On the Change of Names

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

"Abraham was ninety-nine years old, and the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him: I am your God" (Gen. 17:1). The number ninety-nine borders on the hundred, in which shines forth the self-taught kind, Isaac, best of the good affections, joy; for he is born when Abraham is a hundred years old.

There is also the first-fruit given to the priests of the Levitical tribe: for having received tithes, from these, as from their own produce, they in turn offer first-fruits which contain the ratio of a hundredth (Num. 18:26). For the ten is a symbol of progress, the hundred a symbol of perfection. The one in the middle always hastens toward the summit, enjoying a fortunate nature; and to him, it is said, the Lord of all things appeared.

But do not suppose that the encounter comes through the eyes of the body — for these see only what is perceptible to sense, and the perceptible is composite and full of corruption, whereas the divine is incomposite and incorruptible — rather, that which receives the divine appearance is the eye of the soul.

For indeed, whatever the eyes of the body observe, they apprehend by the aid of light, which is distinct both from the thing seen and from the one seeing; but whatever the soul apprehends, it apprehends through itself alone, without the cooperation of anything else — for the things thought are themselves a light to themselves.

In the same way we are taught the sciences: for the mind, directing its unclosing and unsleeping eye upon doctrines and speculations, sees them not by a borrowed light but by its own genuine light, which shines forth from itself.

So whenever you hear that God appeared to a man, understand this to happen without perceptible light; for it is likely that the intelligible is apprehended by intellection alone. And God is the source of the purest radiance, so that whenever he shines upon a soul, he raises up rays that cast no shadow and are most clear.

Do not suppose, however, that the Existent, who truly is, is apprehended by any human being. For we possess in ourselves no instrument by which we might form an image of that being — neither sense-perception, since he is not an object of sense, nor mind. Moses, then, the beholder of the invisible nature — for the sacred oracles say he entered into the darkness (Exod. 20:21), hinting at the invisible and incorporeal substance — having searched everywhere through everything, sought to see clearly the thrice-longed-for and only good.

But since he found nothing, not even any form resembling what he hoped for, despairing of instruction from other things, he takes refuge in the very object of his search and begs, saying: "Show yourself to me, that I may see you with knowledge" (Exod. 33:13); and yet he does not obtain his request, since the most sufficient gift granted to the best of mortal kinds is deemed to be the knowledge of the bodies and things that come after the Existent. For it is said:

"You shall see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen by you" (ibid. 23) — meaning that of the bodies and affairs that come after the Existent, those things which come within our apprehension, even if not all of them are apprehended already, while that One alone is not by nature visible.

And what wonder is it, if the Existent is incomprehensible to human beings, when even the mind within each of us is unknown to us? For who has seen the essence of the soul? Its obscurity has bred countless disputes among the sophists, who propose opposing opinions, some even contrary to whole classes of being.

It followed, then, that not even the name "Lord" could be applied to him who truly is. Do you not see that when the prophet, eager to learn, asks what he should answer those who inquire about his name, he says: "I am the One who is" (Exod. 3:14) — equivalent to saying, "my nature is to be, not to be spoken"?

But that mankind should not be wholly deprived of an address for the best of beings, he grants that his name be used, by way of accommodation, as though he were a being of that sort: "the Lord God" of the three natures — teaching, perfection, practice — whose symbols are recorded as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "For this," he says, "is my name forever" — as considered in our own age, not in the age before the ages — "and my memorial," not that which stands beyond memory and thought, and again, "for generations" (ibid. 15), not for natures ungenerated.

For those who have come into mortal existence need this accommodated use of the divine name, so that, even if not in reality, at least in name they may approach and be adorned by what is best. A further oracle, spoken from the person of the ruler of all things, makes clear that his name "Lord" has been revealed to no one. "I appeared," he says, "to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, being their God, and I did not reveal my name 'Lord' to them" (Exod. 6:3). For when the inverted order is set right, the sense would run thus: "My name, the 'Lord,' I did not reveal to them," but only the name used by accommodation, for the reasons already stated.

So ineffable indeed is the Existent that not even the powers who serve him tell us his lordly name. At any rate, after the wrestling match which the ascetic wrestled for the possession of virtue, he says to the invisible overseer: "Tell me your name," and he replied: "Why do you ask this, my name?" (Gen. 32:29), and he does not disclose his own and proper name. "It is enough for you," he in effect says, "to be benefited by my good words spoken over you; but do not seek names, which are symbols of created things, from natures that are incorruptible."

Do not, then, be perplexed if the eldest of beings is unspeakable, seeing that even his word is not utterable by us in a lordly name. And indeed, if he is unspeakable, he is also inconceivable and incomprehensible; so that the statement "the Lord appeared to Abraham" (Gen. 17:1) must be understood not as though the Cause of all things himself shone forth and appeared — for what human mind is capable of containing the magnitude of such an appearance? — but as one of the powers around him, the royal power, appearing in advance; for the title "Lord" belongs to rule and kingship.

Our mind, when it played the Chaldean and babbled of things on high, was accustomed to attend to the active powers of the cosmos as causes; but having become a migrant from the Chaldean doctrine, it came to know that the cosmos itself is guided and steered by a ruler, of whose rule it received an impression.

For this reason it is said, "there appeared" — not the Existent, but the Lord; just as one might say a king appeared, one who existed from the beginning but was not yet known to the soul, which, though late in learning, did not remain wholly ignorant, but formed an impression of the rule and sovereignty that exists among beings.

And the ruler, once he has appeared, confers a still greater benefit on the listener and beholder, saying: "I am your God" (Gen. 17:1). For of whom, I might ask, are you not God, of all that has come into being? But the interpretive word will teach me that he is not now speaking about the cosmos, of which he is entirely craftsman and God, but about human souls, which he has not deemed worthy of the same care.

For he judges it right that he be called Lord and Master of the base, but God of those making progress and improving, and both together, Lord and God at once, of the best and most perfect. For instance, having established Pharaoh as the extreme limit of impiety, he never once called himself Pharaoh's God — but wise Moses he calls so, for he says, "See, I give you as god to Pharaoh" (Exod. 7:1) — while he named himself Lord in many of the oracles delivered by him; and such things are sung as these:

"Thus says the Lord" (Exod. 7:17), and at the beginning: "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, I am the Lord; speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I speak to you" (Exod. 6:29), and Moses says to him:

"When I go out of the city, I will spread out my hands to the Lord, and the voices will cease, and the hail and rain will be no more, that you may know that the earth is the Lord's" — as it were, the whole bodily and earthly constitution — "and you" — the mind that carries the image — "and your servants" — the individual thoughts that serve as bodyguards. "For I know that you do not yet fear the Lord" (Exod. 9:29-30) — equivalent to saying, not the one so called in some other sense, but the one who is truly the Master.

For no created being is in truth Lord, even if he should stretch his rule from one end of the earth to the other; only the Unbegotten is a leader who does not deceive, whose rule the one who fears and is struck with awe takes up as a most profitable prize of admonition, while ruin, pitiable in every way, awaits the one who is careless of it.

He has shown himself, then, as Lord to the foolish, holding over them the fear proper to a ruler, but he is written as God to those improving, as also now: "I am your God" (Gen. 17:1), "I am your God, increase and multiply" (Gen. 35:11); but to the perfect he is both together, Lord and God at once, as in the Ten Words: "I am the Lord your God" (Exod. 20:2), and elsewhere:

"The Lord God of your fathers" (Deut. 4:1). For he judges it right that the base be mastered as by a lord, so that, being cautious and groaning, he may keep the fear of a master hanging over him; and that the one making progress be benefited as by a God, so that by good deeds he may attain to perfection; and that the perfect one both be led as by a lord and be benefited as by a God — for this one remains forever unchanging, while the other is altogether a man of God.

This is shown most clearly in the case of Moses: "This," he says, "is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed" (Deut. 33:1). O most beautiful and most fitting exchange, to be deemed worthy of giving oneself in return for divine providence!

But do not suppose that becoming a man and becoming a man of God happen in the same way: a man belongs to God as his possession, but a man of God belongs to him as a boast and a benefit. If, then, you wish to have God as the portion of your understanding, first become yourself a portion worthy of him; and you will become this if you flee from all laws that are handmade and adopted by choice.

But indeed it was not right to be ignorant of this either: that the phrase 'I am your God' (Gen 17:1) is spoken in an extended sense, not in its strict and proper one. For That Which Is, insofar as it is, does not belong to the category of the relative; it is full of itself and sufficient to itself, both before the coming-to-be of the world and after the coming-to-be of the universe, in the very same way.

For it is unchangeable and immutable, needing absolutely nothing else, so that all things belong to it, while it, properly speaking, belongs to nothing. Of the powers that it extended toward creation for the benefit of what was composed, some happen to be spoken of as relative: the royal power and the beneficent power. For a king is king of someone, and a benefactor is benefactor of some other person, who in every case is being ruled or benefited.

Akin to these is also the creative power, which is called God; for through this power the Father who begot and crafted all things established everything, so that 'I am your God' is equivalent to 'I am maker and craftsman.'

The greatest gift is to have obtained him as one's architect, of whom the whole cosmos itself also obtained a share. For he did not fashion the soul of the base person — vice is hateful to God — but the soul of middling character he did not shape by himself alone, according to most holy Moses, since this soul, like wax, was going to receive the impression of both the beautiful and the shameful.

That is why it is said: 'Let us make man according to our image' (Gen 1:26), so that, if it receives a base stamp, it may appear to be the work of others, but if a beautiful one, the work of the sole craftsman of things beautiful and good. In every case, then, that man is virtuous to whom he says 'I am your God,' since he has obtained the maker alone, without the cooperation of others.

At the same time this also gathers together and teaches the doctrine established by him in many places, that he is craftsman of good and wise things alone. This whole company, moreover, has of its own will disregarded the abundant possession of external goods, and even the pleasures dear to the flesh.

For well-conditioned, vigorous athletes fortify the body — the soul's slave — against the soul, whereas those who are pale and wasted and reduced almost to skeletons through education have, in a sense, allotted even their bodily vigor to the powers of the soul, and, to tell the truth, have been resolved into the single form of the soul and have become bodiless intellects.

It is fitting, then, that the earthly element perishes and is dissolved whenever the mind, wholly and entirely, chooses to be well-pleasing to God; but this kind is rare and scarcely to be found, though not impossible to come about. The oracle given concerning Enoch shows this: 'Enoch was well-pleasing to God, and he was not found' (Gen 5:24).

Where, indeed, could one go to contemplate this good thing? What seas would one have to cross? To what islands, coming to whom — among barbarians or among Greeks?

Or is it not the case that even now there are some among those initiated into philosophy who say that wisdom does not exist, since neither does the wise man — for no human being, from the beginning of creation up to the present life, has been considered entirely blameless, since it is impossible for one bound to a mortal body to be wholly happy?

Whether these things are rightly said we shall examine at the proper time; but for now, following the oracle, we shall say that wisdom is indeed an existing thing, and that its lover, the wise man, also exists — though, existing as he does, he has escaped the notice of us who are base; for the good is unwilling to consort with evil.

For this reason it is said: 'he was not found' — the character who was well-pleasing to God — as one who, though existing, is hidden away and flees our coming together with him, since he is also said to have been 'transferred,' which is to migrate and undertake a change of dwelling from mortal life to the immortal.

These men, then, driven mad with a divine madness, have grown wild; but there are others who are companions of a tame and gentle wisdom. Among these, piety is practiced with particular care, and human affairs are not disregarded. Witness the oracles, in which it is said to Abraham, in the person of God: 'Be well-pleasing before me' (Gen 17:1) — which means, not to me alone, but also in my presence as judge of your deeds, as one who oversees and watches over them.

For in honoring your parents, or showing mercy to the poor, or benefiting friends, or defending your country, or attending to the claims of justice common to all human beings, you will indeed be pleasing to those you deal with — but you will be pleasing before God. For with an unsleeping eye he sees all things, and by a special grace he calls to himself and welcomes what is excellent.

That is why the practicer of virtue too, in his prayer, declares the same thing, saying: 'The God before whom my fathers were well-pleasing,' adding 'before him' (Gen 48:15), so that we may know the real difference between being well-pleasing 'to God' and being well-pleasing 'before him': the one phrase encompasses both, the other only one of the two.

So too Moses, among his exhortations, admonishes, saying: 'You shall do what is pleasing before the Lord your God' (Deut 12:28) — meaning, do such things as will prove worthy to appear before God, and which he will accept even without being seen; and such deeds are also accustomed to extend toward those who resemble him.

Setting out from this, he wove the tabernacle together with two enclosing boundaries, placing a curtain between the two, so that the things within might be distinguished from the things outside (Exod 26:33); and he overlaid the sacred ark, guardian of the law, with gold both within and without (Exod 25:10); and to the high priest he gave two robes, the linen one within, and the embroidered one, together with the ankle-length robe, outside (Exod 28:4; Lev 6:10).

For these things, and others like them, are symbols of a soul that is pure both within, toward God, and without, toward the perceptible world and life. Fittingly, then, that declaration was made to the wrestler who had won his victory and was about to be crowned with the wreaths of triumph. For the proclamation concerning him is this: 'You have prevailed with God, and are mighty with men' (Gen 32:28).

For to be well-esteemed in each rank — both in relation to the uncreated and in relation to the created — belongs to no small understanding, but, to tell the truth, to one who stands at the border between the world and God; and altogether it is fitting that the virtuous man be an attendant of God, for the ruler and father of all that has come to be cares for what he has made.

For who does not know that even before the coming-to-be of the world God was sufficient unto himself, and that after the coming-to-be of the world he remained the same, without change? Why, then, did he make the things that did not exist? Was it not because he was good and a lover of giving? Shall we, then, his servants, not follow our master, marveling exceedingly at the cause, yet not overlooking our own nature?

Having said 'Be well-pleasing before me,' he adds, 'and become blameless' (Gen 17:1), observing a sequence and order. Strive, then, rather for what is noble, so that you may be well-pleasing; but if not, at least abstain from wrongdoing, so that you may not incur blame. For the one who succeeds is praiseworthy, while the one who does no wrong is not blameworthy.

And for those who succeed there lies the elder's prize, being well-pleasing; but the second prize, for those who do not sin, is being blameless. Perhaps, too, for mortal creation, not to fail utterly is written down as equal to, and the same as, succeeding. For, as Job says, 'Who is clean of defilement, even if his life is but a single day?' (Job 14:4).

Countless are the things that defile the soul, which it is not possible to wash and cleanse away entirely. For inescapably there remain, akin to every mortal being, certain destructive spirits, which it is reasonable to expect will subside, but which it is altogether impossible to remove.

Does anyone, then, seek a just or prudent or self-controlled or, in general, a perfectly good man in a life so thoroughly confused? Be content, even if you do not find one who is not unjust, or not foolish, or not licentious, or not utterly base in every respect. For the overthrow of the vices is something to be grateful for; but the complete possession of the virtues is impossible for man as we know him.

It was therefore reasonable that he said, "Be blameless" (Gen. 17:1), supposing that to be free from sin and reproach was a great advantage toward a happy life. And to the one who has chosen to live in this manner he acknowledges that he will leave, in accordance with the covenants, the inheritance that is fitting — for God to give, and for the wise man to receive.

For he says, "I will set my covenant between me and you" (Gen. 17:2). Covenants are written for the benefit of those worthy of the gift, so that a covenant is a symbol of grace, which God has placed in the middle, himself reaching it out and the human being receiving it.

And it is an excess of benefaction that there should be nothing between God and the soul, except grace herself, the virgin. I have set down the whole account concerning covenants in two treatises, and, not wishing to repeat myself, I willingly pass over it here, and at the same time I do not wish to break the continuity that belongs to this present treatise.

It is said next: "Abraham fell upon his face" (ibid. 3). Was he not bound, through the divine promises, both to know himself and the nothingness of the mortal race, and to fall down beside the one who stands, as a display of the understanding he held concerning himself and concerning God? For the one who stands always in the same way sets the whole of created instability in motion — not through legs, for he is not shaped like a human being,

but through that which shows him unswerving and unchangeable; whereas the other, never firmly established in the same state, receives at different times changes of every kind, and — tripped up, poor wretch (for his whole life is a slippery slope) — must he not fall a great fall?

But the one falls unwillingly, in ignorance, while the other falls willingly, being tractable. For this reason he is said to have fallen "upon his face" — upon the senses, upon speech, upon the mind — all but crying out and shouting that sense-perception has fallen, unable of itself to perceive, unless by the forethought of the Savior it should be roused again to the apprehension of the bodies that underlie it; and that speech, too, has fallen, unable to interpret anything of what exists, unless he who fashioned and fitted together the vocal instrument should open the mouth and articulate the tongue and strike the sounds musically; and that the mind, too — the king — has fallen, stripped of its powers of comprehension, unless the one who molded living things should raise it up again and set it firmly in place, and, furnishing it with keen-sighted pupils, lead it to the vision of things incorporeal.

Approving, then, of the manner in which he fled from himself and fell of his own free will, on account of the confession he made concerning Being — that the one who stands in truth was one alone, while the things that come after him admit of turnings and changes of every kind — God resounds, as it were, and grants him a share of speech, saying, "And as for me, behold, my covenant is with you" (Gen. 17:4).

And this suggests some such thought as this: there are very many forms of covenant, apportioning graces and gifts to the worthy, but the highest kind of covenant is I myself. For having shown himself — insofar as it was possible for the unshowable to be shown — through saying "And as for me," he adds, "behold my covenant": I myself am the beginning and source of all graces.

For to some God is accustomed to hold out his benefactions through others — through earth, water, air, sun, moon, heaven, and other incorporeal powers — but to others through himself alone, declaring that those who receive himself are his portion; and these he immediately deemed worthy of another appellation as well.

For it is said, "Your name shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham" (Gen. 17:5). Now some of those who love to give offense, and who are always eager to attach blemishes to what is blameless — waging war, not so much on bodies as on things, an undeclared war on the sacred texts — take everything that does not seem, on the surface of the wording, to preserve propriety (though such things are symbols of a nature that always loves to hide itself), and, after examining it with meticulous scrutiny, disparage it and bring it forward for slander — above all, the changes of names.

And I myself once heard a godless and impious man, mocking and jeering, who dared to say: "Great indeed, and extravagant, are the gifts which Moses says the ruler of the universe holds out! By the addition of one letter — alpha added to the single one already there — and again by another addition, of the letter rho, what a marvelous benefaction he supposed himself to have bestowed... he named Abram's wife Sarah 'Sarrah,' taking on a second rho!" And he went through a whole string of similar remarks in one breath, sneering all the while.

Now for his derangement he did not long delay in paying the fitting penalty; for from a small and chance pretext he rushed to the noose, so that the vile and incurable man might not even end his life by a clean death. But it would be just for us, to prevent someone else being caught by the same errors, to cut away the false suspicions, by giving a natural explanation and demonstrating that these sayings are worthy of all earnest attention.

For God does not bestow mute or vowel letters, or words and names in general — seeing that when he had brought forth plants and animals in turn, he summoned them before the human being as before a ruler, whom he had set apart from all others on account of understanding, so that he might give to each its proper name. For it says, "Whatever Adam called each, that was its name" (Gen. 2:19).

Then, since God did not even deem it fitting to pronounce the entire formation of names, but entrusted the task to a wise man, the founder of the human race, it is worth surmising that he himself added and refitted parts of names, or syllables, or letters — not vowels only, but consonants as well — and did this under the pretext of a gift and an extravagant benefaction? It cannot be said.

Rather, such things are the marks of powers — small tokens of great realities, perceptible signs of intelligible things, visible signs of the unseen. And the powers themselves are examined in the finest doctrines, in true and pure conceptions, in improvements of the soul. It is easy to grasp the proof of this if one begins from the man now renamed.

Abram, when interpreted, means "uplifted father"; Abraham means "elect father of sound." How these differ from one another we shall know more clearly once we have first read what is signified by each.

By "uplifted," then, allegorizing, we mean the man who raises himself up from earth to the height and surveys the things aloft — a wanderer among the heavens, a student of celestial phenomena, investigating what the size of the sun is, what its courses are, how it apportions the seasons of the year as it approaches and withdraws again in circuits of equal speed, and inquiring about the moon's illuminations, phases, waning, and waxing, and the movement of the other stars, both the fixed and the wandering.

For the examination of these matters does not belong to an unproductive and barren soul, but rather to one exceptionally well-endowed, and capable of begetting whole and perfect offspring. For this reason he called the student of celestial things "father" — because he is not barren of wisdom.

The symbols pertaining to Abram, then, are worked out with this precision; those pertaining to Abraham we shall now show. There were three: father, elect, and of sound. We say that the "sound" is uttered speech — for the vocal organ is the sounding instrument of the living creature — and that the father of this is the mind, since the stream of speech flows from the understanding as from a spring; and "elect" belongs to the wise man, for whatever is best is found in him.

According to the earlier characteristics, then, the lover of learning and the babbler about celestial things was sketched in outline; but according to those just now described, the philosopher — or rather the wise man — was made clear. No longer suppose, then, that the divine bestows a mere change of names, but rather a correction of character conveyed through symbols.

For the man who had earlier busied himself with the nature of the heavens, whom some call an astronomer, God summoned to a share in virtue, and showed him to be, and named him, wise, setting a seal upon his transformed character — as the Hebrews would say, Abraham, but as the Greeks would say, "elect father of sound."

"For what purpose," he says, "do you investigate the dances and revolutions of the stars, and leap up so far from earth toward the ether? Is it merely that you may busy yourself with things up there, and nothing more? And what benefit could come from such excessive meddling? What abatement of pleasure? What overthrow of desire? What dissolution of grief or fear? What excision of the passions that shake and confound the soul?"

For just as there is no benefit in trees unless they prove capable of bearing fruit, in the same way there is none in the study of nature either, unless it is going to bring about the acquisition of virtue; for this is its fruit.

For this reason some of the ancients, likening the discourse of philosophy to a field, compared the natural part to the plants, the logical part to the hedges and enclosures, and the ethical part to the fruit — supposing that the surrounding walls, too, were constructed for the guarding of the fruit by those who own it, and that the plants themselves had been fashioned for the sake of producing fruit.

In this way, then, they said that in philosophy too the study of nature and of logic must be referred back to ethics, by which character is improved, aiming at once at the acquisition and at the use of virtue.

This, then, is what we were taught concerning him who was renamed in word but who in deed changed from natural philosophy to ethical philosophy, and migrated from contemplation of the cosmos to knowledge of its Maker, from which he acquired piety, the fairest of possessions.

We shall now speak of the matters concerning his wife Sarah, for she too is renamed, to Sarrah, by the addition of the one letter rho. These, then, are the names; but their meanings must be explained. Sara is translated "my ruler," and Sarrah, "ruler."

The former, then, is a symbol of particular virtue, the latter of generic virtue. And by as much as a genus differs from a species in the direction of being less particular, by so much does the second name surpass the first; for the species is both small and perishable, while the genus is both extensive and imperishable.

God wishes to bestow great and immortal things in place of small and perishable ones, and this work is fitting for him. For the practical wisdom that resides in the excellent person is the beginning only of that person, and one who possesses it would not err in saying, "The beginning of me is the practical wisdom within me"; but the generic practical wisdom that stamped this individual wisdom is no longer the beginning of some particular person, but is itself, absolutely, the Beginning.

Accordingly, the particular wisdom that exists in a species will perish along with its possessor, but the wisdom that, like a seal, stamped it will remain, freed from everything mortal, imperishable throughout eternity. So too among the arts, some perish together in species with those who acquired them - geometers, grammarians, musicians - while the generic arts remain indestructible. And in this same passage he further teaches, in passing, that every virtue is a queen, ruling and governing the affairs of life.

But Jacob too came to be renamed Israel, and not without purpose. Why? Because Jacob means "supplanter," while Israel is called "one who sees God." Now it is the work of a supplanter, when practicing virtue, to shake the very footings of passion on which it is established, and to move, unsettle, and overturn whatever in them is firm and fixed - and this does not tend to happen without struggle and free of contest, but only when someone, contending in the exercises of practical wisdom, trains the exercises of the soul and wrestles against the reasonings that oppose and try to throw it by the neck. But it is the work of one who sees God not to leave the sacred contest uncrowned, but to carry off the prizes for victory.

What crown could be woven more full of bloom and more fitting for a victorious soul than the one by which it will be able to gaze sharply upon the One who truly is? A noble prize indeed lies before the soul in training: to have its eyes opened toward the far-shining comprehension of the sight of the only Being worthy of contemplation.

It is worth raising the question why Abraham, from the moment he was renamed, is deemed worthy of that same appellation, no longer being called by his former name, whereas Jacob, though addressed as Israel, is nonetheless called Jacob again, still more often, afterward. We must say, then, that these too are distinguishing marks by which taught virtue differs from virtue acquired by training.

The one who has been made better through teaching, having obtained a favored nature that secures for him what is unforgettable through the cooperation of memory, makes constant use of what he has learned, gripping it tightly and holding it firmly; but the one in training, once he has exercised strenuously, in turn takes breath and relaxes, gathering himself and restoring the strength worn down by his labor, just as those who oil their bodies for athletics do. For these too, when they grow weary in their exercise, pour on oil so that their strength may not be entirely torn away by the violence and intensity of the contest.

Then the one who was taught, since he makes use of an immortal instructor, possesses the benefit as something dwelling within him and immortal, never turning aside; while the one in training possesses only his own voluntary effort, and it is this that he exercises and hardens, so that he may return to his proper kind.

The latter, then, is the more enduring of hardship, but the former is the more fortunate; for the one makes use of another as teacher, while the other seeks and inquires and investigates from himself, searching earnestly into the things of nature, employing unbroken and continuous labor.

For this reason the changeless God renamed Abraham, since he was destined to remain in a like condition, so that, by the one who stands fixed and is ever the same and in the same way, he might be firmly established in that state which was to be his lasting one; but Jacob was renamed by an angel, a servant of God, a word - so that it might be acknowledged that nothing among the things that come after the One who Is is a cause of unwavering and unshifting steadiness, but rather a cause of harmony, such as that in a musical instrument, which contains the tensions and relaxations of notes for the artful blending of melody.

But of the three founders of the nation, the outer two were renamed, Abraham and Jacob, while the middle one, Isaac, retained the same appellation forever. Why? Because taught virtue and trained virtue admit of improvement - for the one who is being taught desires knowledge of what he does not know, and the one who makes use of training desires the crowns and the prizes set before a soul that loves labor and loves contemplation - whereas the self-taught and self-learned kind, since it is constituted more by nature than by pursuit, was brought forth from the beginning equal, complete, and perfect, lacking nothing needed to fill out its number.

But Joseph is not the steward of the goods proper to the body; for he changes his name, being called Psonthomphanech by the king of the land (Gen. 41:45). What account this too gives must be explained. Joseph is translated "addition"; and an addition is whatever belongs to convention rather than to nature - gold, silver, possessions, revenues, the service of household slaves, an abundant supply of treasures and furnishings and other wealth, and the countless provisions that produce pleasure.

The provider and steward of these things has come to be called, quite fittingly, by the name "addition," since he has taken charge of things brought in and added from outside to what accords with nature. The oracles bear witness to this, showing that he stored up the food of the whole bodily region, Egypt, and administered its grain supply (Gen. 41:

48). Such, then, is the Joseph made known to us by these signs; let us now consider what sort of figure Psonthomphanech is. It is translated "mouth that judges in response." For every foolish person supposes that the man of great wealth, awash in external goods, is thereby also a man of sound judgment, competent to answer whatever questions he is asked and competent also to propose beneficial counsels from himself - and, in general, such a person locates practical wisdom in fortune, when instead fortune ought to be located in practical wisdom; for it is fitting that the unstable be guided by the stable.

And indeed, his brother by the same mother - the father calls him Benjamin, but the mother calls him "son of my pain" (Gen. 35:18), very fittingly by nature. For Benjamin, translated, means "son of days," and day is illumined by the light perceptible from the sun, and it is to this light that we liken empty opinion.

For empty opinion possesses a certain perceptible brightness in the praises given by the many and the common herd, in decrees inscribed, in the dedication of statues and images, in purple robes and golden crowns, in chariots and four-horse teams and the escorting of crowds. The one who zealously pursues these things has fittingly, then, been named "of days" - of perceptible light, and of the brightness that surrounds empty opinion.

This, the elder reason, truly the father, gives him as his fitting and proper name; but the soul that has suffered gives the name that matches what it has suffered, for it calls him "son of pain." Why? Because those who are carried along by empty opinions are supposed to be happy, but in truth they are wretched.

For the contrary winds are many: envy, jealousies, unceasing quarrels, rivalries irreconcilable even unto death, hostilities handed down from children's children in succession - an inheritance no one would choose to possess. It is therefore necessary that the God-inspired reason present her as dying in these very birth-pangs,

the birth-pangs that bring forth vain opinion - for it says, "Rachel died in hard labor" (Gen. 35:16, 19), since indeed the sowing and begetting of perceptible and empty glory is, in truth, the death of the soul.

What of this, then? Were not the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, made to resemble, quite fittingly by nature, the two eldest sons of Jacob, Reuben and Simeon? For it is said: "Your two sons, who were born in Egypt before I came into Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be to me as Reuben and Simeon" (Gen. 48:5). Let us then consider in what manner these are fitted to the two.

Reuben is a symbol of a good natural endowment - for translated it means "son who sees," since everyone who possesses quickness and a good natural endowment has clear sight - while Ephraim, as we have often said elsewhere, is a symbol of memory - for translated it means "fruit-bearing," and the best fruit of the soul is memory. And nothing else is so akin to another thing as remembering is to a good natural endowment.

Again, Simeon is a name for learning and instruction - for translated it means "hearing" - and it is characteristic of one who is learning to listen and pay attention to what is said; while Manasseh is a symbol of recollection, for he is named from forgetting.

But it necessarily happens that the one who comes forth out of forgetting must remember; and recollection is proper to learning. For often the theorems of the one who is learning slip away, since through weakness he is unable to retain them, and then rise again to the surface from the beginning. The affliction of this slipping-away is called forgetting, and that of the return-flow is called recollection.

Is it not fitting, then, that memory corresponds to natural aptitude, and recollection to learning? Indeed, the relation Simeon bears to Reuben — that is, learning to nature — is the same relation Manasseh bears to Ephraim, that is, recollection to memory.

For just as the naturally gifted person is superior to the one who learns — the one resembles sight, the other hearing, and hearing takes second place to sight — so too the person of memory is in every way superior to the person of recollection, because the latter is mixed with forgetfulness, while the former remains unmixed and unadulterated from beginning to end.

Indeed, the oracles call the father-in-law of the chief prophet now Jethro, now Reuel: Jethro when vanity is flourishing, for the name, translated, means 'superfluous,' and vanity is a superfluity in a life devoted to truth — a vanity that treats what is fair and necessary to life as a laughing matter, while dignifying the unequal claims of greed.

This man prefers human things to divine, custom to law, the profane to the sacred, the mortal to the immortal, and, in short, seeming to being. And having taken it upon himself unbidden, he steps into the role of counselor, instructing the wise man not to teach what alone is worth learning — ‘the ordinances of God and the law’ (Exodus 18:20) — but instead the contracts men make with one another, which are all but the cause of a fellowship that is no fellowship at all. And the great man submits to all of it, thinking it fitting that small matters be judged by small men, and great matters by great (ibid. 22, 24).

But this man who merely seems wise often changes, and having passed on from the flock he had blindly been allotted to drive, and having sought out the divine herd, he becomes no discreditable part of it, marveling at the herdsman of nature and admiring the oversight he exercises in caring for his own flock. For Reuel, translated (Exodus 2:18), means 'the shepherding of God.'

The main point has been stated; now let the proofs be set out. First, he is introduced as an attendant of judgment and justice, for the name Midian, translated, is derived from 'judgment.' And this has a double sense. It signifies, on the one hand, exclusion and rejection — the very thing that regularly happens to competitors in what are called the sacred games, for countless men who proved unfit have already been disqualified by the judges of the contest.

These men, initiated into the unholy rites of Baal-peor (Numbers 25:3) and widening every orifice of the body to receive the streams poured in from outside — for Baal-peor, translated, means, roughly, 'mouth of the skin' — flooded the mind that should have governed them and let it sink to the utmost depths, so that it could not swim back up nor manage to rise even a little.

And it suffered this, until the peaceable one, priest of God (ibid. 12, 13), clear-spoken Phinehas, came as an unbidden champion, being by nature a hater of wickedness and possessed by zeal for what is noble. Having taken up his javelin — that is, a sharpened and penetrating reason, capable of searching out and tracking down each thing — he was able not to be deceived, and, employing his vigorous strength, pierced the passion through the womb (ibid. 7, 8), so that it might no longer breed any evil sent from God.

Against these men the greatest war was also waged by the race that sees, in which, of those who fought it out, 'not one was missing' (Numbers 31:49), but each returned unwounded and safe, crowned with the wreaths of victory.

This, then, was one thing signified by Midian. There is another kind, the discerning and judicial, which is also joined by marriage to the prophetic race. 'The priest,' he says, of judgment and justice, 'has seven daughters' (Exodus 2:16) — symbolically, the faculties of the irrational part: the organ of generation, the voice, and the five senses, shepherding the flock of their father.

For it is through these seven faculties that the advances and increases of the father-mind are established, by the apprehensions that arise within them. Each, when it arrives at its proper object — sight at colors and shapes, hearing at sounds, smell at vapors, taste at flavors, and the others at whatever suits them — 'draws water,' in a certain sense, from the perceptible things outside, 'until they have filled the troughs of the soul, from which they water the flock of their father' (ibid.) — I mean the purest flock of reasoning, which carries about with it both security and order at once.

But when the companions of envy and malice arrive, leaders of a wicked herd, they drive the daughters away from their natural use (ibid. 17). For the senses lead things from outside in, to the mind as if to a judge and king, so that, employing what is best, they may act rightly.

But those others sit opposed, pursuing them and issuing the contrary command: to drag the mind outward and hand over appearances as plunder — until 'rising up,' the disposition that had until then seemed quietly to love virtue, and being seized with divine inspiration, its name Moses, will shield them and 'rescue them' (ibid.) from those who held them captive, nourishing the father's flock with words that give drink.

Having escaped the attack of enemies of the understanding — men who are enemies at heart but who covet only outward trappings, as in a tragedy — the daughters no longer come to Jethro but to Reuel (ibid. 17, 18). For they have abandoned their kinship with vanity and have been made kin, through a lawful upbringing, to a portion of the sacred herd worthy to be counted its own, the herd that the divine Word leads, as the name shows: for it means 'the shepherding of God.'

And when the herdsman tends his own flock, good things are at hand in abundance, ready-made, for those of the flock who obey and do not resist. Indeed, a song of this kind is sung among the hymns: 'The Lord shepherds me, and I shall lack nothing' (Psalm 22:1).

The mind, then, that has the divine Word for shepherd and king, will fittingly ask his seven daughters: 'Why have you come today, hurrying with such great speed?' (Exodus 2:18). For formerly, when you were occupied with things perceptible to sense, you would linger outside for a long time and return only with difficulty, lured on by those very things; but now, I do not know what has come over you, that you have returned so promptly, contrary to custom.

They will say, then, that they themselves were not the cause of running the double course to and from the objects of sense without pausing for breath and with great impetus, but rather the man who rescued them from the shepherds of the wild herd — whom they call an Egyptian, that is, Moses (ibid. 19) — though he is not only a Hebrew but of the purest stock of the Hebrews, the stock that alone serves as priests — they themselves being unable to rise above their own nature.

For since the senses stand on the border between the intelligible and the perceptible, it is a welcome thing if they reach out toward both, rather than being led by the perceptible alone; but to suppose that they will ever confine themselves solely to the objects of the understanding is great naivety. For this reason they put both together, signifying by 'man' the things discernible by reason alone, and by 'Egyptian' representing the objects of sense.

On hearing this, he will ask again: 'Where is the man?' (ibid. 20). In what part of your domain does the rational form dwell? 'Why have you left him' so readily (ibid.), instead of holding fast, once you had met him, to the fairest and most profitable possession for yourselves?

But if not before, then now 'call him, so that he may eat' (ibid.) and be nourished by your improvements and your growing kinship with him. For perhaps that winged, god-borne, and prophetic race, named Zipporah, will also come to dwell with us, and will be led as a bride (ibid. 21).

So much, then, about these things. But Moses also renames Hoshea as Joshua (Numbers 13:17), reminting the man of a particular quality into a settled disposition. For Hoshea, translated, means 'this particular kind of man,' while Joshua means 'the salvation of the Lord,' a name for the best possible disposition.

For settled dispositions are superior to the particular men who possess them, just as musicianship is superior to the musician, and medicine to the physician, and every craft to the craftsman who practices it — superior in permanence, in power, and in the unstumbling excellence of its principles. For a disposition is permanent, active, complete, whereas the particular man is mortal, passive, incomplete; and what is incorruptible is superior to what is mortal, what is actively causative is superior to what merely suffers, and what is complete is superior to what is incomplete.

In this way the coinage of the man just mentioned was reminted into a better form. And Caleb, too, is himself entirely transformed; for it says, 'another spirit came to be in him' (Numbers 14:24), as though the governing faculty had changed toward the utmost perfection.

For Caleb, translated, means 'whole heart'; and this is a symbol that the soul has not shifted and wavered only in part, but has been transformed wholly and entirely toward what is approved, having banished, through arguments of repentance, whatever was not altogether praiseworthy. For only by washing away what defiled it in this way, and making use of the cleansing baths of practical wisdom, was it destined to shine bright.

It so happens that the chief prophet has many names. When he interprets and expounds the oracles that are delivered to him, he is called Moses; when in prayer he blesses the people, he is 'a man of God' (Deuteronomy 33:1); and when Egypt pays the penalty for its impieties, he is 'god' to Pharaoh, the king of that land (Exodus 7:1).

Why is this? Because rewriting laws for the benefit of those who will encounter them is the work of one who gropes his way, one who always keeps hold of divine things by hand and who has been called up (Exodus 24:1) by the god-proclaiming lawgiver, and who has received from him a great gift: the interpretation and prophecy of sacred laws. For "Moses," when translated, means "taking," but it can also mean "a groping," for the reasons stated.

But to pray and to bless is not for just anyone, but for a man who has not looked to kinship with created things, but has assigned himself to the leader and father of all.

For it would be a welcome thing if someone managed merely to use sound judgment for himself; but to procure the good for others as well — this was the promise of a greater and more perfect soul, one truly touched by the divine, and one who, having obtained this, will fittingly be called god. And this same person is god precisely because he is wise, and for that reason rules over every fool, even should that fool be enthroned upon a royal scepter and pride himself greatly on that very account.

For the ruler of all things wishes — even when certain people, guilty of unbearable wrongs, are about to be punished — to have intercessors on their behalf, men who, imitating the propitious power of the Father, will use their punishments more moderately and humanely. For to do good is the property of God.

Having now spoken sufficiently about the change and alteration of names, we shall turn to the next topics on our route. There followed immediately the birth of Isaac. For having called his mother Sarah instead of Sarai, he says to Abraham: "I will give you a child from her" (Genesis 17:16). We must examine each point in turn.

Now whoever gives anything in the proper sense of the word always gives something that is entirely his own. If this is true without falsehood, then Isaac would be, not the man, but that which shares a name with the best of the good affections — joy, laughter — the inward son of God, who gives him as a gentle balm and cheerfulness to the most peaceable souls.

For it would be absurd for one man to exist, and for another to father bastard and adulterine children upon his wife; and indeed Moses records God as the husband of the quiver-bearing mind, when he says: "The Lord, seeing that Leah was hated, opened her womb" (Genesis 29:31).

For having taken pity and compassion on virtue, hated by the mortal race, and on the soul that loves virtue, he leaves barren [...] its cluster-loving nature, but opens the spring of good offspring, granting her an easy childbirth.

And Tamar, having become pregnant with divine seed, and not having seen the one who sowed it — for it is said that she then "veiled her face" (Genesis 38:15), just as Moses, when he turned away, reverent of looking upon God (Exodus 3:6) — but having closely examined the tokens and the pledges and having judged the matter within herself, that a mortal does not give such things, cried out: "Whosever these are, by him I am with child" (Genesis 38:25).

Whose is the ring — Faithfulness, the seal of the universe, the archetypal Idea, by which all things that are without quality and without shape were stamped and given form? And whose is the necklace — Destiny, the sequence and proportion of all things, holding an unbreakable chain? And whose too is the staff (ibid.) — that which is fixed, unshaken, unchangeable: admonition, discipline, education? The scepter, the kingship — whose is it? Is it not God's alone?

And so the confessing disposition, Judah, delighted by her possessed and god-inspired manner, speaks boldly, saying: "She has been shown righteous, for the reason on account of which I did not give her to any mortal" (ibid. 26), considering it impious to defile things once profaned that belong to the divine.

...things. And practical wisdom too, having given birth in the manner of a mother, reveals the self-taught race — that God himself sowed it. For once the child was born she exults, saying: "The Lord has made laughter for me" (Genesis 21:6), which is equivalent to saying: he shaped Isaac, he fashioned him, he begot him, since he himself was laughter.

But this saying is not for everyone's ears, since much of the evil of superstition has flowed among us and flooded unmanly and ignoble souls. Hence she adds: "For whoever hears will rejoice with me" (ibid.), implying that there are few whose ears are open and pricked up to receive these sacred words, which teach that to sow and beget noble things is the proper work of God alone.

To these words all others are deaf. And I recall an oracle once proclaimed by a prophetic mouth, fiery in this way: "From me your fruit has been found. Who is wise, and will understand these things? Who is intelligent, and will know them?" (Hosea 14:9-10). And I pondered on him who resounds and strikes the instrument of voice, himself invisible in an invisible way, and I marveled, struck with astonishment at what was said.

For if there is any good among existing things [...] or rather, if the whole heaven and cosmos, to speak the truth, is the fruit of God, sustained as it were by a tree of eternal and ever-flourishing nature. And it belongs to intelligent and wise men to know and confess such things — not to men of no account.

What "I will give you" means has been stated; but what "from her" (Genesis 17:16) means must now be shown. Some have taken it to mean what comes from outside her, thinking it judged best by right reason that the soul declare nothing beautiful to be properly its own, but rather something that comes to it from outside, according to the magnanimity of the God who rains down graces. Others take it to mean immediate speed.

For "from her" is equivalent to "at once," "immediately," "without delay," "without postponement." And it is in this manner that divine gifts love to occur, outrunning even the intervals of time. And there is a third group, who say that virtue is the mother of that which comes to be good, receiving its seed from no mortal source.

To those who ask whether a barren woman gives birth — for the oracles, having earlier introduced Sarah as barren, now acknowledge that she will become a mother — this must be said: that a barren woman does not by nature give birth, just as a blind man does not see nor a deaf man hear; but the soul that is barren toward base things, and infertile of the excess of passions and of vices, is nearly the only one that enjoys an easy delivery, bearing things worthy of love, seven in number, according to the song sung by Grace, that is, by Hannah, who says: "The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children has grown weak" (1 Kingdoms 2:5).

She calls "she who has many children" the mind heaped together out of mixed and jumbled reckonings, which, because of the multitude of crowds and disturbances surrounding it, bears incurable evils; and she calls "barren" the soul that does not receive what is mortal as fertile seed, but rather consumes and destroys the company and intercourse of base things, and instead holds fast to the number seven and to the most peaceful state that accords with it. For it is this that she wishes to be pregnant with and to be called mother of.

Such was the meaning of "from her." Now let us examine the third point, what was meant by "child." First, then, it is worth marveling that he does not say he will give many children, but will grant only one. Why is this? Because the beautiful is by nature to be assessed not so much by multitude as by power.

For there are, if it should happen, very many things that are musical, grammatical, geometrical, just, prudent, courageous, and temperate; but the musical itself, and the grammatical itself, and the geometrical itself, and further the just, the temperate, the prudent, and the courageous itself — this one thing alone, supreme, differing in nothing from the archetypal Idea, from which all those many and countless things were shaped.

This, then, concerns his saying that he would give one. But now he has said "child," not carelessly nor without forethought, but in order to establish that it is not a stranger, nor a supposititious child, nor again a bastard or illegitimate offspring, but a legitimate and comely one, truly the offspring of a noble soul. For "child" (teknon) is derived from "birth" (tokos), spoken to emphasize the kinship by which children are naturally fitted to their parents.

"I will bless her," he says, "and she shall become nations" (Genesis 17:16), showing not only that generic virtue is, as it were, divided into nations — that is, into its nearest species and the subdivisions beneath those species — but also that it has come about that, just as with living beings, so too with things, there are, in a sense, nations, for whom it is a great benefit to have virtue present with them.

For all things bereft and widowed of practical wisdom are harmful, just as things unlit by the sun are necessarily dark. For it is by virtue that the farmer better tends his plants; by virtue too that the charioteer drives his chariot without stumbling in the races; by virtue too that the pilot steers his ship on its voyage. Virtue has made it possible for households, cities, and countries to be better managed, fashioning men skilled in household management, in statecraft, and in fellowship.

Virtue has introduced the best laws and has everywhere sown the seeds of peace, since by its opposite the opposite things swiftly tend to arise: war, lawlessness, bad government, confusion, disastrous voyages, overturnings, and that most troublesome disease among the sciences, villainy, from which, instead of arts, evil arts have taken their name. Necessarily, then, virtue will extend into nations — great and massed assemblies alike of living beings and of things — for the benefit of those who receive it.

It is said next, "and kings of nations shall come from her" (Gen 17:16). For all those she conceives and bears are rulers — not by lot, an unstable thing, nor by the vote of hired men choosing them for a short time, but established forever by nature itself.

This is not a tale of my own invention, but comes from the most sacred oracles, in which certain people are introduced saying to Abraham: "You are a king from God among us" (Gen 23:6) — not because they had examined his material possessions (for what possessions could belong to a man who had emigrated, who did not even dwell in a city but wandered a vast, desolate, and trackless land?), but because they perceived the kingly disposition in his mind, so that they had to agree, in Moses' terms, that only the wise man is king.

For truly the prudent man is a ruler over the foolish, knowing what must be done and what must not; the self-controlled man rules the licentious, having examined with care the matters of choice and avoidance; the courageous man rules the cowardly, having clearly learned what must be endured and what must not; the just man rules the unjust, aiming at an unwavering equality in the distribution of what is due; and the pious man rules the impious, holding fast to the best convictions about God.

It was likely that the mind, puffed up by such promises, should be lifted aloft. But he, to our reproof — we who are accustomed to hold our heads high even over the smallest things — falls, and immediately laughs (Gen 17:17) with the laughter of the soul: gloomy in countenance, but smiling in mind, since a great and unmixed joy had settled within him.

Both things happen at the same time to the wise man who inherits goods greater than hope: he laughs and he falls. The falling serves as assurance against boastfulness, through recognition of mortal nothingness; the laughing serves to confirm piety, through the conviction that God alone is the cause of graces and goods.

Let becoming, then, fall and grow gloomy — naturally so, for of itself it is unstable and full of grief — but let it be raised up by God, and laugh; for God alone is its support and its joy.

One might reasonably be puzzled how it is possible for anyone to laugh when laughter has not yet come into existence among us — for Isaac is laughter, and according to the present inquiry he has not yet been born. For just as it is not possible to see without eyes, or to hear without ears, or to smell without nostrils, or indeed to use any of the other senses without their proper organs, nor to comprehend without reasoning, so too it would not seem possible to laugh unless laughter had already been fashioned. What, then, should we say?

Nature often foreshows many things that are about to come into being through certain signs. Do you not see the fledgling that, before it can swim upon the air, flaps its wings and shakes its pinions, giving a foretaste of the good news that it will be able to fly?

Have you not seen a lamb, or a kid, or a calf still newborn, before its horns have grown, when someone provokes it, standing its ground and charging with those very parts from which nature will produce its weapons of defense?

Indeed, in beast-fights the bulls do not immediately gore their opponents, but first plant their feet firmly apart, moderately loosen their necks, turn one side away, and glare with a truly bull-like look — and only then do they charge, taking hold of the task. What happens then, those accustomed to coining names have called an "onrush": a kind of impulse existing before the impulse itself.

The soul, too, undergoes something similar in most cases: when the good is hoped for, it rejoices beforehand, so as, in a sense, to be glad before gladness and to take delight before delight. One might compare it also to what happens with plants: for these too, when they are about to bear fruit, put forth shoots beforehand, blossom beforehand, and grow green beforehand.

Look at the cultivated vine, how it has been wondrously wrought by nature with tendrils, coils, shoots, leaves, and vine-branches, which, all but giving voice, announce the tree's joy over the fruit to come. And indeed the day laughs beforehand, deep in the dawn twilight, when the sun is about to rise; for one gleam is the herald of another, and a fainter light goes forth before a light of greater brilliance.

So joy accompanies the good that has already arrived, but hope accompanies the good that is expected: we rejoice over what has come, but hope for what is to come — just as it happens, too, in the case of opposites; for the presence of evil produces grief, but its expectation produces fear. And fear, it turns out, is nothing other than grief before grief, just as hope is joy before joy; for what fear is in relation to grief, that hope is in relation to joy.

The senses carry about clear evidence for what has just been said. Smell, stationed before taste, all but decides in advance almost everything concerning food and drink — for which reason some, looking sharply at this evident fact, have called it the "foretaster." And hope, too, is by nature a kind of foretasting of the good to come, and it establishes that good beforehand in the soul that is destined to acquire it with certainty.

So too on journeys, a man hungry and thirsty, suddenly seeing springs, or trees of every kind heavy with cultivated fruit, though he has not yet eaten or drunk, nor even drawn water or plucked fruit, is filled beforehand with the hope of enjoyment. Then shall we suppose that the body's nourishments can be feasted upon even before their use, while the mind's nourishments are not capable of giving delight in advance, even when they are about to provide a feast?

He laughed, then, reasonably enough, since laughter did not yet seem to have been sown in the race of mortals; and not he alone, but his wife laughs as well. For it says again: "Sarah laughed within herself, saying, 'This has not yet happened to me, even now'" (Gen 18:12) — a good that comes about spontaneously, without effort; and the one who made the promise is "my lord and elder" (ibid.) over all becoming, whom it is necessary to trust.

At the same time this also teaches us that virtue is by nature a thing to rejoice in, and that the one who possesses it always exults; and conversely, that vice is a thing of grief, and that the one who possesses it is most sorely pained. Do we still wonder at those philosophers who say that virtue is a state of good feeling?

For behold, Moses has been found to be the sponsor of this wise doctrine, since he represents the man of worth as rejoicing and laughing; and elsewhere not only him, but also those who come into the same condition as he. "For seeing you," he says, "he will rejoice in himself" (Exod 4:14) — as though the mere sight of the man of excellence were sufficient to fill the mind with gladness, unburdening it of the most hateful of the soul's evils, grief.

But rejoicing is granted to no wicked person, just as is also sung in the words of the prophets: "There is no rejoicing for the impious, says God" (Isa 48:22). For this is truly a saying and a divine oracle: that the life of every worthless person is gloomy, grief-laden, and full of misery, even if it pretends to smile in its outward face.

For I would not say that the Egyptians truly rejoiced, in truth, when they heard that Joseph's brothers had come, but rather that they feigned appearances by putting on a show. For no rebuke that comes upon fools is pleasant; just as no physician is pleasant to the undisciplined invalid. For toil follows what is beneficial, and ease follows what is harmful; and those who prefer ease to toil naturally come to hate those who recommend what is beneficial.

So whenever you hear that "Pharaoh and his court rejoiced" (Gen 45:16) at the arrival of Joseph's brothers, do not suppose that this was true delight — unless perhaps insofar as they expected him to change from the goods of the soul, on which he had been raised, to the endless desires of the body, having falsified the ancient and ancestral coinage of his kindred virtue.

Having conceived such hopes, the pleasure-loving mind does not consider it enough to hook the younger men, those only just beginning their training in self-control, with the bait of desires; it considers it a terrible thing unless it also brings under its sway the elder reason, in whom the raging passions have already grown old and subsided.

For again he speaks, offering losses as though they were benefits: "Take your father and your possessions, and come to me" (ibid. 18) — to Egypt, and to this fearsome king, who drags back by force the goods that are our ancestral and truly existing possessions, once they have advanced outside the body (for by nature they are free), forcing them to be handed over to a most bitter prison, having appointed as jailer — so the oracle says — Potiphar the eunuch and chief cook (Gen 39:1), a man deprived of noble things and cut off from the generative powers of the soul, and moreover unable to sow or plant anything pertaining to education; a man who, in the manner of a cook, kills living things and cuts and divides them limb by limb and part by part, and wallows among lifeless and dead things — not so much bodies as affairs — and, by his elaborate seasonings, rouses and provokes the impulses of the endless passions, which it would have been fitting instead to tame and calm.

And he says, "I will give you all the good things of Egypt, and you shall eat the marrow of the land" (Gen 45:18). But we shall say to him: we who have beheld the goods of the soul do not admit any good of the body; for the thrice-longed-for desire for those goods is sufficient, once it has melted within us, to work forgetfulness of everything dear to the flesh.

Such, then, is the false-named joy of the foolish; but the true joy has already been spoken of, and it fits only the man of worth. "So he fell down and laughed" (Gen 17:17) — falling not away from God, but away from himself; for he stood firm with respect to the unchangeable one, but fell from his own self-conceit.

Such is the falsely named joy of the foolish, but the true joy has already been described, and it belongs to the good alone. "So he fell down and laughed" (Gen 17:17) — not falling away from God, but from himself; for he stood firm with respect to the unchangeable one, but fell from his own self-conceit.

And so, when the mind's presumption of wisdom had been cast down, and the God-loving disposition had been roused and set firmly upon the unswerving alone, he laughed, and at once "he said in his understanding: shall a child be born to a hundred-year-old man, and shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, give birth?" (ibid.)

Do not, however, think that the phrase "not with the mouth" but "in the understanding" is added carelessly, but rather with great precision. Why? Because by saying "if a child will be born to the hundred-year-old man" he seems to raise a doubt about the birth of Isaac, a birth which he was earlier said to have believed in, as this recent oracle made clear: "this one shall not inherit you, but the one who shall come out of you" — and immediately after he said: "and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Gen 15:4, 6).

Since, then, it was not consistent for one who had believed to doubt, he made the doubt not long-lasting, not extending as far as the tongue and mouth, but stopping short within the swiftly moving understanding itself. "For in the understanding," it says, "he spoke" — a thing which none of those praised for swiftness of foot could outrun, since it has outstripped even every winged creature.

This, I think, is why the most esteemed of the Greek poets said, "like a wing or a thought," showing the swiftness of quickness, later intensifying it by making thought swifter than the wing of an arrow. For the understanding travels over many things and bodies at once, in the same moment, with an unutterable motion, and reaches at once to the ends of earth and sea, contracting and cutting through the boundless distances; and at the very same time it leaps up so far from the earth that it ascends through the air into the ether, and comes to rest, with difficulty, near the outermost vault of the fixed stars.

For its fiery and burning heat does not allow it to remain at rest; hence it goes far beyond, and is carried outside the boundary of this whole realm of sense-perception, toward that which is fashioned, of kindred nature, out of the Forms. So in the case of the good man the turning aside was brief, indivisible, without parts, not perceptible by sense but only by the understanding, in a certain way timeless.

But perhaps someone might say: what then, that one who has believed admits even a trace or shadow or breath of unbelief at all? This person, I think, wishes to say nothing else than that he declares the one who has come into being to be uncreated, the mortal immortal, the perishable imperishable, and man — if it is right to say it — God. For the faith which falls to a human being's lot

he says must be so secure as to differ in no way from that faith which concerns Being itself, the faith that is complete and full in every respect. For Moses says in the greater song: "God is faithful, and there is no injustice in him" (Deut 32:4).

But it is great ignorance to suppose that a human soul can contain the virtues of God, which are unswerving and utterly steadfast; it is enough to be able to acquire images of them, images diminished by many and great degrees from their archetypes — and perhaps not even that is unreasonable.

For the virtues of God must necessarily be unmixed, since God too is not a composite, being a simple nature; but the virtues of human beings are mixed, since we too have come into being as mixtures, blended of the divine and the mortal, and harmonized according to the principles of perfect music. And whatever is composed of several elements has, by nature, opposing pulls toward each of its parts.

Happy is the one to whom it has been given to incline, for the greater part of his life, toward the better and more divine portion; for to do so for the whole of time is impossible, since the opposing weight of mortality sometimes tips the balance the other way, and lying in wait, seizes its opportunity in the untimely lapses of reasoning, so as to resist by force.

"Abraham, then, believed God" (Gen 15:6) — but he believed as a man, so that you may know the peculiar mark of mortality and learn that no other turning could come upon him except one that arose from his own nature. But if the turning was brief and momentary, one ought to give thanks for it; for many others have been swept away entirely, submerged by the rush and current, and destroyed by its force.

For virtue in a mortal body, noble friend, is not, according to most sacred Moses, sound of foot, but suffers something like numbness, limping a little. "For the broad part of his thigh was numbed," it says, "and because of it he limped" (Gen 32:25, 31).

But perhaps one of the bolder sort might come forward and say that this utterance is not that of a man who disbelieves, but of one who is praying — that if the best of the good emotions, joy, is to be born, it should be born by no other numbers than the ninety and the hundred (Gen 17:17), so that the perfect good might come into being through perfect numbers.

And the numbers mentioned are indeed perfect, especially according to the most sacred records. Let us look at each of them. Shem, at once, the son of righteous Noah and ancestor of the seeing race, "is said to have been a hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad" (Gen 11:10), whose name is interpreted "he threw wretchedness into confusion" — a fine thing, to shake, confound, and destroy the wretched offspring of the soul that is full of evils, namely injustice.

But also "Abraham plants a field" (Gen 21:33), using the hundredth measure to reckon out the plot of land, and Isaac "finds barley yielding a hundredfold" (Gen 26:12). And Moses builds the court of the sacred tabernacle a hundred cubits (Exod 27:9), measuring out the distance toward the east and the west.

And the hundredth part is a firstfruit of the firstfruits, which the Levites offer as firstfruits to the priests (Num 18:28); for having received the tithes from the nation, they give to the priests, as from their own possessions, a sacred tenth of the tenths.

One might, on further examination, find many other instances bearing on the honor of the number just mentioned in the laws, but for the present purpose what has been said suffices. But if from the hundred you take away a sacred tenth as firstfruit for God, who bears, increases, and fills the soul with fruits, you will leave another perfect number, the ninety. For how is it not perfect, being the boundary between the first and the tenth, by which the Holy of Holies is set apart, in the manner of the middle curtain (Exod 26:33), by which things of the same kind are divided according to the distinctions found within their species.

The good man, then, spoke to his understanding things that were truly good; but the base man sometimes expresses beautiful things most beautifully, yet does the most shameful things shamefully — just like Shechem, the offspring of folly, for his father is Hamor, which when translated means "donkey," while Shechem itself, when interpreted, means "shoulder," a symbol of toil. And wretched and full of misery is the toil that folly begets, just as beneficial is the toil to which quickness of mind is akin.

At any rate, the oracles say that Shechem "spoke to the understanding of the virgin," after first humbling her (Gen 34:2–3). Was it not said with precision, "he spoke to the understanding of the virgin," almost as if to show that he had done the very opposite of what he said? For Dinah is undeceived judgment, Justice enthroned beside God, ever-virgin; for both "judgment" and "justice" are translations of the name Dinah.

This virgin the foolish attempt to corrupt through their daily counsels and practices, and by the fine appearance of their speech they escape refutation. They ought, then, either to act in accordance with what they say, or, while doing wrong, to keep silent; for silence, they say, is half of an evil — just as Moses too, rebuking the one who claimed the birthright of primacy but yielded second place to the imperishable God, says: "you have sinned; be silent" (Gen 4:7).

For to boast loudly of one's evils is a double sin. And this is more or less what happens to most people: they always speak of what is dear and just to the ever-virgin Virtue, but they let slip no occasion on which, having the power, they will not outrage and mistreat her. For what city is not full of those who sing hymns to the ever-virgin Virtue?

They wear out the ears of everyone they meet, rehearsing such things as: prudence is necessary, folly is harmful; self-control is to be chosen, licentiousness is hateful; courage deserves to be endured for, cowardice to be fled; justice is advantageous, injustice disadvantageous; the holy is noble, the unholy shameful; reverence toward God is praiseworthy, irreverence blameworthy; it is most proper to human nature to deliberate, act, and speak well, and most foreign to it to do each of these badly.

Repeating these and similar things endlessly, they deceive the law courts, the councils, the theaters, and every assembly and gathering of human beings, just like those who fit beautiful masks over the ugliest of faces, taking care not to be exposed by those who look on.

But it is of no use; for some will come, thoroughly vigorous and possessed by zeal for virtue, who will strip away these coverings and amulets — all that they have woven together through their evil artistry of words — and will gaze upon the soul itself, naked and alone, and will come to know the secrets of its nature stored away in its inmost recesses. Then, bringing them out into the open, they will display to everyone, in the clear light of the sun, all its shame and disgrace — what sort of thing it really is, how shameful and ridiculous, and what a counterfeit beauty it had put on through its borrowed ornaments.

Those ready to take vengeance on such profane and impure ways are two in number, Simeon and Levi, but one in purpose. Hence too, in the blessings, their father numbered them as one (Gen 49:5), because of the harmony of their concord and their impulse toward one and the same object. But Moses no longer even mentions a pair, but has engraved the whole of Simeon into Levi (Deut 33:8), blending two substances into one, forming out of them a single thing, stamped as it were with one form, uniting hearing with action.

Since, then, the man of worth recognized that the promise, according to his own understanding, spoke of things full of reverence and caution, he experienced both feelings at once: faith toward God and distrust toward what is created. Fittingly, then, he says in his petition, "Let this Ishmael live before you" (Gen 17:18), placing each of the words he uses not at random — "this," "let him live," "before you." For many have been deceived by the ambiguity of names as applied to things.

We must consider what I mean. Ishmael, when interpreted, means "hearing of God," and of those who hear the divine teachings, some hear to their benefit, others to their own harm and that of others. Or do you not see the augur Balaam? He is introduced as one "hearing the sayings of God and possessing knowledge from the Most High" (Num 24:16).

But what did he gain from such hearing, what from such knowledge — he who set out, by deliberate choice, to maim the best eye of the soul, the eye trained to see God alone, yet was unable to do so because of the Savior's unconquerable power? And so he, pierced through by his own derangement of mind, received many wounds and perished among the wounded (Num 31:8), because he had counterfeited God-inspired prophecy with the sophistry of divination.

Rightly, then, does the man of worth pray that this Ishmael alone may be healthy, on account of those who do not listen genuinely to the sacred teachings — men whom Moses expressly forbade to attend the assembly of the All-Ruler.

For those whose generative faculty of thought has been crushed, or wholly cut off — those who exalt their own mind and sense-perception as the sole causes of human affairs, or the lovers of polytheism who have held in honor the many-godded throng, born of a harlot, not knowing the one Man and Father of the virtue-loving soul, God — are they not rightly driven out and banished (Deut 23:1–2)?

Something similar, it seems to me, is done by parents who accuse their son of drunkenness; for they say, "This our son is disobedient" (Deut 21:20), signifying by the addition of the word "this" that there are other children, steadfast and self-controlled, who obey the commands of right reason and instruction. For these are the soul's truest parents, by whom to be accused is most shameful, and to be praised most glorious.

As for the words "This is that Aaron and Moses, to whom God said, Lead out the sons of Israel from Egypt" (Exod 6:26), and "These are they who spoke to Pharaoh the king" (ibid. 27) — let us not suppose these were said carelessly, or that the pointing-out signifies nothing more than the bare names.

For since Moses is the purest mind, and Aaron his reasoned speech, and the mind has been trained to think in a manner befitting God, and speech too to interpret holy things in a holy way, the sophists, mimicking them and counterfeiting this approved coinage, claim that they too think rightly about the best things and speak in a praiseworthy manner (Exod 7:11). So that we might not be deceived by setting the counterfeit beside the genuine because of a similarity in stamp, God gave a test by which the two would be distinguished.

What, then, is the test? To lead the mind that is capable of vision, that loves the sight of God and loves wisdom, out of the region of the body. The one who was able to do this is the true Moses; the one who was unable, who is called by the name only while wrapped in countless empty titles, is an object of ridicule. As for Ishmael, he prays that he may live, not out of concern for the life joined to the body, but so that the divine hearing

may be roused and kindled anew, everlasting upon the soul. The one, then, prays to live as a hearing of words and a learning of sacred teachings, as has been said; but Jacob, the man of practice, prays for good natural endowment. For he says, "Let Reuben live and not die" (Deut 33:6) — is he then praying for immortality and incorruption, a thing impossible for a human being? Surely not. What, then, he wishes to convey must be explained.

All that is heard and all that is learned is built up as upon a foundation already laid — a nature receptive of instruction; but where nature does not first exist, everything is useless. For those without natural aptitude seem to differ not at all from an oak or a deaf stone; nothing adheres and fits itself to them, but everything rebounds and leaps away as from something hard and unyielding.

But the souls of those well-endowed by nature may be seen to resemble smoothed wax, blended in due measure — neither too hard nor too soft — readily receiving all that is heard and seen, and taking the perfect impress of their forms, vivid images stored in memory.

It was necessary, then, for the rational race to pray that this good natural endowment be free from sickness and immortal. For few share in the life lived according to virtue, which is the only truly unerring life — I do not mean the common herd, for none of these has any part in true life — but only those, if any, who have managed to flee the pursuits of ordinary people and to live for God alone.

For this reason the ascetic and courageous one greatly marveled that anyone, carried along in the midst of life's river, is swept away by no current, and is able to withstand even great flowing wealth, to push back the onrush of unmeasured pleasure, and not be snatched up by the storm-wind of empty glory.

It is not Jacob, in fact, but rather the sacred word, that says to Joseph — to every soul that is well conditioned in body and finds itself examined amid an abundance of resources for wealth, and is captured by none of these — "For you are still living" (Gen 46:30), uttering a marvelous saying that outstrips our own life. For we, having caught a small breeze of good fortune, shake out every sail, and puffing ourselves up grandly, blow hard and steadily, run full-sailed toward the enjoyment of the passions, and do not furl our unrestrained, slackened desires until

we run aground and wreck the whole vessel of the soul. Most beautifully, then, does he pray that this Ishmael may live. He adds, therefore, "let him live before God" (Gen 17:18), setting as the goal of happiness that the mind be deemed worthy of the oversight and watchful care of the best of beings.

For if, when a tutor is present, the one led astray would not err; if a guide, being near, benefits the one learning; if a young man, in the presence of an elder, is adorned with reverence and self-control; and if a father or mother, merely by appearing at the right moment, restrains a son who is about to do wrong — to what surpassing degree of blessing do we suppose one attains who always believes himself to be watched by God? For the one who fears and trembles at the dignity of the one present and looking on will flee wrongdoing with all his might.

When he prays that Ishmael may live, he has not, as I said before, despaired of the birth of Isaac. But he has put his trust in God... for it is not possible for a human being to receive the very things it is possible to give to God, since it is easy for God to grant the most and the greatest gifts, but it is not easy for us to receive the gifts held out to us.

For it would be enough for us if we could obtain those good things that are companions of toil and practice, more familiar to us; but of those that come about of themselves, without art or any human contrivance at all, and arise ready-made, there is not even hope of attaining them. For these, being divine, must of necessity be found among natures more divine and undefiled, natures set free from the mortal body.

Moses taught that thanksgiving should be made according to the power of one's hands (Num 6:21): the quick-witted dedicating as an offering his intelligence and prudence; the eloquent consecrating all the virtues found in speech, through both song and prose-hymns to the Existing One; and each according to his kind — the natural philosopher offering the study of nature, the moralist all of moral philosophy, the craftsman and man of science the principles of the arts and sciences.

So too the sailor and the pilot will dedicate a safe voyage, the farmer a rich harvest of crops, the herdsman good breeding among his animals, the physician the health of the sick, the general in war his victory in battle, and the statesman or king his lawful governance and leadership; and, to sum it all up, whatever good things belong to soul, body, or external circumstances, the one who is not self-loving will declare God, the only truly unerring cause, to be their author.

Let none of those who seem more obscure and lowly shrink, out of despair of the better hope, from becoming a grateful suppliant of God; but even if he expects nothing of the greater gifts, let him give thanks, according to his own power, for those things which he has already obtained.

And he has obtained countless things: being, life, nourishment, soul, sense-perception, imagination, impulse, reasoning. Reasoning is a small word, but a most perfect and most divine work, a fragment torn from the soul of the universe — or, to speak more reverently, as those who philosophize according to Moses would say, an impression closely resembling a divine image.

Worthy of praise, too, are those among the spies who attempted to uproot the entire trunk of virtue, root and all, and carry it off, but, since they were unable, at least took a single branch with one cluster of grapes, a sample and portion of the whole, which alone they had strength to carry (Num 13:24).

It is a thing to be prayed for, to dance in company with the whole massed throng of the virtues; but if this is too great for human nature, let us be content if it is granted to someone to encounter even one of them individually — self-control, or courage, or justice, or love of humanity. For let the soul bear and bring forth some one good thing, and not become altogether barren and without fruit.

But you will lay such commands on your own son? If you are not gentle with your servants, nor sociable with your equals; if you are not decorous with your wife, nor respectful toward your parents; if you have contempt for your mother and father, you are impious toward the divine as well. If you delight in pleasure, do not abstain from love of money either. Give yourself over to desire, and be vain as well. For why not?

Do you think it right not to be moderate in some things, if you cannot be so in all? Would not a son then say: What are you saying, father? Do you want your son to be either perfectly good or perfectly bad, and will you not love him if, instead of the extremes, he chooses the middle course?

Is this not why Abraham too, in the matter of the destruction of the Sodomites, beginning from the number fifty, ends at ten (Gen 18:24, 32), imploring and beseeching, so that, if the complete release into freedom should not be found within that generation—of which the sacred fiftieth reckoning is the symbol (Lev 25:10)—the middle education, reckoned alongside the number ten, might be accepted on behalf of the soul that is about to be condemned, toward its release?

Among the unrefined, those who are educated, and among the unmusical and untrained in the arts, those who have taken part in the general round of culture, have more resources for growth, since from childhood they have been steeped in discourses about endurance and self-mastery and virtue of every kind. Hence, even if they have not entirely wiped and washed themselves clean, priding themselves on their brightness, still they have been cleansed moderately and to a middling degree.

Something similar Esau seems to say to his father: "Have you only one blessing, father? Bless me also, father" (Gen 27:38). For different blessings have been allotted to different people: perfect ones to the perfect, middling ones to the imperfect, just as it is with bodies too. For the healthy and the sick have different exercises and different foods, and other matters of regimen are not the same for both; rather, one diet suits the one group, so that they may not fall ill at all, and another suits the other, so that they may change toward better health.

Since there are many good things existing in nature, grant me whichever of them seems to fit me, even if it is the very smallest, taking aim at this alone: whether I shall be able to bear easily what is given, and not, failing at even this, collapse in my misfortune.

What do we suppose is signified by the words, "Is the hand of the Lord not sufficient?" (Num 11:23)? Is it not that the powers of the Existing One reach in every direction to do good, not only to those held in honor but also to those who seem more obscure? To these he grants what is fitting, weighing and measuring, in equal proportion within himself, what is appropriate to each according to the weights and measures of each individual soul.

I am struck no less by the law laid down concerning those who strip off their sins and seem to repent. For it commands that the first offering brought should be an unblemished ewe. "But if," it says, "his hand is not sufficient for a sheep, he shall bring, for the sin he has sinned, two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a sin offering and one for a whole burnt offering.

And if his hand cannot find a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, he shall bring as his gift a tenth of an ephah of fine flour. He shall not pour oil on it, nor put frankincense on it, because it is for sin. And he shall bring it to the priest, and the priest shall take a full handful of it as a memorial portion and place it on the altar" (Lev 5:7, 11, 12).

So then, by these three means it propitiates repentance: by cattle, or by birds, or by fine white wheat, according to the capacity of the one being purified and, presumably, repenting. For small offerings are not required of the great, nor great offerings of the small, but offerings equal and similar in proportion. It is worth inquiring, then, why purification is by three means.

It happens that sins and right actions alike are, roughly speaking, examined under three heads: thought, speech, and deed. For this reason, in his exhortations Moses, teaching that the acquisition of the good is neither impossible nor hard to attain, says:

"You need not fly up to heaven, nor go to the ends of earth and sea, to grasp it; rather it is near, very near." Then he shows it almost visibly: "Every deed is in your mouth and in your heart and in your hands" (Deut 30:12–14), meaning symbolically: in words, in counsels, in works. For human happiness is constituted from good counsel, good speech, and good action, just as unhappiness is constituted from their opposites.

For right action and sin occur in the very same regions: heart, mouth, and hand. Indeed some people deliberate with the utmost good sense, speak excellently, and do what ought to be done. Of the three, the lightest fault is to deliberate about what one should not; the heaviest is to carry out with the hand what is unfitting; and the middle is to say what one ought not.

Yet it turns out that the lightest is hardest to shake off. For it is difficult to bring the soul's turning to rest, and one could more quickly check the rush of a torrent than the soul's turning as it flows uncontrollably; for countless thoughts, one upon another, sweep over it like breakers, carrying it, churning it, and violently overturning the whole of it.

The best and most complete form of purification, then, is this: not even to entertain in thought anything improper, but to conduct one's civic life in peace and good order, whose leader is justice. The second is not to go wrong in speech, by lying, swearing falsely, deceiving, sophistry, false accusation, or in general by letting loose mouth and tongue for the destruction of others—faults on which it would have been better to fasten a bridle and an unbreakable

bond. Why speaking what is unfitting is a heavier sin than merely thinking it is easier to see. Sometimes a person entertains a thought not by his own will but because he is unwilling; for he is compelled to receive notions he does not wish to take in, and nothing involuntary is culpable.

But one speaks willingly, so that if he does not utter a fitting word, he does wrong out of sheer folly—he who was unwilling to say anything more decent even by chance—when it would have profited him to embrace the safest course, silence; and moreover, one who is not keeping quiet could surely, had he wished, hold his tongue.

But a heavier sin than speaking is an unjust deed. For, as they say, "word is the shadow of deed"; and if the shadow does harm, how is the deed not more harmful still? For this reason Moses exempted mere intention from charges and penalties, since it is subject for the most part to involuntary changes and turnings, and is acted upon by thoughts that come in from outside rather than acting itself; but whatever proceeds out through the mouth he brings to account and to reckoning, on the ground that speaking is within our own power.

But the reckonings for words are more measured, while those for culpable deeds are harsher. For he sets great punishments on those who do great wrong and carry into action, by deed, what they had planned with an unjust mind and blurted out with a rash tongue.

The means of purification for the three—thought, speech, and deed—he has stated: a sheep, and a pair of turtledoves or pigeons, and a tenth measure of sacred fine flour, requiring that thought be purified by the sheep, speech by the birds, and deed by the fine flour. Why?

Because, just as mind is the best thing in us, so too among the irrational animals the sheep is best, being the gentlest of creatures and producing yearly of itself a crop for the benefit and adornment of humankind alike; for its fleece wards off harm from cold and heat and, veiling what nature keeps hidden, serves the decorum of those who wear it.

Let the best of animals, the sheep, then be a symbol of the purification of the best thing, thought; and let the winged creatures be a symbol of speech. For speech too is light and winged by nature, borne faster than an arrow, darting everywhere. For what has once been said cannot be recalled; but once carried out, running with great speed, it strikes the ears, and passing through the whole of hearing, sounds at once.

Speech is twofold: one kind true, the other false; for the sake of this, I think, it has been likened to a pair of turtledoves or pigeons. Of the two birds, he says one must be for sin and the other offered as a whole burnt offering, since the true word turns out to be wholly and entirely sacred and perfect, while the false word has gone astray and needs correction.

The symbol of deed, as I said, is the fine flour. For this too happens to be refined not without skill and forethought, but is sifted by the hands of bakers, men who have made the task their profession. Hence he also says: "The priest, taking a full handful, shall offer up its memorial portion" (Lev 5:12), signifying by the handful the undertaking and the doing.

With great precision he said of the beast of the flock, "if his hand is not sufficient for a sheep" (Lev 5:7), but of the birds, "if he cannot find" (Lev 5:11). Why? Because it takes great strength and surpassing power to overcome the soul's turnings of thought, but not great might to check the sins of speech.

For silence--as I said before--is the remedy for every fault committed through speech, and it is easy for anyone to make use of. But many people, because of their talkativeness and lack of measure in words, cannot find a way to put a limit on their speech.

Having been nurtured and trained in these and similar distinctions and divisions of things, would it not seem reasonable for the man of worth to pray that Ishmael might live, since he is not yet able to conceive Isaac?

What then does the good God do? To one who asks for one thing he gives two, and to one who prays for the lesser he grants the greater. For it says, "God said to Abraham: yes, behold, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son" (Gen 17:19). The symbolic answer "yes" hits the mark precisely. For what is more fitting than that God should nod assent to good things and confess them readily?

But every fool shakes his head in refusal at the things to which the divine nods assent. At any rate the oracles introduce Leah as hated; and that is why she received such a name, for, when interpreted, it means "one who refuses" and "one who grows weary" -- because all of us turn away from virtue and consider its commands wearisome, since they often enjoin things that are not pleasant.

Yet she has been judged worthy of such acceptance by the Ruler of All that her womb, opened by him (Gen 29:31), received the sowing of divine seed for the begetting of noble pursuits and actions. Learn, then, O soul, that not only Hagar, the intermediate education, but also "Sarah," virtue, "shall bear you a son." For her offspring is taught, but the offspring of Sarah is altogether self-taught.

Do not be surprised, if God, who brings forth all things that are excellent, has brought forth this kind too -- rare on earth, but very abundant in heaven. You may learn this from the other faculties of which man is composed. Do the eyes see because they have been taught? Do the nostrils smell by instruction? Do the hands touch, or the feet go forward, at the commands or exhortations of teachers?

And the impulses and impressions -- these being the first motions and states of the soul -- did they come to be by teaching? Did our mind, by attending some sophist's school, learn to think and comprehend? All these things, released from teaching, employ a self-acting nature for their own proper activities.

Why then do you still marvel, if God will also rain down virtue that is free of toil and hardship, needing no oversight, but from the beginning whole and complete? And if you want a testimony more trustworthy still, you will find that of Moses, who says that for other men food comes from the earth, but for the man of vision alone, from heaven.

Now with the foods that come from the earth, human farmers also cooperate; but the foods from heaven, the one self-working God rains down without the collaboration of others. And indeed it is said: "Behold, I rain bread upon you from heaven" (Exod 16:4). What food, then, does he rightly say is rained down from heaven, if not heavenly wisdom?

This wisdom, from above, he who possesses abundance and prosperity of understanding sends down upon souls that have a longing for virtue, watering all things, and especially on the sacred seventh day, which he calls the sabbath (Exod 16:23ff). For then, he says, there will be a bringing forth of good things that come of themselves, not sprouting from any deliberate craft, but budding by a self-generated and self-completing nature and bearing their own proper fruits.

So then virtue will bear you a noble male son (Gen 17:19), freed from every feminine passion, and you shall call the name of the son by the name of the feeling you will feel over him -- and you will altogether feel joy; so that you will also give it a name symbolic of that feeling, laughter.

Just as pain and fear have utterances tinged with venom, which the passion that has done violence and gained the mastery gives a name to, so good counsel and gladness compel the use of natural exclamations, than which one could not find names more proper or more exactly aimed, even if one happened to be wise about names.

That is why it says: "I have blessed him, I will increase him, I will multiply him; he shall father twelve nations" (Gen 17:20) -- the whole circle and chorus of the sophistic preliminary studies -- "but my covenant I will establish with Isaac" (Gen 17:21), so that the race of men might have a share of each virtue, the taught and the self-taught, the weaker being taught, the vigorous being ready-made.

"At this season," he says, "wisdom shall bear you" joy (Gen 17:21). What season, most amazing one, are you pointing to? Is it not the one alone that is undisclosed by any process of becoming? For the true season itself would be the well-doing and the good timing of all things -- of earth, of heaven, of the natures in between, of living beings and plants alike.

That is why Moses too had the courage to say to those who fled and were unwilling to take up the war for virtue against those arrayed against them: "Their season has departed from them, but the Lord is among us" (Num 14:9). For he all but openly confesses that God is the season -- he who stands far off from every impious person, but walks about among souls that are becoming virtuous.

For he says: "I will walk about among you, and I will be your God" (Lev 26:12). Those who say that the seasons of the year are the "seasons" are misusing the word improperly, since they have not at all precisely grasped the natures of things, but partake largely of the arbitrary.

Heightening the beauty of the one to be born, he says he will be born "in the other year" (Gen 17:21), meaning by "other year" not the interval of time that is measured by the cycles of the moon, but that which is truly displaced, strange, and new -- other than the things seen and perceived by sense, examined among things bodiless and intelligible -- which held the pattern and archetype of time, namely eternity. And eternity is recorded as the life of the intelligible cosmos, just as time is the life of the perceptible one.

In which year he also "finds barley yielding a hundredfold" (Gen 26:12) -- he who has sown God's graces for the begetting of a greater number of good things, so that as many as possible of those worthy might come to share in them.

But indeed it is customary for the one who has sown also to reap. Yet he is said to have sown -- displaying the virtue that is hostile to envy and evil -- and to have found, but not to have reaped; for it was another who had made the ear of grain of his benefactions fuller and more abundant, one who, having prepared and made ready greater hopes and more numerous gifts, set them before those who sought to find them.

The phrase "he finished speaking with him" (Gen 17:22) is equivalent to saying that he brought the hearer himself to completion, who before was empty of wisdom, and filled him with immortal words. And when the disciple had become complete, "the Lord went up from Abraham" (ibid.), showing not that he was separated from him -- for by nature the wise man is God's attendant -- but wishing to establish the voluntary character of the disciple, so that what he had learned he might now display of himself, without the teacher any longer standing over him, not by compulsion but employing a willing and self-commanded eagerness, and so act through himself. For the teacher gives to the one who has learned room for voluntary practice without prompting, engraving thereby the surest form of unforgettable memory.

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