On Flight and Finding

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

"And Sarah mistreated her, and she fled from her presence. And an angel of the Lord found her at the spring of water in the wilderness, at the spring on the road to Shur. And the angel of the Lord said to her, 'Slave-girl of Sarah, where have you come from, and where are you going?' And she said, 'I am fleeing from the presence of Sarah my mistress.' And the angel of the Lord said to her, 'Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hands.' And the angel of the Lord said to her, 'Behold, you are with child, and you will bear a son, and you will call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your humiliation. This one will be a wild man; his hands will be against everyone, and everyone's hands against him' (Genesis 16:6-12, omitting verse 10)."

Having said in the previous treatise what was fitting concerning preliminary studies and concerning ill-treatment, we shall next set down what concerns fugitives — the fitting subject. For Scripture makes mention in many places of those who run away, just as now it says of Hagar that, having been ill-treated, she "fled from the presence of her mistress."

I myself think there are three causes of flight: hatred, fear, and shame. Out of hatred, then, both women leave their husbands and men their wives; out of fear, children leave their parents and household slaves their masters; out of shame, friends leave their companions, whenever they have not done something pleasing to them. And I have known fathers, too, who because of their sons' soft and luxurious living have turned away from a severe and philosophic life, and out of shame have chosen to live in the country rather than in the city.

Of these three causes it is possible to find records in the sacred writings. The practicer Jacob, at any rate, flees his father-in-law Laban out of hatred, and his brother Esau out of fear, as we shall presently show.

Hagar, on the other hand, departs out of shame. The sign of this is that an angel — the divine Word — meets her, one who is to counsel and guide her back to her mistress's house, and who, encouraging her, says: "The Lord has heard your humiliation" (Genesis 16:11) — a humiliation you endured neither through fear nor through hatred (for the one is the passion of an ignoble soul, the other of a quarrelsome one), but for the sake of the image of self-mastery, namely shame.

For it would be likely, if she had been fleeing out of fear, that the one who had threatened her with fear should console her to feel gently disposed; for then it would be safe for the fugitive to return, but not before. But no one goes first to meet her, since she has been reconciled through herself; but the one who out of goodwill is at once friend and counselor — conviction — teaches her not merely to feel shame, but also to employ boldness. For shame without courage is only half of virtue.

The more exact characteristics the discourse to follow will disclose. But we must return to the topics proposed, and begin from those who flee out of hatred. For it says: "Jacob concealed it from Laban the Syrian, so as not to tell him that he was fleeing, and he himself fled, and all that was his" (Genesis 31:20-21).

What, then, is the cause of the hatred? For perhaps you desire to learn this. There are some who fashion into a god the qualityless, formless, and shapeless substance, neither knowing the moving cause nor taking pains to learn it from those who know, but living in ignorance and unlearning of the finest of studies, of which alone and above all it was necessary to work out the knowledge.

Laban belongs to this class; for the oracles assign to him the unmarked flock (Genesis 30:42). And "unmarked," as applied to the universe as a whole, is qualityless matter; as applied to human beings, it is the untaught and undisciplined soul.

There are others, of the better portion, who have said that mind came and set all things in order, bringing the disorder arising from mob-rule among existing things into the order of lawful rule, of kingship. Jacob is a member of this company, a dancer in its chorus, one who presides over the marked and dappled flock. And "marked" and "dappled," as applied to the universe as a whole, means form; as applied to human beings, the well-schooled and learning-loving understanding.

Having drawn deeply on what is by nature sociable, the marked one, companion of true monarchy, comes to the unmarked one — who, as I have already said, fashions material powers into gods and thinks nothing effective exists apart from these — in order to teach him that he does not think rightly.

For the world has come into being, and it has certainly come into being through some cause; and the reason of the maker is itself the seal by which each of existing things has been shaped. This is why complete form accompanies things that come into being from the very beginning, since they are impression and image of a complete reason.

For the living creature that has come into being is incomplete in quantity — witness the growths that accompany each stage of life — but complete in quality; for the same quality remains, since it has been stamped from a divine reason that remains and is in no way subject to change.

But seeing that the unmarked one is deaf to learning and to lawful oversight, the marked one rightly resolves upon flight; for he fears that, in addition to being unable to do him any good, he may even suffer harm besides. For associations with the unintelligent are harmful, and the soul, often against its will, receives impressions of their derangement. And truly by nature education is hostile to lack of education, and diligence to negligence.

This is why the powers under training, giving voice, cry out, recounting the causes of their hatred: "Have we still a portion or an inheritance in our father's house? Have we not been reckoned by him as strangers? For he has sold us, and has utterly consumed our money. All the wealth and glory which God has taken from our father shall be ours and our children's" (Genesis 31:14-16).

For being free, both in name and in thought, they consider none of the foolish to be rich or held in honor, but reckon all of them, so to speak, dishonored and poor, even should they exceed the fortunes of kings laden with gold. For they say they will possess not the wealth of their father, but the wealth that was taken away from him, nor his glory, but the glory that was taken away from him.

The worthless man has been deprived of true wealth and of honor that does not deceive; for these good things — prudence, self-mastery, and the kindred dispositions — are procured by virtue, which soul-loving souls inherit. Therefore it is not…

…the things that belong to the base man, but the things of which he has been deprived, that are abundance and true renown for the good. And he has been deprived of the virtues, which have become the possessions of these — so that the saying elsewhere spoken may agree with this: "We shall sacrifice to the Lord God the abominations of Egypt" (Exodus 8:26). For the finest and unblemished victims are the actions done according to virtue, which the passion-loving Egyptian body abominates.

For just as here, by a natural process, the things held sacred among the Egyptians as profane are, in the eyes of those who see sharply, said and reckoned all fit for sacrifice, in the same way whatever every fool has been deprived of and stripped of, of these the companion of true nobility shall be heir. And these are: true glory, indistinguishable from knowledge, and wealth — not the blind kind, but the most sharp-sighted of existing things, which admits no counterfeit coin, nor indeed anything lifeless at all, even should it pass as genuine.

Fittingly, then, he will flee from the one who has no share in the divine goods — who, even in the very matters where he accuses another, unknowingly incriminates himself, when he says: "If you had told me, I would have sent you away" (Genesis 31:27). For this very thing would have been worthy of flight — if, being a slave of countless masters, you had, while play-acting rule and leadership, proclaimed freedom to others.

"But I," he says, "did not take a human being as a fellow-worker for the road that leads to virtue, but obeyed divine oracles commanding me to depart from here — the very oracles that guide me even now. How, then, could you have sent me away?"

"Or would you have escorted me, as you boasted you would, with a gladness that was grief to me, and with unmusical music, with drums and inarticulate, irrational blows carried through the ears into the soul, and with the lyre" (ibid.) — instruments that are not so much lyreless and out of tune as the actions of that kind of life are? But indeed, these are the very things for the sake of which I resolved upon flight; and you, it seems, were devising counter-pulls against my flight, so that I might run back again, because of the deceptive and easily-led nature of the senses, upon which I have with difficulty managed to gain a footing."

Hatred, then, has been the cause of the flight just described; fear will be the cause of the one about to be described. For it says: "Rebecca said to Jacob: Behold, Esau your brother threatens to kill you. Now then, hear my voice, and rise up and flee to Laban my brother, to Haran, and dwell with him for some days, until your brother's fury and anger turn away, and he forgets what you have done to him; and I will send and fetch you from there" (Genesis 27:42-45).

For it is worthy of fear, lest the worse part of the soul, lying in ambush or even raising dust openly, should overturn and cast down the better part. And this is the best counsel of right-minded perseverance, the counsel of Rebecca.

"Whenever you see," she says, "the base man flowing in full flood against virtue, and giving much account to the things one ought rather to disregard — wealth, glory, pleasure — and praising wrongdoing as the cause of each of these (for those who do wrong become, they say, especially rich in silver and gold and glorious), do not turn at once to the opposite road and take up a life without possessions, without vanity, austere and solitary; for you will provoke your adversary and anoint against yourself a heavier enemy. Consider, then, what you must do to escape his wrestling holds."

Whenever, he says, you see the base man flowing in abundance against virtue and holding in high esteem the things one ought to disregard—wealth, reputation, pleasure—and praising injustice as the cause of each of these (since it is the unjust, above all, who become rich in silver and gold and renowned), do not turn to the opposite path and at once take up a life without money, without pride, austere and solitary. For you will only provoke your opponent and anoint a heavier enemy against yourself. Consider, then, what you must do to escape his wrestling holds.

Engage with the very same things—I do not mean the practices themselves, but the things that produce what has been named: honors, offices, silver, gold, possessions, colors, various shapes, beauties—and whenever you encounter them, like a good craftsman, engrave the finest form upon the material substances and bring the work to completion as something praiseworthy.

Or do you not know that when an amateur takes charge of a ship capable of being saved, he capsizes it, while a man skilled in piloting has often saved even a ship that was being lost? And of the sick, some who relied on the inexperience of their attendants have come off badly in body, while others through experience have escaped even dangerous diseases. And why prolong the point? For whatever is done with skill is always a refutation of what is done without skill, and true praise of the one is an unerring accusation of the other.

If, then, you wish to refute the base man of great wealth, do not turn away from abundance in money. For he will show himself to be either an illiberal and slavish money-lender and usurer, a wretched man, or, at the other extreme, a spendthrift swept along, most ready to gulp down and squander, the most ambitious patron of courtesans and pimps and procurers and every unrestrained troupe of revelers.

You, however, will furnish a subscription for your poor friends, will grant gifts to your homeland, will help marry off daughters of parents without means by providing a sufficient dowry, and, all but laying your own resources out in the open, will call to a share in them all who are worthy of the favor.

In the same way, too, if you wish to reproach the wicked man who is mad for reputation and boastful, then, having the power to be honored, do not turn away from the praise of the many. For thus you will trip up the wretch who struts and takes long strides in his arrogance. He will misuse his prominence for the outrage and dishonor of others who are better than he, exalting the worse sort through it; but you, on the contrary, will share your good repute with all who are worthy, securing safety for the good and improving the worse through admonition.

And if you go to tables of unmixed wine and lavish extravagance, go with confidence; for you will put the intemperate man to shame by your own self-control. For he, falling upon his belly and opening before his mouth his insatiable desires, will gorge himself without order, will snatch at his neighbor's portion, and, licking up everything, will feel no shame; and once he is glutted with food, drinking open-mouthed, as the poets say, he will provide laughter and mockery for onlookers.

But you will use moderate things without necessity, and if you are ever compelled to come to the enjoyment of more, setting reasoning in command over the necessity, you will never turn pleasure into displeasure but will—if one may put it this way—get drunk soberly.

Truth, then, would justly find fault with those who without examination abandon the business and money-making of political life and claim to have despised reputation and pleasure. For they are posturing, not despising; they put forward squalor and gloominess, living out a harsh and unkempt existence as bait, as though they were lovers of orderliness and self-control and endurance.

But they cannot deceive the more discerning, who peer within and are not led along by what is in plain view. For these, drawing back the veils that conceal other things, have looked upon what lies stored within, whatever its true nature is; and if it is beautiful, they have admired it, but if shameful, they have mocked it and hated the pretense.

Let us, then, say to such people: do you aspire to a life unmixed, unsociable, solitary, and isolated? What have you shown beforehand of the goods found in community? Do you turn away from money-making? Well, when you became men of business, did you wish to act justly? Do you affect to disregard the pleasures of the belly and those after the belly, while, when you had abundant material for them, did you practice moderation? Do you despise reputation? Well, when you were held in honor, did you practice freedom from pride? You have laughed at political life, perhaps not understanding how useful the thing is.

First, then, train and practice beforehand in the affairs of life, both private and public, and having become skilled in both statesmanship and household management through their sister virtues—the virtue of household management and that of statesmanship—set out, out of great abundance, on a migration to another and better life. For it is good to have first contended in the practical life as a kind of preliminary contest before the more perfect contest of the contemplative life. Thus you will escape the charge of hesitancy and idleness.

So too the Levites were ordained to carry out their tasks only up to the age of fifty (Num. 4:30ff.), and once released from practical service, to observe and contemplate each thing, receiving as the prize for their success in the practical life another life, one that delights in knowledge and contemplation alone.

And it is necessary, absolutely necessary, that those who claim a share in things divine should first fulfill what is required of human beings; for it is great foolishness to suppose that those unable to master the lesser things will attain the greater. Become known, then, first for virtue as it concerns human beings, so that you may also be commended for virtue toward God. Such is what endurance teaches to the one in training,

and we must examine the wording closely. "Behold," he says, "Esau your brother threatens you" (Gen. 27:42)—but is it not the oaken and, through ignorance, unpersuadable character, named Esau, that bears a grudge and, holding out the baits of mortal life for your destruction—money, reputation, pleasures, and their kin—murders you? But you, child, flee the present contest; for the strength has not yet been given to you in full, but the sinews of your soul are still, as befits a child, rather soft.

For this reason he also addressed him as child, which is a name at once of goodwill and of age; for we hold that the character in training, being young, stands beside the perfect character, worthy of friendship. Such a one is capable of carrying off the prizes set before children, but is not yet able to carry off those set before men; and the best prize of men is the service of God alone.

For this reason, whenever, not yet fully purified, but merely supposing we have washed away only what defiles our life, we arrive at the courts of that service, we leap back faster than we approached, unable to bear its austere regimen, its sleepless worship, and its continuous and unwearying toil.

Flee, then, for the present, both the worst and the best: the worst being the fictional invention of myth, the immoderate and discordant poem, the truly hard and oaken notion and persuasion born of ignorance, of which Esau is the namesake; and the best being the votive offering—for the priestly race is a votive offering to God, consecrated to the great high priesthood of him alone.

For to dwell together with what is bad is most harmful, and to dwell together with what is perfectly good is most perilous. Jacob, at any rate, both flees from Esau and is separated from his parents; for being still in training and still contending, he flees vice, but is unable to live together with perfect and self-taught virtue.

For this reason he will journey abroad to Laban—not "the Syrian," but the brother of his mother—that is, he will arrive at the brilliant splendors of life; for Laban is translated "white." But upon arriving he will not be haughty, puffed up by chance successes; for translated, "the Syrian" means one who is elevated. Now here Laban is not called "the Syrian," but the brother of Rebecca.

For the materials of life, when handed over to a base man, lift up and elevate the mind that is empty of good sense—the one named "the Syrian"—but for the lover of education who remains firmly and steadily fixed in the doctrines of nobility... this is the brother of Rebecca, of steadfastness; and he dwells in Haran, which, translated, means "holes," a symbol of the senses; for one who still dances in mortal life has need of the instruments of the senses.

"Dwell then, child," he says, "with him"—not for all time, but "for some days" (Gen. 27:44); and this means: learn thoroughly the domain of the senses, know yourself and your own parts—what each is and for what it exists and how it is naturally fitted to act—and who it is that moves and pulls the strings of these marvels, invisible and invisibly, whether it be the mind within you or the mind of the universe.

And when you have examined yourself, scrutinize also what belongs to Laban—the successes that seem brilliant according to empty reputation—so that you may be captured by none of them, but, like a good craftsman, skillfully fit them all to their proper uses. For if you show yourself, once you have entered this political and turbulent life, to possess a steady and well-schooled character, I will send for you from there (Gen. 27:45), so that you may obtain the same prize that your parents obtained. And the prize is the unswerving and unyielding

service of him who alone is wise. The father, too, teaches the same things, adding a little: for he says, "Rise up and flee to Mesopotamia, to the house of Bathuel, the father of your mother, and take for yourself from there a wife from among the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother" (Gen. 28:2).

Here too he does not call Laban "the Syrian," but Rebecca's brother, who is about to form a bond of kinship with the man in training through marriage. "Flee, then, to Mesopotamia"—that is, into the middle of the torrential river of life—and do not be swept away and swallowed up, but stand firm and vigorously repel the most violent surge of affairs that breaks over you from above and from either side and from every direction.

For you will find the house of wisdom a fair-weather and calm harbor, which will readily receive you when you anchor there. Wisdom's name is sung in the oracles as Bathuel, which, translated, is called "daughter of God"—and a genuine daughter indeed, and ever-virgin, having obtained a nature untouched and undefiled, both because of her own orderliness and because of the dignity of him who begot her.

He said that the father of Rebecca was Bethuel. And how could the daughter of God, wisdom, rightly be called a father? Is it because the name of wisdom is feminine, but its nature is masculine? For indeed all the virtues have designations that are feminine, yet powers and activities belonging to the most perfect of men, since that which comes after God—even if it should be the eldest of all other things—holds second place, as female to the male that makes all things, in accordance with its likeness to the rest; for the male always has precedence, while the female is deficient and comes second.

Let us then, giving no thought to the difference in names, say that wisdom, the daughter of God, is both male and father, sowing and begetting in souls learning, education, knowledge, prudence, and fine and praiseworthy actions. It is from this house that Jacob the practicer courts a marriage for himself; for where else than from the house of wisdom will he find a partner, a judgment beyond reproach, with whom he will spend the whole of his life?

He has spoken more precisely about flight when he laid down the law concerning murderers, in which he went through every type—voluntary killing, involuntary killing, killing by ambush, killing by premeditation. Read the law: ‘If someone strikes another and he dies, let him be put to death by death; but if he did not do it willingly, but God delivered him into his hands, I will give you a place to which the murderer may flee. But if someone plots against his neighbor to kill him by treachery and takes refuge there, you shall take him from the altar to be put to death’ (Exodus 21:12–14).

Knowing clearly that he sets down no superfluous word, I was at a loss within myself, under the boundless impulse to examine the meaning of the text, as to why he did not simply say that the willful killer should ‘be put to death,’ but ‘be put to death by death’; for by what else does one who dies come to his end, if not by death?

So, when I visited a wise woman named Reflection, I was released from my inquiry; for she taught me that some who are living are dead, and some who are dead are alive. Those who are base, she said, though they extend their years to extreme old age, are dead, since they have been deprived of the life that goes with virtue; but those who are good, even if they are separated from partnership with the body, live forever, having obtained a portion of immortal destiny.

She confirmed her own account also by oracles, by one such as this: ‘You who cling to the Lord your God, all of you are alive today’ (Deuteronomy 4:4)—for he knows that only the refugees and suppliants of God are living, and that all others are dead; and to those, it seems, he even bears witness of incorruption by adding, ‘live today.’

‘Today’ is an unbounded and untraversable age; for the cycles of months and years, and periods of time altogether, are the doctrines of men who have honored number. But the true name of the age is ‘today.’ For the sun, unchanging, is ever itself, going now above the earth and now beneath it, and by it day and night, the measures of the age, are distinguished—

she confirmed her teaching also by another oracle of this kind: ‘Behold, I have set before your face life and death, good and evil’ (Deuteronomy 30:15)—so, O all-wise soul, the good, that is virtue, is life, while evil, that is vice, is death—and in another place: ‘This is your life and the length of your days, to love the Lord your God’ (Deuteronomy 30:20). This is the finest definition of the immortal life: to be possessed by love and friendship for God, unmixed with flesh and body.

In this way the priests Nadab and Abihu, that they might live, die, exchanging a mortal life for an incorruptible one, and migrating from that which has come into being to that which has not. Of these the symbols of incorruption are sung, that ‘they died before the Lord’ (Leviticus 10:2), that is, they lived; for it is not lawful for a corpse to come into the sight of God. And again this is what the Lord said: ‘I will be sanctified among those who draw near to me’ (Leviticus 10:3), ‘but the dead,’ as it is also said in the hymns, ‘will not praise the Lord’ (Psalm 113:25)—

for the work belongs to them. But Cain, the accursed and fratricide, is nowhere in the legislation said to die dying—rather, there is even an oracle spoken concerning him of this kind: ‘The Lord God set a sign upon Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him’ (Genesis 4:15). Why?

Because, I think, impiety is an endless evil, once kindled, and never able to be quenched—so that the poet’s saying fits when applied to vice: it is not mortal, but an immortal evil; immortal, that is, in our life here, since compared to the life in God it is soulless and dead and, as someone said, ‘more fit to be cast out than dung.’

But surely different regions had to be assigned to different things—heaven to the good, the regions around the earth to evil. The good, then, has no fixed dwelling below; and even if it should ever come to us—for its father is generous with gifts—it is eager to run back rightly to its source; but evil remains here, settled far from the divine chorus, roaming through mortal life and unable to die out of the human race.

This same thing one of the men admired for wisdom proclaimed even more grandly in the Theaetetus, saying: ‘But it is not possible for evils to be destroyed—for there must always be something opposed to the good—nor can they be established among the gods; rather, of necessity they haunt mortal nature and this region here. Therefore one must try to escape from here to there as quickly as possible; and escape is becoming like God so far as possible; and to become like him is to become just and holy, with wisdom.’

Reasonably, then, Cain—the symbol of vice—will not die, if it must live among mortal humankind; so it is not off the mark that ‘be put to death by death’ is said of the murderer, for the reasons that have been shown.

‘But if he did not do it willingly, but God delivered him into his hands’ is very well said concerning those who commit involuntary killing. For it seems to him that voluntary acts belong to our own judgment, but involuntary ones belong to God—I do not mean the sins themselves, but rather, on the contrary, whatever serves as punishment for sins.

For it is unfitting for God to inflict punishment, as he is the first and best of lawgivers; rather he punishes through others who serve him, not through himself. For it befits him to extend favors, gifts, and benefactions himself, since he is by nature good and generous; but punishments he does not carry out without the command of himself as king, yet through others who are equipped for such tasks. Jacob the practicer bears witness to my account in what he says—

‘The God who has fed me from my youth, the angel who has delivered me from all evils’ (Genesis 48:15–16). For the older, greater goods, by which the soul is nourished, he attributed to God, but the younger goods, those that come from the avoidance of sins, to the servant of God.

For this reason, I think, when he was philosophizing about the making of the cosmos, having said that all other things came into being by God alone, he showed that man alone was fashioned with the help of other collaborators. For ‘God said,’ he says, ‘let us make man according to our image’ (Genesis 1:26)—a plurality being indicated by ‘let us make.’

The father of all things converses with his own powers, to which he gave the mortal part of our soul to fashion, imitating his own craft, when he was shaping the rational element within us, deeming it right that the ruling part in the soul be created by the ruler, and the subject part by subjects.

He made use of the powers with him not only for the reason stated, but because the human soul alone was to receive notions of good and evil and to make use of both—if it were not possible to use both alike. He therefore judged it necessary to assign the origin of evils to other craftsmen, and that of goods

to himself alone. Wherefore, when it was first said, ‘let us make man,’ as though about a plurality, there follows, as though about one: ‘God made man’ (Genesis 1:27). For of the true man—who is indeed the purest mind—God alone is the sole craftsman; but of the man so called, the one mixed together with sense-perception, the plurality is responsible.

For this reason, the man who is preeminent is indicated with the article—for it says ‘God made the man,’ meaning that formless and unmixed reasoning—while the other is spoken of without the addition of this article; for ‘let us make man’ signifies the man woven together out of both irrational and rational nature.

Following these same lines, he assigned the blessing of the good and the cursing of the guilty not to the same persons, although both acts carry honor, but since blessing the worthy holds the leading place among praises, while pronouncing curses on the base holds second rank, among those appointed to these tasks—there are twelve leaders of the tribes in number, whom it is customary to call tribal chiefs—he set six of the better ones over the blessing: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin; and the others over the curse: the firstborn and the last of Leah’s sons, Reuben and Zebulun, and the four illegitimate sons of the maidservants (Deuteronomy 27:12–13).

For the leaders of the royal and priestly tribe, Judah and Levi, take their place in the first rank. Reasonably, then, he also hands over those who deserve death for punishment to the hands of others, wishing to teach us that the nature of evil has been driven far from the divine chorus, seeing that even the good that imitates it in dealing with evil—namely, punishment—is carried out through others.

The words ‘I will give you a place to which the murderer may flee’ (Exodus 21:13), spoken of one who kills unwillingly, seem to me very well said; for here he calls ‘place’ not a region filled by body, but, through allegory, God himself, since, though he contains all things, he is not contained, and since he is the refuge of the universe.

It is therefore lawful for one who has evidently used an involuntary turning-aside to say that the turning happened by God's will — which is not lawful for one who has sinned deliberately. And Scripture says he 'will give' this not to the one who killed, but to the one with whom he converses, so that the inhabitant is one thing and the fugitive another. For to his own Word God has granted, as to a native, to dwell in his own knowledge as a homeland, but to the one who has fallen into involuntary faults he has granted refuge,

as to a foreign land for a stranger, not as a homeland for a citizen. Having philosophized in this way about involuntary acts, he next legislates concerning premeditated assault and deliberation, saying: 'But if someone lies in wait to kill his neighbor by treachery and he flees' to God, the place spoken of symbolically, beside whom it has fallen to all things to live — for indeed he says elsewhere: 'whoever flees there shall live.'

But is not the refuge to that which truly is eternal life, and flight from it death? If someone lies in wait, he does wrong altogether out of premeditation, and what is done with treachery is culpable as voluntary, just as, conversely, what is done without treachery is not even blameworthy.

None, then, of the wrongs done insidiously, treacherously, and out of premeditation should be said to happen according to God, but according to ourselves. For within ourselves, as I have said, are the storehouses of evils, but with God are the storehouses of good things alone.

Whoever, then, flees for refuge — that is, whoever blames not himself but God for his sins — let him be punished, being deprived of the altar, the refuge that belongs to suppliants alone for safety and security, and not without reason; for the altar is full of unblemished offerings, I mean of souls unharmed and purified; but a blemish hard to heal, or altogether incurable, is to say that the divine is the cause of evils.

Let such characters, then, who have been zealous to be lovers of self rather than lovers of God, walk outside the sprinkling-basins, so that, as polluted and unclean, they may not even from a distance behold the sacred flame of the soul that is kindled unquenchably and consecrated to God with its whole and entire power.

One of the sages of old, running up most excellently against this very point, dared to say: 'God is in no way whatsoever unjust, but as just as it is possible to be, and nothing is more like him than whoever among us in turn becomes most just. Concerning this is found the true skill of a man, as well as his worthlessness and unmanliness. For knowledge of this is wisdom and true virtue, while ignorance of it is folly and manifest vice. The other seeming skills and wisdoms, when they occur in political powers, are vulgar, and in the arts, menial.'

Having thus ordered that the man unholy and slanderous of divine things be led away from the most sacred places and handed over for punishment, he next says: 'Whoever strikes his father or mother, let him die,' and likewise, 'whoever reviles father or mother, let him die.'

For he all but shouts and cries aloud that no pardon is to be granted to any who blaspheme against the divine. For if those who revile their mortal parents are led away to death, of what punishment must we think worthy those who dare to blaspheme the Father and Maker of all things? And what reviling could be more shameful than to assert that the origin of evils lies not in us, but in God?

Drive them out, then, drive them out, you initiates and hierophants of the divine mysteries — those mixed, promiscuous, and adulterated souls, hard to purify and hard to wash clean, which carry about ears unclosed and a tongue unbarred, instruments ready for their own heavy misfortune, so that they may hear everything, even what is not lawful to hear, and blurt out everything, even what ought not to be spoken.

But those who have been trained in the distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts, and whose lot is a reverent mouth instead of a reviling tongue, are praiseworthy when they succeed, and, when they stumble unintentionally, not altogether blameworthy; and for this reason cities were also set apart for them as places of refuge.

It is worth examining with the utmost precision the essential points concerning this topic. They are four in number: first, why cities of refuge were set apart not from those allotted to the other tribes, but only from those of the Levitical tribe; second, why they number six, and neither more nor fewer; third, why three are beyond the Jordan and the others in the land of the Canaanites; fourth, why the time-limit fixed for the fugitives' return is the death of the high priest.

We must, then, speak fittingly on each point, taking our start from the first. It has been ordained, most appropriately, that refuge be sought only in the cities allotted to the Levites; for the Levites are themselves, in a sense, fugitives, having for the sake of pleasing God abandoned parents, children, brothers, and all mortal kinship.

The founder of this order, at least, is represented as saying to his father and mother: 'I have not seen you, and I do not know my brothers, and I disown my sons,' for the sake of serving that which is, without any divided allegiance. True flight is the deprivation of one's nearest and dearest; fugitives, then, are entrusted to fugitives, for amnesty regarding what they have done, on account of the likeness of their deeds.

Is it, then, for this reason alone, or also for that other reason, that the Levitical tribe of temple-attendants, when men had fashioned as a god the golden calf — that Egyptian vanity — slew them wholesale in a sudden onrush, moved by righteous anger together with an inspired frenzy and a kind of divine possession? 'And each man slew his neighbor and his nearest kin' — the body being the brother of the soul, the irrational the neighbor of the rational, and spoken reason the nearest kin of the mind.

For only in this way could the best thing within us be healed of the worst of poisons: first, if the human being were resolved into soul, its brother the body, together with its endless desires, being severed and cut away; and then, once the soul had cast off, as a scourge, the neighbor of the rational — the irrational — which, splitting itself fivefold like a torrent, stirs up through all the senses, as through channels, the flood of the passions —

and then, next, once reasoning had separated and cut off what seemed nearest of all, spoken reason, so that the reason within, the reasoning of the mind, might be left alone, bereft of body, bereft of sense-perception, bereft of the utterance of audible speech; for being so left, and living the life proper to solitude, it comes to worship purely and without distraction that which alone truly is. In addition to what has been said, this too must be recalled:

that the Levitical tribe consists of temple-attendants and priests, to whom the service of holy things is entrusted; and those who commit involuntary manslaughter likewise perform a service, if indeed, according to Moses, God 'delivers into their hands' those who have done deeds deserving death, for their destruction. But the one group is appointed to give honor to the good, the other to

punish the guilty. These, then, are the reasons why those who have committed involuntary manslaughter flee for refuge only to the cities of the temple-attendants. Who these cities are, and why they number six, must next be told. Perhaps, then, the oldest, strongest, and best metropolis — not merely a city, but the divine Word itself — is the one to which it is most profitable to flee first of all.

The other five, like colonies, are powers of the One who truly is, over which the creative power holds first place, by which the Existent fashioned the cosmos by reason; second is the kingly power, by which the Maker rules what has come to be; third is the gracious power, through which the Craftsman pities and has mercy on his own work; fourth is [ ... ] the share of the legislative power, through which he forbids what ought not to happen.

These are altogether excellent and most strongly fortified cities, the best refuges for souls worthy to be preserved forever; and the ordinance is kind and humane, sufficient to anoint and strengthen one toward good hope. Who could better have shown forth so great an abundance of powers able to benefit, suited to the differences among those who have fallen into involuntary turnings, whose strength and whose weakness are not the same?

He urges the one able to run swiftly to strain onward without pausing for breath toward the highest, divine Word, which is the fountain of wisdom, so that, having drawn from that stream, he may find, instead of death, eternal life as his prize; but the one not so swift, to take refuge in the creative power, which Moses calls God, since through it all things were established and set in order — for whoever grasps that the universe has come to be gains possession of a great good, namely knowledge of its Maker, and this at once persuades the thing made to love the one who planted it —

and the one not so ready for this, to take refuge in the kingly power — for the subject is admonished by fear of the ruler, even if the offspring is not admonished by the goodwill of a father, being corrected by a chastening necessity —; and for the one who cannot reach the boundaries already named, as though they lay too far off, other turning-posts of the necessary powers have been fixed nearer at hand: that of the gracious power, and that which enjoins what must be done, and that which forbids what must not be done.

For the one who has already grasped that the divine is not implacable but, through the gentleness of its nature, benevolent, and that even if he has sinned before, he may repent again in hope of amnesty; and the one who has come to understand that God is a lawgiver, and that by obeying whatever he commands he will be happy in all things — and the last of all will find as his last refuge a turning away from evils, even if not a share in the foremost goods.

These are the six cities which he calls places of refuge, of which five have been figured, and their likenesses exist among the holy things: the laws in the ark represent the commanding and forbidding power; the cover of the ark — which he calls the mercy-seat — represents the gracious power; and the winged Cherubim set upon it represent the creative and kingly powers;

The reasoning that stands above these things is the divine Logos, which never came into a visible form, since it resembles nothing perceived by sense, but is itself the image of God, the eldest of all intelligible things. It is stationed nearest of all, with no interval of separation between it and the One alone who truly is. For it is said: "I will speak to you from above the mercy seat, between the two cherubim" (Exodus 25:21), so that the Logos is the charioteer of the powers, while the one who speaks rides above him, giving the charioteer his commands for the right guidance of the whole.

The one, then, who is without any deviation at all — I will not even speak of the voluntary kind, since he has become free even of the involuntary — having God himself as his portion (Deuteronomy 10:9), will dwell in him alone. But those who, not by forethought but through unwilled errors, have gone astray, will have as their refuges the cities of asylum just named, which are so abundant and so generous.

Of the cities of refuge, three lie across, far removed from our race. What are these? The reasoning of the Ruler, and his power to create and his power to rule as king; for it is in these that heaven and the whole cosmos share.

But the cities near us, touching the mortal race of human beings — the only race to which erring belongs — are the three within: the gracious power, the power that commands what is to be done, and the power that forbids what is not to be done.

For these already touch us. What need is there of a prohibition for those who are not about to do wrong, or of a command for those not disposed to fail, or of the gracious power for those who will never sin at all? But our race has come to need these, because it is by nature inclined

toward both voluntary and involuntary offenses. Fourth and last among the points proposed was the fixed term for the return of the fugitives — the death of the high priest — which presents me with considerable difficulty in the letter of the text. For an unequal penalty is legislated for those who have done the same deed, if indeed some will remain in exile a long time and others a short time; for among the high priests some live very long lives and others very short ones, and some are appointed young, others old.

And among those convicted of involuntary manslaughter, some were exiled at the beginning of a high priest's tenure, others when the one holding the priesthood was already about to die, so that the former are deprived of their homeland for a very long age, while the latter lose only a single day, as it might happen — after which they lift their necks, snort, and laugh as they return to the nearest kin of those they killed.

We shall escape, then, this perplexing and hard-to-defend difficulty by resorting to the natural interpretation through implied meanings. For we say that the high priest is not a man but the divine Logos, who has no share in wrongdoing, whether voluntary or involuntary.

For Moses says that he cannot be defiled either by his father, the mind, or by his mother, sense-perception (Leviticus 21:11), because, I think, he was allotted incorruptible and utterly pure parents: a father who is God, who is also father of all things, and a mother who is Wisdom, through whom all things came into being.

And because his head has been anointed with oil — I mean that his ruling faculty is bathed in radiant light — he was judged worthy to put on the garments. For the eldest Logos of the One who Is puts on the cosmos as a garment — for he wraps himself in earth and water and air and fire and what is made of them — while the individual soul puts on the body, and the mind of the wise man puts on the virtues.

And that he will "never uncover his head" means he will never lay aside the royal diadem, the symbol not of an absolute but of a delegated and admirable rulership; nor again will he tear his garments (Leviticus 21:10).

For the Logos of the One who Is, being the bond of all things, as has been said, holds together and constrains all the parts, preventing them from being dissolved and torn apart; and the individual soul, to the extent that it has been allotted power, does not allow any of the parts of the body to be split off and severed contrary to nature, but keeps them all whole and leads them into an unbreakable harmony and union with one another; and the purified mind of the wise man keeps the virtues unbroken and unharmed, having fitted their natural kinship and fellowship together with a firmer goodwill.

This one, Moses says, "shall not go in to any dead soul" (Leviticus 21:11); and the death of the soul is the life lived with vice, so that no defilement, of the kind folly loves to inflict, will ever touch him.

To this one a virgin from the sacred family is joined in marriage, one whose resolve is pure, unstained, and incorruptible forever; for a widow, a divorced woman, a profaned woman, and a prostitute never become his wife (Leviticus 21:13-14), since he wages relentless and undeclared war against them forever. For to be widowed of virtue, to be cast out and exiled from her, and every profane and unholy persuasion, is his enemy; and the promiscuous, the much-mated, the many-godded — the wicked, godless thing, the prostitute — he does not deem worthy even to look upon, since he has set his love on the woman inscribed as belonging to one husband and father, the Ruler, God.

A certain excess of perfection is discernible in this manner of life. For he knows that even the man who has vowed the great vow may sometimes stumble involuntarily, though not by deliberate purpose; for it is said: "If anyone should die suddenly beside him, he will at once be defiled" (Numbers 6:9). For unwished-for things that fall upon one suddenly from outside defile the soul on the instant, but not for the longest age, since they are involuntary. Of these, the high priest, standing above them just as he stands above voluntary offenses, takes no account.

I have said this not beside the point, but in order to teach that the most natural fixed term for the return of fugitives is the death of the high priest (Numbers 35:25).

For as long as this most sacred Logos lives and remains in the soul, it is impossible for any involuntary deviation to enter it; for it is by nature without share or admission of any offense. But if it dies — not being destroyed itself, but separated from our soul — a return is immediately granted to voluntary offenses; for if, while it remained and was sound within us, they were driven out, then when it departs they will certainly move in and take up residence.

For the unstained high priest, Conviction, has reaped as his own special privilege, by nature, never to admit into himself any slip of judgment. It is therefore worth praying that the high priest and king together, the judge Conviction, may live in the soul — he who, having been allotted the whole tribunal of our reasoning, is overawed by none of those brought to judgment.

Having said what is fitting concerning fugitives, we shall now weave together the sequence that follows in due order. For it is said next: "the angel of the Lord found her" (Genesis 16:7), voting for the return, out of reverence, of a soul in danger of wandering, and becoming, one might almost say, the escort of her return to an unwandering resolve.

It is also useful not to pass over in silence what the Lawgiver philosophizes concerning finding and seeking. For he introduces some who neither seek nor find anything, others who succeed at both, and some who have gained one but not the other — of whom some seek but do not find, and others find without having sought.

Those, then, who desire neither finding nor seeking have, through lack of training and lack of practice, cruelly maimed their reasoning power, and though able to see keenly, have been blinded. So Moses says that "Lot's wife, having turned back, became a pillar" (Genesis 19:26) — not fashioning a myth, but pointing to the peculiar nature of the thing.

For whoever, out of an innate and habitual laziness, neglects the teacher and, disregarding what lies ahead — the things by which one is able to see and hear and use the other faculties for the discernment of the facts of nature — twists his own neck around to face backward instead, having become enamored of the blind things of life rather than of the blind parts of the body, is set up as a monument in the manner of a lifeless and deaf stone.

For such characters, as Moses says, did not have "a heart to understand, eyes to see, and ears to hear" (Deuteronomy 29:4), but fashioned for themselves a blind, deaf, senseless, and wholly maimed life, unlivable, attending to none of the things that matter,

and settling on nothing. The leader of this chorus is the king of the region of the body; for it says: "Pharaoh turned and went into his house, and did not set his mind even to this" (Exodus 7:23) — equivalent to saying he set it to nothing at all, but let himself wither like an untended plant and remain barren through infertility.

Those who deliberate and examine and scrutinize everything carefully sharpen and hone the mind; and the one who exercises it bears its proper fruits — quickness of wit and understanding, through which freedom from deception is achieved; but the thoughtless man dulls and shatters the keen edges of prudence.

Now the flock that is truly irrational and soulless in this sort of pursuit must be dismissed, but the flock of those who employ inquiry and discovery is to be commended. So, for instance, the political character—far from being mad for popular opinion—desires the better generation, the one apportioned by the virtues, and is introduced in the act of seeking and finding it.

“A man,” it says, “found Joseph wandering in the field, and asked him, ‘What are you seeking?’ And he said, ‘I am seeking my brothers; tell me where they are pasturing their flocks.’ And the man said to him, ‘They have set out from here, for I heard them saying, Let us go to Dothan.’ And Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan” (Genesis 37:15–17).

Dothan is interpreted as “adequate failing,” a symbol of a soul that has fled empty opinions not partially but completely—opinions that resemble the pursuits of women rather than of men. That is why Sarah, virtue herself, is so aptly said to have had “the things of women fail” in her (Genesis 18:11), the very things over which we labor who pursue an unmanly and truly effeminate life. But the wise man, when he “fails, is added” (Genesis 25:17), according to Moses—most naturally, for it turns out that the removal of empty opinion is an addition of truth.

If, then, someone still spending time in a mortal, much-mixed, and many-shaped life, and possessed of abundant material resources, nonetheless considers and seeks after the better generation, the one that looks only toward the good, he is worthy of approval—provided he does not let the dreams and phantoms of things reputed and apparent to be good rise up again and get the better of him.

For if he remains in an unadulterated inquiry of soul, walking in the tracks of the things sought and following after them closely, he will not let go until he encounters the things he longs for. Yet among the worthless he will find none of them. Why is that?

“For they have set out from here,” having abandoned our pursuits and migrated to the desolate country of the impious. These are the words of the true man, the reproof within the soul, who, seeing the soul at a loss, deliberating, and searching, is on guard lest, wandering, it should miss the straight road.

I have marveled greatly, too, at those two: the one eagerly inquiring about the middle term between the two extremes, and saying, “Behold the fire and the wood; where is the sheep for the whole burnt offering?” and the other answering, “God will see to a sheep for himself for a whole burnt offering, child”—and afterward finding the thing given in exchange: “For behold, a single ram, caught by its horns in a Sabek plant” (Genesis 22:7, 8, 13).

Let us see, then, what the one who asks is at a loss over, what the one who answers declares, and, third, what the thing found was. What he inquires about is this: behold the acting cause, the fire; behold also the thing acted upon, the matter, the wood; where is the third thing, the result?

For instance: behold the mind, a warm and fiery breath; behold also the objects of thought, as it were the matter; where is the third thing, the actual thinking? Again: behold the sight, behold the color; where is the actual seeing? And in general: behold sense-perception, the faculty of judgment, and behold also the perceptible objects, the matter; where, then, is the actual perceiving?

To one inquiring into these things the fitting answer is: “God will see to it for himself,” for the third thing is God's own work. By his providence the mind apprehends, sight sees, and every sense perceives. “And a ram is found caught,” that is, reason kept still and holding back.

For the best sacrificial victim is stillness and suspension of judgment concerning matters about which there is, in every case, no certainty. For only this is expressible: “God will see to it”—he to whom all things are known, who by the most brilliant light, himself, illumines the universe. All else is inexpressible to created being, over which darkness is poured thick; and quiet is safety in darkness.

They also sought what it was that nourished the soul—“for,” as Moses says, “they did not know what it was” (Exodus 16:15)—and, learning, found it to be God's utterance and the divine Logos, from which all forms of instruction and wisdom flow unceasingly. This is the heavenly food, and it is disclosed in the sacred writings by the mouth of the Cause himself, saying, “Behold, I will rain bread on you from heaven” (Exodus 16:4). For in truth God sprinkles down ethereal wisdom from above upon minds that are well-endowed and fond of contemplation.

Those who saw it, tasted it, and were greatly delighted, learned by experience what they had undergone, but they remained ignorant of what it actually was. Hence they inquire, “What is this?” (Exodus 16:15)—this thing that by nature is sweeter than honey and whiter than snow.

They will be taught by the interpreter of God that “this is the bread which the Lord gave them to eat” (Exodus 16:15). What, then, is the bread? Tell me. “This,” he says, “is the word which the Lord has ordained” (Exodus 16:16). This divine ordinance both illumines and sweetens at once the soul capable of sight, flashing forth the light of truth, and, by persuasion—that sweet virtue—sweetening those who thirst and hunger for nobility of character.

The prophet himself, too, when he sought what the cause of success was, discovered that it is fellowship with God alone. For when he was at a loss, asking who he is and how, being of the seeing race, he might escape the man who seemed to reign as a rival to God, he was taught by the oracle, “I will be with you” (Exodus 3:11, 12).

Inquiries into particular things have, to be sure, an elegant and philosophical character—how could they not?—but the inquiry into God, the best and incomparable of beings and cause of all things, gladdens those who set out on the search from the very start, and it never remains unfulfilled, because he, by his own gracious nature, comes forward to meet them with his virgin Graces and displays himself to those who long to see him. Not, indeed, as he truly is—for that is impossible, since even Moses “turned away his face, for he was afraid to look directly upon God” (Exodus 3:6)—but so far as created nature could touch his incomprehensible power.

This too is recorded among the exhortations: “You shall turn back to the Lord your God,” it says, “and you shall find him, when you seek him out with your whole heart and your whole soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29–30).

Having spoken adequately about these matters too, let us pass on next to the third heading, in which there was seeking but no finding followed. Laban, at any rate, having searched the whole household of the soul of the ascetic, “did not find,” as Moses says, “the idols” (Genesis 31:33).

For it was a matter of realities, not of dreams and empty phantoms. Nor did the Sodomites, blind in mind, though they eagerly strove to violate the sacred and undefiled words, find the road leading to that end; rather, as the oracle says, “they grew weary searching for the door” (Genesis 19:11), even though they ran circling round the whole house and set every stone in motion to satisfy their outlandish and impious desire.

There have already been some who wished to become thresholds instead of doorkeepers, and to overthrow order, the finest thing in life; they not only failed of the prosperity unjustly hoped for, but were forced to cast away even what they already held in their hands. For the law says that the followers of Korah, when they reached out for the priesthood [...], missed both (Numbers 16).

For just as children and grown men do not learn the same things, but each stage of life has its fitting instruction, so by nature there are always some souls that remain childish even in bodies grown old, and, conversely, others that are most mature even while their bodies are just now in the flower and vigor of youth. Those, then, would be guilty of folly who set their desire on things greater than their own nature can bear, since everything that is strained beyond its capacity snaps under the force of the effort.

And Pharaoh, “seeking to destroy Moses” (Exodus 2:15), the prophetic race, will never find him—even though he has heard a harsh report against him, that he has undertaken to overthrow the entire dominion of the body, by two assaults.

Of these he made the first against the Egyptian type, the one who fortified the soul with pleasure—“for, striking him,” says the text, “he buried him in scattered matter, in sand” (Exodus 2:12), thinking that both doctrines were of the same stamp: pleasure as the first and greatest good, and the atoms as the first principles of all things. He made the other assault (Exodus 2:13) against the man who cuts the nature of the good into pieces, assigning one part to the soul, another to the body, and another to external things. For he wishes the good to be whole and entire, allotted to the best thing within us, the mind alone, and fitting none of the soulless things.

Nor did the man sent in search of her find unconquered virtue—the one whose name is Tamar—though she was embittered by the laughable pursuits of men; and this is most natural, for it is said: “And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his shepherd friend the Adullamite, to recover the pledge from the woman; and he did not find her. And he asked the men of that place, ‘Where is the prostitute who was at Enaim by the road?’ And they said, ‘There was no prostitute here.’ And he returned to Judah and said, ‘I did not find her, and the men of that place say there is no prostitute there.’ And Judah said, ‘Let her keep them, lest we become a laughingstock; I sent this kid, and you have not found her’” (Genesis 38:20–23). O wondrous test, O trial!

Someone gave a pledge, having a mind set on purchasing the finest possession, piety, by means of three tokens or symbols—the ring, the necklace, and the staff (Genesis 38:18)—namely, steadfastness and faith, the coherence and consistency of reason with life and of life with reason, and a straight and unswerving education, on which it is profitable to lean.

he tests whether it was well given, this pledge. What, then, is the test? To let down some bait employing an attractive power - reputation, or wealth, or bodily health, or something of that kind - and to learn toward which of these, as on a balance-scale, she will tip; for if there should be an inclination toward any of these, the pledge is not secure. He therefore sent the kid to fetch back the pledge from the woman, not because he had altogether resolved to take it back, but so as to see whether she should ever prove unworthy to keep it. And when will that be?

Whenever she exchanges what matters for what does not matter, preferring counterfeit goods to genuine ones. Now the genuine goods are faithfulness, coherence and consistency of words with deeds, the rule of right instruction; and, conversely, the evils are faithlessness, inconsistency, want of instruction -

and the counterfeit goods are all those things that hang suspended from irrational impulse. Seeking her, then, "he did not find her"; for the good is hard to find, or altogether unfindable, in a life that is all confusion. And should he inquire whether there is anywhere, in the whole region, a soul that has played the harlot after the beautiful, he will hear expressly that she neither is nor ever was; for the licentious woman, the wanton, or the streetwalker who parades at the crossroads, or who cheapens the flower of her youth, or who brightens her outward appearance with purifications and washings while remaining foul within, or who, like painted panels, sketches in her features with pigments for want of natural beauty, or who pursues as a good the thing called the "crowd-of-men" evil, or who is enamored of promiscuity, or who scatters herself among countless partners, or who is mocked and utterly abused by countless bodies and affairs at once - such a woman is not there.

When the one who had sent the messenger heard this, having banished envy from himself and, being gracious by nature, rejoiced beyond measure, and said: is it not, indeed, my prayer that my understanding be truly refined and a citizen of heaven, distinguished by orderliness and self-control and the other virtues, attentive to one man alone, loving the housekeeping of one, and delighting in monarchy? If, then, she is such a one, let her keep what was given - both the instruction and the coherence of word with life and of life with word, and, most necessary of all, security and faithfulness.

But let us take care lest we be mocked for supposing we had bestowed gifts on one unworthy, though we had thought we were giving them most fittingly to the soul. As for me, I have done what it was reasonable for one wishing to take a test and trial of character to do: I let down the bait and sent it forth, and she has shown that her own nature is not easily caught.

And it is clear to me why she is not easily caught. I have seen countless very base people doing the very same things that the very good do, sometimes, but not from the same understanding, since in the one case truth is practiced, in the other, pretense; and the discernment between the two is difficult, for often what merely seems to be has outrun what truly is.

And the lover of virtue seeks the goat offered for sin, but does not find it; for it had already been burned up, as the oracle makes clear (Lev. 10:16). What this hints at must be considered: to sin not at all belongs to God alone; to repent belongs to the wise man; but even this is very difficult and hard to find.

The oracle says, then, that "Moses sought and sought out" (Lev. 10:16) - in mortal life - the doctrine of repentance for sins. For he was eager to find a soul stripping off wrongdoing and going forward naked of sins, without shame. But nevertheless he did not find it, because the flame - I mean the swiftest-moving impulse of the irrational - had run down upon and grazed over the whole soul.

For the lesser things are overcome by the greater, the slower by the swifter-running, and things still to come by things already present; and repentance is a small thing, slow, and still to come, while wrongdoing in mortal life is abundant, swift, and continuous. Reasonably, then, one who has turned about says he is not able "to eat of the sin-offering" (Lev. 10:19-20); for his conscience does not permit him to be nourished by repentance. Hence it is said: "Moses heard, and it pleased him" (Lev. 10:19-20).

For the things that pertain to creation are set far apart from the things that pertain to God; to the one only the visible things are known, but to the other the invisible things as well are known. And he raves who, lying against the truth, claims to have repented while still doing wrong - as if one who is sick should play the part of one who is healthy; for such a man will rather, it seems, become more sick, if he thinks it right to practice none of the things that conduce to health.

Moses once, led on by his love of learning, sought also the causes by which the most necessary events in the world are accomplished; for as he beheld the things in creation - some perishing and being generated, some being destroyed yet others remaining - he was struck with amazement, overwhelmed, and cried out, saying:

"Why is it that the bush burns and is not consumed?" (Exod. 3:2-3). For he does not pry into the untrodden place, the dwelling of divine natures; but when he was already about to engage in an endless and unaccomplishable labor, he was relieved by the mercy and providence of God, the savior of all, who spoke an oracle from the inner shrine: "Do not draw near here" (Exod. 3:5) - equivalent to "do not approach such an inquiry"; for the task belongs to a curiosity and meddlesomeness greater than human power allows. Rather, marvel at the things that have come to be, but do not pry into the causes by which they came to be or perish.

"For the place on which you stand," it says, "is holy ground" (Exod. 3:5). What place is this? Clearly it is the place concerned with causation, which he attached to the divine natures alone, judging no human being competent to lay hold of causation.

He, then, out of longing for knowledge, peering above the whole world, seeks concerning the maker of the world who this hard-to-see and hard-to-conjecture being is - whether body, or bodiless, or something above these, or a simple nature such as a unit, or a composite, or something else among existing things. And seeing that this is hard to hunt down and hard to conceive, he prays to learn from God himself who God is; for he did not hope to be able to learn it from any other of the beings that come after him.

But even so he had no power to inquire into anything concerning the essence of the One Who Is; for "you shall see what is behind me," it says, "but my face you shall not see" (Exod. 33:23). For it suffices the wise man to know the things that follow and attend upon God and all that comes after him, but whoever wishes to gaze upon the essence that governs all will be blinded by the surrounding brilliance of the rays before he sees it.

Having discussed so much concerning the third heading, let us pass on to the fourth and last of the topics proposed, according to which discovery loves to come forward even when no inquiry has taken place. Under this heading is ranked every self-taught and self-instructed sage; for he was not improved by considerations, exercises, and labors, but as soon as he came into being he found wisdom already prepared, rained down from above out of heaven, and having drawn deep of its unmixed draught he feasted, and continued drunk with that sober intoxication that comes with right reason.

This is the one whom the oracles named Isaac, whom the soul did not conceive at one time and bear at another; for it says, "having conceived, she bore" (Gen. 21:2), as though timelessly. For what was being born was not a man, but a thought most pure, beautiful by nature rather than by cultivation; for which reason the one who bore it is also said to have "ceased to have the way of women" (Gen. 18:11) - the customary, reasonable, and human way.

For the self-taught kind is new and beyond reason and truly divine, constituted not by human devisings but by divine frenzy. Or are you unaware that Hebrew women have no need of midwives for childbirth, but "give birth," as Moses says, "before the midwives come in" (Exod. 1:19) - I mean the methods, arts, and sciences - using nature alone as their helper? And it gives most beautiful and most fitting definitions of the self-taught: one such is this, that which is found quickly; the other, "that which God has handed down."

Now that which is taught requires a long time, while that which comes by nature is swift and, in a manner, timeless; and the one has a man as its guide, the other, God. The former definition he set down in a question: "What is this that you found so quickly, my child?"; the other in an answer, saying: "What the Lord God handed to me" (Gen. 27:20).

There is also a third definition of the self-taught: that which comes up of itself. For it is said among the exhortations: "You shall not sow, nor shall you reap the things that come up of themselves" (Lev. 25:11); for the things that come by nature have no need of art, since God himself sows them and brings them to completion by the art of husbandry, so that things not truly spontaneous appear as though spontaneous - except insofar as they had no need at all of human contrivance.

And this is not so much an exhortation as it is a declaration of judgment; for if he were advising, he would have said: do not sow, do not reap; but declaring, he says: "you shall not sow, nor shall you reap the things that come up of themselves." For of the things we obtain that grow spontaneously from nature, we find that we ourselves are the cause of neither their beginnings nor their ends -

the beginning being the sowing, and the end the reaping. But it is better to understand it thus: every beginning and every end is spontaneous, that is, it is nature's work, not ours. For instance, what is the beginning of learning? Clearly it is that nature in the one being taught which is receptive to particular teachings. And what, again, is the beginning of being brought to perfection? If one must speak without holding anything back, it is nature. For the teacher is capable of producing advances, but the perfection that reaches the summit belongs to God alone, the best nature.

He who is nourished on these doctrines lives in everlasting peace, released from unwearying toils. And the peace of the seventh day, according to the lawgiver, admits of no distinction; for in it, creation lays aside the appearance of activity and rests.

Fittingly, then, it is said: "and the sabbaths of the land shall be food for you" (Lev. 25:6) - by way of hidden meaning; for only the rest that is in God is nourishing and enjoyable, procuring the greatest good, peace unmixed with war. For the peace found among cities is tainted with civil strife, while the peace of the soul is unmixed with any discord.

It seems to me that the following passage most vividly represents discovery without inquiry: "When the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers to give you - great and goodly cities that you did not build, houses full of every good thing that you did not fill, cisterns hewn out that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant" (Deut. 6:10-11).

Do you see the abundance of great goods poured out and ready for possession and enjoyment? The generic virtues are likened to cities, because they extend most broadly; the particular virtues to houses, for these are drawn into a narrower circle; well-formed souls are likened to cisterns, easily filled with wisdom as those are with water; and to vineyards and olive groves are likened progress, growth, and the production of fruits. The fruit of knowledge is the contemplative life, which produces unmixed joy as from wine, and intelligible light as from a flame, whose nourishment is oil.

Having said this much about finding, let us move on next to what follows in our approach. ‘The angel of the Lord found her,’ he says, ‘at the spring of water’ (Gen. 16:7). Now ‘spring’ is used in many senses: in one, our own mind; in another, the rational disposition and education; in a third, the base condition; in a fourth, the excellent condition opposed to it; and in a fifth, the maker and father of all things himself.

The oracles that have been recorded show the proofs of these; we must examine what they are. Right at the beginning of the Law, immediately after the creation of the world, a certain verse is sung out: ‘A spring rose up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth’ (Gen. 2:6).

Those uninitiated into allegory and into a nature that loves to hide itself liken the spring just mentioned to the Egyptian river, which floods the plain every year, seeming almost to display a power that imitates the sky.

What the sky is to other regions in winter, the Nile is to Egypt when summer is at its height: the sky sends rain down from above onto the earth, but the Nile, most paradoxically, flows from below upward and waters the fields by its flow. Starting from this, Moses too, not without insight, described the Egyptian way of thinking as one that prefers earth to heaven, things of the land to the Olympian gods, and the body to the soul.

But it will be possible to speak of these matters again another time, when circumstances allow. For now, since we must aim not to speak at excessive length, we should return to the interpretation by way of implied meanings, and say that ‘a spring rose up and watered the whole face of the earth’ means something like this:

Our governing faculty, as though from a spring, pours out many powers as if through channels in the earth, and sends these powers on to the organs of sense — eyes, ears, nostrils, and the rest — which belong to every living creature around the head and face. So the governing part of the body, that is, the face, is watered as if from a spring by the governing part that belongs to the soul: the visual spirit stretching out to the eyes, the auditory to the ear, the olfactory to the nostrils, the gustatory in turn to the mouth, and the tactile over the whole surface of the body.

There are also the manifold springs of education, beside which grow upright and most nourishing words, like the trunks of palm trees. For it says, ‘They came to Elim, and in Elim there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trunks; and they camped there beside the water’ (Exod. 15:27). Elim is translated ‘gates,’ a symbol of the entrance to virtue; for just as gates are the beginnings of a house, so the general course of preliminary studies is the beginning of virtue.

Twelve is a perfect number; witness the zodiac circle in the sky, set with just that many luminous stars; witness too the sun’s revolution, which completes its circuit in twelve months, and men reckon the hours of day and night in numbers equal to the months of the year.

Moses praises this number in no small number of places: he records twelve tribes of the nation, legislates twelve loaves of the presentation-bread, and orders that twelve engraved stones be woven into the sacred vestment, into the ankle-length robe, upon the breastpiece (Exod. 28:17ff).

He also praises the number seven multiplied by ten: here, saying there were seventy palm trees by the springs; elsewhere, that there were seventy elders alone, upon whom the divine and prophetic spirit was distributed (Num. 11:16); and again, that seventy calves are brought as sacrificial victims, divided into harmonious groups, at the Feast of Tabernacles. For the bulls are not all sacrificed together, but over seven days, beginning with thirteen bulls (Num. 29:13ff); for by subtracting one bull each successive day, all the way to the seventh, the sum total of seventy would be reached.

Arriving, then, at the gateways of virtue, that is, the preliminary studies, and seeing springs there with young palm shoots beside them, they are said to camp not beside the plants but beside the waters. Why? Because those who carry off the prizes of complete virtue are crowned with palm and ribbons, whereas those who are still engaged with the whole cycle of preliminary studies, thirsting as they are for learning, settle beside the branches of knowledge that are able to irrigate and water their souls.

Such, then, are the springs of intermediate education. Let us now examine the spring of folly, about which the lawgiver has spoken as follows: ‘Whoever lies with a woman who is menstruating has uncovered her spring, and she has uncovered the flow of her blood; let both of them be utterly destroyed’ (Lev. 20:18).

He calls sense perception ‘the woman,’ taking mind to be its ‘husband.’ Sense perception ‘sits apart,’ that is, sits at the furthest remove, whenever it abandons the mind, its own proper husband, and settles instead among the seductive and corrupting objects of sense, entangling itself amorously with each of them. If, then, the mind should turn to sleep, when it ought to stay awake, it ‘uncovers’ its own ‘spring’ — the spring, that is, of sense perception, for the mind itself was, as I said, the spring of sense perception — and by doing so, it makes itself unroofed, unwalled, and an easy target for attack.

But sense perception too ‘uncovers the flow of her own blood.’ For sense perception, always flowing out toward the external object of sense, is covered over and held in check when it is restrained by reasoning; but it is left desolate, bereft of its rightful guide, when reasoning fails. And just as lack of walls is the gravest evil for a city, so lack of a guard is for the soul. When, then, does it become unguarded?

It is when sight is left unroofed, poured out toward visible things; when hearing is left unroofed, drenched by every sound; when smell and its kindred faculties are left unroofed, ready to suffer whatever those who assail them wish to inflict; and when spoken speech, too, is left unroofed, blurting out at the wrong moment countless secrets, since nothing checks its onward rush. Flowing unchecked in this way, it has overturned great life-projects that were sailing along steadily, as if in calm water.

This is the great flood, in which ‘the floodgates of heaven were opened’ — I mean, of the mind — ‘and the springs of the abyss were uncovered’ (Gen. 7:11), that is, the springs of sense perception. For it is only in this way that the soul is flooded: from above, as it were from the sky of the mind, when wrongdoings burst forth; and from below, as it were from the earth of sense perception, when passions pour down.

For this reason Moses forbids ‘uncovering the shame of father and mother’ (Lev. 18:7), knowing clearly what a great evil it is not to restrain and conceal the sins of mind and sense perception, but instead to parade them out into the open

as though they were achievements. These, then, are the springs of sins; we must now search out the spring of practical wisdom. Rebecca, that is, endurance, goes down to this spring, and having filled the whole vessel of her soul, comes back up — the lawgiver quite naturally calling the descent an ascent. For virtue is lifted up to the heights whenever it resolves to come down from arrogant pride.

For it says: ‘She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up’ (Gen. 24:16). This spring is divine wisdom, from which the particular sciences are watered, along with every soul that loves contemplation and is possessed by love of the best.

To this spring the sacred word gives most fitting names, calling it ‘Judgment’ and ‘holy.’ For it says, ‘Having turned back, they came to the spring of judgment; this is Kadesh’ (Gen. 14:7); and Kadesh means ‘holy.’ It all but shouts and cries out that the wisdom of God is holy, bringing with it nothing earthly, and is the judgment of all things, by which all

contrarieties are separated out and judged. We must now speak of the highest and best spring, which the Father of all proclaimed through prophetic mouths. For he said somewhere: ‘They have abandoned me, the spring of life, and dug for themselves broken cisterns that will not be able to hold water’ (Jer. 2:13).

So God is the most ancient spring — and rightly so, no doubt, for he has rained down this entire universe. I am struck with wonder when I hear that this spring belongs to life; for God alone is the cause of soul and of life, and especially of rational soul, and of life lived with practical wisdom. For matter is dead, but God is something more than life — an ever-flowing spring of living, as he himself said.

But the impious, having run away, remain to this day untasting of the drink of immortality; in their derangement, they dug for themselves, and not for God, in the first place, preferring their own doings to the things of heaven and Olympus, and preferring what comes from careful contrivance to what comes ready-made and spontaneous.

Then, unlike Abraham and Isaac, the wise, who dig wells (Gen. 21:30; 26:18) — deep understandings that yield drinkable words — they dig cisterns, which have no good nourishment of their own, but need an inflow from outside, one that could come only from teaching, when instructors constantly pour into the ears of their students, all at once, the doctrines and theorems of knowledge, for the mind to grasp and memory to store up what has been handed down.

But now "the pits are broken" — that is, all the reservoirs of the untutored soul are shattered and leaking, unable to hold and keep safe the inflow of things that could do it good.

So much, then, has been said about springs as the occasion called for. But very precisely do the oracles introduce Hagar as found at the spring (Gen 16:7), yet not drawing from it. For the soul that is still making progress is not yet able to make use of the unmixed drink of wisdom, though it is not forbidden to spend its time nearby.

And the whole road that runs through education is a highway, most secure and best fortified. Hence he says she was found "on the way to Shur" (ibid.), and Shur is translated "wall" or "straightness." So the conviction speaking within the soul says to her: "Where have you come from, and where are you going?" (ibid. 8). He says this not because he doubts or is asking, but rather to shame and reproach her.

For it is not right for an angel to be ignorant of anything that concerns us. And here is a sign: he clearly knows even what is in the womb, which is unclear even to the one carrying it, when he says, "Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Ishmael" (ibid. 11). For to know that the child being carried is male is beyond human power — and so is knowing, before it is even born, what course of life it will choose, namely that it will be "a wild man," not civilized and gentle.

"Where have you come from," then, is said as a rebuke to the soul that is fleeing the better and ruling judgment, whose handmaid she was — not merely called so, but so in fact — and who was destined to carry off great renown. "And where are you going?" You are chasing after what is unclear, having thrown away what was agreed and acknowledged.

It is right, then, to praise her for rejoicing at the admonition. And she has produced proofs of that joy: not accusing her mistress, laying the blame for her flight on herself, and giving no answer to the second question, "Where are you going?" — for that is unclear, and about unclear things it is both safe and necessary to suspend judgment.

Accepting her obedience, the conviction says, "Return to your mistress" (ibid.); for it is profitable to the learner to be under the oversight of the teacher, and to the imperfect to be a slave to prudence. "And when you return, be humbled under her hands" (ibid. 9) — a fine humbling, one that consists in pulling down an irrational pride.

For with such gentle birth-pangs you will bring forth a male offspring named Ishmael (ibid. 11), disciplined by divine hearing; for Ishmael is translated "hearing of God." Hearing takes second place to sight, and sight is the portion allotted to the true and firstborn son, Israel; for by interpretation he is "one who sees God." For it is possible to hear falsehoods as though they were truths, since hearing is deceptive, but sight is free of falsehood, and by it things that truly exist are apprehended.

He characterizes the manner of the one begotten both by saying he will be "a wild man" — a kind of rustic-wise man, not yet judged worthy of the tame and truly civilized portion (and this portion is virtue, through which character is by nature made gentle) — and by saying, "his hands against all, and the hands of all against him" (ibid.); for this is the mark of a sophist, one who postures as excessively skeptical and delights in contentious arguments.

This man strikes at all who belong to true learning, opposing each one individually and all of them together, and he is struck by all of them in turn, who naturally defend themselves as though defending their own children — the doctrines their soul has borne.

But he assigns him a third mark as well, saying, "he shall dwell over against all his brothers" (ibid.), almost openly displaying the face-to-face conflict and everlasting opposition. So the soul pregnant with the sophist's reasoning says to the conviction speaking within her: "You are the God who watches over me" (ibid. 13) — equivalent to "you are the maker of my intentions and my offspring" — and not without reason.

For to free souls — truly free, truly citizen souls — he is a free and freedom-making craftsman, but to slaves he is a slave. Angels are the household servants of God, though considered gods by those still bound in toils and slavery. "Therefore," it says, "she called the well 'the well of him whom I saw before me'" (ibid. 14).

But were you not going to, O soul still making progress and going deep into the learning of the general preliminary studies, see, as though through a mirror made of education, the cause of that learning? And most fitting is the location of such a well, "between Kadesh and Bered" (ibid. 14); Bered is translated "in evils," and Kadesh "holy" — for it lies on the border between holy things and profane, in the midst of progress, fleeing what is base, but not yet capable of living together with things that are perfectly good.

← All of Philo of Alexandria: The Complete Works