more unjust than that?

But against the demolition of this stronghold, the plunderer of injustice stands ever ready and murderous, whom the Hebrews call Gideon, which is interpreted "a band of plunderers." For it says: "Gideon set out toward the men of Phanuel, loosing them, saying, 'When I return in peace I will tear down this tower'" (Judges 8:9).

It is a wholly beautiful and most fitting boast for a soul that hates wickedness and is sharpened against the impious, to be assured that it will demolish every argument that persuades the mind to turn away from holiness. And this is naturally so: for when the mind turns back, everything in it that had been leaning and turning away is dissolved.

The time for this demolition, most paradoxically, is not war, as one might say, but peace. For by the stability and calm of the mind, which piety naturally produces, every argument that impiety had fabricated is overturned.

Many have raised even the senses like a kind of tower, to such a height that they touch the very bounds of heaven -- and heaven, symbolically, is our mind, in whose realm the best and divine natures make their circuit. Those who dare this set sense-perception above the intellect, and claim the right to seize, through the objects of sense, all that belongs to the intelligible, forcing what is by nature master into the rank of slave, and what is by nature slave into the rank of ruler.

The words "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower" (Genesis 11:5) must certainly be understood in a more figurative sense. For to suppose that the divine approaches or withdraws, descends or, conversely, ascends -- or in general undergoes the same conditions and motions as particular living creatures, being confined and moved -- is, so to speak, an impiety that places God beyond the ocean and outside the world.

These things are spoken of God in human terms by the lawgiver, though God is not human in form, for the benefit of us who are being instructed, as I have often said elsewhere. For who does not know that for one who descends, it is necessary to leave one place and occupy another?

But by God all things have been filled, since he encompasses and is not encompassed; and to him alone it belongs to be both everywhere and nowhere. Nowhere, because he himself brought space and place into being together with bodies, and it is not lawful to say that the maker is encompassed by any of the things made. Everywhere, because he has extended his powers through earth and water, air and heaven, leaving no part of the world empty, and has drawn all things together, binding them through all things with invisible bonds, so that they might never be loosed -- for the sake of which, having taken this into careful consideration...

For that which is above the powers is conceived as existing in superabundance... in respect of being alone. But his power, by which he set in order and arranged all things, is rightly called God, and it has embraced the whole and passed through all the parts of the universe.

But the divine, which is invisible, incomprehensible, and everywhere present, is truly nowhere visible or comprehensible... "Behold, I stand here before you" (Exodus 17:6), seeming to be shown and grasped, has surpassed all created things, prior to every act of showing and every appearance.

None of the names denoting transitional motion, then, applies to God as he exists in himself: not "above," not "below," not "to the right," not "to the left," not "forward," not "backward." For he is conceived in none of the things named, since, even were he to turn, he could not change places.

Nevertheless it is said that he came down and saw -- he who by foreknowledge has clearly grasped all things, not only after they came to be but even before they came to be -- for the sake of exhortation and instruction, so that no one among those not present, relying on unstable conjecture, might place premature trust from a distance, but rather might come close to the facts themselves, peer into each one, and examine them with care. For an unwavering sight is a witness worthy to be set above deceitful hearing.

For this reason, even among those with the finest constitutions, a law has been recorded that hearsay is not to bear witness, since by nature the tribunal of hearing tends toward being bribed. Moses too says among his prohibitions: "You shall not accept an empty report" (Exodus 23:1) -- meaning not only that one should not accept, through hearsay, a false or foolish account, but also that hearing, coming a little short of sight in grasping the clear truth, is entangled and filled with emptiness.

This, we say, is the reason it is said that "God came down to view the city and the tower." Nor is it added carelessly, "which the sons of men built" (Genesis 11:5). For someone among the irreverent might perhaps say, mockingly at the same time, that the lawgiver teaches us a strange new lesson -- that towers and cities are built up by none other than the children of men! For who is unaware of things so plain, so conspicuous, so utterly obvious?

But you should not suppose that this obvious and commonplace point has been set down in the most sacred oracles for its own sake, but rather that what is hidden is to be tracked down through the visible names. What, then, is this hidden meaning?

Those who ascribe to many of the things that exist the status of, so to speak, fathers, and who introduce the crowd of many gods, have poured out confusion and a mingled chaos over reality alike, and have handed over the soul's end to pleasure -- these, if the truth must be told, are the builders of the city just spoken of and of its acropolis, piling up, tower-fashion, the things that produce that end. They differ not at all, I think, from those born of a harlot, whom the law has driven out of the divine assembly, saying: "No one born of a harlot shall enter the assembly of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 23:2) -- since, like archers wandering after many targets and hitting none of them truly, they have set up countless false-named first principles and causes for the coming-into-being of what exists, and in doing so have failed to recognize the one maker and father of all things.

But those who make use of knowledge are rightly called sons of the one God, as Moses too acknowledges when he says: "You are sons of the Lord God" (Deuteronomy 14:1), and "God who begot you" (Deuteronomy 32:18), and "Is not this one himself your father?" (Deuteronomy 32:6). It follows for those whose souls are so disposed to consider only the good to be beautiful -- which stands opposed, for the overthrow and demolition of it, to the end of pleasure championed by men skilled in warfare. And even if someone is not yet worthy to be called a son of God,

let him nonetheless be earnest to be adorned according to his firstborn Logos, the eldest of the angels, as it were the archangel bearing many names. For he is called Beginning, and the Name of God, and the Logos, and the Man after the image, and the one who sees, Israel.

For this reason I was led, a little earlier, to praise the virtues of those who say, "We are all sons of one man" (Genesis 42:11). For even if we have not yet become worthy to be reckoned children of God, we may still be children of his unseen image, the most holy Logos; for the Logos, the eldest, is the image of God.

And indeed in many places throughout the legislation, those who hear are again called "sons of Israel" -- sons of him who sees. For hearing has been honored with second place after sight, and what is learned always comes second to that which grasps clear impressions of the underlying realities without need of instruction.

I admire, too, what is revealed in the books of the Kingdoms, according to which those who flourished and lived many generations later are, without qualification, recorded as "sons" of David, who sang the praises of God (3 Kingdoms 15:11; 4 Kingdoms 18:3, and elsewhere) -- though in his own lifetime, their own great-grandfathers had perhaps not yet been born. For the begetting that belongs to souls made immortal through virtue is not the begetting of perishable bodies, and it is this kind that is traced back to the leaders of nobility of character, as though they were the begetters and fathers.

But against those who pride themselves on their vainglory, the Lord said: "Behold, one race and one lip, of them all" (Genesis 11:5) -- equivalent to saying, behold one kinship and one family, and again the same harmony and concord belongs to all of them together, with no one estranged in judgment or out of tune -- as happens also among people without music, whose vocal instrument, for all its notes, is sometimes made discordant and out of tune throughout, tuned to the height of disharmony and bringing only unison out of dissonance.

One can see something comparable happening in matters of health: the periodic fevers that physicians' children call quotidian, tertian, and quartan strike at the same hours, day or night, preserving toward their victims a fixed and orderly sequence.

The words "and this they began to do" are spoken with no small measure of indignation, because it was not enough for these reckless men to confound what was right toward their own kin — they went so far as to dare an assault on the very realm of the Olympians, sowing injustice

and reaping impiety, though to no advantage for the wretches. For it is not with impiety as it is with injustice toward one another, where they often accomplish much of what they wish, giving effect through their deeds to the schemes conceived by their thoughtless counsels; the divine is beyond harm and beyond injury, and those whose nature is too corrupt to be cleansed manage only to make a beginning against it — they never reach the end.

That is why it says, "they began to do": those insatiable for lawbreaking, once glutted with their evils against the things of earth, sea, and air — all that belongs to the perishable order — conceived the thought of turning their assault against the divine natures in heaven. Yet those beings, being outside the realm of created things, cannot in any way be treated with abuse; and blasphemy itself brings no harm to those it reviles, since they never depart from their own nature, but instead brings irreparable disaster upon those who utter the charge.

Yet the fact that they only began, and were unable to reach the end of their impiety, does not mean we should excuse them from the guilt of having accomplished the very things they intended. This is why Scripture speaks of them as having finished the tower even though they did not finish it, when it says, "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower" — not the one they were about to build, but the one they "had already built"

(Gen. 11:5). What proof is there, then, that the structure was never brought to completion? The first is plain to see: no part of the earth, whatever it may be, can possibly touch heaven, for the reason given earlier — that a center cannot touch a circumference. The second is that the aether, sacred fire, is an unquenchable flame, as its very name shows, derived from "aithein," which in ordinary speech means "to burn."

A single witness to this from the portion of heavenly fire is the sun, which, though it stands so far from the earth, sends its rays all the way to earth's innermost recesses, and both warms and scorches the air that stretches from earth up to the heavenly sphere — air that is by nature cold. Whatever lies far from the sun's path, or is set at an angle to it, it only warms; but whatever lies near it, or directly in its path, it sets ablaze by force.

If this is so, was it not inevitable that the men who dared to climb upward would be consumed by fire, struck by a thunderbolt, before their grandiose scheme could be brought to completion? This seems to be hinted at in what is said afterward: "they stopped," it says, "building the city and the tower" (Gen. 11:8) — not, surely, because they had finished, but because they were prevented from completing it by the confusion that fell upon them. Yet those who had gone as far as forming the plan and setting their hands to the work did not thereby escape responsibility for what they had attempted.

The diviner and reader of omens, then, who deals in vain guesses about uncertain things — for Balaam, too, is translated "vain" — the Law says that the Seer curses him, even though in his words he framed only auspicious blessings; for God looks not at what is said, which by his providence was altered like a genuine coin substituted for a counterfeit, but at the intent, in which harm rather than benefit was being rehearsed. For these things are by nature at war with one another: conjecture with truth, vanity with knowledge, and prophecy that comes through frenzy with sober wisdom.

Moreover, if a man lies in ambush intending to kill someone and fails to do so, he is nonetheless liable to the same penalty as a murderer, as the law written concerning such matters makes clear: "if," it says, "a man attacks his neighbor to kill him by treachery, and he flees for refuge, you shall take him even from the altar to put him to death" (Exod. 21:14). Though he only made the attempt and did not actually kill, the law reckoned the intent to murder an equal wrong to the killing itself; for this reason it granted no amnesty even to one who had become a suppliant, but commanded that the man who had acted with an unholy purpose be dragged away even from the sanctuary.

He is unholy not only because he plotted, against a soul capable of living forever through the acquisition and exercise of virtues, a murder carried out through the assault of vice, but also because he lays the blame for his impious daring upon God. For the word "flees for refuge" implies this very meaning: that many who wish to escape the charges against themselves, and think to deliver themselves from the wrongs they have done, cast the guilt properly their own — deserving punishment — upon God, who is the cause of no evil but of every good. For this reason it was judged a holy thing to drag such men away even from the altars themselves.

Scripture also sets an extraordinary penalty against those who build up and reinforce arguments in support of atheism — a penalty that some of the foolish might suppose to be, not a harm, but a benefit: "nothing they set their minds to do," it says, "shall fail them" (Gen. 11:6). What boundless, immeasurable misery! That everything the most deranged mind sets itself to attempt should lie subject and obedient to it, with nothing at all, great or small, ever lagging behind, but

as though racing to meet each need before it even arises. This is the demonstration of a soul bereft of good sense, one that finds nothing standing in the way of its wrongdoing. For a person not yet beyond all cure would rather pray that his mind's every resource fail him entirely, than that he should find easy success whenever he sets himself to steal, commit adultery, murder, or rob a temple, or attempt any such deed — and would rather find countless obstacles blocking the way. For one who is hindered casts off the greatest sickness, injustice, but one who carries the deed through unopposed takes that sickness upon himself.

Why then do you still envy and admire the fortunes of tyrants as blessed, fortunes by which they carry out with ease whatever their raging, brutalized minds conceive, when you ought instead to groan within yourselves over such men — if indeed helplessness and weakness are profitable to evils, in the same way that abundance and strength are most beneficial to goods?

But one of the foolish, perceiving to what extreme of misery the license to go on sinning leads, said with candor: "my guilt is too great to be forgiven" (Gen. 4:13). For it is a terrible thing to leave a soul unbridled, since by its own nature it is untamed, and can only be gentled by being held in check with reins and, if need be, the threat of the whip.

For this reason an oracle of the holy God, full of gentleness and sketching out good hopes, was set down for those who love discipline, to this effect: "I will never let you go, nor will I ever abandon you" (Josh. 1:5). For when the bonds of the soul by which it was held fast are loosened, the greatest of disasters follows in their train — to be abandoned by God, who has bound the whole universe with the unbreakable bonds of his own powers, by which, having drawn everything tight, he wills all things to remain unbroken.

And indeed he says elsewhere, "everything that is bound fast by a bond is clean" (Num. 19:15), since dissolution is the cause of unclean corruption. So then, whenever you see one of the base easily accomplishing everything he sets himself to do, never marvel at him as though he were succeeding; on the contrary, pity him as one who is failing, because he lives on in a state barren of virtue and abundantly fertile in vice.

It is worth pausing to consider what sense lies behind the words spoken in the person of God: "come, let us go down and confuse their language there" (Gen. 11:7). For he appears to be conversing with certain others as his fellow-workers, and the same thing was written earlier concerning the making of man: "God said,"

"let us make man according to our image and likeness" (Gen. 1:26), where "let us make" shows a plurality; and again, "God said, behold, Adam has become like one of us, in knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:22), for the phrase "like one of us" is set not with reference to one, but to several.

We must say this first: nothing among existing things has come into being equal in honor to God; there is one ruler and leader and king, to whom alone it belongs to govern and administer the whole. "The rule of many is not good; let there be one ruler," one king — and this could rightly be said with even more justice of the cosmos and of God than of cities and of men. For it is necessary that of one thing there be one maker, and again one father and master.

This point having been established beforehand, it would follow to weave in what fits with it. Let us consider, then, what this is. God, though he is one, has around him countless powers, all of them assisting and preserving what has come into being, among which are also the powers that punish; and even punishment is not, properly speaking, harmful, since it is a restraint and correction of wrongdoing.

Through these powers the incorporeal and intelligible cosmos was framed — the archetype of this visible one — composed of invisible forms, just as this visible cosmos is composed of visible bodies.

Struck with awe, then, at the nature of each of these two worlds, some people not only deified them as wholes, but also deified the most beautiful parts within them — the sun, the moon, and the whole of heaven — which, feeling no shame at all, they called gods. Moses, discerning their folly, says, "Lord, Lord, king of gods" (Deut. 10:17), to mark the difference between the one who rules and those who are subject to him.

There is also, throughout the air, a most sacred choir of incorporeal souls, attendants upon the heavenly bodies; the oracular word is accustomed to call these souls angels. So the whole host of each rank, arrayed in its fitting order, serves and ministers to the commander who arrayed it, and follows him, in his lawful and rightful command, as its leader; for it is not permitted that the divine army should ever be found guilty of desertion.

It befits a king to associate with his own powers and to employ them for the service of such tasks as are fitting not to be brought about by God alone. The Father of the universe stands in need of nothing, so as to require the cooperation of others if he wishes to create; yet, seeing what is fitting both to himself and to the things coming into being, he entrusted to his subordinate powers the shaping of certain things, though he did not grant even to these full and independent authority to bring their work to completion, so that nothing amiss might occur among the things that come into being.

So much had to be sketched out first. Now I must say why: the nature of living things was first divided into two opposing portions, the irrational and the rational, and the rational was in turn divided into the perishable and the immortal kind—perishable being that of human beings, immortal that of the bodiless souls that circle through the air and heaven.

These souls have no share in vice, for they received from the beginning an untainted and blessed portion and were not bound to the body, that place of endless misfortunes. The souls of irrational animals likewise have no share in it, since, having no part in reasoning, they are not liable to the voluntary wrongs that arise from calculation.

Almost alone of all beings, the human being, possessing knowledge of both good and evil, often chooses what is basest and flees what is worthy of pursuit, so that he above all stands condemned for sins committed with forethought.

It was fitting, then, that God should attach the fashioning of this being to his subordinates as well, saying, “Let us make man,” so that man's right actions might be referred to God alone, but his sins to others. For it did not seem fitting to God, the ruler of all, to fashion by himself the road to vice within a rational soul; for this reason he entrusted the construction of this part of man to those who came after him. For the voluntary, as the counterpart to the involuntary, needed to be brought forth and fashioned as well, for the completion of the whole.

Let this much be said on that point. But it is also fitting to reflect that God is the cause of good things alone, and of nothing evil whatsoever, since he himself was the eldest and most perfect good among all beings. It is most fitting that the best being should fashion, by himself, only what belongs to his own nature—the best things—while the punishments inflicted on the wicked are secured through his subordinates.

My argument is confirmed by the words spoken by the one made perfect through discipline: “The God who has nourished me from my youth, the angel who has delivered me from all evils” (Gen. 48:15–16). For he too confesses, in effect, that the choicest of good things, which nourish luminous souls, are referred to God alone as their cause, while the portion of evils is again entrusted to angels—though not even they hold full authority to punish—so that his saving nature might never be the author of anything that tends toward destruction.

That is why he says, “Come, let us go down and confound.” For it is the impious who deserve to meet with such a sentence, so that his gracious, beneficent, and generous powers may be made familiar instead with punishments. Yet knowing that these powers are beneficial to the human race, he ordained that they act through others; for it was necessary both that the wicked be judged worthy of correction, and that the fountains of his unfailing graces be kept unmixed with things that are not only evil but even reputed to be evil.

We must inquire what confusion is. How then shall we inquire? In this way, as it seems to me: often we come to recognize people we did not know before by way of their kinsfolk, who bear some resemblance to them. In the same way, then, things that are not easily grasped from themselves might become clear through their likeness to things akin to them.

What things, then, are like confusion? Mixture, as the old account has it, and blending. But mixture is tested in dry substances, blending in liquid ones.

Mixture of differing bodies, then, is not a mere juxtaposition in some arrangement, as if one were to make a heap by bringing together barley and wheat and vetch and various other kinds of seeds into the same place; blending, however, is not juxtaposition, but an extension throughout the whole in which unlike parts interpenetrate one another, their qualities still capable of being separated out again by some technique—as is said to happen with wine and water.

For when the two are brought together they produce a blend, yet what has been blended can nonetheless be resolved again into the qualities out of which it was made: with an oiled sponge, the water is absorbed while the wine is left behind—perhaps because, since the sponge itself arises from water, it naturally reabsorbs from the blend what is its own, the water, and leaves behind what is foreign to it, the wine.

Confusion, however, is the destruction of the original qualities, when they are all extended together throughout every part to produce the generation of one single, different thing—as happens with the four-drug compound in medicine. Wax, tallow, pitch, and resin, I think, when brought together, produce this compound, and once it has been composed it is no longer possible to separate out the powers from which it was composed; rather, each of them has vanished, and the destruction of them all has given birth to one distinct new power.

So when God threatens confusion upon impious reasonings, he commands the destruction not only of the particular form and power of each vice, but also of the compound formed from them together, so that neither the parts by themselves nor the union and concord of them all should retain any strength for the overthrow of the better portion.

For this reason he says, “Let us go down there and confound their tongue, so that none of them may hear the voice of his neighbor” (Gen. 11:7)—which is equivalent to saying: let us render each of the parts of vice mute, so that it neither utters its own voice nor, by resounding together with another, becomes the cause of harm.

This is our reading; but those who follow only what is plain and ready to hand suppose that what is now being described is the origin of the Greek and barbarian dialects. I would not blame them—perhaps they too are using a true account—but I would urge them not to stop there, but to move on to the figurative interpretations, holding that the literal sense of the oracles is, as it were, the shadow of bodies, while the meanings signified beneath it are the things that truly subsist in reality.

The lawgiver himself, indeed, gives grounds for this to those whose understanding is not blind, as, for instance, in the very passage now under discussion. For he named what came about “confusion.” Yet if he meant only the origin of dialects, he would have applied a more accurate name in place of “confusion”—“separation.” For things that are cut apart are not confounded, but on the contrary separated; and the two names are opposites, not only in word but in the very deed each denotes.

For confusion, as I have said, is the destruction of simple powers to produce the generation of one thing compounded together, whereas separation is the division of one thing into several, as happens with a genus and the species contained under it. So if the wise lawgiver had meant to command that a single language be divided into the sections of several dialects, he would have used more exact and proper terms—division, distribution, separation, or something of that kind—not a word that fights against these, confusion.

No, the aim is to dissolve the massed ranks of vice, to nullify its compacts, to abolish its fellowship, to destroy and annihilate its powers, and to tear down the strength of its dominion, which it has fortified with dreadful transgressions.

Do you not see that the Fashioner of the soul's parts brought none of them into fellowship with any other? Eyes cannot hear, ears cannot see, the juices within the mouth cannot smell, nor can the nostrils taste; reason, in turn, cannot be affected by anything belonging to the senses, nor, conversely, can sensation give voice to speech.

For the Craftsman knew that it was advantageous for none of these to hear the voice of its neighbor; rather, the parts of the soul were to exercise their own proper powers, unconfused, for the benefit of living creatures, being kept apart from fellowship with one another, while the parts of vice were to be brought to utter confusion and destruction, so that, whether sounding together or existing by themselves, they might not become a source of harm to the better portion.

For this reason he also says, “The Lord scattered them from there” (Gen. 11:8), which is equivalent to saying he dispersed them, drove them into exile, made them vanish. For to sow is the cause of good things, but to scatter abroad is the cause of evil; the one occurs for the sake of increase, growth, and the generation of other things, the other for destruction and ruin. The God who plants wishes to sow nobility and goodness throughout the universe, but to scatter and drive out from the commonwealth of the world that accursed impiety, so that virtue-hating characters may at last cease building the city of vice and the tower of godlessness.

For once these have been scattered, those who long ago fled the tyranny of folly will find their way home through a single proclamation, which God himself has written and confirmed, as the oracles make plain, where it is declared: “If your dispersion is from one end of heaven to the other, from there he will gather you” (Deut. 30:4).

So it is fitting that the concord of the virtues should be attuned by God, and the discord of the vices dissolved and destroyed by him. The name most proper to vice is confusion, of which every fool is clear proof, employing words, counsels, and deeds that are worthless and in disarray.

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