Philo of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
"Now Sarah, the wife of Abraham, bore him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar. And Sarah said to Abraham: See, the Lord has closed me up, so that I do not bear; go in to my slave girl, that you may have children by her" (Gen. 16:1-2).
The name Sarah, translated, means "my sovereignty." For the wisdom that is in me, and the self-control that is in me, and the particular justice, and each of the other superior qualities that happen to belong to me alone, is a sovereignty over me alone; for it governs me and rules me, since I have chosen to obey it, being by nature a queen.
This power Moses declares, most paradoxically, to be both barren and exceedingly fruitful, since he acknowledges that the most populous of nations came into being from her. For in truth, virtue is barren toward everything base, but enjoys such an easy fruitfulness in good things that it needs no midwife's art at all — for it brings forth before the midwife can arrive.
Now animals and plants, resting for the greater part of the year, bear their proper fruits once, or at most twice, in accordance with the number that nature has assigned to each, fitted to the yearly seasons. But virtue, never resting, but continually and without interruption, at every indivisible moment of time, gives birth — never indeed to infants, but to graceful words, blameless counsels, and praiseworthy actions.
But neither does wealth benefit its possessors if they cannot use it, nor does a fruitful wisdom benefit us if it does not also bring forth what is useful to us ourselves. For some she judged altogether worthy of living with her, while others did not yet seem to have reached the age to sustain a praiseworthy and temperate household; to these she permitted the preliminary rites of marriage, giving them hope that they would one day also celebrate the marriage itself.
Sarah, then, the virtue that rules my soul, was bearing children, but not to me; for I, being still young, was not yet able to receive her offspring — right thinking, right action, piety — because of the multitude of bastard children whom empty opinions had begotten upon me. For the nurture of these, and the ceaseless care and unending anxieties they demanded, forced me to neglect the legitimate children, the true citizens of the soul.
It is good, then, to pray not only that virtue may bear children — for she is fruitful even without prayer — but that she may bear them to us ourselves, so that, sharing in her seeds and offspring, we may be happy. For she is accustomed to bear only to God, gratefully rendering the firstfruits of whatever good things she has received to the one who opened, as Moses says, "the ever-virgin womb" (Gen. 29:31).
And indeed of the lampstand — the archetype, the model of the copy — he says that it shines from the one part, evidently the part turned toward God; for being the seventh and middle branch among the six lamp-stems divided into two triads on either side as bodyguards, it sends its rays upward toward Being, considering its light too bright for
mortal sight to bear (Exod. 25:37, 31). For this reason he does not say that Sarah does not bear at all, but that she does not bear to a particular someone. For we are not yet able to receive the offspring of virtue, unless we first make the acquaintance of her handmaid; and the handmaid of wisdom is the general education that comes through the preliminary studies.
For just as in houses there are outer courts before the inner doors, and in cities the suburbs, through which one may pass to go inside, so too the general studies stand before virtue; for these are the road that leads to her.
One must know that great undertakings have great preludes as well. And virtue is the greatest of undertakings; for it concerns itself with the greatest of materials, the whole of human life. It is fitting, then, that it should not employ brief preludes, but grammar, geometry, astronomy, rhetoric, music, and the whole of the other rational studies, of which Sarah's handmaid Hagar is the symbol, as we shall show.
"Sarah said," it says, "to Abraham: See, the Lord has closed me up, so that I do not bear; go in to my slave girl, that you may have children by her" (Gen. 16:1). We must set aside from the present discussion the union and intercourse of bodies with bodies that have pleasure as their end; for what is meant is the union of the mind with virtue, the mind desiring to have children by her, but if it cannot do so at once, then at least being taught to become betrothed to her handmaid,
that is, to intermediate education. And it is worth marveling at the modesty of wisdom, who did not think it right to reproach us for our slowness, or our utter barrenness, in coming to birth, even though the oracle spoke the truth in saying "she did not bear" — not out of jealousy, but because of our own unfitness. For it says, "the Lord closed me up, so that I do not bear," and does not add "to you," so that it should not seem to be casting misfortune in our teeth or reproaching others. "Go in, then," it says, "to my slave girl,"
the intermediate education of the intermediate and general sciences, that you may first have children by her; for afterward you will also be able to enjoy your union with the mistress for the begetting of legitimate children.
For grammar, by teaching us the history found in poets and prose writers, will produce understanding and broad learning, and will teach us to look with contempt upon all that empty opinion puffs up as grand, on account of the misfortunes that story tells the celebrated heroes and demigods of the poets to have suffered.
Music, charming away what is unrhythmic with rhythms, what is discordant with harmony, and what is out of tune and unmelodious with melody, will bring what is dissonant into consonance. Geometry, implanting the seeds of equality and proportion in a soul that loves learning, will through the elegance of continuous study instill in it a zeal for justice.
Rhetoric, sharpening the mind for contemplation and training the reasoning faculty for expression, and welding it together, will show the human being to be truly rational, by cultivating that peculiar and special gift which nature has bestowed on no other living creature.
Dialectic, the sister and twin of rhetoric, as some have called it, distinguishing true statements from false and refuting the plausibilities of sophistries, will heal a great sickness of the soul, namely deception. It is profitable, then, to associate and practice beforehand with these and similar studies; for perhaps, perhaps, it will happen to many of us that through these subject arts we shall come to be known to the sovereign virtues.
Do you not see that even our body does not partake of solid and costly foods before it has, in its infant age, been nourished on varied, milk-like foods? In the same way, consider that the general studies and the particular theories within each of them are prepared as childhood nourishment for the soul, while the virtues are the more perfect food, truly fitting for grown men.
The first characteristics of intermediate education are represented by two symbols, that of race and that of name. By race she is Egyptian, and she is called Hagar, which, translated, means "sojourning"; for it is necessary that one who takes part in the general studies, and is a companion of broad learning, should be allotted to the earthly and Egyptian body, needing eyes in order to see and read, ears in order to attend and hear, and the other senses in order to unfold each of the objects of sense.
For that which is judged cannot naturally be apprehended apart from that which judges; and it is sense-perception that judges the perceptible, so that nothing precise concerning the perceptible world — in which lies the greater part of philosophizing — could be attained without sense-perception. And sense-perception, the more bodily part of the soul, is rooted in the vessel of the whole soul, and the vessel of the soul is, by symbol, called Egypt.
This, then, is the one characteristic derived from race, which the handmaid of virtue has received as her lot; let us now examine what sort of characteristic derives from her name. It happens that intermediate education has the status of a resident alien. For knowledge and wisdom and virtue in its entirety are alone, in truth, native-born, indigenous, and citizens of the universe, while the other branches of learning, obtaining second, third, and last prizes, occupy a middle ground between foreigners and citizens; for they belong purely to neither race, and yet in some measure touch upon both.
For a resident alien is like the citizens in that he dwells among them, but like the foreigners in that he does not have his home there; just as, I think, adopted children, in that they inherit the property of those who adopted them, are like the legitimate children, but in that they were not begotten by them, are like strangers. The same relation that a mistress has to her handmaid, and a citizen wife to a concubine, virtue Sarah has to education Hagar; so that, fittingly, for the one who has aspired to contemplation and knowledge, whose name is Abraham, virtue, Sarah, would be his wife, and his concubine would be Hagar, the whole of general education.
The one, then, to whom right thinking comes through instruction would not reject Hagar; for the acquisition of the preliminary studies is altogether necessary. But if someone, having recognized the contests set before virtue, applies himself to them with unremitting and continuous exercises, holding fast to training, he will take to himself two citizen wives, and as many concubines, the handmaids of the citizen wives.
Each of these was allotted a different nature and character. To begin with the citizen wives: the one is a most healthy, most stable, and most peaceable motion, whom he named, from what befell her, Leah. The other is like a whetstone, and is called Rachel, against whom the mind that loves contest and exercise is sharpened and made keen; her name is translated "vision of unhallowed things," not because she sees profanely, but on the contrary, because she considers visible and perceptible things, in comparison with the pure nature of the invisible and intelligible, to be unholy and profane.
For since our soul is twofold, possessing a rational part and an irrational part, it happens that each has its own virtue: Leah belongs to the rational part, and Rachel to the irrational.
For the one trains us, through the senses and all the parts of the irrational faculty, to hold in contempt those things that deserve to be held of no account — reputation, wealth, and pleasure — which the great herd-like crowd of men, with corrupted ears and with the whole tribunal of the other senses likewise corrupted, judges to be things worth looking at and worth fighting for.
while the other teaches us to turn away from the uneven and rough road, impassable to souls that love virtue, and instead to walk smoothly along the highway, without stumbling or slipping underfoot.
It follows of necessity that the handmaid of the first will be the interpretive power exercised through the organs of speech, and the rational invention of clever arguments that casts its spell through well-aimed plausibility; while the handmaid of the second will be the necessities of nourishment, drink and food.
He has recorded for us the names of the two handmaids, Zilpah and Bilhah. Zilpah, when translated, means ‘a mouth that walks,’ a symbol of the interpretive and discursive faculty; while Bilhah means ‘swallowing,’ the first and most necessary support of mortal creatures, for by swallowing our bodies find their anchorage, and the cables of life are made fast to it as to a foundation.
So the man in training keeps company with all the powers named, with some as free women, citizens’ wives, and with others as slaves and concubines. He desires the movement of Leah — for smooth movement, occurring in the body, produces health, and in the soul it would produce nobility of character and justice — and he loves Rachel too, as he wrestles against the passions and trains himself for self-control and sets himself in opposition to everything perceived by the senses.
For there are two modes of benefit: one that comes through the enjoyment of good things, as in peacetime, and one that comes through resistance to and the stripping away of evils, as in war. Leah, then, is the one through whom it happens that we enjoy the elder and ruling goods, while Rachel is the one through whom we gain, as it were, spoils of war. Such, then, is life together with the free-born wives.
But the man in training also has need of Bilhah — of swallowing — though as a slave and concubine; for without nourishment and life not even living well could be attained, since the intermediate things are always the foundations of the better ones. And he has need too of Zilpah, of discursive interpretation, so that his rational faculty may be gathered together toward perfection from two sources at once: from the spring within the understanding, and from the outflow through the organ of speech.
But these men became husbands of several wives and concubines, and not merely of free-born wives, as the sacred writings show; whereas Isaac had neither more than one wife nor any concubine at all — only his lawful wife lived with him to the end. Why is this?
Because the virtue attained through teaching, which Abraham pursues, has need of several things — of legitimate doctrines belonging to practical wisdom, and of illegitimate ones belonging to the studies of general education — and so too does the virtue perfected through training, which Jacob evidently pursued with such zeal; for acts of training proceed through many different doctrines, some leading and some following, some coming ahead and some lagging behind, involving labors now smaller, now greater.
But the self-taught kind, which Isaac shares — joy, the best of the good emotions — has been allotted a nature that is simple, unmixed, and unadulterated, needing neither training nor teaching, the very things for which there is need of concubine sciences, and not only of free-born ones. For once God has rained down the self-taught and self-instructed good from heaven above, it would be impossible to still keep company with slave and concubine arts, reaching out, as it were, for bastard children of illegitimate doctrines.
For he is recorded as a man who has received this privilege from a mistress and queenly virtue; among the Greeks she is called Patience, among the Hebrews Rebekah. For the man who has found wisdom without toil or hardship, through the good fortune of his nature and the good bearing of his soul, seeks nothing further toward improvement.
For he has ready at hand the perfect gifts of God, breathed into him by the elder graces, and he wishes and prays only that these should remain with him. For this reason, it seems to me, the Benefactor, so that his graces might last forever for the one who received them, betrothed to him, as a wife, Constancy.
Recollection, indeed, takes second place to memory, and the man who recollects ranks below the man who remembers; for the one is like a man continuously in health, the other like one recovering from an illness — for forgetfulness is a disease of memory.
Now the man who makes use of reminding must first have forgotten what he once remembered. The sacred word, then, calls memory Ephraim, which means ‘fruit-bearing,’ while the Hebrews call recollection out of forgetfulness Manasseh.
For truly the soul of the man who remembers bears fruit from what it has learned, casting none of it away, while the soul of the man who makes use of recollection escapes the forgetfulness in which it was held before being reminded. So a free-born wife lives with the man of good memory — that wife is Memory — but a concubine lives with the forgetful man, and she is Recollection, Syrian by birth, boastful and arrogant; for Syria, when translated, means ‘lofty things.’
The son of this concubine, Recollection, is Machir, as the Hebrews call him — which in Greek means ‘of a father’; for those who recollect suppose that the mind, as father, is the cause of their being reminded, and they do not reckon that this very same mind once made room for forgetfulness too, and would not have admitted it, if remembering had depended on the mind itself.
For it is said: ‘These were the sons of Manasseh, whom the Syrian concubine bore him: Machir; and Machir fathered Gilead.’
Nahor too, Abraham’s brother, has two wives, a free-born one and a concubine; the free-born wife’s name is Milcah, and the concubine’s is Reumah. But this is not a historical genealogy recorded by the wise lawgiver — no one of sound mind should suppose such a thing — but an unfolding, through symbols, of matters able to benefit the soul. And by translating the names into our own language we shall know that this promise is true. Come, then, let us examine each of them.
Nahor is translated ‘rest of light,’ Milcah ‘queen,’ and Reumah ‘one who sees something.’ Now to possess light in the understanding is a good thing, but for it to rest, stay still, and remain motionless is not a perfect good; for it is profitable for evils to be treated with quiet, but it is advantageous for good things to be in motion.
For what use is a man with a beautiful voice who keeps silent, or a flute-player who does not play the flute, or a lyre-player who does not play the lyre, or in general a craftsman who does not put his craft into action? Mere theory, without practice, is of no benefit at all to those who possess it; for a man who knows how to compete in the pankration, or to box, or to wrestle would gain no benefit from athletic training if his elbow were disabled, nor would one who has thoroughly learned the science of running, if he were afflicted by gout or fell prey to some other affliction of the feet.
The most sun-like light of the soul is knowledge; for just as the eyes are lit up by rays, so too the understanding is bathed in light by wisdom, and, anointed with ever-new insights, it becomes accustomed to seeing more keenly.
So Nahor is fittingly translated ‘rest of light’; for insofar as he is kinsman to Abraham the wise, he has had a share in the light of wisdom; but insofar as he did not journey abroad with him — the journey from that which has come into being toward the uncreated, and from the world toward the world’s fashioner — he acquired a knowledge that is lame and incomplete, one that rests and remains fixed, or rather is set fast like a lifeless statue.
For he does not remove himself from the land of the Chaldeans — that is, he does not separate himself from the study of astronomy — since he has honored the thing made above the one who made it, and the world above God, or rather has come to regard the world itself as an absolute, sovereign god, rather than as the work of the sovereign God.
He takes Milcah as a wife — not one who by chance actually rules over men or cities as a queen, but one who bears only the name in common with such a queen. For just as one might, not unreasonably, call heaven, being the mightiest of created things, king of the objects of sense-perception, so too the science concerning it, which astronomers, and the Chaldeans especially, pursue, could be called the queen of the sciences.
This woman, then, is a wife of full status; but a concubine is she who sees only one particular thing among the things that are, even if it should be the most trivial of all. For it falls to the best kind to see the best, that which truly is—for Israel is translated “seeing God”—while to one who reaches for second prizes falls the second thing: the perceptible heaven and the harmonious order of the stars within it, a dance that is truly full of music.
Third are the skeptics, who lay hold neither of the mightiest things in nature, whether perceptible or intelligible, but wear themselves down over petty sophistries and hairsplitting arguments. To these belongs a concubine who sees something, even the smallest thing—Rouma—as a consort, since they are unable to advance to the search for better things, things from which they might actually benefit their own lives.
For just as among physicians the thing called “word-doctoring” falls far short of benefiting the sick—since diseases are cured by drugs, surgery, and diet, not by words—so too in philosophy there are certain word-peddlers and word-hunters who are only this: unwilling and unpracticed at curing a life full of sicknesses, but from earliest youth to extreme old age they wrangle and skirmish over verbal quibbles without a blush, as though happiness lay in names and phrases and an endless, interminable fussing over trifles, rather than in better establishing one's character—the wellspring of human conduct—by banishing vices beyond its borders and settling virtues within it.
Yet even the base admit concubines, that is, opinions and doctrines. At any rate Scripture says that Thamna, the concubine of Eliphaz the son of Esau, bore to Eliphaz Amalek (Gen. 36:12). Oh, the illustrious ignobility of that descendant! You will see his ignobility if you set aside the notion that these things are said about human beings, and instead examine the soul as though by dissection.
The irrational and immoderate impulse of passion, then, Scripture calls Amalek; for translated it means “a people that licks up.” For just as the power of fire consumes the fuel laid beside it, in the same way passion, seething, licks up and destroys everything in its path.
The father of this passion is fittingly recorded as Eliphaz; for translated it means, “God scattered me.” But is it not the case that whenever God shakes loose, scatters, and drives the soul away from himself, the irrational passion is immediately born? For the soul's God-loving faculty of sight—a noble scion—God plants, sending its roots out toward eternity and granting fruitfulness for the acquisition and enjoyment of the virtues.
For this reason Moses too prays, saying, “Bring them in and plant them” (Exod. 15:17), so that the divine shoots may become not short-lived but immortal and long-enduring. But the unjust and godless soul he banishes far from himself, scattering it into the region of pleasures, desires, and wrongdoing. This region is most fittingly called the place of the impious—not the mythical Hades—for the true Hades is the life of the wicked man: accursed, polluted, liable to every curse.
This same teaching is inscribed elsewhere too: “When the Most High divided the nations, as he scattered the sons of Adam” (Deut. 32:8)—he drove away all the earthbound dispositions that have taken no care to see anything heavenly and good, truly rendering them homeless, cityless, and scattered. For no base person keeps a home, a city, or anything else that belongs to fellowship intact, but being unsettled he is sown broadcast, carried everywhere, forever changing his abode, and unable to be fixed anywhere.
In the base person, then, vice arises from the wife of full status, but passion from the concubine. For the whole soul is, as it were, the lawful consort of reason—though a soul subject to seizure gives birth to vices—while the nature of the body is the concubine, through whom the origin of passion is observed; for the body is the region of pleasures and desires.
She is called Thamna, a name which translated means “a failing that is tossed about.” For the soul fails and grows powerless under passion, receiving great tossing and surging from the body because of the heavy storm that breaks upon it from the immoderacy of its impulse.
As the head of a living creature is to all the parts already mentioned, so is Esau the founder of this whole line, who is translated now as “a made thing,” now as “oak.” “Oak,” insofar as he is unbending, unyielding, disobedient, and stiff-necked by nature, taking folly as his counselor—truly oaken; and “a made thing,” insofar as the life lived with folly is a fabrication and a myth, full of tragic bombast and empty boasting, and again of laughter and comic mockery, having nothing sound in it, falsified, having shot truth far from its mark—truth being that quality-less, form-less, unfabricated nature which he holds in no regard, though the man in training loves it.
Moses bears witness to this, saying, “Jacob was an unfabricated man, dwelling in a house” (Gen. 25:27), so that his opposite would be homeless, a companion of fabrication, of made things, and of mythical nonsense—or rather, he is himself a stage-show and a myth.
The union, then, of a reason fond of contemplation with its wife-powers and its concubine-powers has been described as far as was possible; but we must weave together the sequence of the argument by tracing out what follows. “Abraham obeyed the voice of Sarah,” it says (Gen. 16:2); for it is necessary that the one who learns should submit to the commands of virtue.
But not all submit—only those in whom a fierce longing for knowledge has taken root. For nearly every day the lecture halls and theaters fill up, and those who profess philosophy run on without pausing for breath, stringing together their discourses about virtue,
but what use is what is said? For instead of paying attention, they send their minds elsewhere—some to voyaging and trade, some to revenues and farming, some to honors and public office, some to the profits available from each craft and pursuit, others to vengeance on enemies, and others still to the enjoyments found in erotic desires—and, in short, different people are absorbed in different things, so that, deaf for the sake of appearances, they are present only in body while absent in mind, no different from images and statues.
And if some do pay attention, they sit only for as long as they are listening, and once they leave, remember nothing of what was said; they have come to be delighted through hearing rather than to be benefited, so that their soul had no strength to conceive and carry to term any of it, but as soon as the cause that stirred pleasure fell silent, their attention too was extinguished.
Third are those in whose ears what was said still echoes, but who turn out to be sophists rather than philosophers. Of these, the discourse is praiseworthy but the life is blameworthy; for they are capable of speaking the best things but incapable of doing them.
It is hard, then, to find a person who is attentive and retentive, who values doing above speaking—qualities attested in the lover of learning through the phrase “obeyed the voice of Sarah.” For he is introduced not as one who hears but as one who obeys; and “obeying” is the most exact term for assenting and submitting.
Nor is the addition of “the voice” beside the point, meaning that he obeyed Sarah as she spoke rather than merely heard her. For it is characteristic of the learner to listen to voice and words, since he is taught by these alone; but the one who acquires the good by practice rather than by instruction attends not to what is said but to those who say it, imitating their life in its individual, blameless actions.
This is said of Jacob when he is sent to a marriage among his kin: “Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and went into Mesopotamia” (Gen. 28:7)—not “the voice” nor “the words”; for the man in training must be an imitator of a life, not a listener to words. The latter belongs to the one being taught, the former to the one who competes in the contest—so that here too we may grasp the difference between the man in training and the learner: the one being formed according to the speaker himself, the other according to the speaker's argument.
“So Sarah, Abraham's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her own maidservant, after Abraham had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abraham as a wife” (Gen. 16:3). Vice is by nature envious, bitter, and malicious, while virtue is gentle, sociable, and kindly, willing in every way to benefit those of good natural capacity, either through herself or through others.
Now then, since we are not yet able to bear children from prudence itself, she pledges her own handmaid—general education, as I have said—and all but undertakes to arrange and escort the marriage; for she herself is said to have taken this woman and given her as a wife to her own husband.
It is worth raising the question why Scripture again calls Sarah “the wife of Abraham” at this point, having already made this clear many times before; for Scripture does not practice the most worthless form of verbosity, namely repetition for its own sake. What, then, must be said? Since she is about to pledge prudence's handmaid, general education, Scripture says that she has not forgotten her agreements with her mistress, but knows that mistress to be his wife by law and by settled judgment, while this other woman is his wife only by necessity and the constraint of circumstance—and this happens to every lover of learning.
The man who has experienced this could be the most truthful witness. I myself, at any rate, when I was first goaded by the stings of philosophy toward longing for her, while still quite young, kept company with one of her handmaids, grammar, and whatever children I begot by her—writing, reading, the lore found in the poets—I dedicated to the mistress.
And again, coming together with another, geometry, and admiring her beauty—for she had symmetry and proportion in all her parts—I appropriated none of her offspring for myself, but to
And again, I met with another—geometry—and admired her beauty, for she had symmetry and proportion in all her parts; and none of her offspring did I keep back for myself, but gave them all as a gift to my noble wife.
I was eager also to meet a third—she was well-rhythmed, well-attuned, tuneful, and was called Music—and from her I begot diatonic and chromatic scales, and enharmonic ones, conjunct and disjunct melodic sequences, belonging to the concord of the fourth, the fifth, and the octave; and again I hid none of these away, so that my noble wife might become rich, served by a countless multitude of household slaves.
For some men, enticed by the love-charms of the handmaids, have made light of their mistress, philosophy, and grown old, some among poems, some among lines and figures, some in blendings of colors, some among countless other things, unable to run back up to the noble wife.
For each art has its own elegant refinements, certain seductive powers, by which some men, having their souls led captive, remain fixed, forgetting the agreements they made with philosophy. But the one who abides by the covenants procures everything from every side for her satisfaction. It is fitting, then, that the sacred word, admiring him for his faithfulness, says that even now Sarah was his wife, at the time when he took the handmaid to please her.
And indeed, just as the studies of general education contribute to the taking up of philosophy, so too does philosophy contribute to the acquisition of wisdom. For philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, and wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human and of their causes. It would follow, then, that just as general education is the handmaid of philosophy, so philosophy is the servant of wisdom.
Philosophy teaches self-mastery of the belly, self-mastery of what comes after the belly, and self-mastery also of the tongue. These things are said to be choiceworthy in themselves, but they would appear more venerable if they were pursued for the honor and pleasing of God. We must, then, keep the mistress in mind whenever we are about to court her handmaids; and let these be, as it were, husbands of the handmaids, but let that other truly be our wife—let this not merely be said.
He gives her not immediately upon arriving in the land of the Canaanites, but after ten years of sojourning there. What this means must not be examined carelessly. At the beginning of our coming into being, the soul deals only with the passions that grow up with it—griefs, pains, terrors, desires, pleasures—which come upon it through the senses, since the reasoning faculty is not yet able to see the things that are good and bad and to distinguish precisely how these differ from one another, but is still drowsy, as it were shut fast in deep sleep.
But as time goes on, when, leaving behind the age of childhood, we are about to become youths, the twin stem, virtue and vice, immediately springs up from a single root; and we come to apprehend them both, but we choose, in every case, one or the other—those of good nature choosing virtue, and those of the opposite disposition, vice.
Once these things have been sketched out in advance, one must know that Egypt is a symbol of the passions, and the land of the Canaanites a symbol of the vices; so that it was fitting that, having raised the people up out of Egypt, he should lead them into the land of the Canaanites.
For man, as I said, at the very moment of his birth is allotted the Egyptian passion, taking root among pleasures and pains as his dwelling; but afterward he sends out a colony toward vice, once the reasoning faculty has already advanced to sharper sight and apprehends both things, the good on the one hand and the evil on the other, but chooses the worse, because it partakes largely of the mortal, to which evil is akin, since the good, in turn, is akin to the divine.
But these are our native lands by nature—the passion, Egypt, belonging to the age of childhood, and vice, the land of Canaan, to the age of youth. Yet the sacred word, though it knows clearly the native lands of our mortal race, lays down as our task, giving orders about what must be done and what will be advantageous, that we hate their customs and their laws and their practices, when it says: "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them: I am the Lord your God. According to the practices of the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the practices of the land of Canaan, into which I am bringing you, you shall not do; and you shall not walk in their laws. You shall do my judgments, and keep my ordinances, and walk in them: I am the Lord your God. And you shall keep all my ordinances and all my judgments, and do them. The one who does them shall live by them: I am the Lord your God" (Leviticus 18:1–5).
Therefore true life belongs to the one who walks in God's judgments and ordinances, so that death would be the practices of the godless. Some things are unseen forms of passion and of the vices, from which the multitudes of the impious and the unholy spring up.
After ten years, then, of sojourning among the Canaanites, we shall take Hagar to wife, since as soon as we are born endowed with reason we lay claim to that ignorance and lack of instruction which is by nature harmful, but later, and in the perfect number, the decad, we come to desire the lawful education that is able to benefit us.
Now the account concerning the decad has been worked out with precision by the sons of the musicians, and our most holy Moses has praised it not modestly, dedicating to it the finest things: the first-fruits, the offerings of first produce, the continual gifts of the priests, the observance of the Passover, the atonement, the release and return to the ancient allotments that comes every fifty years, the construction of the indissoluble tabernacle, and countless other things, which it would take long to mention.
But the essential points must not be passed over. To begin with, Noah—the first man to be proclaimed righteous in the sacred writings—he introduces as the tenth from the man molded out of earth, not wishing to set before us a mere quantity of years, but to teach clearly that just as the decad is the most perfect limit of the numbers proceeding from the unit, so righteousness in the soul is the perfect limit, truly the boundary of the actions that make up a life.
For the oracles have declared that the triad, multiplied by itself, which produces the number nine, is most hostile, while they have welcomed the unit added on to complete the decad, as I have said.
Here is a sign: when the nine kingships of the kings were involved—at the time when civil strife blazed up, the four passions having taken up arms against the five senses, and the whole soul, like a city, was in danger of undergoing pillage and destruction—the wise Abraham marched out and, appearing as the tenth, put an end to it (Genesis 14).
This man secured calm instead of storm, and health instead of sickness, and, if the truth must be told, life instead of death, since God, who grants victory, displayed him as bearer of the trophy; to whom he also dedicates the tithes as thank-offerings for the victory (Genesis 14:20).
And indeed, of every tame and domesticated creature that comes "under the rod"—by which I mean instruction—the tenth is set apart, becoming, by the ordinance of the law, "holy" (Leviticus 27:32), so that from many examples we may be taught the kinship of the decad with God, and of the number nine with our mortal race.
But it is not from animals alone that tithes are to be offered as first-fruits; it has also been ordained concerning whatever springs up from the earth. For he says: "Every tithe of the land, from the seed and from the fruit of the tree, is holy to the Lord; and every tithe of oxen and of sheep, and everything that passes under the rod in the counting, the tenth shall be holy to the Lord" (Leviticus 27:30, 32).
Do you see that he thinks it right that first-fruits should be offered even from the bodily mass that surrounds us, which is truly of earth and of wood? For its life and persistence and growth and health come to it by divine grace. And do you see that it has also been ordained that first-fruits be offered again from the irrational animals within us ourselves—these being the senses? For seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting, and touching besides, are divine gifts, for which thanks must be given.
But indeed, we are taught to praise our benefactor not only for the masses of the body, made of wood and earth, nor for the irrational animals, the senses, but also for the mind, which, properly speaking, is the human being within the human being—the better part within the worse, the immortal within the mortal.
For this reason, I think, he consecrated all the firstborn, exchanging for them the tenth—I mean the Levitical tribe—for the maintenance and safeguarding of holiness and piety and the services that are referred to the honor of God. For the first and best thing within us is reasoning, and it is fitting to offer to God, who has granted us the abundant capacity to think, the first-fruits of understanding and quickness of mind, of apprehension and prudence, and of the other faculties that belong to it.
It is from this that the man of ascetic practice, setting out in prayer, said: "Of all that you give me, I will tithe a tenth to you" (Genesis 28:22); while the oracle recorded after the prayers of victory, which Melchizedek—who has obtained a priesthood self-taught and untaught—offers, says, "for he gave to him," it says, "a tenth of everything" (Genesis 14:20): from the things of perception, right perceiving; from the things of speech, speaking well; from the things of the mind, thinking well.
From each of these three measures, then, a tenth must be set apart as a kind of sacred offering, so that speaking, perceiving, and comprehending may all be examined without blame and in health, according to God. For this is the true and just measure; what falls short of it, on our part, is false and unjust.
It is fitting, then, that also in the sacrifices a tenth part of the measure of fine wheat flour should be brought up to the altar together with the victims (Exodus 29:40), while the number nine, the remainder left from the tenth, stays behind with us.
With these things the continual sacrifice of the priests also harmonizes; for they are instructed always to offer the tenth part of an ephah of fine wheat flour (Leviticus 6:20). For they have learned, by passing over the ninth, to worship truly the tenth alone, who is God to the sense of perception - since the ordered world has been allotted nine portions,
eight of them in heaven - the fixed sphere and the seven wandering stars carried along in their own courses - and a ninth, the earth together with water and air; for these last belong to one kindred, since they undergo every sort of turning and change.
The many, then, honor these nine portions and the ordered world compacted out of them, but the perfect man honors the tenth God who stands above the nine, their craftsman; for having risen above the whole work he longed for the artisan himself, and was eager to become his suppliant and servant. For this reason the priest dedicates a continual tenth to the tenth, the only and eternal one.
This, properly speaking, is what should be called the Passover of the soul - the crossing over from every passion to the tenth, which is the object of mind and divine. For it is said: "On the tenth of this month let each man take a sheep for his household" (Exodus 12:3), so that from the tenth day the victims, kept watch over in the soul that has been illumined in two of its three portions, might be consecrated to the tenth, until the soul, having become wholly light throughout, like the moon nearly full as it waxes toward the second week, is able not only to guard its unharmed and blameless advances but already to offer them as a sacred act.
This is propitiation - for this too is confirmed on the tenth of the month (Leviticus 23:27), when the soul supplicates the tenth God, having been persuaded by careful reflection of the lowliness and nothingness of what is created, and having been taught the surpassing heights, in all that is good, of the uncreated. So he who has thus humbled and drawn himself in, without even a plea, at once finds God gracious and propitious, while those who are puffed up with boasting and self-conceit do not. This is release (Leviticus 25:9 and following),
this is the complete freedom of the soul, as it shakes off the wandering in which it went astray and puts in at the unwandering nature, returning to the portions allotted to it - the portions it received when it still breathed brightness and strove in the labors concerned with what is good. For then, admiring it for its victories, the sacred Word honored it, giving it an extraordinary prize, an immortal inheritance, its rank within the imperishable race.
This too is what the wise Abraham entreats, when the land of Sodom - in word - but in fact the soul barren of what is good and blind in its reasoning, was about to be set ablaze, so that if the memorial of justice, the number ten, should be found in it, it might obtain some reprieve (Genesis 18:32). He begins his entreaty from the number of release, fifty, and ends at ten, the final
redemption. From this, I think, Moses too, after choosing captains of thousands, of hundreds, and of fifties, appoints in addition captains of tens over all (Exodus 18:25), so that if the mind cannot be improved through the higher ranks, it may at least be purified through the lowest.
A most excellent teaching the studious son also learned, when he conducted that remarkable embassy, procuring for the self-taught sage his most fitting virtue, perseverance. "For he takes ten camels" - the remembrance of the number ten, I mean of right instruction, drawn from the many, indeed countless, memories of his master.
"He also takes some of his master's good things" (Genesis 24:10) - clearly not silver nor gold nor anything else made of perishable matter, for Moses never applies the name "good" to such things - but he equips and furnishes himself with the genuine goods that belong to the soul alone: teaching, advancement, diligence, longing, zeal, inspired impulses, prophecies, a passionate desire to succeed.
Practicing and training himself in these, when he is about to make harbor as if out of the open sea, he will take two earrings, a drachma's weight each, and ten gold bracelets for the hands of the woman he is procuring (Genesis 24:22). Oh, an arrangement worthy of God! That what is heard should be a single drachma, an unbroken unit and one by nature - for it is fitting that hearing attend to nothing except a single word, one that rightly recounts the virtues of the One and only God - and that the undertakings should be ten pieces of gold; for actions in accordance with wisdom are made sure by perfect numbers, and each such action is more precious than gold.
Such also is the offering, chosen by merit, that the rulers made when the soul, adorned by philosophy in a manner worthy of the sacred, kept the dedication festival, giving thanks to God its teacher and guide. "For he dedicates a censer of ten shekels of gold, full of incense" (Numbers 7:14), so that the wise man alone may judge the fragrances given off by prudence and every virtue.
And when they seem to be pleasing, Moses will sing the refrain, saying: "The Lord smelled a fragrance of sweetness" (Genesis 8:21), setting the smelling in place of approving; for God is not shaped like a human being, nor does he have need of nostrils or any other bodily organs.
Proceeding further, in speaking of the divine dwelling, the tabernacle, he will say, "ten curtains" (Exodus 26:1); for the whole structure of wisdom has been allotted the perfect number, ten; and wisdom is the court and royal dwelling of the ruler of all and only sovereign King.
This, then, is the house perceived by mind; the house perceived by sense is the ordered world, since he wove the curtains together also from materials that are symbols of the four elements. For they are worked from fine linen, hyacinth-blue, purple, and scarlet (ibid.), four kinds, as I said. Fine linen is a symbol of earth, for it grows from it; hyacinth-blue of air, for this color is black by nature; purple of water, for the cause of its dye comes from the sea, from the shellfish that shares its name; and scarlet of fire, for it most resembles flame.
Again, when Egypt grew unruly, exalting the mind that sets itself against God by conferring on it the insignia of royalty - the throne, the scepter, the diadem - the overseer and guardian of all things admonishes it with ten plagues and punishments.
In the same way Abraham too promises the wise man that he will bring about the destruction and complete ruin of neither more nor fewer, but precisely ten nations, and will give the land of those destroyed to his descendants (Genesis 15:18-20), deeming it right to make use of the number ten everywhere - for praise and for blame, for honor and for punishment.
Yet why do we recall these things? For the sacred and divine legislation Moses has recorded, all together, in ten sayings; and these are the ordinances, the general chapters of the countless particular laws, the roots and origins and ever-flowing springs of the injunctions that contain commands and prohibitions for the benefit of those who use them.
It is fitting, then, that the union with Hagar comes ten years after the arrival in the land of Canaan; for we cannot, the moment we become rational beings, while our understanding is still soft, reach out for the general course of instruction, but only after we have made our understanding and quickness of mind firm, so that we no longer approach all things with a light and superficial judgment, but with a settled and secure one.
For this reason what follows is woven on in due sequence: "he went in to Hagar" (Genesis 16:4); for it is fitting that the one who is learning should go to the teacher for the sake of knowledge, so as to be taught the lessons appropriate to human nature. Here the pupil is represented as going to the teacher; but often it is she who runs ahead, banishing envy from herself and drawing to herself those who are well endowed by nature.
One may see, at any rate, virtue - Leah - going out to meet the man in training and saying to him, "You shall come in to me today" (Genesis 30:16), when he was returning from the field. For where else ought the steward of the fields and plants of knowledge to go, if not to virtue, once she has been cultivated?
There are times, too, when she tests those who come to her, to see how much eagerness and diligence they have; she does not go to meet them, but veils her face and sits, like Tamar, at the crossroads, giving those who pass by the impression of a prostitute (Genesis 38:14-15), so that those who are curious enough to uncover her may bring to light and behold the untouched, undefiled, and truly virginal beauty, most excellent of all, of modesty and self-control.
Who, then, is the one given to inquiry and love of learning, who thinks it right to leave nothing veiled unexamined and unsearched, if not the commander-in-chief and king, the one who abides by and rejoices in his agreements with God, whose name is Judah? For it says, "He turned aside to her on the road and said, 'Let me come in to you'" (ibid. 16) - though he was not going to force the matter - and to consider what power lies veiled there, and for what it has been prepared.
After the entrance, then, it is written, "and she conceived" (ibid. 18), and the text does not expressly indicate who does the conceiving; for the discipline conceives and seizes upon the learner, persuading him to be enamored of her, while the learner in turn seizes upon the one who teaches him, whenever he is eager to learn.
Often one of those who lead others through the intermediate branches of learning, having gained a gifted pupil, boasts of his teaching as though he alone were responsible for the pupil's aptitude, and, puffing himself up and swelling with pride, he holds his neck stiffly, arches his brows, and grows conceited, and from those who wish to study with him he demands a great deal, while those he perceives to be poor, though thirsting for education, he turns away, as though he alone had discovered some treasure of wisdom.
This is what "having in the womb" means: to be swollen, puffed up, and wrapped in a bulk greater than is fitting — through which some have even come to dishonor virtue, the mistress of the intermediate sciences, though she is honorable in her own right.
Now all the souls that conceive with understanding nevertheless give birth by distinguishing and separating things that are confused — as did Rebecca. For having received in her womb the understanding of the two nations of the mind, virtue and vice, by a good delivery she separates and distinguishes the nature of each (Gen. 25:23). But those souls that conceive without understanding either miscarry, or bring forth a contentious sophist who shoots and hurls his arrows (Gen. 21:20), or one who is himself struck and pierced by arrows.
And perhaps this is reasonable; for some souls think they "receive," others that they "have" in the womb, and the difference between the two is very great. Those who think they "have" ascribe the conception and the birth to themselves and speak of it grandly, while those who hold that they "receive" acknowledge that they possess nothing of their own, but recognize that the seeds and offspring are watered from outside, and they marvel at the giver; self-love, that greatest of evils, they thrust away, in favor of the perfect good, piety toward God.
In this manner, too, the seeds of legislation among human beings were sown. "For there was a certain man," it says, "of the tribe of Levi, who took one of the daughters of Levi, and had her. And she conceived, and bore a male child; and seeing that he was beautiful, they hid him for three months" (Exod. 2:1–2).
This is Moses, the purest mind, the truly beautiful one, who received both lawgiving and prophecy together through an inspired and god-possessed wisdom — he who, being of the tribe of Levi both on his father's and his mother's side, holds fast to truth from both lines equally.
The greatest profession of the founder of this tribe is this: he is bold enough to say, "He alone is God to be honored by me" (Exod. 20:3), and nothing else that comes after him — not earth, not sea, not rivers, not the nature of the air, not the changes of the winds or the seasons, not the forms of animals or plants, not sun, not moon, not the multitude of stars circling in harmonious order, not the whole heaven and cosmos together.
It is the boast of a great and transcendent soul to rise above creation and to overstep its boundaries, and to cling only to the uncreated, according to the sacred instructions, in which it is said, "to cling to him" (Deut. 30:20). Therefore to those who cling to him and serve him without ceasing, he gives himself in return as their portion. And an oracle guarantees this promise, in which it is said: "the Lord himself is his portion" (Deut. 10:9).
Thus souls are by nature apt to give birth by "receiving" in the womb rather than by "having." And just as the eyes of the body see sometimes dimly and sometimes clearly, in the same way the eye of the soul at times receives the properties of things confused and indistinct, and at times pure and clear.
The unclear and indistinct impression resembles an embryo not yet formed in the womb, while the vivid and altogether clear impression resembles one that has been fully shaped, fashioned in each of its inner and outer parts, and has received its fitting form.
On these matters a law was written, set down very finely and beneficially, as follows: "If two men are fighting and one strikes a woman who is with child, and her child comes out not yet fully formed, he shall be fined a penalty; whatever the woman's husband exacts, he shall pay along with an assessment. But if it is fully formed, he shall give life for life" (Exod. 21:22–23). For it is not the same thing to destroy a complete work of the mind and an incomplete one, nor a thing merely conjectured and apprehended, and a thing already hoped for and now existing.
For this reason, where the matter is unclear, an unclear penalty is legislated, but where it is complete, a fixed penalty is legislated — complete not in the sense of moral virtue, but in the sense of having reached completion by some technical process free from fault. For it is not the one who has "received" who carries it in the womb, but the one who "has" in the womb, professing self-conceit in place of freedom from vanity. Indeed, it is impossible for the one who has "received" in the womb to miscarry, since the plant, once sown by a competent hand, is fit to be brought to full term; but for the one who "has," it is not unnatural, since she is held fast by a disease without a physician.
Do not suppose that Hagar is said to "see herself" as having conceived, through the words "seeing that she had conceived" (Gen. 16:4); rather, it is her mistress Sarah who sees this. For later Sarah herself says of herself, "seeing that she had conceived, I was dishonored in her eyes" (ibid. 5).
Why is this? Because the intermediate arts, even if they do see the things proper to themselves, of which they are pregnant, see them altogether dimly; whereas the sciences apprehend clearly and with great vividness. For science is more than art, having gained from reason what is firm and unshakeable.
For the definition of art is this: a system of trained apprehensions directed toward some useful end, the "useful" being rightly added because of the existence of harmful arts and crafts; but the definition of science is: a sure and firm apprehension, unshakeable by reason.
Music, then, and grammar and their kindred we call arts — indeed those who are made proficient through them are called craftsmen, musicians and grammarians — but philosophy and the other virtues we call sciences, and those who possess them we call knowers; for they are prudent, temperate, and lovers of wisdom, and not one of them ever errs in the doctrines of a thoroughly worked-out science, as do those mentioned before in the theorems of the intermediate arts.
For just as the eyes see, but the mind sees more clearly through the eyes, and the ears hear, but the mind hears better through the ears, and the nostrils smell, but the soul perceives more vividly through the nostrils, and the other senses each apprehend what is proper to them, while the understanding perceives more purely and genuinely — for, properly speaking, this is the eye of eyes, the hearing of hearing, and a purer sense than each of the senses, using them as its assistants in a court of law, while it itself judges the natures of the things submitted, so as to agree with some and reject others — in the same way, the so-called intermediate arts, resembling the powers of the body, encounter their subjects by certain simple impressions, while the sciences do so more accurately and with exceptional scrutiny.
For what mind is to sense-perception, science is to art. For just as the soul is, so to speak, a sense of the senses, as was said before... [lacuna] ...each of these arts has appropriated for itself some small portion of what exists in nature, about which it labors and busies itself — geometry with lines, music with sounds — but philosophy claims the whole nature of existing things; for its material is this cosmos and the whole visible and invisible substance of what exists.
What wonder is it, then, if the science that surveys the wholes also beholds the parts, and does so better than they do, since it has been furnished with greater and keener-sighted eyes? Fittingly, then, sovereign philosophy will behold the intermediate education, her handmaid, as pregnant, rather than that handmaid beholding herself.
And indeed no one is unaware of this either: that philosophy has bestowed on each of the particular arts the principles and seeds from which their theorems are thought to have sprung. For geometry discovered further the equilateral and scalene figures, circles and polygons and the other shapes, but it was not geometry that discovered the nature of the point, the line, the surface, and the solid, which are the roots and foundations of what has been mentioned.
For how could geometry, in defining these, say that a point is that which has no part, a line is length without breadth, a surface is that which has only length and breadth, and a solid is that which has the three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth? These belong to philosophy, and the whole business of definitions belongs to the philosopher.
To write and to read is the task of the more elementary grammar, which some, altering the name, call "letters," while the unfolding of what is found in poets and prose writers belongs to the more complete grammar. So when grammarians go through the parts of speech, are they not then dragging off and appropriating as a side business the discoveries of philosophy?
For it is philosophy's own task to examine what a conjunction is, what a noun, what a verb, what a common noun, what a proper noun, what is elliptical in speech and what is complete, what is declarative, what is a question, what is an inquiry, what is inclusive, what is optative, what is imprecatory; for it is philosophy that has put together the study of self-complete statements, propositions, and predicates.
To see that an element is a semivowel, a vowel, or wholly voiceless, and how each of these is customarily pronounced, and the whole theory concerning sound, elements, and the parts of speech — has this not been labored over and brought to completion by philosophy? Yet after drawing brief trickles as though from a torrent, and squeezing what they have stolen into their own smaller souls, these thieves feel no shame in bringing it forward as their own.
For this reason, priding themselves against their mistress -- the one to whom the true authority and the confirmation of the things under study properly belong -- they hold her in no account. But she, perceiving their disregard, will reprove them, and will say with all frankness: I am wronged and cheated by men who, so far as lies with them, transgress our agreement.
For ever since you took to your bosom the preliminary studies, the offspring of my handmaid, you have honored her as a wedded wife, but have turned away from me in such a way as never even once to have come together with me. Yet perhaps this is only what I suppose about you, inferring from your open intimacy with the servant-girl a hidden estrangement from myself; but if your disposition is the opposite of what I have supposed, it is impossible for anyone else to know it, though easy for God alone.
For this reason she will fittingly say, "Let God judge between me and you" (Gen. 16:5), not because she has already condemned him as having done wrong, but because she is in doubt whether perhaps he may even be acting rightly -- a doubt which is truly resolved not long after, through the words with which he defends himself and heals her uncertainty, saying, "Behold, the maidservant is in your hands; deal with her as is pleasing to you" (Gen. 16:6).
For in calling her a "maidservant" he acknowledges both things at once, that she is a slave and that she is a child -- for the name "maidservant" fits both of these -- and at the same time he wholly acknowledges also their opposites, ascribing to the mistress maturity, and to the slave-girl her position as mistress, all but crying aloud: the encyclical education I embrace as younger and as a handmaid, but knowledge and understanding I have honored as mature and as mistress.
And the phrase "in your hands" signifies that she is subject to you. But it also indicates something else of this kind: the things belonging to the slave-girl come into the hands of the body -- for the ordinary needs of the encyclical studies belong to bodily organs and faculties -- but the things belonging to the mistress come into the soul; for by reasoning are the matters of understanding and knowledge entrusted.
So that by as much as the mind is more powerful and more effective and altogether superior to the hand, by so much have I judged the knowledge and understanding to be more admirable than the encyclical culture, and have honored it exceptionally. Take, then, O you who are and are considered by me to be mistress, all my instruction, and use it as a handmaid, "as is pleasing to you."
Now what is pleasing to you, I am not ignorant, is altogether good, even if not agreeable, and beneficial, even if far removed from what is pleasant. For those in need of correction, admonition is good and beneficial, which the sacred word signifies by another name: affliction.
For this reason it continues, "and she afflicted her" (Gen. 16:6), equivalent to: she admonished her and brought her to her senses. For a sharp goad is exceedingly profitable to those living in ease and unrestraint, as it is to unruly horses, since with the whip and with training alone they can scarcely be tamed and made gentle.
Or do you not see the prizes set before those who go unreproved? They grow sleek, they spread out, they fatten, they breathe splendor; then the utterly wretched and ill-starred are lifted up in impiety, crowned and proclaimed with pitiable garlands. For because of the smoothly flowing course of their good fortune, they have supposed themselves to be gods plated with silver and gold, after the manner of counterfeit coin, forgetting the true and truly existing God.
Moses too bears witness to this where he says, "He grew fat, he grew thick, he grew broad, and he abandoned God who made him" (Deut. 32:15); so that if excessive ease brings forth the greatest evil, impiety, then, on the contrary, affliction accompanied by law brings forth a perfect good, admonition worthy of song.
Setting out from this, he called the symbol of the first festival "the bread of affliction" (Deut. 16:3), that is, the unleavened bread. And yet who does not know that festivals and feasts produce cheerful gladness and good spirits, not afflictions?
But it is clear that he has used the word for the toil that brings correction. For most and greatest of goods are wont to arise from disciplined exercises and vigorous toils; and the festival of the soul is zeal, the toil for what is best when brought to its fulfillment. For this reason it is also prescribed "to eat the unleavened bread with bitter herbs" (Exod. 12:8), not as a mere relish, but because most people count as unpleasant the not swelling up and boiling over with desires, and being restrained and drawn together, thinking it bitter to unlearn the passion -- which is in truth
gladness and festival to a mind that loves the contest. For this reason, it seems to me, the laws were taught again in the place called Bitterness; for doing wrong is pleasant, but doing what is just is laborious -- and this is the truest law of all. For, it says, after coming out from the passions of Egypt "they came to Marah, and they were not able to drink the water of Marah, for it was bitter; therefore the name of that place was called Bitterness. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and he cast it into the water, and the water became sweet. There he set for him statutes and judgments, and there he tested him" (Exod. 15:23-25).
For the hidden trial and testing of the soul lies in laboring and being made bitter; for it is difficult to discern which way the balance will tip. For those who grow weary too soon collapse, judging toil to be a heavy adversary, and drop their hands through weakness like athletes who have given up, having resolved to run back to Egypt for the enjoyment of passion.
But those who endure the fearful and terrible things of the wilderness with great fortitude and strength contend through the struggle of life, keeping themselves undefiled and unconquered, and rising above the necessities of nature -- hunger, thirst, cold, heat, all the things that are accustomed to enslave others -- brought under control through great abundance of strength.
The cause of this was that the toil was not bare, but was accompanied by being made sweet; for it says, "the water was made sweet" -- sweet and pleasant toil is called by another name, love of labor. For the sweetness within toil is love and longing and zeal and affection for the good.
Let no one, then, turn away from such affliction, nor ever suppose that "the bread of affliction" is spoken of the table of festival and gladness as harm rather than benefit; for the soul that is being admonished is nourished by the doctrines of instruction.
This unleavened cake is so sacred that it has been commanded by oracles to set out twelve unleavened loaves, equal in number to the tribes, upon the golden table in the inner sanctuary (Exod. 25:29). And they are called loaves of presentation.
And by law it is also forbidden to offer any leaven or any honey upon the altar (Lev. 2:11); for one must not consecrate as holy either the sweetnesses of bodily pleasures or the loose and puffed-up exaltations of the soul, things that are by their very nature profane and unholy.
Is it not, then, fitting that the prophetic word, by name Moses, speaking with solemnity, should say: "You shall remember all the way by which the Lord your God led you in the wilderness, that he might afflict you and test you, and that it might be known what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not; and he afflicted you and made you hungry, and fed you with manna, which your fathers did not know, that he might declare to you that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds through the mouth of God" (Deut. 8:2-3)?
Who, then, is so impious as to suppose that God is one who afflicts, and that famine, that most pitiable destruction, is brought by him upon those who cannot live without food? For he is good and the cause of good things, a benefactor, a savior, a nourisher, a bestower of wealth, a giver of great gifts, having driven wickedness out from his sacred boundaries -- for it was thus that he exiled from paradise the burdens of the earth, both Adam and Cain. Let us not, then, be led astray by mere words,
but let us consider what is signified through the hidden meanings, and say that "he afflicted" is equivalent to "he disciplined and admonished and brought to his senses," while "he tried by famine" did not produce a lack of food and drink, but of pleasures and desires, of fears and grief and wrongdoings, and, in sum, of all the works either of vice or of passion.
And what follows next bears witness to this: "he fed you with manna." Is it fitting to call famine and affliction, or on the contrary the cause of abundance and prosperity, of freedom and good order, that food which, without toil and without hardship on the part of men, apart from effort, was given not from the earth as is customary but from heaven, a prodigious work, provided for the benefit of those who would partake of it?
But the many, the herd-like, suppose that those who are nourished on divine words live wretchedly and miserably -- for they have never tasted the all-nourishing taste of wisdom -- while those who live amid comforts and pleasures are unaware that they
Thus, then, a certain kind of affliction is beneficial, so much so that even its lowliest form, slavery, has been reckoned a great good. And this a father in the sacred writings prayed for his son -- the excellent Isaac for the foolish Esau.
For he said somewhere: "By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother" (Gen. 27:40), judging it most advantageous for the one who chooses war instead of peace, and who, as it were, bears arms in battle because of the faction and turmoil within his soul, to become obedient and to serve, and to obey in everything whatever commands the lover of self-control lays upon him.
From this, I think, one of the disciples of Moses, named "peaceable" — who in his ancestral tongue is called Solomon — says: "My son, do not disdain the discipline of God, and do not grow faint when reproved by him; for the Lord disciplines whom he loves, and scourges every son whom he receives" (Prov. 3:11-12). So it is that rebuke and admonition have been reckoned so noble a thing that through them acknowledgment of God becomes kinship with him. For what is closer to a son than a father, or to a father than a son?
But so that we may not seem to draw out our discourse by stringing argument upon argument, we will offer, apart from what has already been said, the clearest possible proof that a particular kind of affliction is the work of virtue. For there is a law of this sort: "You shall not afflict any widow or orphan; but if you afflict them with wickedness..." (Exod. 22:22). What does this mean? Can one be afflicted by anything other than wickedness? For if afflictions are the work of wickedness alone, then it is superfluous to write down what is already agreed upon, and it would be affirmed even without the addition.
He will certainly say: I know of one who is reproved by virtue and disciplined by wisdom as well. Therefore I do not hold every affliction blameworthy, but the affliction that is the work of justice and lawgiving — for it brings a person to soundness of mind through rebuke — this I admire above all, while the affliction that arises from folly and wickedness, being harmful, this I turn away from and rightly condemn.
So then, whenever you hear that Hagar was afflicted by Sarah, do not suppose that anything of what customarily happens in the jealousies of women took place. For the discourse is not about women, but about minds — the one still being trained in the preliminary studies, the other already contending in the contests of virtue.