On Dreams

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

The treatise before this one dealt with the God-sent dreams that belong to the first class, in which we said that the divine sends the visions in sleep by its own direct initiative. In this treatise we shall show, so far as we can, those dreams that fit the second class.

The second class is that in which our own mind, moved along with the mind of the universe, seems to be possessed and carried by God, so that it becomes capable of anticipating and foreknowing some of the things that are to come. And the first dream proper to this class, of the sort signified, is the vision that appeared upon the ladder set up toward heaven, as follows:

"And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was fixed upon the earth, whose top reached to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it; and the Lord stood firmly upon it, and said: I am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; do not be afraid. The land on which you are sleeping I will give to you and to your offspring, and your offspring will be as the sand of the earth, and it will spread abroad to the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east; and in you all the tribes of the earth will be blessed, and in your offspring. And behold, I am with you, guarding you on every road on which you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not abandon you until I have done all that I have spoken to you" (Genesis 28:12-15).

There is a necessary preparation for this vision, and if we determine it precisely we shall perhaps also be able easily to grasp what is signified by the vision. What, then, is this preparation? "And Jacob went out," it says, "from the well of the oath and journeyed toward Haran, and he came upon a place, for the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and set it at his head, and he slept in that place" (Genesis 28:10-11). And then immediately comes the dream.

It is worth raising, then, at the outset, these three questions: first, what is the well of the oath, and why was it so named; second, what is Haran, and why, on leaving the well just mentioned, he goes at once to Haran; and third, what is the place, and why, when he comes to it, the sun sets and he himself falls asleep.

Let us examine the first point at once. To me, then, the well seems to be a symbol of knowledge; for its nature is not superficial but very deep, nor does it lie open in plain view, but loves to hide itself somewhere out of sight, nor is it found easily, but only with much labor and scarcely at all. And this holds not only for the disciplines that contain great and ineffable objects of contemplation, but is observed also in the most trivial of them.

Whichever of the crafts you wish to choose, take, not the noblest one for me, but the most obscure of them all, one that perhaps no free person raised in a city would willingly pursue, but that a household slave in the country, wrestling against a difficult and ill-tempered master who compels him to do many unwelcome things, would scarcely take up even unwillingly.

For it will be found to be not simple but complex, not to be captured by hunting, hard to find, hard to master, hostile to hesitation and negligence and idleness, but full of zeal and ambition and sweat and care. For this reason those who dug this well, it is said, did not even find water in it (Genesis 26:32), since it has come about that the ends of the disciplines are not merely hard to find but altogether undiscoverable.

For this reason one person becomes more skilled in grammar and another more skilled in geometry than another, because the possible extensions and increases cannot be bounded by any limits; for the portion still remaining always exceeds what has already been learned and lies in wait for the learner, so that the one supposed to have touched the limits of a discipline is considered by one judge to be only half complete, while before the tribunal of truth he seems to be only now beginning.

"Life is short," someone said, "but the craft is long," and its magnitude is best grasped by the one who genuinely immerses himself in it, digging it out as it were like a well. For this reason it is told that a certain man, dying already gray-haired and extremely old, wept, not out of cowardice from fear of death, but out of longing for learning, as though only now entering upon it, at the very moment he was about to depart from it for the last time.

For the soul flowers toward knowledge just when the body's vigor withers with length of time. It is hard, then, before one has reached maturity and full vigor in the more precise apprehension of things, to be tripped up and cut short. This experience is common to all lovers of learning, for whom new discoveries rise and shine upon the old, many born of the soul itself when it is not barren and unfruitful, and many others shown forth unpredictably and spontaneously by nature to those whose minds see sharply. The well of knowledge, then, having no boundary or end, has been shown to be of this sort.

Now we must say why it was named an oath (Genesis 26:33). Matters that are in doubt are settled by an oath, and things unstable are made firm, and things unbelieved gain belief; from which it follows that one could affirm nothing so confidently as this, that the kind of wisdom is without boundary and without end.

It is a fine thing indeed for one who discourses on these matters, even without swearing, to add his assent; but let one who is not overly ready to agree give his assent only once bound by an oath. Yet let no one shrink from swearing such an oath as this, knowing clearly that he will be inscribed among the pillars of those who keep their oaths well.

Enough, then, on these points. It would follow next to consider why, of the four wells dug by Abraham and Isaac and their households (Genesis 21:25, 26:19-23), the fourth and last was called "oath."

Might it not, then, be that this wishes to indicate, by way of undertones, that since the universe as a whole is composed of four elements, and we ourselves likewise are shaped from an equal number, from which, having been molded, we were formed into human shape, three of these are by nature in some way apprehensible, while the fourth is beyond the grasp of every judge?

In the universe, then, it happens that earth and water and air and heaven are the four elements in all; and of these, while the other three may be hard to discover, they have not been assigned altogether to the lot of the undiscoverable.

For indeed we grasp of earth that it is a heavy body, indissoluble and solid, divided into mountains and level plains, and separated by rivers and sea, so that some parts become islands and others form continents, and that part of it has thin soil and part deep soil, and part is rough and harsh and stony and altogether barren, while part is smooth and soft and most fertile, and countless other things besides these we apprehend.

And again of water, that it has many things in common with what has been said of earth, and other things peculiar to itself; for part of it is sweet, part briny, part marked by other distinguishing qualities; and part is drinkable, part not drinkable — and neither quality belongs to all waters, but where one quality is present, the other is not, and where the one is absent, the other is certainly present — and part is cold, and part is by nature warm —

for there are countless springs in many places that pour out boiling water, not only on land but also in the sea; indeed streams have even been observed sending up boiling water in the midst of the open sea, streams that the vast surrounding expanse of the seas, though flooding over them from age to age, has not been able to quench, nor even to cool down to any degree —

and again, that air has a nature that yields, giving way in exchange with bodies, being the instrument of life, of breathing, of sight, of hearing, and of the other senses, admitting states of density and rarity, of motion and of rest, turning and changing in every kind of alteration and transformation, generating winters and summers and the seasons of autumn and spring, from which the cycle of the year comes by nature to its completion.

Of all these things, then, we have perception; but heaven has a nature beyond our grasp, having sent us no clear mark of itself. For what could we say of it? That it is frozen crystal, as some have claimed? Or that it is the purest fire? Or that it is a fifth, circularly moving body, sharing in none of the four elements? What, again, of the fixed and outermost sphere — does it have depth extending upward, or is it itself only a surface devoid of depth, resembling flat figures? What, again,

of the stars — are they masses of earth full of fire (for some have said they are ravines and glens and glowing lumps of ore, deserving themselves of prison and mill, in which such things are used for the punishment of the impious) — or are they, as someone has said, a continuous and dense harmony, indissoluble compressions of ether? Are they ensouled and possessed of mind, or without share in mind and soul? Do they have motions that are voluntary, or only motions under compulsion? What, again,

of the moon — does it bring a genuine light of its own, or a borrowed one kindled by the rays of the sun, or is it, in itself, neither of these separately, but rather a blend of both, as it were of its own fire and another's? For all these matters, and others of this kind, belonging to the noblest and fourth of the bodies in the universe, heaven, are obscure and beyond grasp, resting upon conjectures and guesses, not upon any firm account of the truth;

so that even if someone were bold enough to swear an oath, that no mortal has ever yet been able to grasp any of these things clearly, the oath would hold true. For this reason the fourth and dry well was named "oath," being the inquiry into the fourth of the elements in the universe,

an inquiry without end and altogether hard to find — the inquiry into heaven. Let us now see in what way the fourth element within ourselves too is by nature exceptionally and in a special sense beyond our grasp. Now the four highest things that concern us are body, sense-perception, reason, and mind; and of these, three are not obscure in every respect, but contain within themselves certain evidences that allow them to be apprehended.

And what do I mean by this? That we know the body is extended in three directions and moves in six ways: it has three dimensions—length, depth, and breadth—and twice that many motions—upward, downward, to the right, to the left, forward, and backward. We are also not ignorant that it is a vessel for the soul, but that it also grows to maturity, wastes away, grows old, dies, and dissolves,

this we know clearly. Nor with regard to sense-perception have we become entirely dull and blind, but we can say that it divides into five, and that each has its own organs fashioned by nature—eyes for sight, ears for hearing, nostrils for smell, and the rest fitted to their proper objects—and that they are messengers of the mind, reporting colors, shapes, sounds, the particular qualities of scents and flavors, and in short bodies and whatever qualities are in them; and that they are the soul's bodyguards, disclosing whatever they see or hear, and, foreseeing and guarding against anything harmful that approaches from outside, keep it from stealing in unnoticed and becoming a cause of irreparable harm to their

mistress. Nor does sound altogether escape our judgment; rather we know that one sound is high, another low, one melodious and harmonious, another discordant and quite unmusical, and again one greater, another lesser; and they differ in countless other ways too—in kind, in color, in intervals, in conjunct and disjunct tunings, in the concords of the fourth, the fifth, and the octave.

And of articulate speech too, which of all living creatures man alone has been allotted, there are things we know—for instance, that it is sent up from the mind, that it is articulated in the mouth, that the tongue, striking with the tension of the voice, stamps it as articulate and makes it speech, not merely bare, inert, and shapeless sound, and that it holds the rank of herald or interpreter before the mind that dictates it.

Is, then, the fourth of the things within us, the mind that governs, also comprehensible? Surely not. For what do we suppose it to be in its essence? Breath, or blood, or body altogether—but no, we must call it incorporeal—or a limit, or a form, or a number, or a continuity, or a harmony, or any other of the things that exist?

When it is born, does it come in at once from outside, or is our inward warm nature tempered by the surrounding air, as iron heated by the smith is tempered by cold water into its hardest state? For this reason it is thought to be called soul (psyche) from cooling (psyxis). And again, at death, is it extinguished and destroyed along with the body, or does it survive for a very long time, or is it altogether imperishable?

And where has the mind taken up its lodging? Has it been allotted a house? Some have consecrated to it the acropolis within us, the head, around which the senses too keep watch, thinking it likely that its bodyguards station themselves nearby, as with a great king; others, holding that it is enshrined beneath the heart, dispute the point. In any case the fourth thing is always incomprehensible,

heaven in the cosmos, set apart from the nature of air, earth, and water, and mind in man, set apart from body, sense-perception, and speech its interpreter. Perhaps it is for this reason that the fourth year is declared "holy and praiseworthy" in the sacred records (Lev. 19:24).

For what is holy among created things is heaven in the cosmos, around which the imperishable and long-lived natures revolve, and in man it is the mind, being a fragment divine—most of all according to Moses, who says, "He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7).

And it seems to me not without purpose that each is called praiseworthy as well; for these are the things capable of proclaiming, as in a tragic chorus, the praises, hymns, and blessings of the Father who begot them—heaven and mind. For man has been allotted a privilege beyond the other creatures, to serve the One who Is, while heaven forever sings, producing through the motions of the beings within it a harmony of all music;

and if it happened that its sound reached our hearing, uncontrollable loves and raging longings and unceasing, maddening frenzies would arise, so that, sustained no longer as mortals by food and drink through the throat, we would be nourished, like those about to be made immortal, through the ears, by songs divine of perfect music. Of these Moses is said to have been a hearer, when, having become incorporeal, for forty days and an equal number of nights he touched neither bread nor water at all (Exod. 24:18).

Heaven, then, the archetypal instrument of music, seems to have been tuned to the height of perfection for no other reason than that the hymns sung in honor of the Father of all might be accompanied musically. And indeed we hear that Virtue, called Leah, at the birth of her fourth son could bear no more, but checked, or was checked in, her childbearing; for she found, I think, that all generation from her was dry and barren once she had brought Judah, confession, the perfect fruit, into flower.

And it makes no difference whether one says that she "ceased bearing" (Gen. 29:35), or that at the fourth well the servants found no water (Gen. 26:32), since by both symbols alike it is shown that all things thirst for God, by whom the generation and nourishment of created things are watered.

Now small-minded citizens of petty towns will perhaps suppose that the lawgiver's lengthy account concerns nothing more than the digging of wells; but those enrolled in the greater fatherland, this cosmos, being of more perfect understanding, will know clearly that the inquiry, for those who are given to seeing and to the contemplation of beauty, concerns not wells but the four parts of the universe—earth, water, air, and heaven.

Going through each of these with utmost care of thought, in three of them they found things comprehensible—and they gave three names to what they found: injustice, enmity, and wide space (Gen. 26:20, 21, 22)—but in the fourth, heaven, nothing at all, as we showed a little earlier; for the fourth well is found to be without water, dry, and is called an oath for the reason stated.

Let us pursue what follows by inquiring who Haran is, and why he, having gone out from the well, comes to her (Gen. 28:10). Haran, then, as it appears to me, is a kind of mother-city of the senses. For it is interpreted sometimes as "dug out," sometimes as "holes," both names disclosing one and the same thing.

For our body has, in a certain manner, been hollowed out into the organs of the senses, and each of the organs has become a kind of hole for each sense, in which it is its nature to lodge. So then, whenever someone puts out from the well called the oath, as from a harbor, he necessarily arrives at once at Haran; for one setting out on a journey away from the best and boundlessly vast region of knowledge is inevitably received by the senses, without any guides.

For our soul is often moved by itself, having stripped off the whole bodily mass and fled the crowd of the senses, and often too clothed with these once more. Its naked motion, then, has been allotted the things comprehensible by thought alone, while its motion in company with the body has been allotted the things perceptible by sense.

If, then, someone is altogether unable to commune by thought alone, he finds sense-perception as a second refuge, and whoever fails of the objects of thought is at once drawn down to the objects of sense; for the second voyage is always toward sense-perception, for those who have not been able to sail well toward the governing mind.

It is good, even once one has arrived here, not to grow old and settle permanently, but, living as in a foreign land like a resident alien, always to seek removal and return to one's native soil. For Laban, knowing nothing at all—no form, no kind, no idea, no concept, none of the things apprehended by thought alone—but hanging upon what is visible, whatever comes to sight and hearing and the kindred faculties, has been judged worthy of Haran as his fatherland, which the virtue-loving Jacob inhabits for a short time as a stranger, remembering his return home.

At any rate the mother, Endurance, that is Rebecca, says to him: "Rise up and flee to Laban my brother, to Haran, and dwell with him some days" (Gen. 27:43-44). Do you understand, then, that the one in training does not endure to spend his life dwelling in the region of the senses, but only a few days and a short time, because of the necessities of the body bound to him, while a long age and life is stored up for him in the intelligible city?

For this reason it seems to me that his grandfather in knowledge as well, Abraham by name, did not endure to linger long in Haran. For it is said that "Abraham was seventy-five years old when he went out from Haran" (Gen. 12:4), even though his father Terah, whose name is interpreted as "scouting of scent," lived there until his death,

having spent his life there. It is expressly declared in the sacred records that "Terah died in Haran" (Gen. 11:32); for he was a scout of virtue, not a citizen, and made use of scents but not of the enjoyment of foods, not yet being able to be filled with wisdom, nor even to taste it, but only to catch its scent.

For just as hunting dogs, we are told, sharpened by nature with an especially keen sense of smell, track and find even the most distant carcasses of wild beasts by scent, in the same way the lover of learning tracks the sweet breeze given off by justice and the rest of virtue, and longs to encounter those very sources from which is given off this most admirable brightness; but being unable, he carries his head about idle and futile, merely catching the scent of nobility of character and the most sacred savor of its food—for he does not deny that he is greedy for knowledge and wisdom.

Blessed, then, are those to whom it has been given to enjoy the love-charms of wisdom and to feast upon her contemplations and doctrines, and who, even once well-feasted, still thirst, carried onward by an insatiable and unquenchable longing for knowledge.

Second place, however, will be won by those who could not enjoy the sacred table itself but caught the savor of it, wafted into their own souls; for these will be revived by the breezes of virtue, just as those weakened by illness, unable to take food, are brought scents for their recovery — the saving remedies against fainting that physicians' assistants prepare in advance.

It is said that Terah, having left the land of Chaldea, moved his household to Harran, bringing with him his son Abraham and the other members of his family — not so that we might learn, as from a writer of history, that certain people once migrated, leaving their ancestral land and settling in a foreign one as though it were their homeland, but so that a lesson most useful for life and fitting for a human being should not go unheeded. What is this lesson?

The Chaldeans study astronomy, while the citizens of Harran busy themselves with the region of the senses. The sacred word therefore says to the one who spies out the workings of nature: Why do you inquire about the sun — whether it is a foot wide, whether it is larger than the whole earth, whether it is many times its size? Why do you ask about the illuminations of the moon — whether it has a borrowed light, or uses only its own? Why do you ask about the nature of the other stars, or their revolutions, or their sympathy with one another and with things on earth?

Why, while walking on the earth, do you leap beyond the clouds? Why do you claim to be able to grasp the things in the upper air while your feet are rooted to dry land? Why do you dare to draw conclusions about things that admit of no evidence? Why do you meddle with matters aloft that are not your concern? Why do you stretch the ingenuity you display in your studies all the way to heaven? Why do you practice astronomy, babbling about the sky? Do not, my friend, examine what is above you and beyond you, but consider what is near at hand — rather, examine yourself without flattery.

How then will you examine yourself? Go in mind to Harran, the excavated place, the pits and hollows of the body, and inspect your eyes, ears, nostrils, and all the other organs of sense; and pursue the philosophy most necessary and most fitting for a human being, asking: what is sight, what is hearing, what is taste, what is smell, what is touch, and what, in general, is sensation? And then ask what it is to see and how you see, what it is to hear and how you hear, what it is to smell or taste or touch, and how each of these processes ordinarily comes about.

But before examining one's own household thoroughly, is it not the height of madness to investigate that of the universe? And I am not yet giving you a greater command than this: to see your own soul and your mind, on which you pride yourself so greatly — for you will never be able to comprehend it.

Go up now into heaven and boast about the things there, though you have not yet been able to know, as the poet's verse says, what good and evil are wrought within your own halls. Bring the spy back down from heaven, draw him away from that inquiry, and know yourself; then work diligently at this too, so that you may obtain a share of human happiness.

In this way the Hebrews name him Terah, and the Greeks name him Socrates; for they say that Socrates too grew old in the most exacting inquiry into the precept know yourself, philosophizing about nothing beyond what concerned himself. But he was a man, whereas Terah is the very principle set forth concerning self-knowledge, like a most flourishing tree, so that the lovers of virtue might readily pluck from it the fruit that shapes character and be filled with saving and most pleasant nourishment.

Such, then, are our spies of understanding; but the natures of those who compete and contend for it are more perfect still. For these, having thoroughly mastered the whole account concerning the senses, see fit to proceed to some further and greater object of contemplation, leaving behind the hollows of sensation, which are named Harran.

Among these is Abraham, who attained advances and improvements toward the reception of the highest knowledge; for when he knew most, that was when he most despaired of himself, so that he might come to exact knowledge of the One who truly is. And this is naturally so: whoever comprehends himself thoroughly has thoroughly despaired of himself, having clearly grasped in advance the nothingness in every respect of what is created; and whoever has despaired of himself comes to know the One who is.

We have now shown what Harran is, and why the one who leaves the well of the oath comes to it. We must next consider the third and following point: what is the place he encounters — for it is said, he encountered a place (Gen. 28:11).

Place is conceived in three ways: first, as a region filled by a body; second, in a different sense, as the divine word, which God himself has filled wholly and entirely with incorporeal powers. For it says, I saw the place where the God of Israel stood (Exod. 24:10) — the place, and that place alone, where he permitted sacred rites to be performed, forbidding them elsewhere; for it has been ordained to go up to the place that the Lord God shall choose, and there to sacrifice the whole burnt offerings and the peace offerings, and to bring up the other unblemished sacrifices (Deut. 12:5ff.).

In a third sense, God himself is called place, because he encompasses all things while being encompassed by nothing whatsoever, because he is the refuge of all things, and because he is his own region, having made room for himself and being contained by himself alone.

I, then, am not a place, but am in a place, and so is each of the things that exist; for what is contained differs from what contains it, whereas the divine, being contained by nothing, is of necessity itself its own place. This is confirmed for me by the oracle given concerning Abraham: he came to the place that God had told him of; and lifting up his eyes he saw the place from a distance (Gen. 22:3–4). Tell me, did the one who had already come to the place see it from a distance?

But perhaps there is here an ambiguity between two distinct things, of which the one is the divine Word, and the other is the God who is prior to the Word.

The one, then, who has been guided by wisdom as a stranger arrives at the former place, having found the divine Word as the head and end of his contentment; and having come to be in that Word, he does not yet succeed in coming to God as he is in his being, but sees him from a distance — or rather, he is not even capable of beholding that One even from afar, but sees only this: that God is far removed from all that has come to be, and that the comprehension of him is settled at the furthest remove from every human understanding.

Yet perhaps, in this allegory, he has not now taken place to stand for the Cause at all, but what is meant is rather this: he came to the place, and lifting up his eyes he saw it — that very place to which he had come — as being far from the unnameable, ineffable God who is beyond comprehension under every form.

With this established beforehand, when the one in training comes to Harran, that is, to sense-perception, he encounters a place (Gen. 28:11) — neither the place filled by a mortal body (for all the earthborn share in this, having filled a region and occupying some place, as of necessity), nor the third and best place, of which one could scarcely gain a notion by spending one's time at the well that was called the Oath, where the self-taught race, Isaac, dwells, never departing from faith in God and trust in what is unseen — but rather he encounters the middle, the divine Word, who guides toward what is best and teaches whatever is fitting for the occasion.

For God, not deeming it fitting to come himself into sense-perception, sends his own words to help those who love virtue; and these heal and cure the sicknesses of the soul, setting forth sacred exhortations like unshakable laws, calling souls to their exercises, and, like trainers, implanting in them strength and power and an unconquerable vigor.

Fittingly, then, the one who has come to sense-perception encounters no longer God himself, but the Word of God, just as his grandfather in wisdom, Abraham, did. For it is said, the Lord departed, when he had finished speaking with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place (Gen. 18:33); from which it is gathered that to meet with such sacred words is to meet words from which the God who is prior to all things has withdrawn, no longer extending his own manifestations directly from himself, but those that come from the powers that follow after him.

It is most extraordinary that the text does not say he came to the place, but that he encountered a place; for to come is voluntary, but to encounter is often involuntary, so that the divine Word, appearing suddenly, might offer to the desolate soul an unexpected joy greater than hope, being about to journey with it as its companion. For Moses too leads the people out to the meeting with God (Exod. 19:17), knowing well that God comes invisibly to meet souls that long for him.

He then gives the reason why he encountered the place: for the sun set, it says (Gen. 28:11) — not this visible sun, but the most radiant and most brilliant light of the invisible and greatest God. Whenever this light shines upon the mind, the lesser lights of reasoning set, and still more, all the places of sense-perception are cast into shadow; but whenever it withdraws elsewhere, everything at once rises and comes forth.

Do not be surprised that the sun, by the rules of allegory, is likened to the Father and Ruler of all things; for nothing is truly like God, but among things reckoned so by opinion there are only two — the invisible and the visible: the invisible being the soul, the visible being the sun.

He has shown the soul's likeness to God elsewhere, where he says, God made man, according to the image of God he made him (Gen. 1:27), and again in the law laid down against murderers: whoever sheds a man's blood, his own blood shall be shed in return, because I made man in the image of God (Gen. 9:6); the likeness of the sun, however, he has indicated through symbols.

It is easy to perceive this in another way as well, by inference: first, because God is light — for it is sung in the hymns, the Lord is my light and my salvation (Ps. 27:1) — and not only light, but the archetype of every other light, or rather older and higher than every archetype, holding the relation of a pattern to it. For the pattern was his most complete Word, light — for God said, let there be light (Gen. 1:3) — while he himself is like none of the things that have come to be.

Next: just as the sun distinguishes day from night, so Moses says God built a partition wall between light and darkness—"for God separated the light from the darkness" (Gen. 1:4). And just as the sun, once it has risen, reveals what was hidden among bodies, so also God, having generated all things, not only brought them into visibility but made what previously did not exist, being not merely a craftsman but a founder in his own right.

In the sacred word, understood by way of its deeper meanings, the sun is spoken of in many senses. In one sense it is the human mind, which those build up like a city and construct who are compelled to serve what is generated rather than the unbegotten—those of whom it is said, "they built fortified cities for Pharaoh: Pithom"—the word to which persuasion belongs—"and Ramesses"—perception, by which the soul is eaten away as though by moths, for "seismos" is interpreted as "of a moth"—"and On"—the mind, which he named "City of the Sun" (Exod. 1:11)—since, like the sun, it has assumed leadership over our whole mass and extends its own powers like rays into the whole.

Everyone who has taken up the citizenship of the body claims as father-in-law the priest and attendant of the mind, whose name is Joseph. For it says, "he gave him Aseneth, daughter of Pentephres priest of Heliopolis, as wife" (Gen. 41:45).

In a second sense he calls perception, symbolically, "sun," since all perceptible things are made visible by the intellect. Of this he has spoken thus: "the sun rose upon him, when the form of God had passed by" (Gen. 32:31). For indeed, when we are no longer able to dwell together with the most sacred forms and with the bodiless images of the One who Is, but turn aside and pass elsewhere, we make use of that other light, the light of perception, which differs from sound reason not at all, one might simply say, from darkness.

This light, once risen, arouses sight and hearing, and further taste and smell and touch, as though they were sleeping, but turns prudence and justice and knowledge and wisdom, though wide awake, into sleep.

For this reason the sacred word says that no one can be pure before evening (Lev. 11:24 and elsewhere), since the intellect is still overpowered by the movements that come through perception, as by poisons. And he lays down for the priests too, as at once a law and a maxim from which there is no escape, when he says: "He shall not eat of the holy things, unless he has washed his body with water, and the sun sets, and he becomes clean" (Lev. 22:6-7).

For through these words he shows most clearly that no one is altogether pure enough to make use of the holy and sacred rites, so long as he still values the perceptible splendors of mortal life. But if someone does not accept these, he is, in consequence, illumined by the light of prudence, by which he will be able to wash and cleanse away the stains of empty opinions.

Or do you not see that the sun itself, both rising and setting, produces opposite effects? For whenever it rises, all things on earth are lit up all around, while the things in heaven are hidden; but when it sets, conversely, the stars appear, while the things around the earth are cast into shadow.

In the same way within us too: whenever the light of the senses rises like a sun, it happens that the truly Olympian and heavenly sciences are hidden; but whenever it goes down toward its setting, the most star-like and most divine rays of the virtues shine forth, at which time the pure mind comes to be hidden by nothing perceptible.

In the third sense he calls the divine word "sun"—the archetype, as was said before, of the sun that circles through heaven—of which it is said: "the sun went out over the earth, and Lot entered into Zoar, and the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire" (Gen. 19:23-24).

For the word of God, whenever it arrives at our earthly constitution, comes to the aid and assistance of those who are akin to virtue and incline toward it, so as to provide them with refuge and complete deliverance, but sends upon their adversaries ruin and incurable destruction.

In a fourth sense the "sun" spoken of is the Ruler of the universe himself, as I have already said, through whom the sins that seem to be hidden but are past healing are uncovered.

For all things are known to God just as they are possible for him. This is why he leads to the sun those who, their souls' proper tensions collapsed, consort licentiously and rather lustfully with the daughters of the mind—the senses—like harlots and prostitutes, in order that they may be exposed.

For he says: "and the people encamped in Shittim"—interpreted "thorns," a symbol of the passions that goad and wound the soul—"and it was profaned," he says, "in that it fornicated with the daughters of Moab"—these are the senses, called daughters of the mind, for Moab is interpreted "from the father"—and he adds: "take all the leaders of the people and make an example of them to the Lord before the sun, and the wrath of the Lord shall turn away from Israel" (Num. 25:1, 4).

For not only did he wish the hidden wrongs to become manifest, and so shone the sun's rays upon them, but he also called the Father of the universe "sun" by way of symbol—he to whom all things are plainly visible, even those that are carried out invisibly in the recesses of the mind. And when these are made manifest, he says, the one who alone is gracious will be gracious. Why?

Because, if the intellect, supposing it will escape the notice of the divine while doing wrong—as though God were not able to see everything—goes astray in secret and in hidden recesses, and afterward, whether of itself or guided by another, comes to understand that it is impossible for anything to be unknown to God, and unfolds itself and all its deeds and, bringing them out into the open, displays them as though into the sunlight before the Overseer of the universe, saying that it repents of the things it formerly, in a thankless disposition, wrongly supposed—for nothing is unknown to him, but all things, not only what has been done but even what is hoped for, are known and clear to him in great abundance—then it has been cleansed and benefited, and has made gentle the reproof set over it as chastiser, using a just anger, if indeed repentance, being a younger brother,

is accepted by him next after not sinning at all. He is also seen elsewhere applying "sun" symbolically to the Cause, as in the law written concerning those who lend on pledges. Consider the law: "If you take as a pledge the garment of your neighbor, you shall restore it to him before the sun sets; for this is his only covering, this is the garment of his shame. In what shall he sleep? If then he cries out to me, I will listen to him; for I am compassionate" (Exod. 22:26-27).

Is it not fitting to remind—if not reproach—those who suppose that the lawgiver was so earnestly concerned about a cloak? What are you saying, my good sirs? Does the Founder and Ruler of the universe call himself compassionate over so trivial a matter as a garment not returned by a lender to a debtor?

Such are the suppositions of those who have not once beheld the greatness of the virtue of the God who is great in all things, and who attribute human pettiness, contrary to what is right and just, to the unbegotten and incorruptible nature, full of blessedness and happiness.

For what wrong do lenders do in holding pledges among themselves until they recover what is their own? "The debtors are poor," someone will perhaps say, "and deserve pity." Then would it not have been better to write a law by which they raise funds for them by subscription, rather than either declaring them debtors or forbidding lending on pledges? But the one who permits it could not reasonably be displeased, as though at the impious, with those who do not give back before the time what they received.

But someone who has come, so to speak, to the utmost limits of poverty, wearing one single rag, and brings in new lenders, has abandoned the pity that pours out on every side from those who see such misfortunes befalling people at home, at temples, in the marketplace, everywhere.

But as things stand, even the one covering he had for shame, with which he screened over what nature keeps unspoken, this he brings and holds out. A pledge for what, tell me? For some other, better garment? For no one lacks necessary food, so long as springs gush forth, rivers flood in their season, and the earth yields its yearly crops.

Is the lender then so deeply wealthy, or so utterly cruel, that he is willing to contract with someone for four drachmas, or perhaps even less, and to lend to one so destitute rather than give outright—or to take as a pledge the one garment that was his, which under another name might fairly be called stripping him? For it is the custom of clothes-strippers, in undressing people, to take away their garments and expose them naked, those who had them.

Why did he take care that no one should sleep unclothed at night, but no longer show equal concern that one awake by day should be shamefully naked? Is it not that at night and in darkness all things are hidden, so that one feels less shame or none at all, while by day and in light they are uncovered, so that one is compelled to blush the more?

And why did he command not to "give" the garment but to "give it back"? For giving back applies to what belongs to another, and pledges belong more to the lenders than to the borrowers. But do you not consider this: that he did not command the debtor, once he had received the garment for his night's rest, to rise by day and remove it and carry it back to the lender?

And yet even the slowest reader, given the peculiar character of the wording, would be led to grasp something beyond the bare letter; for the ordinance resembles a definition more than an exhortation. Someone exhorting would have said: "the cloak taken in pledge, if it is the debtor's only garment, return before evening, so that he may have it to wrap himself in at night" — but instead the lawgiver defines it as it actually stands: "for this is his only covering, this is the garment of his shame; in what shall he sleep?" (Exod. 22:27).

This much, and matters like it, let us say to the sophists of the literal exercise, who arch their eyebrows so severely; but let us ourselves, following the laws of allegory, say what is fitting about these things. We say, then, that the garment is a symbol of reason. For just as clothing wards off the harms that cold and heat are wont to inflict on the body, and screens the parts nature keeps hidden, and is an ornament fitted to the body, so too.

in a similar way reason was given to man by God as the most beautiful of gifts — first, as a weapon of defense against those who would rise up against him. For just as nature has armed each of the other animals with defenses of its own, by which it beats off those who attempt to wrong it, so to man too God has given reason as the greatest bulwark and unbreakable guard, wrapped in which as in a suit of armor he will have a companion and champion most his own and closest to him; and using this as his advocate in the front line he will be able to repel the harms brought against him by his enemies. Second, reason is most necessary as a covering against shame and reproach.

— for reason is skilled at concealing and shading over the sins of human beings — and third, as an ornament for the whole of life; for it is reason that makes each thing, and all things, better, and leads them toward what is superior.

But there are certain plagues and banes among human beings, who take reason itself in pledge, stripping it from those who possess it, and, when they ought to help it grow, instead cut off the whole of it — like men who ravage the territory of their enemies and set about destroying the grain and the rest of the crop, which, if left standing, would have been of great benefit to those who used it.

So there are some who wage an implacable, undeclared war on rational nature, cropping its shoots to the very skin and crushing its first growths, rendering it, so to speak, barren and sterile of good pursuits.

For when a soul is sometimes rushing toward education with unrestrained impulse, struck by love of the doctrines of philosophy, these men, in envy and malice, fear that it will breathe mightily, rise to the greatest heights, and flood — like a torrent — their own petty word-splitting and their plausible inventions against the truth; and so they divert its current elsewhere, into their own base contrivances, channeling it off toward vulgar and illiberal crafts. Often, too, having aborted and choked it, they leave its natural greatness idle — like wicked guardians who leave a deep-soiled, fertile land, belonging to orphan children, barren — and, most pitiless of all men, they feel no shame in stripping from a human being his only garment, reason. "For this," it says, "is his only covering" (Exod. 22:27). What else is there besides reason?

For just as neighing is proper to the horse, and barking to the dog, and lowing to the ox, and roaring to the lion, so speaking — reason itself — is proper to man. This is the bulwark, the covering, the panoply, the wall of that creature most beloved of God,

man, who alone of all creatures has reaped it as his own. Hence it goes on to say: "this garment alone is the covering of his shame" (Exod. 22:27). For who else so shades over and conceals the reproaches and shames of life as reason does? Ignorance is a shame kindred to irrational nature, but education is a sister of reason, its own proper ornament.

"In what, then, shall he sleep" — that is, in what shall a man find rest and repose — except in reason? For reason lightens the burden of our most heavily fated race. Just as those pressed down by griefs or fears or other evils have often been healed by the kindness, familiarity, and tact of friends, so — not often, but always — reason alone, the averter of evil, drives off the heaviest weight of all, the weight laid on us both by the necessities of this body bound to us and by the unforeseen mishaps that assail us from without.

For reason is our friend, our acquaintance, our intimate, our companion, bound to us — or rather fitted and united to us — by some indissoluble and invisible glue of nature. For this reason it foretells what will be to our advantage, and, should something unwanted occur, it is present unbidden to help, bringing not merely the one benefit that an idle advisor or a passive ally provides, but both at once.

For it has not practiced a half-finished power, but one whole and complete in all its parts; and if it should fail in the attempt, in the things it has in mind or is carrying out in deed, it arrives at a third resource, consolation. For reason is a remedy, as for wounds, and a saving medicine for the passions of the soul — and the lawgiver says it must be returned "before the sun goes down" (Exod. 22:26), that is, before the most radiant beams of the greatest and most manifest God set, which out of mercy for our race he sends down from heaven into the human mind.

For while that most godlike and bodiless light remains in the soul, we shall return the reason we had taken in pledge, as one returns a garment, so that the one who receives it may cover the shame of his life with what is properly man's own possession, enjoy the divine gift, and rest in peace, in the presence of such a counselor and shield-bearer, who will never abandon the post assigned to him.

So then, while God still makes the sacred light shine upon you, hasten to return the pledge to its owner by day; for once it sets, you will have, like all Egypt (Exod. 10:21), a darkness you can feel, and, struck with blindness and ignorance, you will be stripped of all you thought you controlled, by him who sees Israel — whom you were holding as a pledge though he is by nature free, enslaving him by force.

We have drawn out this long course for no other reason than to teach that the mind in training, moving unevenly between prosperity and its opposite, and in a sense continually rising and descending, when it prospers and is lifted to the heights, is illumined by the archetypal, bodiless rays of the rational spring of the God who brings all to fulfillment; but when it descends and looks downward, it is illumined by the images of those rays — the immortal words, which are customarily called angels.

That is why it now says: "he came upon a place; for the sun had set" (Gen. 28:11). For when the rays of God abandon the soul — the rays through which the clearest apprehensions of things come about — a second and weaker light rises, the light of words, no longer of realities, just as it happens in this world too; for the moon, taking second place after the sun, sends a dimmer light down to the earth once the sun has set.

Indeed, to meet with a "place" or a "word," for those unable to see the God who exists before place and word, is a most sufficient gift, because they were not left utterly without light in their souls; rather, once that unmixed light set from them, they harvested a mixed light instead. "For the sons of Israel had light in all the places where they dwelt," it says in the Exodus narrative (10:23), so that night and darkness were forever banished from among them — unlike those whose souls' eyes are maimed even before their bodies' are, who live without ever knowing the rays of virtue.

Some, however, supposing that what is here called the sun symbolically means sense-perception and mind — the standards of judgment reckoned as ours — and that the "place" means the divine word, have understood it this way: the man in training met the divine word once the mortal and human light had set.

For as long as the mind supposes that sense-perception firmly apprehends both intelligible and sensible things, and roams on high, the divine word stands far off; but once each — mind and sense alike — has confessed its own weakness, and, in a manner of speaking, has set like the sun and hidden itself, then right reason, the guardian ever seated beside the soul in training, comes forward at once in welcome to a soul that has despaired of itself and waits, unseen, for the one who visits it from without.

It says, then, next, that "he took some of the stones of the place and put them at his head, and slept in that place" (Gen. 28:11). One might marvel not only at his treatment of hidden meanings and his natural philosophy, but also at the plain instruction it gives toward the training of endurance and hardship.

For it does not think fit that the man who cares for virtue should live a life of soft luxury and indulgence, emulating the pursuits and ambitions of those called fortunate but in truth full of misfortune, for whom the whole of life, in the words of the most sacred lawgiver, is a sleep and a dream —

men who, by day, once they have gone through their wrongdoing against others in the courts, the council-chambers, the theaters, and everywhere else, come home — wretches that they are — to overturn, not the house built of stone, but the house natural to the soul, the body, pouring in immoderate and unceasing food and drenching it with much unmixed wine, until reason sinks to the bottom and is gone, and the passions born of the belly's excess rise up, and, seized by uncontrollable frenzy, fall upon and entangle themselves with whatever they happen upon, until, having driven off the worst of their frenzy, they subside.

And at night, when the time comes to turn to bed, they prepare costly couches and richly flowered bedding and lie down in the utmost softness, imitating the luxury of women, to whom nature has granted a relaxed way of life, on whose account the artisan who fashions the body has made theirs of the softer material.

No one of this kind is an intimate of the sacred word; rather, those who are truly men, lovers of self-control, good order, and modesty, having laid down self-restraint, contentment with little, and endurance as, so to speak, the foundations of their whole life, safe harbors of the soul in which they will anchor securely and without danger, superior to wealth, pleasure, and reputation, disdainful of food and drink and of anything beyond the bare necessities — so far as hunger does not begin to rebel — are utterly ready to endure hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and all else hard to bear, for the sake of gaining virtue, zealots for whatever is most easily procured, so that they are never ashamed even of a cheap cloak, but on the contrary reckon costly ones a disgrace and a great loss to life.

For these men the lawgiver's ultimate couch is soft ground, their bedding is bushes, grasses, herbs, and a great scattering of leaves, and at their heads are certain stones or small mounds of earth rising a little above the level ground. This life the luxurious call harsh and austere, but those who live for true nobility of character call it most pleasant; for it suits men who are not merely called men, but truly are.

Do you not see that even now he introduces the athlete of noble pursuits, though abounding in royal wealth and provisions, sleeping on the ground and using a stone as a pillow, and a little later, in his prayers, asking for bread and a garment—the wealth of nature (Gen. 28:20)—since he had always mocked the man occupied with empty opinions and derided those who marveled at him? This man is the archetypal model of the ascetic

soul, an enemy to everyone who is effeminate and womanish. The ready praise, then, of the man who loves labor and loves virtue has been stated; but the meaning conveyed through the symbol must be investigated. It is fitting to know now that the divine place and the sacred region is full of bodiless words.

And these words are immortal souls. Taking one of these words, choosing by merit the highest of them, and setting it, as it were, near the head of his own understanding, as the head of a united body (Gen. 28:11)—for this too is in a sense the head of the soul. He does this on the pretext of going to sleep, but in truth in order to rest upon the divine word and to lay upon it the whole of his life as a most light burden.

And the word gladly listens and receives the athlete, at first as one who will become a disciple; then, when he has approved the fitness of his nature, he gives him a hand in the manner of a trainer and calls him to the exercises, and holding him fast compels him to wrestle, until he has built up in him an unconquerable strength, changing his ears by divine inspirations into eyes and calling him, transformed, by the new stamp of Israel, the one who sees. Then he also places on him the crown of victory.

The crown has a strange and foreign name, and perhaps not an auspicious one; for it is called by the president of the games 'numbness.' For it is said, 'the breadth of the thigh grew numb' (Gen. 32:25)—the most admirable prize of all rewards, proclamations, and honors.

For if the soul, having received a share of unconquerable power and been perfected in the contests of the virtues, and having arrived at the very boundary of the good, should not be lifted up in height by arrogance nor, standing on tiptoe, boast as though able to stride far on sound feet, but should instead grow numb and be checked in the breadth it had widened through self-conceit, and then, voluntarily tripping itself, should limp, so as to fall short of the bodiless natures—then, seeming to be defeated, it will win the victory.

For to yield one's primacy by judgment rather than by necessity is, among the better sort, accounted honorable, since even the second prizes set among the contests of this arena surpass by a very great margin, in the greatness of their worth, the first prizes set among others.

Such, then, is the prelude of the God-sent vision; it is now time to turn to it and to examine each of its details precisely. 'He dreamed,' it says, 'and behold, a ladder was fixed on the earth, whose head reached to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending upon it; and the Lord was fixed above it' (Gen. 28:12-13).

A ladder, then, in the world is symbolically called the air, whose base is earth and whose summit is heaven; for from the sphere of the moon, which those who study the heavens record as the last of the circles in heaven and the first with respect to us, the air, stretched out in every direction, reaches down to the very edge of the earth.

This is the dwelling of bodiless souls, since it seemed good to the Maker that all the parts of the world should be filled with living creatures. For this reason he furnished the earth with land creatures, the seas and rivers with water creatures, and heaven with the stars—for each of these is said to be not only a living creature but also a mind, wholly and entirely most pure—so that in the remaining portion of the universe, the air, there should likewise be living creatures. But if they are not perceptible by sense, what of it? For the soul too is invisible.

And indeed it is likely that the air nurtures living creatures even more than earth and water, since it is the air that has ensouled the creatures in those elements too; for the Craftsman made it the abiding condition of unmoving bodies, and the nature of things moved without conscious impression, and, further, the soul of those able to make use of impulse and impression.

Is it not absurd, then, that the element through which other things were ensouled should itself be without a share of souls? Therefore let no one deprive the noblest kind of living creatures of the noblest of the regions beneath heaven, the air; for this alone, of all things, is not left desolate, but like a populous city has as its citizens imperishable and immortal souls, equal in number to the stars.

Of these souls some descend to be bound to mortal bodies, namely those most drawn toward the earth and fond of the body, while others ascend, being sorted again according to the numbers and periods appointed by nature.

Of these, some, longing for the familiar habits of mortal life, run back down again, while others, having condemned its great foolishness, called the body a prison and a tomb, and, fleeing as though from a jail or a grave, are lifted up on light wings toward the upper air and journey through the ages above.

But there are others, the purest and best, who have obtained a still greater and more divine portion, who have never at all desired anything of the things upon earth, but are lieutenants of the Ruler of all, like the ears and eyes of a great king, watching and hearing everything.

These the other philosophers are accustomed to call daemons, but the sacred word calls them angels, using a more fitting name; for they announce the Father's commands to his offspring, and the offspring's needs to the Father.

For this reason he represented them as ascending and descending, not because God, who reaches everywhere, has need of messengers, but because it was advantageous for us, who are subject to peril, to make use of mediating and arbitrating words, on account of our being awestruck and terrified before the supreme Ruler and the vastness of his sovereign power.

Taking thought of this we once entreated one of the mediators, saying, 'You speak to us, and let not God speak to us, lest we die' (Exod. 20:19). For we are unable to bear not only punishments, but even overwhelming and unmixed benefits, such as he himself might bestow directly, without employing other servants.

Most beautifully, then, does he represent the air, fixed on the earth, through the symbol of a ladder; for the vapors given off from the earth, being made fine, happen to be turned wholly into air, so that earth is the base and root of air, and heaven is its head.

It is said, at any rate, that the moon is not an unmixed condensation of ether, as each of the other stars is, but a blend of ethereal and airy substance; and that the dark patch appearing on it, which some call its 'face,' is nothing other than the air mingled within it, which, being by nature dark, extends all the way to heaven.

Such, then, is the ladder spoken of symbolically in the world; and if we examine the one within human beings, we shall find it to be the soul, whose base is, as it were, the earthly part, sense-perception, and whose head is, as it were, the heavenly part, the purest mind.

Up and down through the whole of it the words of God move without interruption: when ascending, drawing the soul up together with them and severing it from what is mortal, displaying to it the vision of the things alone worthy to be seen; and when descending, not casting it down—for neither God nor a divine word is ever the cause of harm—but descending together with it out of love for humankind and pity for our race, for the sake of help and alliance, so that, breathing life-giving breath, they may revive the soul still being carried, as if on a river, in the body.

In the minds of those who have been utterly purified, the Ruler of all things alone walks silently and invisibly—for there is an oracle given to the wise man, in which it is said, 'I will walk among you, and I will be your God' (Lev. 26:12)—but in the minds of those still being washed, who have not yet entirely cleansed away the filthy and defiled life within their heavy bodies, angels, adopted for the task, brighten them with the doctrines of nobility.

As for how great a host of evil inhabitants is being expelled, so that the good one alone may come to dwell there, this is clear. Strive, then, O soul, to become a house of God, a holy sanctuary, a most beautiful dwelling-place; for perhaps, perhaps, as the whole world is his house, you too will have as master of the house one who cares for his own dwelling, so that it may forever be preserved most securely fortified and unharmed.

Perhaps, too, the ascetic pictures his own life as resembling a ladder; for by nature askesis is an uneven thing, at one time advancing to a height, at another turning back to the opposite, and at one time faring, like a ship, with a fair voyage of life, at another with a foul one. For the life of ascetics is, as someone said, lived on alternate days—living and awake at one time, dead or asleep at another.

And perhaps this too is said not without purpose: the wise are allotted to dwell in the Olympian and heavenly region, having learned always to travel upward, while the wicked dwell in the recesses of Hades, practiced from beginning to end in dying, and accustomed from swaddling clothes to old age to corruption.

The practitioners, however — for they occupy the middle ground between the two extremes — often walk up and down as on a ladder, drawn upward by the better portion or dragged back by the worse, until God, the judge of this contest and struggle, awards the prizes to the better rank, utterly abolishing the opposing one.

There appears in the dream yet another image, one not fit to be passed over in silence. Human affairs are naturally like a ladder, because of their uneven motion.

For one day, as someone said, casts one man down from the heights and lifts another up, since nothing among us is by nature disposed to remain in the same state, but all things undergo every kind of change.

Do not rulers constantly arise from private citizens, and private citizens from rulers; the poor from the rich, and from the poor men of great wealth; the honored from the neglected, and the most conspicuous from the obscure; the strong from the weak, and the capable from the incapable; the intelligent from the foolish, and the most sensible from those who were once deranged?

There is indeed a road of human affairs that runs up and down, marked by unstable and unsettled turns of fortune, whose unevenness is proved, by no obscure but by quite clear evidence, by time, the most truthful of witnesses.

Now the dream signified that the one standing firm upon the ladder was the archangel, the Lord; for one must suppose that Being stands above, like a charioteer above a chariot or a helmsman above a ship, over bodies, over souls, over things, over words, over angels, over earth, over air, over heaven, over the powers perceived by sense, over the natures invisible — over everything, visible and invisible alike; for having bound the whole cosmos to himself and suspended it from himself, he drives so vast a nature as a charioteer drives his team.

But let no one, on hearing that he 'stood firm upon it,' suppose that anything cooperates with God so as to make him stand securely; rather let him consider this: that what is meant is equivalent to saying that the support, the prop, the strength, and the stability of all things is the secure God, who stamps immovability upon whatever he wishes. For when he props and supports, the things thus established remain forever indestructible.

Standing, then, upon the ladder of heaven, he says to the one who was seeing this vision in a dream: 'I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac; do not be afraid' (Gen 28:13). This oracle was the goal of the practicing soul and its surest support, teaching it that the Lord and God of all things belonged, by both of these titles, to its own lineage — being inscribed and called both the God of fathers and of grandfathers — so that the whole cosmos and the lover of virtue might have the same inheritance; since it has also been said, 'the Lord himself is his inheritance' (Deut 10:9).

Do not suppose it said carelessly that Abraham is now called both Lord and God, while Isaac's God alone is named. For Isaac is a symbol of knowledge that comes about self-taught, self-heard, and self-learned by nature, while Abraham is a symbol of knowledge acquired by teaching; and it belongs to the one to be a native and homegrown, and to the other to be a migrant and a newcomer.

For having abandoned the foreign and alien Chaldean tongue of those who babble idly about astronomy, he arrived at the language fitting a rational creature — the service of the cause of all things.

This character, then, has need of two powers to attend to him — dominion and beneficence — so that by the might of his ruler he might obey the laws laid down for him, and by his gracious kindness be greatly benefited; while the other has need of the power of grace alone. For he was not made better by an admonishing rule, having possessed the good by nature, but through the gifts rained down upon him from above he was good and perfect from the beginning.

God, then, is the name of the gracious power; Lord is the name of the royal power. What, then, could one call an older good than to obtain unmixed and unadulterated beneficence, and what a younger good than one blended of both dominion and gift? Perceiving this, it seems to me, the practicing soul prayed a most wonderful prayer, that the Lord might become to him God (Gen 28:21); for he wished no longer to fear him as a ruler, but to honor him lovingly as a benefactor.

Is it not likely that by these and similar things even blind minds might sharpen their sight, once made to see by the most sacred oracles, so as to breathe deeply and not merely skim along the surface of the words? But even if we, closing the eye of the soul, are unwilling or unable to look up, do you yourself, O hierophant, prompt us and stand over us, and never cease to anoint our eyes, until, initiating us as mystagogue into the hidden light of the sacred words, you show us what is invisible to the uninitiated.

This indeed is fitting work for you to do; but you souls, as many as have tasted divine longings, rise up as from a deep sleep, scatter the mist, and hasten toward that all-encompassing vision, casting off slow and hesitant delay, that you may perceive all the sights and sounds which the president of the contest has prepared for your benefit.

Countless indeed are the things worthy of display, but one of them is what was said a little before: the oracle called him who was, by birth, the grandfather of the practicing soul, his 'father,' yet did not apply the name of 'father' to the one who had truly begotten him. For it says, 'I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father' — though this man was in fact his grandfather — and again, 'the God of Isaac' (Gen 28:13), and then does not add 'your father.'

Was it not, then, worth investigating the reason for this? Certainly. Let us then examine, without carelessness, what it is. Scripture says that virtue is acquired either by nature, by practice, or by learning, and therefore recorded all three founders of the nation as wise, though they did not set out from the same starting point, but were hastening toward the same goal.

The eldest of them, Abraham, used teaching as the guide of the road leading to the good, as we shall show elsewhere, so far as is possible; the middle one, Isaac, was guided by a nature that hears and learns of itself; and the third, Jacob, by the practiced exercises through which come the labors of contest and struggle.

Since there are three ways by which wisdom is acquired, it has happened that the two extremes are especially united; for what comes by practice is the offspring of what comes by learning, while what comes by nature is akin to both — for it is laid down as a root beneath them all — and has obtained a prize that is unopposed and ready at hand.

It is fitting, then, that Abraham, who was made better by teaching, is called the father of Jacob, who was forged by exercise — not as man is father of man, but as a faculty of hearing, most ready for learning, is father of a faculty for practice and fit for contest.

If, however, this practicing soul runs vigorously toward the goal and sees clearly, in the full light of day, what before it only dimly dreamed, then, transformed into the better character and addressed as Israel, 'he who sees God,' he no longer inscribes as his father Jacob the supplanter, nor Abraham who learned, but Isaac, the noble one born by nature.

This is not a myth of my own devising, but an oracle recorded upon the sacred tablets. For it says, 'Israel set out, he and all that was his, and came to the well of the oath, and offered a sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac' (Gen 46:1). Do you now perceive that the present discourse is not about perishable men, but, as has been said, about the nature of things? For behold, the very same subject is at one time named Jacob, son of Abraham, and at another time called Israel, son of Isaac, for a precisely determined reason.

Having said, then, 'I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac,' he adds, 'do not be afraid' (Gen 28:13), consistently with what precedes. For how could we still be afraid, holding you, the deliverer from fear and every passion, as our defending shield — you who also gave shape to the archetypal patterns of our education, hidden until then, so that they might become visible, teaching as Abraham, and begetting as Isaac? For you consented to be called the teacher of the one and the father of the other, granting to the one the rank of a disciple, and to the other that of a son.

For this reason you also promise to give the land — I mean virtue, the most all-bearing and most fruitful — upon which the practicing soul lies down to rest, sleeping to the life of sense while being awake to the life of the soul (Gen 28:13), accepting his peaceful rest, which he chose not without war and the hardships of war — not by bearing arms and killing men, far from it, but by destroying the opposing army of the passions and vices of virtue.

And the offspring of wisdom is likened to the sand of the earth (ibid. 14), both because of its countless, unbounded multitude, and because just as the underlying sand beats back the assaults of the sea, so the reasoning of education beats back the assaults of sins and wrongdoings. And this reasoning, according to the divine promises, is extended to the very ends of the universe, and shows the one who possesses it to be heir of all the parts of the world, reaching everywhere — toward the east, toward the west, the regions of the south, the regions of the north; for it is said, 'it shall spread abroad to the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east' (ibid. 14).

The good and noble person is not merely a private good but a common good for all, offering the benefit that flows from him to everyone, freely and without delay. For just as the sun is light for all who have eyes, so too the wise man is light for all who share in rational nature: "for in you all the tribes shall be blessed" (Genesis 28:14).

This oracle applies both to a single person with respect to himself, and to one person with respect to another. For if the mind within me is purified by perfect virtue, the tribes of the earthly element around me are purified together with it — the tribes allotted to the senses and to that greatest reservoir, the body. And if someone, whether in a household or a city or a country or a nation, becomes a lover of wisdom, that household and that city and that country and that nation must necessarily attain a better life.

For just as aromatic substances, when they give off their fragrance, fill with sweetness all who come near them, in the same way all who are neighbors and border on the wise man draw in the breeze that streams from him to the greatest distance and have their characters made better.

The greatest benefit for a soul that toils and struggles is to have as its fellow traveler the God who has already arrived everywhere: "behold," he says, "I am with you" (Genesis 28:15). Of what wealth, then, could we still stand in need, when we have you, the only true wealth, "guarding us on the road" (ibid.) that leads to virtue, at every one of its turnings? For the rational life does not consist of a single part directed toward justice and the rest of virtue, but of countless parts, from which, setting out, one can arrive at practical wisdom.

And it is beautifully said too: "I will bring you back to this land" (ibid.). For it would have been good if reasoning, remaining with itself, had never journeyed out to sense-perception at all; but the second-best voyage is to return again to oneself.

Perhaps this also hints at the doctrine of the soul's immortality. For having left the heavenly place — as was said a little earlier — the body came, as it were, into a foreign land. And he says that the Father who begot it will not overlook it, confined forever; but taking pity, he will loose its bonds and safely escort it, set free, all the way to the mother city, and will not let it go before the promises made in words have been confirmed by deeds of truth. For it is characteristic of God to say, without exception, only what is going to come to pass. And yet what am I saying?

His words differ in no way from his deeds. So the soul in training, stirred and roused to inquire about Being, at first supposed that the Existent was in a place; but pausing a little, and growing fearful at how hard the object of its inquiry was to locate, it begins to change its mind.

"Jacob awoke," it says, "and said, the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it" (Genesis 28:16). And it would have been better, I would say, not to know, than to suppose that God is contained in something — God, who himself contains all things in a circle around him.

Rightly, then, he was afraid and said in wonder: "how fearful is this place" (Genesis 28:17). For truly, among the topics of natural philosophy, this is the most difficult of all: the question where, and whether at all, the Existent is in something. Some say that everything which subsists has taken possession of some region — different thinkers assigning it different regions, either within the cosmos or, outside it, in some space between worlds; others say that the unbegotten is like nothing that has come into being, but surpasses the whole of things, so much so that even the swiftest-running thought must confess itself far outstripped and defeated in the attempt to grasp it.

This is why he cried out at once: "this is not" (ibid.) what "I supposed, that the Lord is in the place" (Genesis 28:16); for he contains, but is not contained — that is the truth. And this visible, perceptible thing that is shown, this sense-perceptible cosmos, is therefore nothing other than the house of God (ibid.), the house of one of the powers of the Existent, the power by which he was good.

He called the cosmos a house, and also named it the gate of the heaven that leads toward truth (Genesis 28:17). And what is this? The cosmos put together out of the forms — the intelligible cosmos, brought into being under the divine bounty — which cannot be grasped in any other way except by passing beyond this perceptible and visible cosmos.

For it is not possible to conceive of anything else among existing things as incorporeal, except by beginning from bodies. For place was conceived from bodies at rest, and time from bodies in motion; points and lines and surfaces, and limits generally, were conceived from the outermost covering, as it were a garment, that surrounds bodies.

By analogy, then, the intelligible cosmos too was conceived from the perceptible cosmos, being a kind of gate to it. For just as those who wish to view cities enter through gates, so all who wish to grasp the invisible cosmos are guided there by the visualization the visible cosmos provides. But the cosmos of intelligible substance, being without any shape visible to sight, will be apprehended solely through the archetypal idea imprinted in it, corresponding to the form it beheld without any shadow, once every wall and every gate has been removed from it, so that it looks at nothing from the outside, but discerns, by itself and through itself, in some ineffable and hard-to-describe act of vision, beauty that admits of no change.

Enough, then, on these matters. Fitting the same category is another dream as well, the one about the multicolored flock, which the visionary, rising up after it, recounts, saying: "the angel of God said to me in my sleep, Jacob. And I said, what is it? And he said, lift up your eyes and see the male goats and the rams mounting the sheep and the she-goats — the streaked, spotted, and speckled with ash-gray. For I have seen everything that Laban is doing to you. I am the God who appeared to you in the place of God, where you anointed a pillar to me and vowed a vow to me. Now therefore rise up and go out from this land and depart to the land of your birth, and I will be with you" (Genesis 31:11–13).

You see that the sacred word records God-sent dreams not only for those that appear directly from the most venerable of causes, but also for those that come through his interpreters and attendant angels, who have been judged worthy of a divine and blessed portion by the Father who begot them. But consider what follows as well.

The sacred word, to some, gives orders like a king, commanding by decree what must be done; to others, as a teacher to disciples, it explains what is beneficial; to others, as a counselor putting forward the best opinions, it greatly benefits those who do not know on their own what is advantageous; and to others still, gently and with persuasion, like a light, it discloses much of what cannot be spoken, which none of the uninitiated may lawfully hear.

And sometimes it also asks questions of certain people, as of Adam: "where are you?" (Genesis 3:9), to which one might properly answer, "nowhere" — because nothing human ever remains in the same state, but is in motion, in soul, in body, and in external things alike. Our reasonings are unstable, receiving from the same objects not the same but opposite impressions; the body too is unstable, as the changes through every stage of life from infancy to old age show; and unstable too are the things

hung up outside us, tossed by the ever-shifting current of fortune. Yet whenever it comes to the council of its friends, it does not begin to speak before calling each of them by name, so that, pricking up their ears and attending in silence, they may hear what is being solemnly declared with a memory that never fades — since it is also said elsewhere: "be silent and listen" (Deuteronomy 27:9).

In this way, at the bush, Moses is called by name — "for when he saw," it says, "that he was drawing near to look, the Lord called to him out of the bush, saying, Moses, Moses. And he said, what is it?" (Exodus 3:4). Abraham likewise, at the wholly-burnt offering of his beloved and only son, both when he began the sacred rite and when, having given proof of piety by being ready to remove from among men that self-taught race called by the name Isaac, he was stopped.

For at the beginning it says: "God was testing Abraham, and said to him, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. And he said, take your son, your beloved son, whom you loved, Isaac, and offer him up"; and then, once he had already brought the victim up onto the altar, "the angel of the Lord called to him out of heaven, saying, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. And he said, do not lay your hand on the boy, and do nothing to him" (Genesis 22:1–2, 9–12).

And the man in training too, being one of that friendly company, is reasonably deemed worthy of the same privilege and is called by name: "for the angel of God said to me in my sleep," he says, "Jacob. And I said, what is it?" (Genesis 31:11).

Once called by name, he pays close attention, trying to grasp precisely the signs that appeared to him — and the signs consist of matings and births among words, as though they were livestock. "For lifting up his eyes," it says, "he saw the male goats and the rams mounting the sheep and the she-goats" (Genesis 31:12).

The male goat leads the herd of goats, and the ram leads the flock of sheep; and these animals are symbols of two perfect forms of reason, of which the one purifies and empties the soul of its sins, while the other nourishes it and fills it with right actions. Such are the leading reasons that guide us, like herdsmen; and the herds — fittingly named after sheep and goats — dart forward and advance eagerly toward justice.

Lifting up his eyes, then — the eye of his understanding, until now closed — he saw the perfect reasonings, comparable to goats and rams, sharpened both to diminish wrongdoing and to increase the doing of what is right; and he saw how they mount the sheep and the goats, souls still young and tender, just come into bloom and adorned with the flower of their prime — not in pursuit of irrational pleasure, but sowing, invisibly, the seed of wisdom's teachings.

For this marriage is blessed with fine children, joining not bodies but perfect virtues to well-formed souls. Come forward, then, all you upright reasonings of wisdom, mount, sow your seed, and whatever soul you see that is deep, fertile, and virgin, do not pass it by; but calling it to intimacy and union with yourselves, bring it to completion and make it pregnant — for it will bear all things noble, a male offspring, "streaked, spotted, and speckled with ash-gray" (Genesis 31:10).

On the power that each of these offspring possesses, we must inquire. The "white-spotted," then, are the most far-shining and conspicuous, since "dia-" is often used to mean "great," from which usage it is customary to call something "diadēlon" and "diasēmon" — that is, "greatly clear" and "greatly notable."

He means, then, that the firstborn offspring of the soul that has received the sacred seed should be "white-spotted," resembling a light that is not dim but a most far-shining radiance, such as might come, unshadowed, from the sun's rays in a clear sky at midday. He also means that they should be "speckled" — not in the manner of the many-shaped, ever-shifting, unclean leprosy, which through instability of judgment produces an unsteady, drifting life, but stamped with letters and diverse seals, all of them genuine, whose distinctive qualities, mingled and blended together, will produce a musical harmony.

For some have supposed the art of embroidery to be so neglected and obscure a thing that they assigned it to weavers. But I am amazed not only at the art itself but at its very name, especially when I look upon the divisions of the earth, the spheres in the heavens, the differences among animals and plants, and this whole altogether variegated fabric — the universe.

For I am compelled at once to conceive of the craftsman of this entire weaving as the discoverer of the art of embroidery, and I revere the discoverer, and I honor the art he discovered, and I am struck with astonishment at the work itself — though I have not been able to see even the smallest fraction of it, and from the part that has appeared to me, if indeed it has appeared, I precisely conjecture the whole by the hope of proportion.

I marvel too at the lover of wisdom, because he has practiced this same art, judging it worthy to gather many differing things from differing sources and weave them into one. For taking from elementary grammar the first two things, writing and reading; from more advanced study, familiarity with the poets and the recollection of ancient history; from arithmetic and geometry, the freedom from deception in matters requiring proportion and calculation; from music, rhythms and measures — the enharmonic, the chromatic, and the diatonic, and again conjunct and disjunct melodies; from rhetoric, invention, style, arrangement, disposition, memory, delivery; and from philosophy, whatever these other arts have left out, along with everything else out of which the whole of human life is composed — he has fitted together one most flourishing work, mixing ease of learning with breadth of learning.

And the craftsman of this web the sacred word called Bezalel (Exod. 31:2ff.), whose name, interpreted, means "in the shadow of God." For this man fashions copies, while Moses is the architect of the patterns themselves; and for this reason the one sketched things as though they were shadows, while the other fashioned not shadows but the archetypal natures themselves.

If, then, even the holy things have been constructed by the art of embroidery, and the wise embroiderer alone is spoken of in the oracles revealed by the hierophants, and the beautiful embroidery of God — this universe — has been brought to perfection by all-wise knowledge, how is it not fitting to welcome embroidery as an instrument of knowledge?

Every house of wisdom, both in heaven and on earth, will carry as its most sacred image a copy of this art, from which the one in training works out forms of varied discourses; for right after the white-spotted he saw the speckled, marked with the stamp of education. Third are the ashen-sprinkled.

Yet who in his right mind would not say that these too, by kind, are speckled? But his concern is not so much with distinctions among cattle as with the road that leads to nobility of character.

For he means that the one setting out on this road should be sprinkled with ash and water, because reason holds that earth and water, mixed and shaped by the molder of man, were separated out to form our body — not a body wrought by hand, but the work of an invisible nature.

The beginning of wisdom, then, is not to forget oneself, but always to keep before one's eyes the elements out of which one was compounded; for in this way one might wash away arrogance, the most God-hated of evils. For who, bearing in mind that ash and water are the origins of his own coming-to-be, would be puffed up by conceit and carried aloft?

For this reason he also judged it right that those about to perform sacred rites be sprinkled with the things just mentioned, considering no one worthy to offer sacrifice who had not first come to know himself and grasped the nothingness of humanity, inferring from the elements out of which he was compounded that he is worth nothing.

These three signs — the white-spotted, the speckled, and the ashen-sprinkled — appear imperfect in the one still in training, who is not yet perfect; but in the perfect man they themselves appear perfect as well.

Let us observe in what manner. The sacred word judged it right that the great high priest, whenever he was about to perform the services enjoined by the law, first be sprinkled with water and ash (Exod. 29:4), as a reminder to himself — for the wise Abraham too, when he was about to entreat God, called himself earth and ashes (Gen. 18:27) — and then that he put on the ankle-length tunic and, over it, what is called the speckled breastplate (Exod. 29:5), a likeness and copy of the light-bearing stars in heaven.

For there are, it seems, two temples of God: one is this universe, in which the high priest is his firstborn, the divine Logos; the other is the rational soul, whose priest is the man who is true in reality, whose sense-perceptible likeness is the man who performs the ancestral prayers and sacrifices, to whom it is entrusted to put on the tunic just described, since it is a counter-copy of the whole of heaven — so that the universe may join man in sacred service, and man join the universe.

Two types, then, he has already shown to be in his possession — the sprinkled and the speckled form; the third and most perfect, called "white-spotted," we shall now indicate. Whenever this same high priest enters into the innermost part of the sanctuary, he strips off the speckled vestment and puts on instead a different linen garment, made of the purest fine linen (Lev. 16:4).

This is a symbol of vigor, incorruptibility, and a most radiant light. For the fabric is unbreakable, comes from nothing that dies, and, unless carelessly cleansed, has a color that is most bright and most light-like.

Through these things he hints at this: that of those who serve the One who Is without guile and in purity, there is none who has not, first, made use of firmness of resolve, having scorned human affairs, which entice, cause corruption, and produce weakness; then aspired to incorruptibility, having laughed at all the things mortals fashion in their vain conceit; and finally been illumined by the unshadowed, all-encompassing light of truth, admitting nothing whatsoever of false opinion, which by its nature belongs to darkness.

Let the great high priest, then, stamped with the three seals we have mentioned — the white-spotted, the speckled, the ashen-sprinkled — be recorded by us as such a man. But the man devoted to the constitution of human society, named Joseph, may be seen laying claim not to the extreme characters, but only to the middle, speckled one.

For it is said that he had a coat of many colors (Gen. 37:3), since he had neither been sprinkled with the sacred purifications by which he might have known himself to be a compound of ash and water, nor was he able to touch the all-white, most light-like garment, virtue; but he clothed himself instead in the altogether variegated fabric of public life, in which the smallest part is mixed with truth, while many great portions consist of plausible, persuasive, likely falsehoods — the very source from which all the sophists of Egypt have sprung: augurs, ventriloquists, portent-readers, men skilled at deceiving, chanting spells, and working sorcery, whose treacherous arts it is a great task to escape.

For this reason Moses fittingly introduces this coat as stained with blood (Gen. 37:31), since the whole life of the man engaged in public affairs is stained — waging war and being warred upon, struck and pierced by the unforeseen mischances that assail him.

Examine, then, the man wholly devoted to the people, upon whom the affairs of the city depend, and do not be overawed by those who admire him, and you will find many diseases lurking within him and many fates hanging over him, each violently gripping his soul by the neck, secretly wrestling with it, seeking to overturn and cast it down — whether because the multitude resents his leadership, or because of a counterattack by some more powerful man.

Envy too is a heavy enemy, hard to shake off, always fastening itself upon what is called good fortune, and it is not easy to escape.

Why then, fastening the embroidered life of public affairs upon ourselves as though it were a costly garment, do we strut about, deceived by the outward comeliness of its visible appearance, failing to perceive its hidden and concealed disgrace — treacherous and precarious as it is?

Let us, then, strip off this flowery coat and put on instead the sacred tunic, woven through with the embroideries of the virtues; for so we shall also escape the ambushes that lack of skill, lack of knowledge, and lack of education set against us — of which Laban is a devotee.

For since the sacred word has cleansed us with the lustral waters prepared for consecration, and has adorned us with the secret teachings of true philosophy, leading us to the test and making us distinguished, conspicuous, and radiant, it now calls to account that treacherous character, provoked to outrage by what has been said.

For it says, 'I have seen all that Laban does to you' (Gen 31:12) — the very opposite, surely, of what I myself have granted: the thing hard to cleanse, the thing disqualified, the thing dark through and through. But one who relies confidently on the hope of divine alliance ought not to cower, since it is also said to him, 'I am the God who appeared to you in the place of God' (Gen 31:13).

It is a very fine boast for a soul, to claim that God appears to it and converses with it. But do not pass over what has been said; examine it carefully — whether there really are two gods. For it says, 'I am the God who appeared to you,' not 'in my place,' but 'in the place of God,' as though of another. What, then, must we say?

The God who exists in truth is one, but those called god by extension of usage are many. This is why the sacred word here signals the true God by using the article, saying 'I am the God,' while it names the one so called by extension without the article, saying 'the one who appeared to you in the place,' not 'of the God,' but simply 'of god.'

Here he calls his eldest Logos 'god' — not out of superstition about the placement of names, but with a single aim in view: to deal with the matter itself. Indeed, elsewhere too, when he examined whether there is any name belonging to the One who Is, he clearly recognized that no proper name exists for him (Exod 6:3); whatever anyone says is said only by extension of usage — for he is not naturally an object of speech, but only of being.

This is confirmed also by the oracle proclaimed to the one who inquired whether he had a name: 'I am the One who Is' (Exod 3:14) — so that, since none of the things it is possible for a human being to grasp apply to God, he might at least come to know his existence.

To the incorporeal souls who serve him, then, it is fitting that he should appear as he truly is, conversing as a friend with friends; but to souls still in the body he appears likened to angels — not changing his own nature, for he is unchangeable, but implanting in those who form the impression a semblance of another shape, so that they suppose the image to be, not a copy, but that archetypal form itself.

There is an old story told, that the divine, taking the likeness of different men at different times, goes about among the cities in a circuit, examining acts of injustice and lawlessness; and perhaps it is not told truthfully, but it is certainly told usefully and beneficially.

But the sacred word, always employing more solemn and holier conceptions concerning the One who Is, while at the same time eager to educate the life of the foolish, likened him to a human being — yet not to any particular individual —

and for this reason attributed to him a face, hands, feet, a mouth and voice, angers and passions, and further weapons of defense, comings in and goings out, and movements upward, downward, and in every direction — referring the main point of these accounts not to the truth, but to the benefit of those who are learning.

For there are some whose natures are so utterly dull that they are incapable of conceiving God at all without a body; there is no way to admonish such people except by telling them, in this manner, that God comes and withdraws like a man, descends and ascends, uses a voice, is displeased at wrongdoing, is implacable in his anger, and has ready in advance, against the unjust, arrows and swords and all the other instruments suited for punishment.

It is enough if they can be brought to their senses by the fear hung over them through such images. And these are, one might say, the only two paths of the whole legislation: one inclines toward the truth, by which it is established that 'God is not like a man' (Num 23:19); the other looks to the opinions of the more sluggish-minded, concerning whom it is said, 'The Lord your God will discipline you, as a man disciplines his son' (Deut 8:5).

Why then should we still be astonished if he is likened to angels, seeing that he is likened even to men, for the sake of helping those in need? So when he says, 'I am the God who appeared to you in the place of God' (Gen 31:13), understand that he occupied, so far as appearance goes, the place of an angel — without changing — for the benefit of one not yet able to see the true God.

For just as those unable to look upon the sun itself see instead the sun's reflected radiance and take it for the sun, and see the halo around the moon and take it for the moon itself, so too they perceive the image of God — his angel, the Logos — as though it were God himself.

Do you not see Hagar, general education, who says to the angel, 'You are the God who watches over me' (Gen 16:13)? For she, being of Egyptian stock, was not capable of seeing the most ancient Cause. But now the mind, as it begins to improve, comes to form an impression of the ruling power over all such powers.

This is why he himself says, 'I am the God whose image you formerly beheld as if it were myself, and to whom, engraving a most sacred inscription, you set up a pillar' (Gen 31:13); and the inscription signified that I alone stand fast (Exod 17:6), and that I have founded the nature of all things, bringing disorder and disarray into cosmos and order, and have set my weight beneath the universe, so that it might be firmly

established, upon my mighty and subsisting Logos. For a pillar is a symbol of three things: standing, dedication, and inscription. Standing and inscription, then, have been explained; but dedication needs to be pointed out—

The whole heaven and the cosmos is a votive offering of God, who made this offering; and likewise, all souls that are citizens of the cosmos and beloved of God consecrate themselves, drawn aside by nothing mortal, and never tire of hallowing and offering up their own incorruptible life as a sacred gift.

But foolish is the one who sets up a pillar not to God but to himself, fixing in place the things of becoming, which are shaken through and through in every part, and deeming them worthy of inscriptions and praises — things which, being full of blame and reproach, it would have been better either never to have written at all, or, once written, to have erased at once.

This is why the sacred word says outright, 'You shall not set up a pillar for yourself' (Deut 16:22); for nothing that pertains to truth is self-standing, even if certain men, lying, should burst themselves declaring otherwise.

But such people not only imagine themselves to be firmly fixed, but also think themselves worthy of honors and inscriptions, having forgotten the one who alone is worthy of honor and truly stands fast. For as they were already destroying themselves and turning aside from the road that leads to virtue, sense-perception, their innate wife, turned them still further astray and forced them to run aground.

And so the whole soul, wrecked like a ship run aground, was set up in the manner of a pillar. For the oracles say that Lot's wife, having turned back to look behind her, became a pillar of salt (Gen 19:26) — and fittingly, appropriately so—

For if someone does not look ahead, at what is worth seeing and hearing — and these are the virtues and the deeds done according to virtue — but instead keeps looking back at what lies behind, at the backward and hindward things, pursuing deaf reputation and blind wealth and senseless bodily bloom and mindless beauty of form and all that is akin to these, that person will be dedicated as a lifeless pillar, collapsed in upon itself; for such pursuits have no stability.

Most excellently, then, the one in training, having learned through continuous practice that what comes into being is of itself subject to movement, while what is uncreated is unchangeable and unmoved, sets up a pillar to God, and having set it up, anoints it; for it is said, 'You have anointed a pillar to me' (Gen 31:13).

But do not suppose that a stone is anointed with oil; rather, understand that the doctrine that God alone stands fast is exercised and trained within the soul, by an art of anointing — not the kind by which bodies are made fat, but the kind by which the mind acquires strength and unconquerable vigor.

For anyone base and fond of exercise who has set out in pursuit of noble pursuits — so that, having naturally practiced the sister art to medicine, the art of anointing, and having anointed and welded together all his arguments concerning virtue and piety, he will dedicate to God the most beautiful and firmest votive offering.

That is why, after the dedication of the pillar, he says, “You have vowed a vow to me” (ibid.). A vow, properly speaking, is a dedication, when a person is said to give to God as a gift not only his own possessions but himself, the possessor, handing himself over as well.

“Holy,” he says, “is the one who lets grow the hair of his head” (Num. 6:5) once he has made his vow. And if he is holy, he is altogether a votive offering, no longer touching anything unconsecrated and profane.

My argument is guaranteed by the prophetess and mother of a prophet, Hannah, whose name, translated, means “grace.” For she says she gives her son Samuel as a gift to the Holy One (1 Kingdoms 1:28) — not so much a human being as a disposition, inspired and possessed by a God-borne frenzy. Samuel, interpreted, means “appointed to God.”

Why then, soul, do you still indulge in vanity and labor in vain, instead of resorting to the ascetic, to learn the weapons and the wrestling holds against passion and empty opinion? For perhaps, once you have learned, you will lead a herd — not an undistinguished, irrational, and unruly one, but a tried and reasoning and richly varied herd.

If you become its leader, you will lament the pitiable human race, but you will never cease turning in supplication to the divine, nor will you fail to bless God's happiness; you will also engrave hymns fit for holy use on pillars, so that you may not only speak fluently but also sing musically of the virtues of the One who Is. For in this way you will also be able to return to your father's house, having escaped the long and endless storm in a foreign land.

In recording the third kind of God-sent dreams, we might fittingly summon Moses to our aid, so that, as he learned without having been taught, he may instruct us as well in our ignorance concerning the signs, illuminating each one. The third kind arises whenever, in sleep, the soul, moved of itself and shaking itself into frenzy, is caught up like a Corybant, and, possessed and inspired with a power of foreknowledge, foretells things to come.

For the first kind occurred when God originated the motion and, invisibly, sounded within us things unclear to us but known to himself; the second, when our own mind was moved along with the soul of the universe and filled with a God-borne madness, by which it is permitted to foretell many things that are to come to pass.

That is why the hierophant disclosed the visions belonging to the first kind of signification very plainly and clearly, since God, through the dreams, was suggesting things resembling clear oracles; but those of the second kind he disclosed neither with full clarity nor in deep obscurity. An example of these is the vision that appeared of the ladder reaching to heaven. For it was enigmatic, yet the enigma was not so thoroughly hidden from those with the power to see keenly.

But the visions belonging to the third kind, being more obscure than the former because their enigma is deep and thoroughgoing, also required the science of dream interpretation. At any rate, all the dreams of this kind recorded by the lawgiver are interpreted by men skilled in the art just mentioned. Whose dreams, then, are these?

Surely it is clear to everyone: they are the dreams of Joseph, those of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and those which the chief baker and the chief cupbearer themselves saw.

It would be fitting always to begin instruction from the first examples. The first are those which Joseph saw, receiving two visions from the two parts of the cosmos, heaven and earth: from earth, the dream about the harvest — which runs thus: “I thought we were binding sheaves in the middle of the field, and my sheaf rose up” (Gen. 37:7) — and, concerning the zodiac circle, the dream: “as though the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me” (ibid. 9).

The response to the first, made with vehement indignation, ran thus: “Will you indeed reign over us? Or will you indeed have dominion over us?” (ibid. 8). And to the second, again a righteous anger: “Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, to bow down to you upon the earth?” (ibid. 10).

Let these things, then, be laid down like foundations, and let us build up the rest, following the instructions of that wise master-builder, Allegory, examining each of the two dreams with precision. But there is something that must be heard before both: some have extended the nature of the good over many things, while others have allotted it to the best part alone; and some have mixed it together, while others have left it unmixed.

Those, then, who declared that only the noble is good, keeping it unmixed, assigned it to the most sovereign part within us, reasoning; while those who mixed it fitted it to three things — soul, body, and external goods. The latter belong to the softer, more luxurious way of life, having been raised for the most part from the very cradle in the women's quarters and in the effeminate habits of the women's quarters; the former, by contrast, live a hardy life, having been raised as boys among men, and being themselves manly in their thinking, embracing what is advantageous ahead of what is pleasant, and using athletic regimens aimed at strength and vigor, not at pleasure.

Moses, then, introduces the leaders of two companies: of the noble one, Isaac, self-taught and self-instructed — for he records him as being weaned (Gen. 21:8), a man who did not think it right to make any use at all of soft and milky, infantile and childish forms of nourishment, but rather of vigorous and mature ones, since from infancy he was well suited by nature for strength, ever flourishing and growing young again — and, of the yielding and easily-swayed company, Joseph.

For he does not disregard the virtues of the soul, but he also takes forethought for the stability of the body, and he reaches also for an abundance of external things. Naturally he is pulled in different directions, having set before himself many ends of life, and, dragged this way and that by each of them, he is shaken and thrown into confusion, unable to find a footing.

For indeed his ends do not, like cities bound by treaty, keep the peace... but rather attack one another in turn, so that now one prevails and now is defeated. For often a great impulse, streaming toward wealth and reputation, overpowers the concerns for body and soul; then, forced back again by the resistance of both, it is in turn overcome by the other. And in the same way...

...the pleasures of the body, breaking out all together, flood over and obliterate everything intelligible in their path; then, before long, wisdom, blowing back against them with a violent and forceful breath, slackens the current of the pleasures and calms altogether all the eager pursuits and ambitions that come through the senses.

Such, then, is the cycle of endless war that revolves about the versatile soul. For when one enemy is struck down, another, stronger still, is sure to spring up in its place, after the manner of the many-headed Hydra; for they say that in her case, in place of the head that was cut off, another sprouted up, hinting at the many-shaped and prolific race of undying vice, so hard to capture.

So then, never singling out one thing in answer regarding Joseph, know instead that he is an image of a manifold and blended sort of opinion. For there is displayed in him also the rational form of self-mastery, belonging to the male line, stamped after the pattern of his father Jacob.

There is displayed also the irrational element of sense perception, imaged forth in the maternal line through Rachel; there is displayed also the seed of bodily pleasure, stamped in him by his association with chief cupbearers and chief bakers and chief cooks; there is displayed also the seed of empty opinion, upon which, as upon a chariot, he mounts because of its lightness (Gen. 41:43), puffing himself up and holding himself aloft, to the ruin of equality.

The character of Joseph, then, is sketched out by what has been said. As for each of the dreams, we must examine it with precision, and we must first inquire into the one about the sheaves. “I thought,” he says, “that we were binding sheaves” (Gen. 37:7). The word “I thought” is at once the utterance of someone who is unsure and hesitant and grasps things dimly, not of one who sees firmly and with clear vision.

For it befits those who are rising up out of a deep sleep and are still dreaming to say “I thought,” not those who are fully awake and looking on with clear sight.

But the ascetic Jacob will not say “I thought,” but rather, “Behold, a ladder was set firmly in place, whose head reached to heaven” (Gen. 28:12), and again: “When the flocks were conceiving, I saw them with my own eyes in my sleep, and behold, the he-goats and the rams were mounting the sheep and the goats, streaked white and spotted and speckled with ash-color” (Gen. 31:10-11).

For those who hold that the good is choiceworthy for its own sake find that the impressions received in sleep are necessarily purer and clearer, just as their waking actions, too, prove the more approved.

I admire it, when I hear the man telling his dream, that he supposed himself binding sheaves, not reaping. That is the work of common laborers and servants, but this is the practice of leaders and men most skilled in husbandry.

For to be able to distinguish what is necessary from refuse, and nourishing from unnourishing, and the genuine from the bastard, and the most useful fruit from a useless root -- not among things the earth sprouts, but things the mind produces -- belongs to the most perfect virtue.

At any rate the sacred word represents those who have vision as reaping, and, most paradoxical of all, not reaping barley or wheat but reaping out the harvest itself. For it is said: "When you reap your harvest, you shall not finish off the remainder of the harvest" (Leviticus 19:9).

For it wishes the man of worth to be not only a judge of things that differ, distinguishing the things from which each thing that comes to be, and the offspring themselves, arise, but also to seem to abolish this very capacity to distinguish, reaping the reaping and cutting off his own claim to it, because he trusts and believes Moses when he says that "judgment belongs to God alone" (Deuteronomy 1:17), with whom lie the comparisons and distinctions of all things -- by whom it is a noble thing to confess oneself defeated, more glorious than a victory sung in song.

It is like reaping the harvest to circumcise a second time, which he devised as something new when he found a circumcision of circumcision (Genesis 17:13), the "purifying of purity" (Numbers 6:2), the cleansing of the soul's own cleansing -- yielding to God the office of making bright, and never supposing themselves able, without divine forethought, to wash and cleanse a life crowded with stains.

Of this same kinship is also the double cave (Genesis 23:9), the double and contested opinions -- the one concerning what has come to be, the other concerning its Maker -- in which the man of worth is nourished, contemplating the things in the cosmos, but also longing to know about the Father who begot it.

From these, I think, the double octave was also discovered in music. For it was fitting that both the work and its Maker be blessed with the most perfect melodies -- two melodies, and not the same ones.

For since the things celebrated in song differed, it was necessary that the melodies and harmonies too be kept distinct, assigning the conjunct scale to the conjoined cosmos fitted together out of differing elements, and the disjunct scale to God, who in his being is disjoined from all coming-to-be.

Again the hierophant declares an opinion that loves virtue, saying: "You shall not finish off the remainder of the harvest" (Leviticus 19:9), remembering the original premise, according to which he confessed that "the end belongs to the Lord" (Numbers 31:28ff.), with whom lies the authority and the ratification of these things.

But indeed the man uninitiated in reaping boasts and says: "I supposed we were binding sheaves I had not reaped" (Genesis 37:7), and did not reckon with himself that this is the service of slaves and of men without understanding, as I said a little earlier.

Sheaves, when we read them allegorically, we say are the things which each person, as his own proper food, grasps at, in the confidence that in it he will live and pass his existence for all time,

so he hopes. Now the varieties of sheaves -- I mean of the things that, as it were, nourish -- are countless, and countless too are those who grasp at and choose the sheaves, so that it is impossible either to name or to conceive them all. But it is not out of place to explain a few of them, by way of example, which the very man who tells the dream himself mentions.

For he says to his brothers: "I supposed we were binding sheaves" (Genesis 37:7). Now the brothers are ten by the same father and one by the same mother; and the name of each of them is a token of some most necessary thing. Reuben stands for natural gift -- for he is called "son who sees": as a son, he is not yet perfect, but as one who sees, sharp of sight, he stands for natural gift. Simeon stands for learning -- for the name means "hearkening."

-- Levi for earnest activities and actions and holy services; Judah for songs and hymns to God; Issachar for wages, which are given in return for good works -- though perhaps the works themselves were the perfect wage; Zebulun for light, since his name means "a flowing away of night" -- for when night flows away and departs, light of necessity rises --

Dan for the distinguishing and cutting apart of things; Gad for piratical attack and counter-attack; Asher for natural wealth -- for his name is interpreted "blessing," since wealth is reckoned a blessed possession; Naphtali for peace -- for by peace all things are opened up and made wide, just as they are shut in by war;

and his name, translated, means "a widening" or "a thing opened up" -- Benjamin for time both young and old: for, when interpreted, he is said to be "son of days," and by days and nights this age, at once young and old, is measured out.

Each one, then, grasps at what belongs to him, and having grasped it binds together all its parts: the man of good natural gift binds together quickness of apprehension, persistence, and memory, in which natural gift consists; the man apt to learn binds together attentive hearing, quietness, and close attention; the man of enterprise binds together boldness and venturesome daring;

the grateful man binds together praises, encomiums, hymns, and felicitations, both in speech and in song; the man who desires wages binds together untiring constancy, most enduring steadfastness, and diligence, together with an unrivaled swiftness;

the man who pursues light instead of darkness binds together wakefulness and keenness of sight; the man who is zealous for the cutting and distinguishing of things binds together sharpened arguments, so as not to be deceived by like things as though they were the same, not to speak for favor, and to be incorruptible;

the man who lies in wait more like a pirate against his adversaries binds together deceit, trickery, sorcery, sophistries, pretense, and hypocrisy -- things blameworthy in themselves, but praised when directed against enemies; the man who practices being rich with nature's wealth binds together self-control and being content with little; the man who loves peace binds together good order, justice, freedom from vanity, and equality.

From these the sheaves of the brothers by the same father are bound together, while those of the brother by the same mother are bound from days and time, causes of nothing yet the cause, as it were, of all things.

But the dreamer and interpreter of dreams himself -- for he was both -- grasps at empty opinion as though it were the greatest, most brilliant, and most useful of possessions. Therefore it is first from dreams, things dear to the night, that he becomes known to the king of the region of the body, not from the clear evidence of things plainly visible, which needs daylight for its display.

Then he is proclaimed governor or guardian of all Egypt, destined to carry off second honors after the king's -- honors which, before judging reason, are set down as more obscure and more ridiculous forms of dishonor upon dishonor.

Then he is invested with "a golden collar" (Genesis 41:41-42) -- a conspicuous halter, a circle and wheel of endless necessity -- not the sequence and order that follows in life and the connected chain of nature's affairs, as with Tamar; for hers was not a collar but a necklace, an ornament (Genesis 38:18) -- and also with a royal ring (Genesis 41:42), a gift, a faithless pledge of faith, contrary to the one given back again to Tamar by the king who sees, Israel, by Judah.

For this one gives the soul a seal (Gen. 38:18), a most beautiful gift, teaching that God gave shape to the substance of all things, which was without shape, gave form to what was formless, gave figure to what had no quality, and, having brought the whole cosmos to completion, sealed it with an image and an idea, namely his own Logos.

But that other one climbs up into the second chariot (Gen. 41:43), puffed up by the swaying of his wits and by empty conceit, and he stores grain (ibid. 48), keeping treasure for the body and procuring food for it from every side; and this is a heavy siege-wall raised up against the soul.

His very name testifies, not least, to his choice and his zeal for this way of life; for "Joseph" is interpreted as "addition." And empty opinion is forever adding the bastard to the legitimate, the alien to the proper, the false to the true, the excessive to the sufficient, luxury to life, and vanity to living.

Consider what I mean to show. We are nourished by food and drink, even if it is the plainest barley cake and spring water. What, then, has empty opinion piled on top of this — countless kinds of pastries and honey-cakes, and the elaborate, endlessly varied blendings of innumerable wines, seasoned more for the enjoyment of pleasure than for the sharing of nourishment?

Again, the relishes necessary for eating are wild greens and vegetables, and many kinds of tree-fruit, and besides these, cheese and whatever else is of the same sort; and if you like, for meat-eating people we may add fish and flesh as well.

Would it not have been sufficient to roast these over coals, cooked on the spot over a fire in the manner of truly heroic men, and so partake of them? But the glutton does not confine himself to this; taking empty opinion as his ally, and stirring up the gluttonous passion within him, he searches out and looks around for celebrated cooks and table-arrangers skilled in their craft.

And these men, stirring up the baits that have been devised over long ages against the wretched belly, preparing the peculiar properties of sauces and arranging them in due order, fawn upon the tongue and tame it; then at once they hook the landing-place of the senses, taste, through which, in place of a free man, a slave — a hunter after dinners — before long comes to light.

Who, indeed, does not know that clothing was devised, in the first place, against the harms that come to the body from cold and heat?

It is a windbreak, as the poets somewhere say, against winter's storm... Who, then, is it that fashions the costly purple robes, the transparent, delicate summer garments, the gossamer-fine wraps, the garments flowered either by dyes or by the weaving of those skilled in dyeing or weaving many-colored patterns, and who outdo even the imitation found in painting? Who? Is it not empty opinion?

But indeed we also needed houses, for the same reasons, and so that we might not be harmed by wild beasts, or by men more savage in nature than wild beasts, running in upon us. Why then do we adorn the floors and the walls with costly stones? Why do we range over Asia and Libya and all Europe and the islands, searching out columns chosen for their excellence, and architraves?

And why do we take such trouble and pride ourselves over Doric and Ionic and Corinthian carvings, and all that those who luxuriate in these fashions have further devised, adorning capitals of columns? And why do we construct men's quarters and women's quarters roofed in gold?

Is it not on account of empty opinion? And yet for sleep a soft floor was enough — since even to this day report holds that the Gymnosophists among the Indians, by ancient custom, sleep on the ground — or if not that, then at least a pallet, a couch made of chosen stones or cheap wood.

But no — ivory feet are made for the bed-frames, and couches inlaid with costly shells and richly patterned tortoiseshell, fashioned with great labor and expense over a long time, and some coverlets are of solid silver and solid gold and set with precious stones, adorned with flowered patterns and sprinkled with gold, as if for display and pageantry rather than for daily use — and the craftsman of all these is empty opinion.

What further need is there to seek for ointments beyond the fruit pressed from the olive? For it both softens the skin and relieves the body's weariness and produces good flesh, and if anything has become slack it draws it tight with its firmness, and instils vigor and strength no less than any other substance.

But against these helpful things the pleasant unguents of empty opinion have been raised as a siege-wall — unguents for which perfumers labor and great regions contribute, Syria, Babylon,

India, Scythia, among whom the sources of spices are found. And as for drinking, what was needed more than the cup that nature herself has fashioned with the utmost artistry? That cup is our own hands, which a man, bringing them together and cupping them, and applying them well to his mouth while another pours in the drink, uses not only as a remedy for thirst but acquires an unspeakable pleasure besides.

But if some other vessel was absolutely necessary, would not the farmer's wooden bowl have sufficed, rather than the need to search out the crafts of other, more illustrious makers? Why is an unstinting abundance of silver and gold cups fashioned, if not because of vanity snorting its great pride, and empty opinion carried aloft on its swaying perch?

Whenever certain people think it fit to be crowned not with laurel or ivy, not with violets or lilies or roses, or in general with any fragrant wreath of some flower — passing over the gifts of God, which he sends up through the seasons of the year — but instead hoist above their heads a crown of gold, a most burdensome weight, in the middle of the crowded marketplace, without a trace of shame, what else must we suppose them to be but slaves of empty opinion, though they claim to be not only free men but leaders of many others besides?

The day would fail me were I to go on recounting the corruptions of human life. And yet why should I speak at length? For who has not heard of these things, who has not seen them for himself? Who indeed is not worn smooth and familiar with them? So it was altogether fitting that the sacred word named "addition" the enemy of freedom from vanity and the companion of vanity.

For just as superfluous shoots grow up on trees, great blemishes upon the genuine growth, which farmers, out of care for what is necessary, prune away and cut off, so upon the true and vanity-free life there has grown up alongside it the false and vainglorious life, for which, to this very day, no farmer has yet been found who has cut off the harmful growth at its very roots.

Therefore those who practice wisdom, knowing that this plastered-over thing is first pursued by sense-perception and then chased after by the understanding, cry out plainly: "An evil beast has seized and devoured Joseph" (Gen. 37:33).

But is it not a savage beast — this most tangled life of confused men, shaped by vanity, whose skilled craftsmen are greed and unscrupulousness, feasting upon all who come near it? Therefore, though they are still alive, mourning shall be set before them as though they were dead, since they reap a life worthy of lamentation and dirges; for Jacob too mourns Joseph while he is still alive.

But Moses will not allow the sacred discourse concerning Nadab's companions to be mourned (Lev. 10:6); for they were not seized by an evil beast, but were taken up by a rush of unquenchable and immortal light, because they cut off from their path the hesitation of delay and consecrated in purity that ardent and fiery zeal for piety, ever eager to consume the flesh and swift to move — a zeal that is alien to created being but proper to God — coming to the altar not by steps, for this the law forbids, but wafted by a favorable wind and escorted all the way to the circuits of heaven, as a whole burnt offering and a whole fruit-offering

resolved into rays of upper air. Therefore, O soul that obeys the teacher, you must cut off your own hand and power whenever it begins to lay hold of the pursuits that belong to becoming, to generation, or to merely human concerns.

For often... a hand that has laid hold of the twin parts is to be cut off (Deut. 25:11-12), first because it welcomed the pleasure that it ought to have hated, second because it supposed the act of sowing to belong to us, and third because it ascribed to the thing made the power that belongs to the maker.

Don't you see that when the earthy mass, Adam, touches the twin tree, he dies—having honored the pair above the one, and marveled at the thing made above the one who made it? But you, step outside the smoke and the wave, and flee the ridiculous pursuits of mortal life as you would that fearsome Charybdis, and do not so much as touch it, as the saying goes, with the tip of a finger.

But when you strip for the sacred rites of service, open your whole hand and your whole power, and take a firm grasp of the doctrines of education and wisdom. For there is indeed a commandment of this kind: "If a soul brings forward a gift or a sacrifice, the gift shall be fine flour," and then it adds: "and taking a full handful of the flour with the oil and all the frankincense, he shall place the memorial portion on the altar" (Lev 2:1-2).

Was it not altogether beautifully said, that it is the incorporeal soul that is about to perform this sacred service—not the twin mass composed of the mortal and the immortal? For the thing that prays, the thing that gives thanks, the thing that truly brings up unblemished sacrifices, was after all one thing alone: the soul.

What, then, is the sacrifice of the incorporeal soul? What else but fine flour, a symbol of a judgment purified by the instructions of education, sufficient to produce food free of disease and a life free of blame?

From this flour the priest, grasping with the whole hand—which is to say, with every grip of the understanding—is commanded to bring up the whole soul, having become full of the most sincere and purest doctrines, as the finest sacrificial victim, fat and rich, rejoicing in the divine light and breathed upon by the breezes that rise from justice and the other virtues, so as to enjoy forever the sweetest and gentlest of lives. For the oil and the frankincense, of which the priest takes hold together with the white wheat, hint at these very things.

For this reason Moses also established a special feast for the sheaf—not for every sheaf, but for the one from the sacred land. For he says: "When you enter the land that I am giving you, and you reap its harvest, you shall bring sheaves, the firstfruits of your harvest, to the priest" (Lev 23:10). And this means:

When you enter, O understanding, into the land of virtue—which it is fitting to give to God alone—the well-pastured, the fertile, the fruit-bearing land, and then, having sown good things, reap them grown by the one who brings all to completion, do not first carry the harvest home for yourself—that is, do not dedicate to yourself and write your own name as the cause of what has come to be—until you have offered the firstfruits to the Lord of Wealth, who persuades us also to practice deeds that make for wealth.

It says "the firstfruits of your harvest"—of your own harvest, not of the land's—that we might reap and harvest for ourselves, consecrating all the fine, nourishing, and worthy growths.

But the initiate of dreams, who is at once also their initiator, dares to say that his sheaf rose up and stood erect (Gen 37:7). For truly, just as spirited horses raise their necks aloft, so all who belong to the company of empty opinion set themselves up above everyone—above cities, laws, ancestral customs, the affairs of each community.

Then, advancing from popular leadership to civic office, casting down what belongs to their neighbors while raising up and firmly establishing what belongs to themselves, they contrive to bring under their yoke even those free and unenslaved minds that nature has made so.

For this reason it adds: "and your sheaves turned round and bowed down to my sheaf" (Gen 37:7). For the lover of modesty is struck with awe at the stiff-necked man, the cautious man at the self-willed one, and the man who honors equality at the one who is unequal both to himself and to others—and perhaps not without reason.

For the person of refinement, being an observer not only of human life but of all things in the cosmos, knows how much wind necessity, chance, occasion, force, and dominion are accustomed to blow, and how many undertakings and how great pieces of good fortune, running breathlessly all the way up to heaven, they have shaken down and dashed to ruin.

So he will necessarily take up caution as a shield, a kindred safeguard against suffering anything terrible from a sudden attack. For what a wall is to a city, caution is to each individual, I think.

Are they not, then, out of their minds and mad, all who are eager to display untimely frankness of speech, sometimes daring to speak and act against kings and tyrants, not perceiving that they have been yoked—not only by the neck, as cattle are, but with their whole bodies and souls, and with wives and children and parents and the whole populous circle of kinship and companionship bound over as well—and that it is possible for the charioteer and rider, with perfect ease, to goad, to drive, to rein in, to check, to arrange matters small and great just as he wishes?

And so, branded and scourged and mutilated, enduring all at once, savagely and pitilessly, every hardship that precedes death, they are led away,

and in the end they die. These are the wages of untimely frankness of speech—not frankness at all, in the judgment of sound-minded jurors, but folly and derangement and incurable melancholy through and through. What are you saying? A man sees a storm at its height, a heavy wind blowing against him, a squall bursting forth, and a sea heaving with waves—when he ought to be putting into harbor, does he instead put out to sea and set sail?

What pilot or ship-owner was ever so drunk and so far gone in madness as to wish to sail through all the dangers I have named, so that the sea, poured in from above and swamping the vessel, might swallow it up together with its passengers? For the man who wishes to sail without danger, it was possible to wait for a calm, favorable, and gentle wind. What else?

A man sees a bear or a wild boar or a lion advancing upon him with a rush—when he ought to calm and tame it, does he instead provoke it to greater fury and stir it up, so as to make himself ready as a feast and banquet for merciless, raw-devouring beasts?

Unless one is also to resist spiders and Egyptian asps and all the other creatures whose destructive venom it profits no one to oppose, since they bring inescapable death upon those once bitten—for it is enough, by charming and taming them, to suffer nothing terrible from them.

Are there not, then, some human beings more savage and more treacherous than boars, spiders, and asps? Whose treachery and hostility it is impossible to escape except by employing tameness and conciliation. That is why the wise Abraham did obeisance to the sons of Heth—who are interpreted as "those who stand outside themselves" (Gen 23:7)—since the circumstances of the time persuaded him to act so.

For it was not out of honor for those who are, by nature, birth, and custom, the enemies of reason—who take the soul's coinage, education, and drive it out of its senses and pitifully squander it in small change—that he came to do obeisance, but because he feared their present power and their hard-to-conquer strength, and was on guard against provoking them, so that he might secure by service and by word, rather than by fighting and warring against them, a great and firm possession and prize of virtue, the finest dwelling-place of wise souls—the double cave—which he could not obtain by combat, but could win by yielding and attending to them with reasoned speech. What else?

Do we not ourselves, when we spend time in the marketplace, habitually step aside both for magistrates and for beasts of burden? But from opposite motives, and not the same one: for magistrates, out of honor; for beasts of burden, out of fear that some harm might come to us from them.

And when circumstances allow it, it is good to attack and put an end to the violence of enemies; but when they do not permit this, it is safe to remain quiet; and when we wish to derive some benefit from them, it is fitting to tame them.

For this reason it is worth praising, even now, those who do not yield to the champion of empty opinion, but resist him and say: "Will you indeed be king and reign over us?" (Gen 37:8). For they see that he has not yet grown strong—not yet like a flame kindled and blazing, fed by abundant fuel, but still like a spark smoldering, dreaming of glory, not yet openly pursuing it.

For they lay down good hopes for themselves, as though they might yet avoid being captured. They say beforehand: "Will you reign over us?" As if to say: do you imagine you will hold power while we are alive, existing, strong, and breathing? For should we grow weak, perhaps you will prevail; but while we remain vigorous, you will be ranked among the subjects.

And this is the way things naturally are: whenever right reason is strong in the mind, empty opinion is broken down, but it grows strong once reason has weakened. So then, as long as the soul still has its own power intact and no part of it has been mutilated, let it take courage to shoot and hurl its darts at the vanity opposing it, and let it speak freely, saying: "You shall not reign, nor shall you be lord" (Gen. 37:8), neither over us nor over any others besides us.

"But your threats and menaces we shall rout in a single charge, together with our bodyguards and shield-bearers, the offspring of prudence" — those of whom it is said that "they added still more to their hatred of him because of his dreams and because of his words" (Gen. 37:8).

But are not words and dreams merely the images that vanity fashions, while facts and clear, self-evident realities are all that bears upon a right life and right reason? The former, being falsehoods, deserve hatred; the latter, being full of lovable truth, deserve friendship.

Let no one, then, still dare to accuse men of such virtue as displaying the character of haters of humanity and haters of their own kin. Rather, let him learn that it is not a human being who is now under judgment, but the mad lover of opinion and vanity found among the dispositions in each person's soul, and let him approve of those who take up implacable enmity and irreconcilable hatred against it, and never let him embrace what they have detested, knowing with precision

that such judges of the mind would never have erred from soundness, but, having learned and been trained from the beginning to worship and honor the true King, the Lord, they grow indignant if anyone robs God of his honor and summons God's suppliants over to service of himself instead.

For this reason they will say boldly: "Will you indeed reign as king over us?" (Gen. 37:8). Or do you not know that we are not self-governing, but are ruled by the immortal King, the one and only God? And again: "Will you indeed be lord over us?" (Gen. 37:8). For are we not owned, and have we not had, and shall we not always have for all time, the very same Lord? Serving him, we rejoice as no one else rejoices in freedom; for to be a slave to God is the best of all things that are honored within creation.

I too, then, would pray to be able to remain firmly steadfast in the things known by these men. For watchmen and scouts and overseers of deeds, not of bodies, they are, exact and just, sober through the whole of time, so as never to be deceived by any of the usual lures.

But I myself am still drunk even now, and make use of much obscurity, and need staffs and guides like the blind; for one who leans on a support might perhaps manage neither to stumble nor to slip.

But if some people, knowing themselves to be unexamined and unreflective, are not eager to follow with all exactness and care those who have examined all that must be examined, being ignorant of the road even though others know it, let them understand that, entangled in impassable pits, they will not be able to go forward even if they hasten.

As for those men, whenever I am relieved a little of my drunkenness, I am so much in league with them that I count the very same person both enemy and friend. And even now, no less, I will put forward the dreamer as an object of hatred, since they too did so, and I will detest him; and no one of sound mind would blame me for this, since I always yield to the opinions and votes of the majority.

But when he changes to a better life, and no longer dreams, nor suffers, dragged down by the empty fantasies of those who are empty of true glory, into the mire, nor pictures night and darkness and chance encounters with obscure and inscrutable events,

but rising up out of deep sleep continues wakeful, and welcomes clarity in place of obscurity, and truth in place of false supposition, and day in place of night, and light in place of darkness, and turns away from the wife of the Egyptian — bodily pleasure — who urges him to come in to her and enjoy her company, because of his longing for self-mastery and his unspeakable zeal for piety,

and lays claim again to the portion of goods, kindred and ancestral, from which he had seemed estranged, deeming it right to recover for himself the share of virtue that belongs to him, and, advancing by small increments of improvement, comes at last to be established as at the summit and end of his own life and declares aloud, having learned by precise experience, that he belongs to God (Gen. 50:19), and no longer at all to anything perceptible that belongs to created being,

then his brothers will make reconciling compacts with him, turning their hatred into friendship and their ill will into good will, while I, a follower of these men — for I have learned, as a servant, to obey as masters — will not cease praising him for his change of heart;

since even Moses the hierophant rescues from destruction, as a thing worthy of love and worthy of remembrance, his change of heart, by means of the symbol of the bones which he did not think it right to allow to remain buried forever in Egypt (Exod. 13:19), holding it a most grievous thing that, if anything good had blossomed in the soul, this should be allowed to wither and be drowned and vanish beneath the floods which the Egyptian river of the passions — the body — pours forth continually through all the senses.

The vision, then, that appeared concerning the sheaves has been discussed, and its interpretation, in terms of earth. It is now time to examine the other vision, and how it is distinguished by the art of dream interpretation.

"He saw," it says, "another dream, and related it to his father and his brothers, and said: Behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me. And his father rebuked him and said: What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, to bow down to you upon the earth? And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind" (Gen. 37:9–11).

The students of the heavens, then, say that the zodiacal circle, being the greatest of the circles in heaven, has been set with stars in twelve signs, from which it also took its name, and that the sun and moon, ever revolving about it, pass through each of the signs, not at equal speed, but in unequal numbers and times — the sun in thirty days, the moon in about a twelfth part of this, which comes to two and a half days.

It seemed, then, that the one who saw this god-sent vision was being worshiped by eleven stars, ranking himself as the twelfth to complete the circle of the zodiac.

I recall also having heard before from a certain man who approached the subject neither carelessly nor casually, that it is not only human beings who are mad for glory, but the stars too, contending for first place, judge it right that the greater should always be attended by the lesser as their guard of honor.

These matters, then — whether they have any truth or are mere idle talk — must be left for the sky-hunters to examine. But we say this: that the lover of undiscerning eagerness and irrational contentiousness and empty glory, ever puffed up by folly, thinks it right to look down not only upon human beings but upon the very nature of existing things.

And he supposes that all things have come to be for his own sake, and that each thing must bring him tribute as though to a king — earth, water, air, heaven; and he indulges in such an excess of foolishness that he cannot reckon what even a witless child would understand: that no craftsman ever makes the whole for the sake of a part, but makes a part for the sake of the whole; and man is a part of the whole universe, so that, having come into being for the completion of the world, he would rightly himself contribute to it in turn.

But some are so full of such nonsense that they grow indignant if the world does not follow their wishes. For this reason Xerxes, king of the Persians, wishing to strike terror into his enemies, made a display of grandiose deeds, innovating upon nature itself;

for he transformed earth and sea, giving continent in exchange for sea and sea in exchange for continent, yoking the Hellespont with bridges, and breaking open Mount Athos into deep gulfs which, filled with sea, at once became a new, hand-made ocean, nature's ancient order utterly changed;

and having, as it seemed, worked wonders upon the regions of earth, he went up, in his audacious schemes, drawing impiety along with himself even into heaven, wretched man, as though he would move the immovable and overthrow the divine host — and, as the saying goes, he began from the sacred things themselves.

For he shot arrows at the noblest of the heavenly bodies, the sun, the leader of the day — as though he himself were not being wounded by the invisible arrow of madness, not only through his desire for the impossible but also through his desire for the most unholy deeds, either one of which alone would bring great disgrace on anyone who attempted it.

There is a story that the most populous tribe of the Germans — among whom the sea ebbs and flows — at the incoming tides rush forward eagerly, brandishing their swords bared, and run to meet the surging sea as though it were a mass of enemy troops.

It is right to hate them for this — that out of godlessness they dare to take up arms against parts of nature that cannot be enslaved — and right to mock them, because they attempt the impossible as though it were possible, supposing that water, like a living creature, can be stabbed, wounded, killed, and again can feel pain, feel fear, flee in terror before an attacker, and undergo all the other passions of the soul, both pleasures and pains —

— only yesterday, so to speak, I knew a man among the governors who, when he held the administration and oversight of Egypt, resolved to disturb our ancestral customs, and in particular to abolish the most sacred and awe-inspiring law concerning the seventh day, and tried to force people to work on it and to do other things contrary to established custom, thinking this would be the beginning of a wider transgression of all our other customs, if he could succeed in doing away with our ancestral observance of the seventh day.

And when he saw that those he was coercing would not yield to his commands, and that the rest of the populace was far from calm but bore the matter bitterly and harshly, mourning and downcast as though over the enslavement, sacking, and razing of their homeland, he thought fit to argue them into lawbreaking, saying:

‘If an enemy attack should suddenly occur, or a flood should come when the river's flow bursts through the embankments in its rising, or a rush of fire, or a bolt of lightning, or famine, or plague, or earthquake, or any other evil, whether man-made or sent by heaven, will you spend the day quietly at home?’

‘Or will you go out in your customary posture, drawing your right hand in beneath your garment and tucking the other hand under your cloak at your side, so that not even against your will you might do anything toward saving yourselves?’

‘And will you sit in your little synagogues, gathering your usual assembly, safely reading your sacred books, and expounding whatever is not clear, and lingering at leisure over your ancestral philosophy through long discourses?’

‘No — shake off all this, and raise a cry on behalf of your own bodies and those of your parents, children, and other dearest kin, and — if the truth must be told — for your possessions and property too, so that not even these may be destroyed.’

‘Strip off your reverence for the divine.’ And this very man, he said, I myself am all the things I have named — hurricane, war, flood, thunderbolt, famine and plague, the earthquake that shakes and stirs up what stands firmly fixed; I am not the mere name of fated necessity, but a visible power standing near at hand.

What then shall we say of a man who says or thinks such things — merely that he is out of place? Is he not rather some strange new evil from beyond the ocean, or from between the worlds, since a man weighed down by every misfortune has dared to liken himself to the one who is blessed in every way?

This man would go so far as to blaspheme the sun, the moon, and the other stars, whenever something hoped for in its proper season fails to occur at all, or occurs only with difficulty — a scorching heat in summer, or a harsh cold descending in winter, or a spring and autumn, the one barren of good crops, the other all too fruitful in breeding sickness.

So, letting out every rope of an unbridled mouth and a slanderous tongue, he will accuse the stars as though they had failed to pay their accustomed tribute, all but demanding that earthly things be honored and worshipped by the heavenly ones, and himself most of all, inasmuch as, being a man, he is thought to surpass the other living creatures.

Such, then, are the ringleaders enrolled among us in the service of empty opinion; let us now look in turn at the members of their chorus. These are forever plotting against those who practice virtue. Whenever they see such people eager to brighten their lives with undeceiving truth, and to shine as if by the pure light of moon or sun, they hinder them, whether by deceit or by force, driving them into the sunless region of the impious, which deep night holds fast, and endless darkness, and countless throngs of idols, phantoms, and dreams — and having plunged them down there, they force them to worship these as masters.

For we take the one who practices wisdom to be the sun, since as the sun gives light to bodies, this man gives light to the affairs of the soul, and we take the education he employs to be the moon — for it is at night that the use of each is purest and most beneficial — and we take as brothers the refined reasonings born of education and of a soul in training, all of them guiding life along a straight path; but those who have resolved to say and think nothing sound think it right to seize these by the neck with manifold and cunning wrestling-holds, to throw them and break their necks, and to trip them and dash them down.

And this is why the father — not Jacob, but right reason, which is older even than he — gently rebukes such a man, saying, ‘What is this dream you have dreamed?’ (Gen. 37:10).

Did you not see a mere dream? Or did you suppose that things free by nature would, by human compulsion, become slaves, and that the ruling powers would become subject — and, more paradoxical still, subject not to others but to those they rule, enslaved not to other things but to the things enslaved to them? Unless, that is, by the power of God, who alone can do all things, for whom it is lawful both to move what is immovable and to fix in place what is carried along, a reversal of the established order into its opposite should come to be.

For what reason could there be for being angry at, and rebuking, one who has merely seen a vision in sleep? ‘Did I see it willingly?’ he will say. ‘Why do you bring against me the charges due to those who have done wrong deliberately? I have simply recounted what fell upon me from outside and struck my mind suddenly, against my will.’

But in truth the present discussion is not about a dream at all, but about things that resemble dreams — things which seem, to those not fully purified, to be great, splendid, and worth fighting for, but which, in the eyes of the incorruptible judges of truth, are small, dim, and deserving only of mockery.

‘Shall I, then,’ he says — I, right reason — ‘come, and shall the soul of the company of learning also arrive, mother and nurse together, education flourishing in virtue, and shall the offspring of us both also hasten to join us, and, standing opposite in this way, arranged in order, shall we raise our hands in due arrangement and pray, having first put away all vanity?’

‘Then shall we cast ourselves down to the ground, beseeching and attempting to prostrate ourselves?’ But may the sun never shine upon such doings, since deep darkness suits evil, and far-reaching light suits the good. What greater evil could there be than for counterfeit and deceptive vanity to be praised and admired in place of unfeigned and truthful freedom from vanity?

It is beautifully distinguished, the statement that ‘the father kept the matter in mind’ (Gen. 37:11). For it is the work not of a barren and sterile soul, but of one truly mature and capable of bringing forth, to live in continual watchfulness and to despise nothing at all, but to stand in awe before the inescapable and invincible power of God and to look about on every side, wondering what the outcome will finally be for it.

This is also why the oracles say that the sister of Moses — whom we who read allegorically call Hope — watched from a distance (Exod. 2:4), looking, no doubt, toward the end of life, so that a favorable outcome might meet her, sent down from above, from heaven, by the one who brings all things to fulfillment.

For many, often, after crossing unsailable seas and being carried safely and without danger on a long voyage by favorable winds, have suddenly been shipwrecked in the very harbors, just as they were about to make land.

And countless others, after winning heavy wars that lasted many years by main force and coming through unwounded, without even the surface of their skin being grazed, and returning as though from a great public festival and a civic celebration … whole and entire, have come back with cheerful high spirits into their own homes — only to be treacherously attacked there, of all places, where it was least to be expected, and slaughtered, as the saying goes, ‘like oxen at the manger.’

Just as these unexpected and unpredictable misfortunes tend to fall upon us, so too they thrust back the powers of the soul toward their opposites and force them to reverse course, if they can, and try to overturn them. For who, entering the bitter contest of life, has remained unfallen?

Who has not been tripped up? Happy is the one it does not happen to often. On whom has fortune not lain in wait, drawing breath and gathering strength, so that once she has grappled with him she may snatch him away at once, before her opponent even has time to dust himself for the wrestling?

Do we not already know of some who have come from childhood to old age without perceiving any disturbance at all, whether through the good fortune of their nature, or through the diligence of those who reared and educated them, or through both together, and who have been filled with a deep peace within themselves — the peace that is peace in truth, the archetype of the peace found in cities — and who for this reason have been thought fortunate, because they never perceived, even in a dream, the civil war kindled by the passions, the most grievous of all wars — only then, in the very sunset of their life, to run aground and be shipwrecked, either through an unbridled tongue, or an insatiable belly, or an ungoverned lust of the parts below the belly?

For some have set their heart, "on the threshold of old age," on the youthful life of the prodigal — dishonored, disowned, shameful — while others have set it on the life of the villain, the false accuser, the rogue, taking up love of mischief just when it would have been fitting to lay it down, old as it already was.

For this reason we must supplicate God and beseech him earnestly, that our perishable race not be passed over, but that he command his saving mercy toward it to last forever; for it is hard, once we have tasted unmixed peace, to be kept from being sated with it.

But come — is this evil, hunger, a lighter thing than thirst? It has love and longing to comfort it. But when, from another spring, one whose stream is murky and diseased, a man must, through desire to drink, be filled to the full, then of necessity, gorged with a bittersweet pleasure, he must live out an unlivable life, running after harmful things as though they were beneficial, in ignorance of what truly profits him.

The most grievous onset of evils occurs among these, whenever the irrational powers of the soul, having set upon the powers of reason, overcome them.

For as long as either herds of cattle obey their herdsmen, or flocks of sheep their shepherds, or flocks of goats their goatherds, the affairs of the herd go rightly; but whenever those set over them as herd-leaders prove weaker than the beasts themselves, everything goes amiss, and disorder arises out of order, unruliness out of good discipline, turmoil out of stability, and confusion out of discernment, since no lawful authority any longer stands in place — for if it did, the trouble would already have been put down.

What then? Do we not suppose that within ourselves too there is a herd of animals, insofar as the irrational multitude has been cut off from the soul, and that the mind, the ruling part, is the herd-leader? So long as it is strong and capable of leading the herd, everything is accomplished rightly and to advantage.

But whenever some weakness comes upon it, at its very foundation, the subject part too must of necessity suffer along with it; and precisely when it seems most to have been set free, then it becomes most ready as a prize lying open for whoever wishes merely to raise dust against it in the contest. For it is the nature of anarchy to be treacherous, and of rule to be a thing of safety, above all where law and justice are honored — and this is the rule that goes together with reason.

Let this, then, be the precise account of the dreams of empty opinion. As for the forms belonging to gluttony, they are drink and food — though the one requires no great variety, while the other calls for countless seasonings and relishes. These, however, are laid upon two men charged with care for them: the concerns of elaborate drinking upon the chief cupbearer, and those of the more necessary eating upon the chief baker; and, most exactly examined, they are brought forward as men who see their dreams pictured in a single night.

For both press toward the same need, preparing food not simply, but food accompanied by pleasure and delight. And each toils over half of the matter of nourishment, but together the two of them cover the whole.

And moreover each part is drawn along by the other: those who have eaten immediately reach for drink, and those who have drunk immediately for food; so that it is not least for this reason too that the same span of time has been recorded for the appearance of both their visions.

The chief cupbearer, then, was allotted drunkenness with wine, and the chief baker gluttony. And each sees in his vision the things proper to himself: the one, wine and the plant that produces wine, the vine; the other, loaves set out upon baskets, thoroughly cleansed, and himself carrying the baskets on his head (Gen. 40:16–17).

It would be fitting to examine the earlier dream first, and it runs as follows: "In my sleep there was a vine before me; and in the vine were three roots, and it was flourishing, having brought forth shoots; the clusters of grapes were ripe. And Pharaoh's cup was in my hand; and I took the cluster and pressed it out into the cup, and gave the cup into Pharaoh's hands" (Gen. 40:9–11).

How wonderfully, and how truly, he spoke in advance in saying "in my sleep." For in truth, one who pursues drunkenness not so much from wine as from folly, being vexed by uprightness and wakefulness, has, like those who are asleep, been cast down and let go slack and has shut the eyes of his soul, being able neither to see nor to hear anything worth seeing or hearing.

Overcome, he travels through life not by a road but by a blind and unguided pathless waste, impaled on thorns and thistles, and sometimes even rolling down precipices and falling upon others, so that he pitifully destroys both them and himself.

The deep and prolonged sleep, by which every base person is possessed, takes away true perceptions and fills the mind with false images and unstable phantasms, persuading it to accept blameworthy things as praiseworthy. For indeed such a man now dreams of grief as though it were joy, and does not perceive that what belongs to folly and to raving madness ... he sees the plant, the vine.

"There was," he says, "a vine before me" (Gen. 40:9) — the thing desired before the one desiring it, vice before the one given over to vice; a vine which we, unthinking, without realizing it, cultivate against ourselves, whose fruit we both eat and drink, assigning it to each kind of nourishment, and of which, as it seems, we lay claim not to half the harm but to the whole and entire and complete measure of it.

It is fitting not to be ignorant that the intoxicating fruit of the vine affects all who make use of it not alike, but often in opposite ways, so that some are found better than themselves through it, and others worse.

For in some it relaxes the gloom and sullenness, loosens their anxieties, softens their fits of anger and grief, trains their characters toward gentleness, and makes their souls gracious to themselves; but in others, on the contrary, it inflames their tempers, tightens their pains, stirs up their lusts, and rouses their boorishness, producing a mouth unbarred and a tongue unbridled, senses without a door, passions grown rabid and savage, and a mind startled and fluttering at everything.

So that the condition of the former seems to resemble either windless clear air, or a calm, waveless sea, or the most peaceful stability found in cities, while that of the latter resembles either a violent and straining wind, or a stormy and wave-tossed deep, or civil strife — a turmoil more ill-named even than a war fought without truce and without herald.

Of two banquets, then, the one is filled with laughter, play, promises, hopes of good things, acts of favor, good cheer, fair speech, gladness, delight, and freedom from fear;

while the other is filled with gloom, dejection, collisions, insults, wounds, men snarling, glowering, barking, throttling, wrestling each other down with all their might, mutilating ears and noses and whatever part of the body happens to be at hand — men displaying the drunkenness and riotous excess of an entire life, in an unholy contest accompanied by every kind of disgraceful conduct.

It would follow, then, to reckon that the vine too is a symbol of two things, folly and gladness. Each of these, though it could be shown from many examples, we shall demonstrate briefly, through a few, so as not to speak at length.

Next, just as the sun distinguishes day from night, so Moses says that God built a partition between light and darkness: "for God separated the light from the darkness" (Gen. 1:4). And in another sense, just as the sun when it rises reveals the hidden shapes of bodies, so God, having generated all things, not only brought them into visibility but made things that previously did not exist at all -- being not merely a craftsman but a creator.

The sacred word speaks of "sun" in many senses, according to hidden meanings. In one sense it means the human mind, which those who are compelled to serve what is generated rather than the Ungenerated build up and equip like a city -- those of whom it is said that "they built strong cities for Pharaoh: Pithom" -- reason, to which persuasion belongs -- "and Rameses" -- sense-perception, by which the soul is eaten away as though by moths (for "Rameses" is interpreted "the gnawing of a moth") -- "and On" (Exod. 1:11) -- the mind, which he named the City of the Sun, since like the sun it holds the sovereignty over our whole mass and extends its own powers into the whole like rays.

The priest and attendant of the mind is entitled "father-in-law" by everyone who has bound himself to the citizenship of the body -- his name is Joseph. "For he gave him," it says, "Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of the City of the Sun, as wife" (Gen. 41:45).

In a second sense he calls sense-perception symbolically "the sun," since all sensible things are made visible by the intellect. Of this he has spoken thus: "the sun rose upon him, when the form of God had passed by" (Gen. 32:31). For indeed, whenever we can no longer occupy ourselves with the most sacred Ideas and the incorporeal images of Being, but turn elsewhere and pass on, we make use of another light, the light of sense-perception, which differs not at all, plainly, from darkness in comparison with sound reason.

This light, once risen, woke sight and hearing, and taste and smell and touch as well, as though from sleep, but turned prudence and justice and knowledge and wisdom, though wide awake, to sleep.

For this reason the sacred word says that no one can be pure before evening (Lev. 11:24 and elsewhere), since the intellect is still overpowered by the movements that come by way of sense-perception, as by poisons. And he lays down for the priests, in the same breath, both an inescapable law and a maxim, when he says: "He shall not eat of the holy things unless he has washed his body with water, and the sun has gone down, and he has become clean" (Lev. 22:6-7).

For through these words he makes it very clear that no one is wholly pure -- so as to make use of the holy and sacred rites -- for whom it still happens that he honors the sensible splendors of mortal life. But if someone does not accept these, he is, correspondingly, illumined by the light of prudence, by which he will be able to wash and cleanse away the stains of empty opinions.

Or do you not see that the sun itself produces opposite effects both when it rises and when it sets? For when it rises, all things on earth are lit up all around, while the things in heaven are hidden; but when it sets, conversely, the stars shine forth while the things around the earth are darkened.

In the same way within us too: when the light of the senses rises like a sun, the truly Olympian and heavenly sciences happen to be hidden; but when it sets, the most star-like and most divine rays of the virtues appear, at which time the pure mind comes to be, hidden by no sensible thing.

In a third sense he calls the divine Word "sun" -- the model of the sun that circles through heaven, as was said before -- of which it is said: "the sun went forth over the earth, and Lot entered into Zoar, and the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire" (Gen. 19:23-24).

For the Word of God, when it arrives at our earthly constitution, comes to the aid and assistance of those who are akin to virtue and incline toward it, so as to provide them a complete refuge and salvation, but sends upon their adversaries ruin and incurable destruction.

In a fourth sense "sun" refers to the Ruler of the universe himself, as I have already said, through whom the incurable of our sins, though they seem to be hidden in shadow, are uncovered.

For all things are as knowable to God as they are possible for him. Hence he leads, to be exposed before the sun, those whose vigor of soul has been broken down, who consort licentiously and lustfully with the daughters of the mind -- the senses -- as though with streetwalkers and prostitutes.

For it says: "and the people settled in Shittim" -- which is interpreted "thorns," a symbol of the passions that prick and wound the soul -- "and it was profaned," it says, "by fornicating with the daughters of Moab" -- these are the senses, called daughters of the mind, for Moab is interpreted "from the father" -- and he adds: "take all the leaders of the people and make an example of them before the Lord, opposite the sun, and the wrath of the Lord will turn away from Israel" (Num. 25:1, 4).

For not only, wishing hidden wrongdoings to become manifest, did he shine upon them with the sun's rays, but through symbols he also called the Father of the universe "sun," to whom all things are plain, even whatever is accomplished invisibly in the recesses of the mind; and once they have become manifest, he says that the only Merciful One will be merciful. Why?

Because, if the intellect, supposing that it will escape the notice of the divine as it does wrong -- as though God were not able to see all things -- goes astray secretly and in hidden places, and afterward, whether of itself or because someone has guided it, comes to understand that it is impossible for anything to be unknown to God, and lays itself and all its own deeds open, and bringing them out into the open displays them, as though into the light of the sun, to the Overseer of the universe, saying that it repents of the things it formerly judged wrongly through an ungrateful disposition -- for nothing is unknown to him, but all things are known and plain, not only what has been done but even what is hoped for, in great abundance -- then it has been purified and helped, and it has tamed the reproof that stood over it as chastiser, since that reproof employs a just anger, if it accepts repentance as a younger brother

of never sinning at all. He appears, indeed, elsewhere too to take up the sun symbolically for the Cause, as in the law written concerning those who lend on pledges. Let us cite the law: "If you take in pledge your neighbor's garment, you shall return it to him before the sun sets; for this alone is his covering, this is the garment of his shame. In what shall he sleep? So if he cries out to me, I will listen to him; for I am merciful" (Exod. 22:26-27).

Is it not fitting that those who think the lawgiver has such great concern about a cloak -- even if not to reproach them, at least to remind them -- should be asked: what are you saying, noble sirs? Does the Creator and Ruler of the universe call himself merciful over so trifling a matter as a garment not returned by a debtor to a creditor?

This is what it means to suppose such things, and to attribute human pettiness to the ungenerated, incorruptible nature, full of blessedness and happiness, contrary to what is right and just -- all because one has not once beheld the greatness of the virtue of the God who is great in all things.

For what wrong do creditors do in holding the pledges taken by them, until they recover what is their own? The debtors are poor, someone will perhaps say, and deserve pity. Then would it not have been better to write a law by which they would rather raise a collection for them than declare them debtors, or forbid lending on pledges altogether? But he who permits it would not reasonably be indignant, as though they were acting impiously, at those who do not release beforehand the things they have received.

But a man who has come to such an extremity of poverty, so to speak, and wears a single rag, brings in new creditors -- the venom cast at him by onlookers who set aside pity, which lies open before those who suffer such misfortunes, in the home, at the temples, in the marketplace, and everywhere.

But as it is, even the one covering he had for shame, with which he concealed the secret parts of his nature, this he brought and held out. A pledge for what, tell me? For some better garment? For no one lacks necessary food, so long as springs well up, rivers in flood overflow, and the earth yields its yearly fruits.

So then, is the creditor either exceedingly rich or exceedingly cruel, that he should be willing to lend someone four drachmas, or perhaps even less, rather than lend to so poor a man -- or rather give it to him outright -- or that he should take as a pledge the one garment that man had, which by another name could rightly be called stripping a man of his cloak? For it is the custom of cloak-strippers, when they undress people, to take away their clothing and leave those who had it naked.

But why did he take care that no one should sleep unclothed at night, while he was no longer equally concerned that one who is awake by day should be shamefully naked? Or is it not that at night and in darkness all things are hidden, so that one feels shame less or not at all, while by day and in light they are uncovered, so that one is compelled to blush the more?

But why did he command not to "give" the garment but to "return" it? For a return is made of what belongs to another, and pledges belong more to the lenders than to the borrowers. But do you not consider this, that he did not command the debtor, once he had received the garment as bedding, to remove it upon rising the next day and carry it back to the creditor?

But the eunuch who is also Pharaoh's chief cupbearer, having pictured to himself in fantasy the vine, that plant which begets folly, adds to his portrait three roots, so as to signify the furthest extremities of wrongdoing according to the three times —

— for the root is the furthest point. So when folly overshadows the whole soul and takes possession of it, leaving no part of it free or unbound, it compels the soul to commit not only those sins that are curable, but also those that are incurable.

The sins that admit of treatment, then, are written first and are the easiest, while the incurable ones, being extremely difficult, are written last, corresponding to the roots.

And just as, I think, prudence begins by benefiting us in small matters and ends in the greatest achievements of right action, in the same way folly too, forcing the soul from above and gradually separating it from instruction, banishes it far from right reason and drags it down even to the furthest extremities.

The dream showed that after the roots the vine flowered, put forth shoots, and bore fruit — “for it,” he says, “was flourishing, having brought forth shoots; the clusters of grapes were ripe” (Gen. 40:10) — a vine that I wish had instead remained fruitless, never put forth green growth, and withered away entirely for all time.

For what greater evil could there be than folly flourishing and bearing abundant fruit? But also “the cup of Pharaoh” — the reservoir of senselessness, drunken excess, and unceasing intoxication throughout one's whole life — “is in my hand,” he says (Gen. 40:11), which is equivalent to saying it lies within my own undertakings, designs, and powers; for the passion will not prosper of its own accord, apart from my own contrivances.

For just as it is fitting that the reins be in the hands of the charioteer, and the rudder in the hands of the helmsman — since only in this way is the chariot's course and the ship's voyage successfully accomplished — so too the fulfillment of the intemperate man's craving lies in the hand and power of the one who practices the other kind of gluttony, namely drunkenness.

But what happened to him, that he endured boasting of denial rather than confession, in a matter deserving confession? Or would it not have been better not to refuse to acknowledge that he is a teacher of incontinence, than to heap up for the incontinent man the kindling of his passion, as though he were the inventor and craftsman of a shattered and broken, most shameful life?

It is something like this: folly prides itself on things it would be reasonable to hide. As it stands, he glories not only in carrying about in his hands and displaying to everyone the cup, the reservoir of the unrestrained soul, but also in pressing the grape into it — that is, in fashioning the very thing that fulfills the passion and bringing what was hidden out into the light.

For just as infants, longing for nourishment, when about to draw milk, press and squeeze the breast of their nurse, so too the craftsman of incontinence forcefully presses the spring from which the evil of drunkenness pours forth, so that he may make use of the pressed-out drops as the sweetest nourishment.

Let this, then, be our portrait of the man made drunk with strong wine — a drunken, raving evil, and incurable. Now we must in turn examine his kinsman, the glutton, likewise a companion of gorging and voracity, who practices his craft intemperately in matters of eating.

And yet not much effort is needed to hunt him down; for the dream that appeared is a most faithful impression of his likeness. So if we examine it carefully, we shall behold him as a reflection in a mirror.

“I thought,” he says, “that I was carrying three baskets of fine bread on my head” (Gen. 40:16). Now, interpreting allegorically, we say that the head is the ruling mind of the soul, and that everything rests upon it; indeed, he once cried out concerning it: “All these things have come upon me” (Gen. 42:36).

So, having arranged a procession of the things he has devised against his wretched belly, he displays it; and the fool, carrying his baskets, feels no shame at being weighed down by so heavy a threefold burden of baskets — which is to say, by the three divisions of time.

For the devotees of pleasure say that it is composed of the memory of past delights, the enjoyment of present ones, and the hope of those to come.

So the three baskets correspond to the three divisions of time, and the pastries in the baskets correspond to what fits each division — memories for the past, participation for the present, expectations for the future — while the one who bears all this for the pleasure-lover has filled a table that knows no truce and lacks the salt of friendship, drawing not from one kind of intemperance but from nearly every species and kind of licentiousness.

Of this table Pharaoh the king alone partakes, as though at a public feast, since he has cultivated the scattering, dispersal, and destruction of self-restraint — for “Pharaoh” is interpreted as “scattering.” His grandeur and kingliness consist not in glorying, as would be fitting, over the goods of self-control, but in priding himself on the practices of disgusting excess that are unfitting to boast of — a man who has run aground on insatiability, gluttony, and soft living.

Therefore the birds — that is, the unforeseeable chances that fly in from outside — will sweep over everything like fire, set it ablaze, and consume it with their all-devouring power (Gen. 40:17), so that not even a remnant is left for enjoyment to the basket-bearer, who had hoped to carry his inventions and contrivances secure and unassailable for all time.

Thanks be to the victorious God, who renders futile the efforts brought to their utmost pitch by the lover of passion, sending winged creatures invisibly to destroy and ruin them. So the mind, stripped of what it had fashioned, will be found headless and dead, as though its neck had been cut off, nailed fast — like those impaled — to the stake of helpless and destitute lack of instruction.

For as long as none of those sudden, unforeseeable visitations does any damage, the arts devoted to the enjoyment of pleasure seem to prosper; but when they strike unseen, those arts are overturned, and their craftsman is destroyed along with them.

So much, then, for the dreams that have revealed the workshop of taste divided between the two forms of nourishment — drink and food, not the necessary kind but the superfluous and unrestrained kind. Next in order we must at once investigate the dreams of the one who seems to reign over these and all the other faculties of the soul, whose name is Pharaoh.

“In my sleep,” he says, “I thought I was standing by the bank of the river; and behold, seven cows came up out of the river, choice in flesh and beautiful in form, and they grazed in the marsh grass. And behold, seven other cows came up out of the river after them, evil and ugly in form and thin in flesh, the like of which I had never seen, so ugly, in all the land of Egypt.

And the thin, ugly cows ate up the seven first, beautiful and choice cows, and went into their bellies; and it was not evident that they had gone into their bellies, and their appearance was as ugly as at the beginning.”

Then I awoke and fell asleep again, and I saw once more in my sleep: seven ears of grain came up on one stalk, full and good; and seven other ears, thin and blighted by the wind, sprouted after them; and the seven thin ears swallowed up the good and full ears” (Gen. 41:1–24).

You see, then, the prelude of the self-lover, who, though shifting, turning, and changeable in both body and soul, says: “I thought I was standing” — and did not reckon that steadfastness and stability belong properly to God alone, and to anyone who is God's friend.

You see the prelude of self-love, which, being mutable and shifting and changeable in both body and soul, says, "I thought I was standing," not reckoning that steadfastness and fixity belong to God alone, and to whoever is his friend.

The clearest proof of the steadfast power that surrounds him is this world, which is always in the same condition and in the same way -- for if the world is inclined to neither side, how is its craftsman not steadfast? -- and then, further, the most truthful witnesses, the sacred oracles.

For it is said, in the person of God: "Here I stand, there, before you, on the rock at Horeb" (Exodus 17:6), equivalent to: I, the one who appears, being here am also there, and everywhere, having filled all things, standing in the same state and remaining, being unchangeable, before you or anything that exists came into being, established upon the highest and most ancient power and source, from which the coming-into-being of things that exist rained down and the stream of wisdom overflowed.

For "I am he who brought forth a spring of water from the flinty rock" (Deuteronomy 8:15), as it is said elsewhere. And Moses too testifies concerning the unchangeableness of the divine, saying, "I saw the place where the God of Israel stood" (Exodus 24:10), hinting at the immutability of the divine through this standing

and establishment. But so great is the excess of steadfastness that belongs to the divine, that it imparts stability, as the best of possessions, even to the natures it has selected. At once, for instance, he says his covenant, full of graces -- and this covenant is the law and the most ancient reason of all things that exist -- will be established firmly, as upon a foundation, in the soul of the righteous, like a godlike image, when he says to Noah: "I will establish my covenant with you" (Genesis 9:11).

And he intimates two further things besides: first, that righteousness is inseparable from God's covenant; and second, that whereas others bestow gifts that differ from those who receive them, God bestows not only these gifts but the very recipients to themselves -- for he has given me to myself, and each of the things that exist to itself. For "I will establish my covenant with you" is equivalent to "I will give you as a gift to yourself."

And all who love God are eager to flee the storm of restless meddling, in which surge and swell are forever churning, and to find harbor in the calm and most sheltering havens of virtue.

Do you not see what is said of the wise Abraham, that he was "standing before the Lord" (Genesis 18:22)? For when could a mind reasonably be able to stand, unless it is no longer swaying as on a balance-scale, once it stands directly opposite God, both seeing and being seen?

For its steadfastness comes from two sources: from seeing the one beyond compare, in that it is not dragged this way and that by things resembling one another; and from being seen, in that its guide has judged it worthy that his own vision should come to the best part of itself. And to Moses too an oracle of this kind was given: "Stand here with me" (Deuteronomy 5:31), through which both things spoken of are made plain -- both that the virtuous person does not sway, and the steadfastness of the One who is, in respect to all things.

For indeed what draws near to God is made kin to him through its unchangeable self-standing, and the mind, once it has come to rest, clearly recognized what a great good stillness is, and, marveling at its beauty, understood that it belongs either to God alone or to the nature situated between the mortal and the immortal kind.

At any rate he says: "And I stood between the Lord and you" (Deuteronomy 5:5), not meaning by this that he was fixed upon his own feet, but wishing to show this: that the mind of the wise, freed from storms and wars, and enjoying windless calm and deep peace, is greater than a human being, yet less than God.

For the common, herd-like human mind is shaken and stirred up by whatever chance befalls it, while the blessed and happy mind has no share in evils; but the virtuous mind occupies the middle ground, so as to be, properly speaking, neither God himself nor a human being, but touching both extremes -- by its humanity belonging to a mortal race, and by its virtue

to an imperishable one. Something very similar to this is the oracle given concerning the high priest: "Whenever," it says, "he enters the Holy of Holies, he shall not be a human being, until he comes out" (Leviticus 16:17); and if he does not then become a human being, clearly he does not become God either, but a minister of God, belonging by his mortal part to becoming, and by his immortal part made kin to the unbegotten.

He has been allotted the middle rank, until he goes out again to what belongs to his body and flesh. And this is its nature: whenever the mind, seized by divine love, straining itself all the way to the inmost shrine, advances with every impulse and eagerness, being possessed by God it forgets all other things, forgets itself too, and remembers only him to whom it is attached and devoted and whom it serves, to whom, consecrating them, it offers up as incense its sacred and untouchable virtues.

But when it comes to a stop and the great longing relaxes, it runs back from the divine and becomes human again, meeting the human concerns that had been lying in wait in the outer courts,

so that, the moment it peers out from within, they may seize upon it. So then Moses records the perfect person as neither God nor human, but, as I said, on the border between the unbegotten and the perishable nature; while the one who is progressing he places again in the middle region, between the living and the dead, calling those who share their life with wisdom the living, and those who delight in folly the dead.

For it is said of Aaron that "he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was checked" (Numbers 16:48). For he examines the life of virtue neither among the dead, having longing and zeal for the good, nor among those who live in the utmost and perfect happiness -- for something is still lacking with respect to the goal -- but he touches upon both.

And it is said, properly, that "the plague was checked," not that it ceased; for in the case of the perfect, the things that shatter and crush and break the soul cease altogether, but in the case of those making progress they are diminished, being merely held back and restrained.

Since, then, standing and establishment and abiding forever in the same state, in unchangeableness and immutability, belong first to the One who is, and next to the reason of the One who is, which he called a covenant, and third to the wise person, and fourth to the one making progress -- what has happened to the base mind, liable to every curse, that it supposed it alone could stand, though it is carried along, as in a flood, and swept away by the successive eddies of things flowing in through the corpse-bearing body?

For it says, "I thought I was standing on the bank of the river" (Genesis 41:17). We say that speech is symbolically a river, since each of the two is carried outward, and flowing, moves with unremitting speed, and at one time overflows abundantly -- the one with a flood of water, the other with a flood of words and names -- and at another time falls short, slackening and subsiding;

and each is beneficial -- the one watering the fields, the other the souls of those eager to listen -- and there are times when each does harm by swelling up -- the one by flooding the neighboring land, the other by stirring up and confounding the reasoning of those who do not attend to it. This, then, is likened to a river.

But the nature of speech is twofold, the one better, the other worse -- the better being that which benefits, the worse, necessarily, that which harms.

And Moses set forth examples of each, most clearly, for those able to see: "A river," he says, "goes forth out of Eden to water the paradise; from there it is divided into four sources" (Genesis 2:10).

He calls the wisdom of the One who is "Eden," which is interpreted as "delight," because, I think, both the wisdom of God is a delight, and God is the delight of wisdom, since it is also sung in the hymns: "Delight yourself in the Lord" (Psalm 37:4). And as though from a spring of wisdom, the divine reason descends like a river, to water and irrigate the Olympian and heavenly shoots and plants of virtue-loving souls, as though they were a paradise.

And this sacred reason is divided into four sources -- I mean, it is split into the four virtues, each of which is a queen; for to be divided into sources is not like territorial boundaries, but resembles kingship, so that, by displaying the virtues, it may at once declare the one who employs them a wise king, appointed not by human beings but by the truthful and incorruptible and only free nature.

For those who beheld Abraham's nobility say to him: "You are a king from God among us" (Genesis 23:6), laying down as a doctrine for those occupied with philosophy that the wise alone is ruler and king, and that virtue is a rule and kingship answerable to no one.

A companion of Moses, likening this Logos to a river, said in his hymns, "The river of God was filled with water" (Psalm 65:9 [64:10 LXX]). It is unreasonable to suppose that he is speaking literally of one of the streams that flow on earth; rather, it seems, he is representing the divine Logos as full of the stream of wisdom, having no part of itself empty and void — or rather, as he says, poured out whole through the whole and lifted to a height by the continuous and successive flow of that ever-running spring.

There is another such song: "The rush of the river gladdens the city of God" (Psalm 46:4 [45:5 LXX]). What city? For the city now called holy, in which the sacred temple stands, is settled far from both sea and rivers, so it is clear that he wishes to point through hidden meanings to something other than the visible city.

For in truth the current of the divine Logos [ . . . ] and, borne continuously and in order with its rush, pours forth and gladdens all things through all things.

For in one sense he calls the cosmos the city of God, since it received the whole bowl of the divine drink undiluted, and, made radiant, obtained an unfading and everlasting share of gladness for all ages; and in another sense he means the soul of the wise person, in which God is said even to walk about as in a city: for he says, "I will walk among you, and I will be your God" (Leviticus 26:12).

And to the soul of good fortune, when it holds out its own reasoning as the most sacred cup, who pours in the sacred ladles of gladness toward truth, if not the Logos, God's cupbearer and master of the feast (Leviticus 26:36) — the Logos who is not distinct from the drink but is himself the undiluted wine, the radiance, the seasoning, the outpouring, the good cheer, the ambrosia of joy and gladness, to use poetic terms ourselves — the remedy?

The city of God is called by the Hebrews Jerusalem, whose name, translated, is "vision of peace." So do not seek the city of the Existent One among the regions of earth — for it was not built of wood or stone — but in a soul free from war and keen-sighted, one that has set before itself as its goal the contemplative and peaceable life.

For what house could one find among existing things more solemn and more holy for God than a mind that loves to behold, that is eager to see all things and does not desire, even in a dream, faction or disturbance?

Once again the voice that is accustomed to converse with me invisibly and unseen whispers and says: O man, you seem to be ignorant of a great and much-contested matter, which — ungrudgingly, for I have already taught you many other things in season — I will now teach you.

Know then, noble one, that God alone is the most truthful peace, peace in the full sense, while all created and perishable being is unbroken war. For God acts by choice, but being is bound by necessity. So whoever has the strength to leave behind war and necessity and coming-to-be and perishing, and to desert to the unbegotten, to the imperishable, to the willed, to peace, might justly be said to be the dwelling place and city of God.

Let it make no difference to you, then, whether you call the same underlying reality "vision of peace" or "vision of God"; for of the many-named powers of the Existent One, he is not merely an initiate but a leader of the mysteries of peace.

Abraham, moreover, says that he will give the wise man an inheritance of land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates" (Genesis 15:18) — not so much a portion of territory as the better lot concerning ourselves. For our body, and the passions that arise in it and through it, is likened to the destiny of Egypt, while the soul and what is akin to it are likened to the Euphrates.

He thereby sets down a doctrine most useful for life and most binding: that the person of worth has received as inheritance the soul and the virtues of the soul, just as, conversely, the base person has received the body and the vices of the body and those that come through the body.

The word "from" signifies two things: one, that which is included together with that from which it is reckoned; the other, that which is apart from it. When we say that from morning to evening there are twelve hours, and from new moon to the thirtieth day thirty days, we reckon the first hour and the new moon together with the rest; but when someone says that a field is three or four stadia from the city, he clearly means apart from the city.

So now too we must understand "from the river of Egypt" as meaning apart from that river. For he wishes, by removing us from bodily things — which are seen in a flux of corruption, both being corrupted and corrupting — that we should receive as inheritance the soul together with the incorruptible virtues worthy of incorruption.

Thus, then, tracking the matter, we have found that the Logos is praiseworthy when likened to a river. But the Egyptian river itself, it turns out, was blameworthy — an untrained and ignorant thing, so to speak, a lifeless logos. For this reason it also turns into blood (Exodus 7:20), being unable to nourish — for the logos of lack of education gives no drink — and it breeds abundantly frogs (Exodus 8:6), bloodless and lifeless, that croak out a strange and harsh noise, a pain to the ear.

It is said, too, that all the fish in it died (Exodus 7:21), fish which symbolically represent thoughts; for these swim and come to be in the logos as in a river, resembling living creatures and giving it life. But in an uneducated logos the reflections of the mind have died; for nothing intelligent is to be found there, but only, as someone has said, disordered and unmeasured cawing sounds.

Let this suffice on these matters. But since he confesses that he saw in a vision not only the standing and the river but also the banks of the river, saying, "I thought I was standing by the bank of the river" (Genesis 41:17), it is necessary also to recall what is timely concerning the bank.

Nature, then, appears to have fitted lips to living creatures, and especially to humans, for the sake of two most necessary things: one, silence — for the lips are a defense and a most secure barrier for the voice — the other, expression; for through them the stream of words is carried, since when the lips are closed the stream is held back, but it is impossible for it to be carried unless they part.

From this, nature trains and disciplines us for both — speaking and keeping silence — as we watch for the fitting occasion of each. Is something worth hearing being said? Pay attention without opposing it in silence, according to the precept of Moses, "Be silent and listen" (Deuteronomy 27:9).

For of those who come to contentious disputes for the sake of rivalry, not one could rightly be considered either to speak or to listen; but for one intent on truth [ . . . ] beneficial.

Again, when you see in the wars and evils of life the gracious hand of God and a power that stands over and shields you, be still; for this helper has no need of an ally. Of this too there is a proof laid up in the sacred records: "The Lord will fight for you, and you shall be silent" (Exodus 14:14).

But if you see the true and firstborn offspring of Egypt perishing (Exodus 11:5) — desire, pleasure, grief, fear, wrongdoing, folly, licentiousness, and all that is akin and related to these — be struck with awe and be still, cowering before the fearsome might of God.

"For not even a dog," he says, "shall growl with its tongue, from man to beast" (Exodus 11:7) — which is equivalent to saying that neither the doglike tongue that barks and shrieks, nor the human within us, the ruling mind, nor the beastlike creature, sense-perception, should exult, when the entire outward alliance on our behalf, unbidden, comes to shield us, once the opposing power has been destroyed.

But many occasions arise that do not suit silence, but instead call for speech set down in words; of these too memorials can be found laid up. How so? Has someone come to share in some good beyond expectation? It is good to give thanks and to hymn the one who sent it. What then is the good?

Has the passion that assails us died and been cast down flat, unburied? Let us not delay, then, but form a chorus and sing a most sacred hymn, urging all to say: "Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously glorified; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea" (Exodus 15:1).

But while the destruction and removal of the passion is a good, it is not the perfect good; the discovery of wisdom is a surpassing beauty. When it has been found, the whole people will sing, not in one mode of music only, but in every one of its harmonies and melodies.

For it says, "Then Israel sang this song at the well" (Num. 21:17) — meaning, at the spring that lay hidden but was sought out again and, in the end, found: the deep knowledge whose nature it is, by law, to irrigate the rational fields in the souls of those who love contemplation.

What then? When we gather in the genuine fruit of the mind, does the sacred word not command us, as if bringing it in a basket (Deut. 26:2, 4), to offer to reason the firstfruits of the abundant yield of all the good things the soul has flowered, budded, and borne fruit in — showing them openly and proclaiming, in praise of the God who brings all to completion, "I have cleared the sacred things out of my house" (ibid. 13), and "I have stored them in the house of God," setting over them as stewards and guardians those chosen by merit for the sacred service?

These are the Levites, the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows (ibid.) — the Levites as suppliants, the aliens as migrants, and the others as those bereft of birth and widowed of it, who have inscribed God as the true husband and father of the soul that serves him.

This, then, is the most fitting manner both of speaking and of keeping silence. The worthless have practiced the opposite: they have become zealots of a silence that deserves blame and of speech that deserves censure, each cultivated to their own ruin and to the ruin of others.

The greater part of their training lies in saying what ought not to be said. Opening their mouths and letting them go unbridled, they release, like an unchecked torrent, speech that runs on without judgment, as the poets say, dragging along with it countless things of no profit.

And so some have turned to plead the cause of pleasure and desire and every excessive impulse, fortifying the irrational passion as a stronghold against reason its ruler, and have stripped for the contest, grappling as well in quarrelsome disputes, hoping to blind the seeing race and to hurl it down cliffs and chasms from which it could never rise again.

Some have made themselves adversaries not only of human virtue but of the divine as well — to such a pitch of madness did they drive. Now the leader of the passion-loving band is recorded as the king of the land of Egypt, Pharaoh; for it is said to the prophet, "See, he is going out to the water, and you shall stand to meet him at the lip of the river" (Exod. 7:15).

For it is characteristic of him always to go out toward the rush and overflow of irrational passion; but it is characteristic of the wise man to meet the flood of arguments urged in favor of pleasure and desire, not with his feet but with his judgment, firmly and without wavering, at the river's lip — that is, at the mouth and the tongue, which are the instruments of speech. Standing firmly upon these, he will be able to overturn and cast down the persuasions that plead the cause of passion.

The enemy of the seeing race is Pharaoh's people, who did not cease attacking and pursuing and enslaving virtue, and who found a fitting recompense for the evils they inflicted: they were engulfed in a sea of wrongdoings and in the towering waves that the raging passion had stirred up, so that that moment brought a spectacle beyond compare, a victory with no rival, and a joy greater than any hope.

Hence it is said, "Israel saw the Egyptians dead at the lip of the sea" (Exod. 14:30). Great indeed is the hand that fights on our behalf, compelling those who had sharpened these instruments — mouth, lips, and speech — against the truth to fall by mouth, by lips, and by speech, so that those who took them up against others might die not by foreign weapons but by their own.

It brings the soul three most beautiful pieces of good news: first, the destruction of the Egyptian passions; second, that this did not happen in some other place but at the lips of the salty and bitter spring — a kind of sea — through which the sophistic reasoning hostile to virtue had poured forth; and last, the sight of the fallen bodies.

For nothing invisible could be beautiful, but what is fine should be brought forward into the bright sunlight; while evil, on the contrary, deserves to be thrust into deep darkness. And may it never even be seen by chance, while the good is always surveyed with greater eyes. What is so good as to live the beautiful and to see the base put to death?

There were three, then, who stretched the cleverness of their arguments up to heaven. These practiced their art against nature — or rather against their own soul — declaring that only this sensible and visible world exists, that it was never brought into being and will never be destroyed, but is ungenerated, indestructible, without overseer, without pilot, without any ruling providence.

Then, piling argument upon argument, they raised up their disreputable doctrine to a height, like a tower. For it is said, "the whole earth was one lip" (Gen. 11:1) — a harmony of all the parts of the soul that was, in fact, discordant, aimed at unsettling the most sovereign principle among the things that are: the First Cause.

And so, when they hoped to run up to heaven itself by their inventions in order to overthrow the eternal kingdom, the great and undethronable hand cast them down and overturned along with them the doctrine they had built.

The place is called "Confusion," a name fitting the newly devised presumption. For what is more confounding than anarchy? Do not households without a governing head become full of collisions and turmoil? Do not cities left kingless, given over to mob rule — the greatest and most opposite evil — perish?

And have not lands, nations, and regions of the earth, once their governments were dissolved, thrown away ancient and great prosperity? What need is there to speak of merely human affairs?

For not even the other herds of living creatures — of birds, of land animals, of creatures in the water — hold together without some leader of the herd, but they always long for and attend upon their own leader as the sole cause of their good, and in his absence they scatter and perish.

Do we then suppose that for earthly things — the smallest portion of the universe — government is the cause of good and lack of government the cause of evil, but that the cosmos is not filled with the utmost happiness because of the leadership of God who reigns as king?

So they are given a fitting penalty for what they set up: having thrown the sacred realm into confusion through their anarchy, they themselves came to see it — confounded, not confounders. And even before they had yet paid the penalty, puffed up by their derangement of mind, they overthrow the rule of the universe with impious arguments, register themselves instead as rulers and kings, and fasten the undethronable power of God upon a coming-to-be that is ceaselessly perishing and

decaying. Playing the tragedian and boasting, these laughable men are accustomed to say things like this: "We are the leaders, we hold the power; on us everything depends. Who is the cause of good things and their opposites, if not we? To whom does well-being most truly belong, if not to us?" And equally foolish are those who say that everything hangs from some invisible power, which they suppose presides over human and divine affairs throughout the world.

Having boasted so arrogantly, if they sober up as though from drunkenness and come to themselves, and, coming to a sense of the drunken folly in which they indulged, feel shame and reproach themselves for the offenses into which their thoughtless judgment led them — taking as their counselor a repentance that flatters no one and takes no bribes, and propitiating the gracious power of the One who Is with recantations offered in place of their profane songs, now made sacred — they will find complete amnesty.

But if, remaining stiff-necked and unbroken to the end, they leap about as though self-governing, free, and leaders of others, they will learn, by inexorable and uncompromising necessity, their own nothingness in all things, small and great alike.

For the charioteer who has mounted this cosmos as though it were a winged chariot, casting on the bridle, drawing back with force the reins that had gone slack, and tightening the muzzles, will by whip and goad remind them of the master's authority, which they had forgotten because of the kindness and gentleness of the ruler — like bad slaves.

For by turning the mildness of their masters into an occasion for anarchy, they put on a display of having no master at all, until the one who owns them, applying punishments instead of medicines, checks their flowing and abundant disease.

This is why it is said: “a lawless soul, one that opens its lips to do evil or to do well, shall afterward confess its sin” (Lev. 5:4). What do you say, soul so full of pretension? Do you actually know what is truly good, or noble, or just, or holy, or which things fit with which?

The knowledge and the power over these things belong to God alone, and to anyone who is his friend; witness also the oracle, in which it is said: “I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal” (Deut. 32:39).

But the soul that only seems wise did not hold even a superficial dreaming about things beyond itself; rather, this unfortunate soul was so puffed up with empty wind that it even took an oath that the things it had falsely supposed stood firm and fixed.

If, then, the throbbing and boiling of the disease begins to relax, the embers of health, gradually kindled again, will compel it, first, to confess its fault — which is to blame itself — and then to become a suppliant at the altars, imploring with prayers, supplications, and sacrifices, by which alone it is possible to obtain forgetfulness of wrongs.

Next one might reasonably raise the question why it is that Scripture records only the river in Egypt as having “lips,” but no longer does so for the Euphrates or any of the other sacred rivers. For where it says: “you shall stand to meet him by the lip of the river” (Exod. 7:15) — * * *.

And yet some, perhaps mocking, will say that such things ought not to be brought into our inquiries, since they display pettiness of speech rather than any benefit. But I suppose that such details have been seasoned into the sacred writings, like spices, for the improvement of those who read them; and no one who inquires into them should be condemned for excessive word-hunting — rather, the opposite, idleness, should be condemned in those who do not inquire.

For our present concern is not really a study about rivers, but about lives that are compared to the streams of rivers, opposed to one another. For the life of the worthy person is seen in deeds, while the account of the worthless person is seen in words — and “account” belongs to tongue, mouth, and lips, and to * * *.

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