On the Life of Moses I

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

I have resolved to write the life of Moses, whom some call the lawgiver of the Jews, others the interpreter of sacred laws—a man in every way the greatest and most perfect, and to make him known to those who deserve not to be ignorant of him.

For while the fame of the laws he left behind has traveled through the whole inhabited world and reached even the ends of the earth, not many know who he truly was, in the truth of the matter—perhaps out of envy, and also because in many cases the lawgivers appointed by the various cities were unwilling, out of opposition, to consider him worthy of mention among the sayings honored by the Greeks.

Most of these lawgivers abused the powers they gained through education, composing in both poetry and prose comedies and tales of Sybaritic licentiousness—a notorious disgrace—when they ought instead to have put their natural gifts to use in setting forth good men and good lives, so that nothing noble, whether ancient or new, capable of shining forth, might be abandoned to obscurity through neglect, and so that, by passing over the better subjects, they might not seem to prefer, in their eagerness, those unworthy of a hearing, merely in order to make evil things appear splendid and thereby put reproaches on display.

But I, for my part, shall pass over their malice and set forth the facts concerning this man, having learned them both from the sacred books, which he left behind as wondrous monuments of his own wisdom, and from certain elders of the nation; for I always wove together what was said with what I read, and for this reason I believe I have achieved a more exact account of his life than others.

I will begin from the point at which it is necessary to begin. Moses was Chaldean by descent, but he was born and raised in Egypt, because his ancestors, on account of a long famine that oppressed Babylon and the surrounding region, had migrated with their whole household to Egypt in search of food—a land level and deep-soiled and most fertile in everything that human nature requires, and especially in the fruit of grain.

For the river of that land, at the height of summer, when the other rivers—both the winter torrents and those fed from native springs—are said to shrink, rises and overflows, flooding and turning the fields into marshland; and these fields, needing no rain, supply every year an abundance of every good thing, unless the wrath of God should at some point intervene on account of the prevailing impiety of the inhabitants.

He was allotted a father and mother who were the best of their contemporaries, people whom likeness of mind united to one another even more than kinship, for they belonged to the same tribe. He was the seventh generation from the man who, though himself a newcomer, became the founder of the whole nation of the Jews.

He was thought worthy of royal nurture for the following reason. The king of the country, since the nation kept increasing in numbers, grew afraid that the settlers, becoming more numerous, might contend with the native population, by force of a stronger hand, for supremacy of rule; and he schemed with unholy devices to sap their strength, ordering that the female infants born to them be reared—since a woman, through the weakness of her nature, is reluctant for war—but that the males be destroyed, so that they might not increase throughout the cities; for a population strong in fighting men is a stronghold hard to capture and hard to overthrow.

So then, when the child was born, he at once displayed a countenance more refined than that of an ordinary person, so that his parents, so far as they were able, disregarded the tyrant's proclamations; at any rate, they say he was nursed at home on milk for three consecutive months, without the knowledge of most people.

But when, as tends to happen under monarchies, some began searching into private matters, always eager to bring some new report to the king, the parents, fearing that in seeking the safety of one child they, being many, might perish along with him, tearfully exposed the child by the banks of the river and went away groaning, lamenting their own compulsion and calling themselves murderers and child-killers with their own hands, and lamenting also the child's utterly unreasonable destruction.

Then, as is natural in so strange a situation, they accused themselves of being the cause of an even greater calamity. "Why," they said, "did we not expose him the moment he was born? A child who has not yet had a share of gentle nourishment, most people do not even consider a human being; but we, in our excess, reared him a full three months, providing more abundant grief for ourselves and, for him, providing punishment, so that, being able to partake to the fullest of both pleasures and pains,

he might perish with a keener sense of harsher evils." And so they went away, gripped by pitiable grief, in ignorance of what was to come; but the sister of the exposed infant, still a young girl, moved by family affection, watched from a little distance to see what would happen. All this, it seems to me, came about through the providence of God, who was taking care of the child.

The king of the country had a beloved and only daughter. It is said that, though married for a long time, she had not conceived children, though she desired them, as was natural, and especially a male child, who would inherit the fortunate lot of his father's rule, which was in danger of being left without grandsons; and she, being in the habit of remaining at home and never crossing the threshold, was moved by the weight of her cares to set out one day with her handmaids to the river, where the child lay exposed—

and then, intending to use the baths and lustral waters, she caught sight of him in the thickest part of the marsh and ordered him brought to her.

Then, surveying him from head to foot, she was struck by his beauty and vigor, and, seeing him in tears, she pitied him, her soul already turning toward maternal affection as though toward her own true child; but recognizing that he was one of the Hebrews, since they feared the king's decree, she began deliberating about his upbringing; for she thought it was not yet safe to bring him at once into the palace.

While she was still in perplexity, the child's sister, as though from a watchtower divining her hesitation, ran up and asked whether she wished the child to be nursed on milk by one of the Hebrew women, one who had not long before given birth.

When she said she wished it, the girl brought forward her own mother, and the infant's, as though she were a stranger, and the mother, gladly and all the more readily, promised to nurse him under the pretext of payment—by the design of God, who was thereby providing the child's first, genuine nourishment. Then she gave him the name Moses, fittingly, because she had drawn him out of the water; for the Egyptians call water "mou."

But when, growing by leaps and increases beyond the ordinary course of time, he was weaned rather quickly, his mother, who was at once both mother and nurse, brought him back to the one who had given him to her, since he no longer needed to be nursed on milk, so that he might be seen as noble and refined.

And when she saw him, now more fully grown, and drew even more affection from his appearance than before, she made him her son, having first arranged matters concerning the appearance of pregnancy, so that he might be thought her true child and not a substitute; for God makes everything easy that he wishes, even things hard to accomplish.

Being now thought worthy of royal nurture and attendance, he did not, like an ordinary infant, delight in mockery, laughter, and childish games, even though those entrusted with his care allowed him freedom and showed nothing severe toward him; instead, displaying modesty and dignity, he attended to what he heard and saw, insofar as it would benefit his soul.

Teachers at once came to him from various places—some from the neighboring regions and the districts of Egypt, coming of their own accord, others summoned from Greece with great rewards. In no long time he surpassed their abilities, through the excellence of his nature, outstripping their instructions, so that it seemed to be recollection rather than learning, and he even devised for himself solutions to what was difficult to perceive.

For great natures innovate much in the realm of knowledge; and just as bodies in good condition, with all their parts agile, free their trainers from concern, since they require little or no attention, and as farmers are freed by trees of good growth and noble stock which improve of themselves, in the same way a well-endowed soul, anticipating what is said, is helped more by itself than by its teachers, and once it has grasped some starting point of knowledge, rushes forward, as the proverb says, "like a horse into the open field."

As for numbers and geometry, and the theory of rhythm and harmony and meter, and music in its entirety, through the use of instruments and the accounts given in the arts and their applications, the learned men among the Egyptians instructed him in these; and further, in the philosophy conveyed through symbols, which they display in what are called the sacred writings and through the veneration of animals, which they even honor with divine honors; while the rest of general education the Greeks taught him, and those from the neighboring regions taught him the Assyrian script and the Chaldean science of the heavens.

This science of mathematics he also acquired from the Egyptians, who cultivate it most especially; and having accurately learned, from both parties, the points on which they agree and disagree, he set aside contentiousness and sought the truth without love of strife, since his mind could not admit any falsehood—unlike those who fight over mere opinions, who support whatever doctrines happen to be set before them without examining whether they are sound, doing the same thing as those who plead for pay and give no thought at all to justice.

And now, passing beyond the bounds of childhood, he intensified his self-mastery, not, like some, allowing his youthful desires to run unbridled, even though they had countless incitements from the lavish provisions that royal courts supply, but restraining their forward rush by force, as though with reins, by means of self-control and endurance.

And each of the other passions too, though by nature raging and rabid, he tamed and gentled; but if ever it stirred even slightly and fluttered, he administered heavier chastisements than mere verbal reproof. And in general he watched over the soul's first impulses and onsets as one watches an unbroken horse, fearing lest, outrunning reason (whose duty is to hold the reins), they throw everything into confusion. For these are the causes both of good things and of bad: good, whenever they obey reason as their leader; the opposite, whenever they run loose into anarchy.

As was to be expected, then, both his companions and everyone else were astonished, struck as if by some strange spectacle, and asked themselves what kind of mind dwelt within him and was carried about like a statue in his body - whether human, or divine, or a mixture of both - since he had nothing resembling the many, but rose above them and was lifted up toward something greater.

To his belly he allotted nothing beyond the necessary tribute that nature has appointed, and of the pleasures below the belly he gave no thought at all, except so far as was needed for begetting legitimate children.

Having become, beyond all others, a devoted practitioner of contentment with little, and having mocked the life of soft luxury as no one else had - for he longed to live by soul alone, not by body - he displayed the doctrines of philosophy through his daily deeds, saying what he thought and doing what accorded with what he said, so as to bring speech and life into harmony, that his speech might be examined as being such as his life, and his life such as his speech, sounding together as on a musical instrument.

Most people, if but a slight breath of some good fortune falls upon them, puff themselves up and breathe great things, and in their arrogance call those less conspicuous than themselves refuse, nuisances, and burdens on the earth, and other such names - as if they had sealed the unshaken permanence of their prosperity securely to themselves, though they will perhaps not remain in the same state even until the next day.

For nothing is less stable than fortune, which tosses human affairs up and down like pieces on a board, often in a single day casting down the exalted and raising the lowly on high. And though they see this happening always, and know it clearly, still they look down on their own kin and friends, transgress the laws under which they were born and raised, and set in motion their ancestral customs - customs deserving of no just blame - having become dissolute, and through their acceptance of the present, take no further thought for anything of the past.

But he, having already reached the very summit of human good fortune, considered the grandson of so great a king, and being, in everyone's expectation, all but the successor to his grandfather's realm - indeed, what else was he but the one addressed as the young king? - nevertheless emulated the education proper to his own kin and ancestors, holding that the good things of those who had adopted him, however more brilliant for the moment, were spurious, while those of his parents by nature, even if for a while less conspicuous, were at any rate his own and genuine.

And like an incorruptible judge between those who had begotten him and those who had adopted him, he repaid the one with goodwill and ardent love, the other with gratitude for the benefits received, and would have gone on repaying them to the end, had he not observed a great and unprecedented act of impiety newly perpetrated in the land by the king.

For the Jews were strangers, as I said before, since the leaders of the nation had migrated from Babylon and the upper satrapies into Egypt because of famine and lack of food, and had in a sense come as suppliants fleeing to an inviolable sanctuary, seeking both the king's good faith and the mercy of its inhabitants.

'Let strangers,' he said, 'be registered before me as judge as suppliants of their hosts, and resident aliens as being both suppliants and friends, hastening toward equal honor with citizens and already neighbors to them, differing but little from the native-born.'

These, then, who had left their own homeland and come to Egypt to dwell securely as in a second fatherland, the ruler of the country enslaved, and, as though he had taken them captive by right of war, or bought them from masters to whom they were house-born slaves, subjugated and made slaves - not merely the free, but even strangers, suppliants, and resident aliens - neither respecting nor fearing the god of freedom, of hospitality, of suppliants, and of the hearth, who is overseer of such things.

Then he imposed commands heavier than their strength could bear, piling one labor upon another, and the lash followed close upon those who cried off from weakness; for he chose as overseers of the works the most pitiless and savage men, who granted no one any pardon, men whom, from what befell under them, people called 'taskmasters' (Exod. 3:7).

Some labored shaping clay into brick, others gathering straw from every quarter - for straw is the binding of brick - while others were assigned to the building of houses, walls, and cities, and to the cutting of canals, themselves hauling timber by day and by night without relief, having no rest, not even being allowed so much as to lie down and sleep. Forced to do the work both of skilled craftsmen and of laborers, their bodies gave out within a short time, since their souls too had already collapsed beforehand.

Some, indeed, died one after another as if from some pestilential ravage, and these they threw out unburied beyond the borders, not even allowing kinsmen or friends to heap earth over the bodies or to weep for those so pitiably destroyed. But the impious men threatened with mastery even the unenslaveable passions of the soul, the only things that nature has released free from virtually everything else, oppressing them with a more powerful weight of necessity, unbearable to endure.

Over these things he continued in grief and distress, being unable either to punish the wrongdoers or to help the wronged; but what he could do, he did by word, exhorting those set over the work to moderate themselves and relax and slacken the severity of their commands, and urging the laborers to bear present hardships nobly, to be men in their resolve, and not to let their souls grow weary along with their bodies, but to expect good things out of evil.

For everything in the cosmos changes into its opposite - clouds into clear sky, violent winds into still air, the surge of the sea into calm and stillness - and human affairs even more so, inasmuch as they are still less stable.

With such incantations, like a good physician, he thought to lighten their sufferings, heavy as they were; but whenever these eased, they attacked again in turn, bringing with them, out of that brief respite, some new evil always harsher than what came before.

For among those set in authority were some exceedingly untamed and rabid men, no different in savagery from venomous, flesh-devouring beasts - wild animals in human shape, who put forward the form of their bodies as a pretense of gentleness, for the purpose of hunting and deceit.

More unyielding than iron and adamant, one of these, the most violent of them, when - far from giving way - he only grew the more savage at appeals made to him, would strike those who did not perform what was commanded without pause and with quick hands, abuse them to the point of death, inflict every kind of outrage upon them, and kill them, deeming the deed a pious one; and pious it was held to be, that a man living for others' destruction should himself perish.

When the king heard this, he grew indignant, considering it a terrible thing - not that someone had died, or had killed either justly or unjustly, but that his grandson did not think as he did, nor held the same people as friends and enemies, but hated those whom he himself loved, and loved and pitied those toward whom he himself was immovable and implacable.

Once they had seized this opening, the men in power, who already eyed the young man with suspicion - for they knew he would remember their impious deeds against him and take vengeance when opportunity offered - poured countless slanders into his grandfather's open ears, some from one side, some from another, so as to instill fear even about the loss of his throne, saying: 'He will attack; he thinks nothing small; he is always contriving something further; he desires kingship before his time; he flatters some, threatens others, kills without trial, and has put forward as his favorites those most loyal to you. Why do you delay, instead of cutting short what he intends to do? Great is the advantage delay gives to those who plot, against those who are the object of the plot.'

As they went on speaking such things, he withdrew into neighboring Arabia, where it was safe to stay, at the same time entreating God to deliver the innocent from their desperate misfortunes and to punish as they deserved those who had left nothing undone in their outrages, and to grant him to witness both of these things, doubling the favor. And God heeded his prayers, admiring his love of the good and hatred of evil, and before long, as befits a god, gave judgment on the affairs of that land.

And while judgment was still pending, Moses kept contending in the contests of virtue, having within himself as his trainer a noble reasoning, by which, exercised toward the best of lives, both the contemplative and the practical, he labored on, ever unrolling the doctrines of philosophy, discerning them readily with his soul and storing them in memory so as never to forget them, and at once fitting his own actions to them, all of them praiseworthy, aiming not at seeming but at truth, because he had set before himself one single goal, the right reason of nature, which alone is the source and spring of the virtues.

Now another man, fleeing the implacable anger of a king, and having just arrived for the first time in a foreign land, not yet familiar with the customs of the natives nor precisely knowing what pleased or displeased them, would either have been eager, by keeping quiet, to live more obscurely, escaping the notice of the many, or, if wishing to come forward into public view, would at least have sought to win over by assiduous attentions the powerful and those of greatest influence, from whom some benefit and help might be expected, should anyone come and try to drag him off by force.

But he drove along the path contrary to what was to be expected, following the healthy impulses of his soul and allowing none of them to be tripped up; wherefore, sometimes he even played the bold youth beyond his actual power, holding justice to be an invincible power, by which impelled, self-summoned, he rushed to the aid of the weaker.

I will also tell what he did at that time, small though it might appear, yet not the product of a small mind. The Arabs raise cattle and pasture their flocks -- not only the men, but the women too, both young girls and virgins among them, and this not only among the neglected and undistinguished but also among the highly eminent.

Seven girls, daughters of a priestly father, were leading their flock and had come to a certain spring; drawing water with buckets tied to ropes, taking turns from one another so as to share the labor equally, they were filling, with great eagerness, the troughs that lay nearby.

But other shepherds arrived and, looking down on the girls' weakness, tried to drive them off along with their flock, while bringing up their own animals to the water that had been made ready, intending to reap the fruit of another's labor.

Seeing what was happening -- for he was not far off -- Moses ran at full speed, and standing close by said, "Will you not stop your wrongdoing, thinking that solitude gives you license for greed? Are you not ashamed, keeping your arms and forearms idle? You are thick hair and flesh, not men. The girls act with youthful vigor, shrinking from none of the tasks that need doing, while you young men already live in luxury like girls. Will you not go on your way?"

"Will you not withdraw before those who came first, to whom the water belongs? Having drawn it out for them so that the water might be more abundant, is it right that you now hasten to take away what has been made ready? But no -- by the heavenly eye of Justice, which looks even into the most desolate places, you shall not take it away."

"I, at any rate, have been appointed their champion, though unlooked for; for I am an ally to those who suffer wrong, with a great hand which it is not lawful for the greedy to see; you will perceive it, though unseen, wounding you, unless you change your ways."

As he spoke these things -- for even as he spoke he seemed inspired, transformed into a prophet -- they grew afraid that he might be uttering oracles and pronouncements, and became obedient; and they led the virgins' flock to the troughs, having first moved their own animals aside.

The girls returned home greatly rejoicing and recounted what had happened, beyond their hopes, so that they roused in their father a great longing to meet the stranger. Indeed he reproached them for their ingratitude, saying such things as this: "What has come over you, that you let him go, when you ought to have brought him at once, and even if he held back, to have pressed him? Or have you judged me guilty of some hatred of humankind? Or do you not expect to fall in with wrongdoers a second time? Those who forget favors are bound to be at a loss for helpers when they need them. But even now -- for the fault is still curable -- hurry back and invite him, first to be our guest, and then also to share in some return of thanks, for gratitude is owed to him."

Hastening back, they found him not far from the spring, and having made known their father's wishes, they persuaded him to come home. And the father, struck with amazement -- first by his appearance, and a little later by his purpose, for great natures are conspicuous and are not recognized only after a long time -- gave him the fairest of his daughters as wife, bearing witness by this one act to all the qualities that make for nobility of character, and to the truth that only what is beautiful is worthy of love, needing no recommendation from another but carrying its own credentials within itself.

After the marriage, he took charge of the flocks and pastured them, being trained in advance for leadership; for shepherding is a rehearsal and preliminary exercise in kingship for one who is going to govern the gentlest of all flocks, mankind, just as hunting trains natures suited for war; for those who are being prepared for military command practice beforehand in the chase, the irrational animals being set before them as a kind of raw material for the exercise of authority in either season, that of war and that of peace.

For the hunting of wild animals is a general's exercise against enemies, while the care and oversight of tame ones is a king's contest with his subjects; and this is why kings are called "shepherds of the peoples" -- not as a reproach, but as a supreme honor.

And it seems to me, examining the matter not by the opinions of the many but by the truth -- let whoever wishes laugh -- that only the man who is skilled in the science of shepherding could become a perfect king, having been trained in lesser creatures for the government of the greater; for it is impossible for great things to be brought to completion before small ones.

Having become the best of the herdsmen of his time, and, through never shirking any task but employing a willing and self-directed eagerness wherever the oversight of the flocks required it, together with a pure and guileless fidelity, capable of supplying all that contributed to the animals' benefit, he made his flocks increase,

so much so that he was already envied by the other herdsmen, who saw nothing comparable in their own flocks -- flocks for which it seemed good fortune merely to remain as they were, whereas for his, failure to improve daily would have counted as a loss, so accustomed had they become to receiving great increases, in beauty from good flesh and fatness, and in number from prolific breeding and healthy conditions of life.

Leading his flock to a place well-watered and rich in pasture, where it happened that much grass suitable for grazing sheep grew abundantly, he came near a certain wooded ravine and saw a most astonishing sight. There was a thornbush, a plant altogether weak and thorny; this, though no one had brought fire to it, suddenly burst into flame, and though wholly enveloped from root to branch-tip in a great blaze, as though from some fountain pouring it forth, it remained unharmed, not consumed, as if it were some substance immune to suffering and not itself the fuel of the fire, but rather using the fire as its own nourishment.

In the midst of the flame there was a form of surpassing beauty, unlike anything visible, a most god-like image, flashing forth a light more radiant than fire -- one might have suspected it to be an image of Being itself. Let it be called an angel, since it announced, almost in words, through the stillness of a voice clearer than any sound, the things that were about to come to pass, by means of the vision that had been wrought.

For the burning thornbush was a symbol of those who suffer wrong, and the blazing fire a symbol of those who do the wrong, while the fact that what was burning was not consumed signified that those who suffer injustice would not be destroyed by their assailants, but that the attack of the one side would prove ineffective and unprofitable, and the scheme of the other would go unpunished; and the angel signified the providence of God, which, in great stillness, brings ease to what is most terrifying, beyond all human expectation.

The thornbush, as has been said, is a plant most weak, yet not without its thorns, so that if one merely touches it, it wounds; and it was neither consumed by the fire, which by nature devours, but on the contrary was protected by it, and remaining just as it was before it caught flame, having lost nothing whatever, it gained in addition a radiance of light.

All this is a kind of sketch of the condition of the nation, which prevailed at that time, all but crying aloud to those in distress: "Do not lose heart; your weakness is your strength, which will prick and wound countless foes. By those who long to destroy your race utterly, you will, against their will, be preserved rather than perish; you will not be harmed by their evils, but precisely when someone thinks to ravage you most, then above all you will shine forth into glory."

Again, the fire, a destructive substance, was refuting those of savage temper: "Do not be lifted up by your own strength; seeing irresistible powers brought low, be brought to your senses. The burning power of the flame is consumed as though it were mere wood, while wood, which by nature can be burned, plainly burns like fire."

Having shown this marvel and wonder to Moses as the clearest exhortation of things soon to be accomplished, God begins, through his pronouncements, to urge him on to hasten his care for the nation, declaring that he would soon become not only the agent of its freedom but also the leader of its migration from that place, and promising to assist in everything.

"For they have long been mistreated," he says, "and have endured outrages hard to bear, with no human being lightening or pitying their misfortunes; I myself have taken pity on them. For I know each one individually, and I know that all of them, turning together with one accord to supplication and entreaty, hope for help from me; and I am by nature gentle and merciful to genuine suppliants."

"Go, then, to the king of the country, with no fear whatsoever -- for the former king has died, the one from whom you fled for fear of his plot, and another has been entrusted with the country, who bears you no grudge for anything that has happened -- and, taking with you the elders of the nation, tell him that the nation has been summoned by me through an oracle, so that it may go out, according to its ancestral custom, a three days' journey beyond the borders of the country, to offer sacrifice."

But he, well aware that both his own kinsmen and everyone else would disbelieve what he said, replied: "If, then, they ask what is the name of the one who sent me, and I myself am not able to say, will I not seem to be deceiving them?"

And he said: "Tell them first that I am He Who Is, so that, learning the difference between what exists and what does not exist, they may also be further taught that no name at all can properly be used of me, to whom alone being belongs."

He said, "Tell them first that I am the One who is, so that, learning the difference between what is and what is not, they may be further taught that no name at all properly belongs to me, to whom alone being belongs."

But if they are weaker in nature and seek an appellation, make known to them not only this — that I am God — but also that I am the God of three men named for virtue: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, of whom one is the standard of learned wisdom, another of natural wisdom, and the third of practiced wisdom. And if they still disbelieve, they will be won over by three signs, taught by things which no one has ever before seen or heard of among men.

The signs were of this kind. He bids him throw the rod he was carrying down onto the ground. It immediately came to life, crept along, and — most commanding of footless creatures — became a serpent of enormous size, utterly perfect. Quickly withdrawing from the creature and now rushing to flee out of fear, he is called back, and, at God's command and with courage instilled in him at the same time, he seizes it by the tail.

The serpent, still writhing at the touch, stood still, and stretching itself out lengthwise, was immediately changed back into the very same staff, so that both transformations caused amazement, and one could not judge which was the more astonishing, the soul being struck by an equally balanced impression.

This, then, was the first sign; a second was worked not long after. He commands him to hide one of his hands in his bosom and bring it out again a little later. When he did as commanded, the hand suddenly appeared whiter than snow; but when he put it back into his bosom and brought it out again, it returned to its own color, recovering its natural appearance.

These things, then, he was taught by God alone, alone, as a disciple by a teacher, having with him the instruments of the wonders — the hand and the staff — with which he had been equipped beforehand.

A third sign could not be carried with him or taught beforehand, but was destined to astonish no less, and it took its beginning in Egypt. It was of this kind: "Whatever river water," he says, "you draw and pour out on the ground will become blood, the reddest of blood, changed in color and in substance into a complete alteration."

This too, it seems, appeared credible, not only because of the truthfulness of the one speaking, but also because of the wonders already displayed beforehand with the hand and the staff.

Yet, believing, he nonetheless tried to decline the commission, saying that he was slow of speech and slow of tongue, and not eloquent — especially now that he had heard God himself speaking. For, judging human eloquence, by comparison with the divine, to be speechlessness, and being at the same time cautious by nature, he shrank from things too great for him, judging matters of such magnitude not to be within his own capacity, and he begged that another be chosen who would be able to carry out easily each of the tasks assigned.

But God, accepting his modesty, said: "Do you not know who gave man a mouth, and fashioned his tongue and windpipe and the whole instrumentality of articulate speech? It is I. Fear nothing, then; for at my nod everything will be jointed together and will change to what is fitting, so that nothing will any longer hinder the stream of words from flowing smoothly and evenly from a pure spring. But if there is need of an interpreter, you will have your brother as a subordinate mouth, so that he may report to the multitude what comes from you, and you may report to him the things of God."

Having heard this — for it was not altogether safe or free from danger to keep objecting — he set out and journeyed with his wife and children on the road to Egypt, and on the way, meeting his brother, he persuaded him to accompany him by telling him the divine oracles; and indeed his brother's soul had already been prepared beforehand by God's forethought for obedience, so that he agreed without hesitation and followed readily.

Arriving in Egypt with one mind and one soul, they first gathered the elders of the nation together in secret and disclosed the oracles, and how God, taking pity and compassion on them, promised to grant them freedom and a migration from there to a better country, declaring that he himself would be the guide of the journey.

After this they now boldly conversed also with the king about sending the people beyond the borders to perform sacred rites, saying that it was necessary for the ancestral sacrifices to be carried out in the desert, not performed in the same manner as those of other peoples, but in a way and by a law that escaped commonality because of the special peculiarities of their customs.

But he, his soul oppressed from swaddling clothes by ancestral arrogance, and believing there was no intelligible god at all beyond the visible ones, answered insolently, saying: "Who is this whom I must obey? I do not know this so-called new lord. I will not send the nation away on the pretext of a festival and sacrifices, to run wild" (cf. Exodus 5:2).

Then, being harsh and heavy in wrath and implacable in anger, he commands that those set over the works be abused, as granting relaxation and leisure, saying that it belongs to relaxation and leisure to deliberate about sacrifices and festivals; for those under compulsion do not even remember such things, but only those whose life is spent in great comfort and luxury.

So then, as they endured heavier misfortunes than before, and grew indignant at Moses and his companions as deceivers, reviling them, some secretly and some openly, and charging them with impiety for seeming to have lied falsely about God, Moses begins to display the wonders he had been taught beforehand, thinking that those who witnessed them would change from the disbelief that possessed them to belief in what had been said.

The demonstration of the wonders took place before the king and the Egyptian officials as well, with great eagerness. So when all the powerful men had flocked together into the palace, Moses' brother took the staff, and shaking it very demonstratively, threw it down onto the ground; it immediately became a serpent, and those standing around watched, and, filled with astonishment, withdrew in fear and fled.

But as many sophists and magicians as were present said, "Why are you so astounded? We too are not unpracticed in such things, but we employ a craft that produces the like." Then, each throwing down the staff he held, there was a multitude of serpents, and they coiled around the first one.

But that one, rising up to a great height far beyond the rest, widened its chest, and, opening its mouth, with a most violent rush of drawing breath, gathered them all in as in a fisherman's net cast around a shoal of fish, drew them in, swallowed them, and then changed back into the original nature of a staff.

By now the spectacle wrought on so grand a scale had exposed the suspicion lurking in the soul of each of those willfully doing wrong, so that they no longer thought what was happening to be the sophistries and crafts of men, fabricated for deception, but rather that a more divine power was the cause of these things, for which all is easy to accomplish.

But when, though compelled to admit as much by the manifest clarity of what had occurred, they were nonetheless no less emboldened, clinging to the same inhumanity and impiety as though to some most secure good, neither pitying those unjustly enslaved nor doing what was commanded through words, since he who had made his will clear through the more distinct proofs of oracles worked by signs and wonders now had need of a heavier threat and a swarm of blows, by which the senseless are admonished — those whom reason did not educate.

Ten punishments are brought upon the land, a perfect number of chastisement against those who had sinned perfectly; and the punishment was unlike customary ones. For the elements of the universe — earth, water, air, and fire — are set upon them, God having judged it just that the land of the impious should be destroyed by the very things out of which the world was completed, as a demonstration of the power of the rule he wields, the same elements which he shapes and turns, whenever he wishes, toward salvation for the generation of the universe, and toward destruction for the ruin of the impious.

He distributes the punishments: the ones from the coarser elements, earth and water, from which the bodily qualities were completed, he entrusts to Moses' brother as priest; the equal number from air and fire, the elements most productive of soul, to Moses alone; one, common to both, the seventh, he assigns to them jointly; and the remaining three, to complete the number ten, he reserves for himself.

And he begins by bringing first the plagues from water; for since the Egyptians had honored water above all else, believing it to be the origin of the generation of the universe, he thought it right to summon this element first, for the rebuke and admonition of those who revered it. What, then, happened not long after?

At the divine command, Moses' brother brought the staff down upon the river, and at once, from Ethiopia all the way to the sea, it turned to blood; and along with it the lakes, canals, springs, wells, and fountains all turned to blood together — the entire body of water throughout Egypt — so that for lack of anything to drink, people had to hold back from the water at the banks, while the opened veins, as in cases of hemorrhage, shot forth streams of blood like pipes, with not a single clear trickle to be seen anywhere. And the whole race of fish died too, since the life-giving power had turned destructive, so that a foul stench filled everything throughout, so many bodies decaying all at once; and a great crowd of people, destroyed by thirst, lay in heaps at the crossroads, since their kin had no strength left to carry the dead out to the tombs.

For seven days the calamity held its grip, until the Egyptians begged Moses and his companions, and these in turn begged God, to take pity on those who were perishing. And God, relenting in his nature, changed the blood into drinkable water, giving the river back its ancient streams, pure and life-giving.

But no sooner had they been granted a brief respite than they rushed back into the same cruelty and lawlessness, as though justice had vanished from the world entirely, or as though those who had already endured one punishment were not liable to a second chastisement. But by suffering they were taught, like young children, not to be contemptuous; for the punishment that follows close on their heels was slow to catch those who merely intended wrong, but overtook at a run those who were running toward wrongdoing.

For again Moses' brother, at God's command, stretched out his rod over the canals, pools, and marshes and brought on the plague. At the stretching out of the rod so vast a multitude of frogs crept up that not only the marketplaces and every open space, but also the farmsteads, houses, and temples, every private and public place, were filled with them - as if nature had decided to send out one whole species of water creatures as a colony into the opposite land, for dry land is the opposite of water.

So the people could neither go outdoors, since the streets were already occupied, nor stay indoors - for the frogs had already taken over the inner rooms as well, crawling up even to the highest points - and they were in the direst straits, having despaired of any deliverance.

So again they took refuge in entreaties, the king promising to permit the Hebrews' departure, while they won God over with supplications. And when he consented, some of the frogs withdrew into the river, while others died on the spot, and there were heaps of them piled up at the crossroads; people even carried out their own dead from their homes because of the unbearable stench that rose from the corpses of creatures which, even while alive, had produced great disgust

to the senses. But having gained a brief respite from the punishment, like athletes in a contest gathering their strength so as to commit wrong with more robust vigor, they ran back again to their habitual wickedness, forgetting the evils they had just endured.

God, having withheld the punishments from the water, now brought on those from the earth, appointing the same man as its instrument; and he, again at the command given, struck the ground with his staff, and a swarm of gnats poured out and, spreading like a cloud, covered the whole of Egypt.

Though the creature is very tiny, it is nonetheless most troublesome; for it does not merely damage the surface of the skin, causing unpleasant and most harmful itching, but also forces its way inside through the nostrils and ears; and flying into the pupils of the eyes it does damage there too, unless one is on guard - but what guard could there be against so great a swarm, especially when God is inflicting the punishment?

Perhaps someone might ask why he punished the Egyptians by means of creatures so insignificant and disregarded, passing over bears and lions and leopards and the other kinds of untamed beasts that prey on human flesh, or if not these, at least the Egyptian asps, whose bites are naturally lethal without delay.

But if he really does not know, let him learn: first, that God wished to admonish the inhabitants of the land rather than to destroy them; for had he wished to wipe them out entirely, he would not have used animals as allies, so to speak, for his assaults, but rather the god-sent scourges of famine and plague.

After this let him also be taught a further lesson, necessary for the whole of life. What is it? When human beings go to war, they seek out the most powerful ally to reinforce their weakness; but God, being the highest and greatest power, has need of nothing. Yet if he chooses to use certain things as instruments of punishment, he does not select the strongest and greatest, caring nothing at all for their might, but by fitting out cheap and tiny creatures with invincible and unconquerable powers, he wards off wrongdoers through them - as indeed now. For what is cheaper than a gnat?

Yet it had such force that all Egypt was compelled to give up and cry out, "this is the finger of God" (Exodus 8:19); for not even the whole inhabited world, from end to end, could withstand that hand, much less the whole cosmos.

Such, then, were the punishments worked through Moses' brother. But we must next examine, in due order, those which Moses himself administered, and from which parts of nature they were composed. Air and heaven, the purest portions of the substance of the universe, take up after water and earth the task of admonishing Egypt, a province over which Moses was appointed steward.

He began first by disturbing the air; for Egypt alone, almost uniquely among the countries lying in the southern climate, does not receive one of the yearly seasons, namely winter - perhaps, as the account goes, because it is not far from the scorched zone, the fiery element flowing invisibly from there and warming everything around it; or perhaps because the river, flooding at the summer solstice, uses up the cloud formations beforehand -

for it begins to rise at the start of summer and subsides as summer ends, at which time the etesian winds also come rushing down against the mouths of the Nile; through these, still prevented from pouring out - since the sea, raised to a height by the force of the winds, extends its triple waves like a long wall - the river is held back within, and then, as the streams collide, the one coming down from the springs above and the one that ought to flow out to sea being turned back by the obstruction and unable to spread wide, for the banks on either side squeeze it in, it rises, as one would expect, and mounts up -

or perhaps also because it was needless for winter to occur in Egypt at all; for that for which rainfall is useful, the river also supplies, flooding the fields for the yearly production of crops.

But nature does nothing in vain, so as to furnish rain to land that has no need of it; and at the same time she delights in the manifold and diverse harmony of her works of skill, having fitted the concord of the whole together out of opposites; and for this reason she supplies to some the benefit of water from above, out of heaven, and to others from below, out of springs and rivers.

So then, with the country thus disposed - its winter behaving like spring, the regions near the sea moistened only by scant sprinklings, while those above Memphis, the royal seat of Egypt, receive no snow at all - the air suddenly turned so revolutionary that everything which, in harsh winters, falls all at once elsewhere befell it together: downpours of rain, hail heavy and abundant, the violence of winds colliding and clashing against one another, the bursting of clouds, unceasing flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, continuous thunderbolts, which produced a most monstrous spectacle; for running through the hail, a substance at war with fire, they neither melted it nor were quenched by it, but remained unchanged, coursing up and down and preserving the hail intact.

But it was not only the extraordinary abundance of everything that drove the inhabitants to excessive despair, but also the strangeness of the event; for they supposed - as was indeed the case - that what had happened was a novel work wrought from divine wrath, the air having turned revolutionary as never before, to the ruin and destruction of trees and crops, together with which no small number of animals also perished, some by the cold, others crushed as if stoned by the weight of the falling hail, others consumed by fire; and some remained half-burnt, bearing the marks of wounds from the thunderbolts as a warning

to those who saw them. When the disaster abated, and once again the king and his court grew bold, Moses stretched out his rod toward the sky, at God's command. Then a wind came rushing down, a most violent south wind, growing in force and intensity throughout the whole day and night - itself, on its own, a great affliction; for it is a dry wind, causing headaches and dullness of hearing, and capable of producing nausea and distress, especially in Egypt, which lies toward the south, the region through which the light-bearing stars make their circuits, so that as soon as the wind is stirred up, the blaze driven from the sun travels with it and burns everything.

But together with it there also came an irresistible multitude of creatures destructive to plants - locusts, which, pouring out ceaselessly like a stream and filling the whole air, devoured whatever the thunderbolts and the hail had left, so that nothing green was any longer to be seen growing anywhere in that vast land.

Then at last, coming to a most exact realization of their own situation, the leading men, overwhelmed by the disasters, went to the king and said: "How long will you refuse to let the men go? Or do you still not learn from what is happening, that Egypt is ruined?" And he agreed to all that seemed necessary, once the calamity had let up. But when Moses prayed again, a wind rising from the sea scattered the locusts.

And when they had been scattered, and the king was still in his death-throes over releasing the nation, a greater evil than the earlier ones came upon them; for though it was a bright day, darkness suddenly poured over everything - perhaps an eclipse of the sun more complete than those usually seen, or perhaps because the continuous, unbroken density and the most violent compression of the clouds cut off the passage of the rays, so that day was indistinguishable from night, and indeed a single night was reckoned as long as three days and as many nights together.

Then, they say, some lay flung on their beds and did not dare to rise, while others, whenever some natural need pressed them, groped along the walls or whatever else was near, like the blind, and made their way forward with difficulty; for the light of the fire needed for daily use was in some places put out by the storm that held sway, and in other places obscured and rendered invisible by the depth of the darkness, so that the most essential of the senses, sight, though sound in itself, was rendered blind, unable to see anything, and the other senses were also turned aside, like subjects obedient to their ruling sense once it had fallen.

For no one could bear to speak or to listen or to take food, but they wasted away in silence and hunger, giving leisure to none of their senses, but wholly seized by their suffering - until Moses, again taking pity, entreated God; and God brought about light instead of darkness and day instead of night, together with a great clearness of sky.

They say the blows worked by Moses alone were of this same kind — the one of hail and thunderbolts, the one of the locust, and the one of darkness, which admitted no form of light at all. But there was one plague the two brothers were jointly commissioned to bring, which I will now describe.

At God's command they took ashes from a furnace in their hands, which Moses scattered little by little into the air. Then a sudden cloud of dust, falling upon both human beings and irrational animals, produced a savage and agonizing ulceration over the whole surface of the skin, and their bodies at once broke out in eruptions, swelling with festering blisters, which one might have guessed were secretly boiling up from beneath.

Racked by pains and agonies, as was natural from the ulceration and inflammation, they suffered in soul no less than in body, and were worn out with distress — for one would have seen a single continuous sore stretching from head to foot, all the separate wounds on the various limbs and parts having merged into one and the same form — until, once more through the lawgiver's supplications on behalf of the sufferers, the disease grew milder.

This chastisement, fittingly, the two of them were commissioned to bring jointly: the brother because of the dust that was cast up, since the care of what happens from the earth had fallen to his lot; Moses because of the air, which changed for the affliction of the inhabitants — for he was the minister of the blows that came from air and heaven.

Three punishments remain, wrought by God's own hand alone, without any human agency; I will describe each of them as best I can. The first came through a creature the boldest of all in nature, the dog-fly, which those who first assigned names — for they were wise — called by its true name, compounding it from the two most shameless of creatures, the fly and the dog, the boldest of land animals and of winged ones respectively. For these creatures come and rush upon one fearlessly, and even if one tries to drive them off, they contend to the last against being beaten back, until they have gorged themselves on blood and flesh.

The dog-fly, having taken on the daring of both, is a biting and treacherous creature; for it darts from far off with a whirring sound like an arrow shot, and falling violently upon its target fastens itself in deep.

But at that time the assault was also driven by God, so that the malice it worked was doubled, no longer relying only on its natural advantages but also on those from divine contrivance, which armed the creature and roused it to force against the inhabitants of the land.

After the dog-fly there followed another punishment, again without human collaboration: the death of the livestock. Herds of cattle, flocks of goats and sheep, and every kind of beast of burden and other animal, perished in droves all on a single day, as though at one signal — foreshadowing the destruction of human beings that was soon to come, just as happens in plague epidemics; for it is said that the sudden death of dumb animals is often a forerunner of epidemic illness.

After this came the tenth and final judgment, surpassing all that went before: the death of the Egyptians — not of all of them, for God did not intend to lay the land waste but only to give warning, nor of most of the men and women together of every age, but, letting the rest live, he passed sentence of death on the firstborn alone, beginning with the eldest of the king's children and ending with that of the meanest slave-girl at the mill.

For around midnight those who had first called others father and mother, and had first in turn been called sons by them, all healthy and sound of body, were suddenly cut down in the prime of life for no apparent cause, and they say that no household was left without a share in the calamity at that hour.

At daybreak, as was natural, each family, on seeing their dearest ones unexpectedly dead — those with whom they had shared their home and table until evening — were seized by the heaviest grief and filled everything with wailing, so that, because the suffering was common to all, when everyone cried out together with one voice, a single lament resounded from one end of the land to the other.

And as long as people stayed within their houses, each, ignorant of his neighbor's misfortune, grieved only over his own; but once he went out and learned of the others' losses, he immediately took on a double grief in addition to his own — the shared grief now weighing heavier and harder than the lesser, lighter one he had felt before — since he was also robbed of any hope of consolation. For who was going to comfort another while himself in need of the same comfort?

And, as is usual in such circumstances, thinking that what had happened was only the beginning of worse to come, and fearing for the destruction of those still living, they ran together to the palace in tears, their garments torn, and cried out against the king as the cause of all the calamities that had befallen them.

For, they said, if at the very outset, when Moses had made his request, he had let the nation go, none of what had happened would have been experienced at all; but since he had yielded to his customary stubbornness, he had reaped, ready-made, the wages of his ill-timed contentiousness. Then one urged another to drive the people out of the whole land with all speed, counting even the delay of a single day — or rather a single hour — as grounds for irreparable punishment.

Those who were being driven out and expelled, coming to a recognition of their own noble birth, ventured a bold act, such as was natural for free people not forgetful of the wrongs unjustly plotted against them.

For, carrying off much spoil, they loaded some of it upon themselves and put the rest upon their beasts of burden — not out of greed for money, or, as an accuser might say, out of desire for what belonged to others (far from it), but first as recovering the wages owed them of necessity for all the time they had served, and second as requiting, in lesser and unequal measure, what they had suffered in their enslavement. For where is there any equivalence between the loss of money and the deprivation of freedom, for which those who have sense are willing not only to give up their possessions but even to die?

In both respects, then, they were in the right — whether one takes it that they were receiving wages, as in peacetime, of which they had long been unjustly deprived by those unwilling to pay them, or that they were, as in war, taking the property of enemies by the law of the victors. For the Egyptians had begun with unjust deeds, enslaving strangers and suppliants, as I said before, in the manner of captives, while the Hebrews, when the opportunity arose, defended themselves without recourse to arms, with justice itself as their shield and the hand that upheld them.

With so many blows and punishments was Egypt chastised, and not one of them touched the Hebrews, even though they lived together in the very same cities, villages, and houses, when earth, water, air, and fire — the very elements of nature, which it is impossible to escape — were turned against the land. And this was the most paradoxical thing of all: that by the same agents, in the same place and at the same time, some were destroyed while others were kept safe.

The river turned to blood, but not for the Hebrews; for whenever they wished to draw water, it changed back to drinkable water for them. The frog crept up out of the waters onto dry land and filled the marketplaces, farmyards, and houses, but it withdrew only from the houses of the Hebrews, as though it knew how to distinguish who deserved punishment and who did not.

No gnats, no dog-fly, no locust — which did great damage to plants, crops, animals, and human beings — came flying against them; no continuous downpours of rain, hail, or thunderbolts reached as far as them. Of the most agonizing ulceration they felt not even a trace, not even in a dream. While the deepest darkness was poured out upon everyone else, they passed their time in clear light, the daylight shining upon them. While the firstborn among the Egyptians were being taken, not a single Hebrew died; nor was this surprising, since even the destruction of countless livestock had not carried off a single herd belonging to them.

And it seems to me that anyone who had been present at what happened at that time would have thought the Hebrews nothing other than spectators of the sufferings that others were enduring — and not only that, but that they were being taught the finest and most beneficial of all lessons, piety. For never before had the judgment between good and evil come so plainly into view, bringing destruction to some and deliverance to others.

Of those who went out and migrated, the men of military age numbered above six hundred thousand, while the rest of the throng — old men, children, women — was not easy to count. There went out with them also a mixed crowd of stragglers and servants, like a mass of the illegitimate mingled with the genuine multitude. These were the children born to Egyptian women by Hebrew fathers and reckoned into their paternal line, together with all who had come over as converts out of admiration for the piety of the men, and any others who, by the magnitude and repetition of the successive punishments, had been brought to their senses and had changed their ways.

Over all these Moses was appointed leader, receiving his rule and kingship not as some do who force their way to power by arms and engines of war, with forces of cavalry, infantry, and fleets, but for the sake of his virtue and nobility of character and the goodwill toward all which he had always shown without fail — and further, because God, who loves virtue and loves what is noble, bestowed on him this worthy prize.

For when he left behind his rule in Egypt — being grandson of the king then reigning — bidding a hearty farewell, because of the wrongs being done in the land, to the hopes those who had adopted him had placed in him, on account of the nobility of his soul, the greatness of his purpose, and his natural hatred of wickedness, it seemed good to him who governs and cares for the universe to repay him with the kingship of a more numerous and greater nation, one destined, above all others, to serve as priest, forever offering prayers on behalf of the whole human race, for the averting of evils and for a share in blessings.

On taking up his rule, he did not, as some do, strive to increase his own household and advance his sons — for he had two — to great power, so as to make them, for the present, his partners and, later, his successors; for in guileless and pure judgment, applied to all matters small and great alike, he mastered his natural affection for his children, like a good judge unmoved by bribes in his reasoning.

There was one goal that lay before him, an absolutely necessary one: to benefit his subjects and to labor by deed and by word for their advantage, letting no opportunity pass that might contribute to the common good.

Alone among all who have ever governed, he did not treasure up gold or silver, did not collect tribute, acquired no houses, no estates, no livestock, no household service, no revenues, nothing else conducive to luxury and abundance, and yet he could have had a superabundance of everything.

Instead, holding that it is the mark of a soul's poverty to embrace wealth that consists in material things, he honored the man of blind wealth as a fool, but esteemed the one who sees the wealth of nature, and became, I think, as great an emulator of it as anyone has ever been. In clothing, food, and the other matters of daily life he practiced, without any tragic pretension to grander pomp, the plainness and simplicity of a private citizen, but genuinely royal magnificence in those things where it was noble for the ruler to have the advantage; and these were self-mastery, endurance, temperance, and quickness of mind,

understanding, knowledge, labors, hardships endured, contempt for pleasures, acts of justice, exhortations to what is best, blame and lawful punishment of wrongdoers, and, again, praise and honors, according to law, for those who do right.

And so, having bidden a hearty farewell to the accumulation of money and to wealth that inspires such pride among men, God rewards him by giving him in return the greatest and most perfect wealth of all: this is the wealth of the whole earth and sea and rivers and all the other elements and their compounds. For deeming him worthy to appear as a partner of his own portion, he released the whole cosmos to him as a possession fitting for an heir.

And so each element obeyed him as its master, changing the power it had and yielding to his commands. Nor is this perhaps surprising: for if, according to the proverb, "what belongs to friends is held in common," and the prophet has been called a friend of God (cf. Exodus 33:11), then it would follow that he shares also in God's possessions, so far as that is useful.

For God, possessing everything, needs nothing, while the good man, though he possesses nothing in the strict sense, not even himself, nevertheless partakes, so far as he is able, of the treasures of God. And this is perhaps fitting: for he is a citizen of the world, for which reason he was not enrolled as a citizen of any one of the cities of the inhabited earth, since he had received, as was proper, not a portion of a country but the whole cosmos as his portion. What then?

Did he not also enjoy an even greater partnership, being deemed worthy of the very same title as the father and maker of all things? For he was named god and king of the whole nation, and is said to have entered into the darkness where God was (Exodus 20:21), that is, into the invisible, unseen, and bodiless archetypal being of existing things, contemplating things unseen by mortal nature; and having brought himself and his own life into the open, like a well-crafted painting, he set himself up as a supremely beautiful and godlike work, a model for those who wish to imitate it.

Happy are those who have stamped that pattern upon their own souls, or who have striven to stamp it there. For let the mind bear, at the very least, the perfect form of virtue, or, failing that, an unwavering longing to acquire that form.

And indeed no one is unaware of this either, that the obscure are emulators of the illustrious, and direct their own impulses toward whatever those illustrious ones seem most to desire. So whenever a ruler begins to live in soft indulgence and inclines toward a luxurious way of life, nearly the whole of his subjects break out into desires beyond what is necessary, for the belly and for what comes after the belly, unless some, by a stroke of good fortune, come to possess a nature whose soul is not treacherous but kindly and gracious.

But if he chooses a more austere and dignified course, then even those most lacking in self-control among them change over to self-restraint, either out of fear or out of a sense of shame, being eager to create the impression that they too are emulators of the same qualities; and those who are worse would never reject the ways of their betters, unless they had actually gone mad.

Perhaps, indeed, since he was destined to become a lawgiver, he became long before, by divine providence, himself a living and rational law, a providence that, without his knowing it, had already appointed him to be a lawgiver.

When, then, he had received the leadership with the people's willing consent, God directing and approving, he set the colony moving toward Phoenicia and Coele-Syria and Palestine, which was then called the land of the Canaanites, whose borders lay a three-day journey from Egypt.

Then he led them, not by the shortest route, partly out of caution, lest, if the inhabitants should meet them in fear of being displaced and enslaved and war should break out, they might turn back along the same road into Egypt, from enemies into the hands of other enemies, from the new into the old, and become a laughingstock and a mockery, enduring things worse and harder than before; and partly also because he wanted, by leading them through a long and desolate region, to test how they stood with regard to obedience when their supplies were not abundant but grew gradually scarcer.

Turning aside, then, from the straight road, he found a slanting path, and, thinking that it led all the way to the Red Sea, began to travel along it. And they say that a portentous and mighty work of nature occurred at that time, the like of which no one remembers ever having happened before.

For a cloud, shaped into a column of great size, went on ahead of the multitude, by day shining with a sunlike brightness, by night with a fiery one, so that they might not wander astray on the journey but might follow the most unerring guide of the way. Perhaps, indeed, it was even one of the ministers of the great King, an invisible messenger, enfolded within the cloud as a guide before them, whom it is not lawful to see with bodily eyes.

Now the king of Egypt, seeing them travel, as he supposed, off the roads, going through a rough and untrodden wilderness, was pleased at their misstep along the way, thinking that they were shut in with no way out; but repenting of having let them go, he set out to pursue them, intending either to force the multitude back through fear and enslave them again, or to kill them, down to the youths, since they were in open revolt.

Then, taking his whole cavalry force, javelin-throwers, slingers, mounted archers, and all the other light-armed troops, and giving the finest of his scythe-bearing chariots, six hundred of them, to his officers of rank, so that they might follow with fitting dignity and take part in the campaign, he set out at full speed, sparing no haste, hurrying on because he wanted to fall upon them suddenly, before they could foresee it; for an unexpected evil is always harder to bear than one that has been anticipated, in the same proportion as a thing held in contempt is easier to attack than one guarded with care.

And he, with this plan in mind, pursued them, thinking he would overcome them at the first onset, while they by now happened to be encamped by the shores of the sea. As they were about to take their meal, first a great commotion resounded, since so many men and pack animals were being driven together in haste, so that people poured out of their tents, looking about and straining to listen, standing on tiptoe; then, a little later, the opposing force came into view, high up on a ridge, drawn up in arms for battle.

Terrified at this strange and unexpected sight, and neither prepared to defend themselves for lack of weapons — for they had set out not for war but for a colony — nor able to flee — for behind them was the sea, ahead of them the enemy, and on either side deep and untrodden desert — they writhed in anguish, worn down by the magnitude of their troubles, and, as often happens in such misfortunes, blamed their leader, saying:

"Was it because there were no graves in Egypt in which we might be buried when we died, that you brought us out here to bury us after killing us? Or is not any slavery a lighter evil than death? By luring the multitude with the hope of freedom, you have hung over our lives a far harsher danger.

Did you not know our simplicity and the bitterness of the Egyptians and the depth of their wrath? Do you not see the magnitude of these inescapable troubles? What is to be done? Shall we fight unarmed against armed men? Or shall we flee, hemmed in as we are like animals in nets by merciless enemies, by impassable deserts, by unnavigable seas?

But even if the sea could be sailed, what abundance of boats do we have for crossing it?" He, hearing these things, sympathized with them, but he remembered the oracles; and dividing his mind and his speech at the very same time, with the one he silently entreated God, that he might rescue them from their helpless troubles, and with the other he encouraged and comforted those who were crying out, saying, "Do not lose heart. God does not defend in the same way a man does.

Why do you place your trust only in what is reasonable and plausible? God, our helper, has no need of any preparation; to find a way where there is no way is the special work of God; the impossible for every created thing is possible, and close at hand, for him alone."

This he related while still in his ordinary state; but after pausing a little, he becomes inspired, breathed upon by the spirit that was accustomed to visit him, and he prophesies, speaking these oracles: "The army you now see, well armed, arrayed against you, you will see no longer; for it will fall in headlong rout, all of it, and be swallowed up in the depths, so that not even a remnant of it will appear any more above the ground,

And this was not long in coming, but on the very next night. So he declared. And when the sun had set, a south wind at once began to blow with tremendous force; under it the sea drew back—it was accustomed to ebb, but now, pushed still further, the water along the shore was swept away as into a ravine or a Charybdis. No star appeared beforehand, but a thick black cloud covered the whole sky, and the night was murky, to the terror of the pursuers.

Moses, at God's command, struck the sea with his staff. It was torn apart and separated, and of its divided portions the part nearest the breach was lifted up on high and, standing fast like a wall, remained firm and still, while the part drawn back behind was reined in, as if held by invisible bridles, from surging forward; and the middle part, where the breach had occurred, dried up and became a broad and open highway. Seeing this, Moses was amazed and rejoiced, and filled with joy he encouraged his own people and urged them to break camp as quickly as possible.

As they were about to cross, a most portentous sign appeared. The guiding cloud, which had always gone before them until that time, now turned back to the rear of the multitude, so as to serve as a rearguard; and stationed between the pursuers and the pursued, it drove the one people on safely and securely, while it held back and beat off the others, eager as they were to press the attack. Seeing this, the Egyptians were filled with tumult and confusion; their ranks were thrown into disorder by fear, as men fell upon one another and sought at last to flee, when it was of no use.

For the Hebrews crossed by the dry path, deep in the early dawn, together with their wives and children—even those still quite infants. But the divided portions of the sea, rolling in from both sides and joining together, drowned the Egyptians with their chariots and horses, as the returning tide was released by northern winds and lofty triple waves rushed in, so that not even a torch-bearer was left to report to those in Egypt the sudden disaster.

Astounded by this great and marvelous deed, the Hebrews won, without bloodshed, a victory they had not hoped for; and seeing in an instant the massed destruction of their enemies, they formed two choruses on the shore, one of men and one of women, and sang hymns of thanksgiving to God, Moses leading the men and his sister leading the women; for these two had become the leaders of the choruses.

Setting out from the sea, they journeyed on for some time, no longer dreading fear from their enemies. But when their drinking water ran short for three days, they again fell into despair from thirst and began once more to complain, as though they had received no benefit at all; for the onset of a present evil always robs one of the pleasure taken in past goods. Seeing springs, they ran to them as though to draw water, brimming with joy.

But they were deceived through ignorance of the truth, for the water was bitter. Then, having tasted it, bent low by this disappointment of their hope, their bodies gave way and their souls sank, groaning not so much for themselves as for their infant children, whom they could not bear to see asking for drink without tears.

Some of the more faint-hearted, unsteady in piety, even found fault with what had gone before, saying it had happened not for their benefit but rather as a share in still harsher misfortunes, and declaring it better to die three times over at the hands of enemies than to perish once by thirst; for an effortless and swift departure from life, they said, differs in nothing from immortality to those who think rightly, but the truly fearful death is the slow one accompanied by pain—the terror lying not in being dead but only in the process of dying.

While they were giving vent to such lamentations, Moses again besought God, who knows the weakness of living creatures, and especially of man's, and the necessities of the body, which depends on nourishment and is yoked to harsh mistresses, food and drink—he asked God to forgive those who were despondent, and to fill the want of all, not after a long time, but by a gift immediate and swift, since mortal nature's inherent impatience longs for help at the very moment of urgency.

God, in his graciousness, sent forth his power even before the request was finished, and, opening the sleepless eye of the suppliant's soul, showed him a piece of wood, which he commanded him to take up and cast into the springs—perhaps a wood already endowed by nature with a power that had until then gone unrecognized, or perhaps a power created then for the first time for the very use it was about to serve.

When the command was carried out, the springs turned sweet and became drinkable, so that one could not tell they had ever been bitter at all, since not even a trace or spark of their former harshness was left to be remembered.

Having quenched their thirst with double pleasure—since an unhoped-for good delights enjoyment all the more—they also filled their water-jars and set out again, as though feasted and made merry from a banquet and joyous festivity, drunk not with the drunkenness of wine but with the sober drunkenness which they had drawn as their first draught from the piety of their leader.

They came to a second station, well-watered and well-wooded—it was named Elim (Exod. 15:27)—where twelve springs flowed, beside which stood seventy young and flourishing palm trunks, clear signs and tokens, to those able to see keenly with the mind, of unfailing goods.

For the tribes of the nation are twelve, each of which shall keep account of a spring, if it lives piously, since piety supplies unfailing and unfaltering good deeds; and the patriarchs of the whole nation, seventy in number, were fittingly likened to the palm, the finest of trees, which is most beautiful both to look upon and in the fruit it bears, and which has its life-force not buried in roots as other trees do, but rising upward, seated like a heart in the very middle of its branches, by which, as by a true sovereign, it is guarded round about.

Such is also the nature of the mind of those who have tasted holiness; for it has learned to look upward and to travel there, and, ever soaring aloft and searching out the beauties of the divine, it holds earthly things in contempt, counting these as mere play and those alone as truly worthy of serious pursuit.

Not long after this, they began to suffer hunger for lack of food, as though the necessities of life were attacking them in succession, one after another. For harsh and heavy mistresses, hunger and thirst, dividing their afflictions by lot, pressed upon them in turn, and it happened that as relief came from the one, the other set in—which was most unbearable for the sufferers, since, just when they thought themselves freed from thirst, they found hunger lying in wait as the next evil.

Nor was the present scarcity the only hardship; there was also despair over provisions for the time to come. For seeing a deep and vast wilderness, utterly barren of fruit, they fell into deep discouragement; for everything was either rough, broken rock, or salt-encrusted plain, or the stoniest of mountains, or deep sands stretching up to sheer heights, and moreover there was no river, no native stream, no torrent, no spring at all, nothing sown, no tree, whether cultivated or wild, no bird or land creature, except venomous reptiles bent on the destruction of men—serpents and scorpions.

Then, remembering the abundance and prosperity of Egypt, and setting the plenty of everything there against the want of everything here, they took it hard, and one after another they spoke such words as these: "We migrated in hope of freedom, and yet we have not even the assurance of life—we who were made prosperous by our leader's promises, but who are, in the actual outcome, the most miserable of all men.

What end will there be to this endless and so long a journey? For all who travel, whether by sea or by land, a goal is set before them at which they will arrive—for some, ports and harbors, for others some city or country; for us alone lies a trackless wilderness, impassable roads, and grievous despair. For as we advance, a vast and deep sea, impossible to cross, seems to appear before us, widening more with every day.

He has lifted us up and puffed us up with words, and filled our ears with empty hopes, while he stretches our bellies with famine, not even providing the necessary food. Under the name of a colony he has deceived so great a multitude, leading them first out of the inhabited world into an uninhabitable place, and now sending them on to Hades, the last road of life."

Reproached in this way, he was not so much distressed by the abuse directed at him personally, as by the instability of their thinking; for having experienced countless things that had come to pass contrary to expectation and against established custom, they ought no longer to be swayed by any merely plausible reasoning, but ought rather to have come to trust him, having received the clearest proofs that he spoke no falsehood in anything.

Again, when he came to reflect on their want—than which no evil is greater for men—he made allowance for them, knowing that a crowd is by nature an unstable thing and is moved by whatever is immediately at hand, which brings about forgetfulness of what has gone before,

and despair as to what is to come. Since they were all, then, in unbearable distress, and expecting the worst misfortunes, believing them to be lying in wait and very close at hand—partly out of his inborn gentleness and love of humankind, and partly wishing to honor the one he had appointed as leader, and still more to establish, in matters both visible and hidden, how great his piety and holiness truly were—God, taking pity on their suffering, healed it.

So he devised strange and unprecedented acts of kindness, so that by clearer manifestations they might now be taught not to lose heart if something did not turn out at once as they wished, but to endure patiently, expecting good things concerning the future.

What, then, came to pass? On the following day, around dawn, a deep and abundant dew lay all around the whole camp, which fell upon them gently, an unaccustomed and strange kind of rain—not water, not hail, not snow, not ice, for these are what the transformations of clouds produce at the winter solstices—but something very small and very white, like millet, which, falling one layer upon another, was poured out in heaps before the tents, an incredible sight. Astounded at it, they asked their leader what this rain was, which no man had ever before seen, and for what purpose it had come.

Moses, inspired by the breath that came upon him, became possessed by God and prophesied as follows: "To mortals the deep-soiled plain is granted, which they cut into furrows, plow, sow, and work in every other way that farming requires, thereby securing yearly crops in abundance for their necessities. But to God not one portion of the universe but the whole cosmos is subject, and its parts serve him for every need he wishes, as slaves serve a master.

"Now, therefore, it has seemed good to him to bring air as nourishment in place of water, since even earth has often brought rain; for the river in Egypt, when each year it floods and waters the fields with its risings, is nothing other than a rain that falls from below." A paradoxical work indeed, even had it stopped there;

but now still more paradoxical wonders were performed. For people brought vessels from every quarter and gathered the food, some loading it on pack animals, others carrying it burdened on their own shoulders, in their forethought to store up provisions for a longer time.

But it turned out that it could not be stored or hoarded, since God had determined always to grant fresh gifts; for what they prepared sufficient for use at the time they consumed with pleasure, but of what was left over until the next day they found nothing still sound—it had changed, grown foul-smelling, and become full of the kind of creatures that are wont to be bred from putrefaction. This, then, as was fitting, they threw away, and found other food ready, which, together with the dew, happened to fall as snow each day.

The sacred seventh day held a special privilege: since nothing was permitted to be done on it, and it was ordained to abstain from all works, small and great alike, God rained down a double portion the day before, since they could not gather provisions on the Sabbath itself, and commanded them to bring in enough food to last two days; and what had been gathered remained sound, none of it spoiling at all as it had before.

But I will tell of something still more wonderful than this: for forty years—so great a span of time—the supplies of what was necessary journeyed along with them in the order described, apportioned as in a measured ration, according to the distributions due to each.

At the same time they were also taught the thrice-longed-for day—for having sought for a long time to know what the birthday of the cosmos was, on which this universe was completed, and having inherited the question unresolved from their fathers and their fathers' fathers, they were scarcely able to discover it—not only instructed by oracles, but also by a wholly clear proof; for whereas the excess on the other days, as has been said, spoiled, what fell as rain before the seventh day not only did not change but also held a double measure.

The manner of using it was this: gathering at dawn what had fallen as snow, they ground it or crushed it, then boiled it and ate a very sweet food, like honey cakes, needing no elaborate work of bakers.

But indeed they were also, before long, well supplied with things that make for a luxurious life, as many as God, willing to furnish abundance without stint even in the wilderness, as in an inhabited and prosperous land, provided. For each evening a continuous cloud of quails, borne in from the sea, would overshadow the whole camp, flying as close to the ground as possible for ease of capture; so, catching and preparing them each as he pleased, they enjoyed the sweetest meat, and at the same time relieved their diet with this necessary relish.

Of these, then, they had great abundance without any failing; but of water again a terrible scarcity pressed upon them; and when they had already turned to despair of deliverance, Moses took that sacred staff by which he had performed the signs in Egypt, and, filled with God, struck the flint-hard rock.

The rock—whether the vein of a spring already lying beneath it was cut open at the critical point, or whether water then for the first time flowed together into it all at once through invisible underground channels and was forced out under great pressure—burst open under the force of the flow and poured out in gushing streams, so as not only to provide relief from thirst at that moment but also abundant drink for so many tens of thousands for a long time after; for they filled all their water-jars, just as before from the springs which were by nature bitter but had changed, by divine providence, to sweetness.

If anyone disbelieves these things, he neither knows God nor has ever sought him; for he would have recognized at once, recognized with firm apprehension, that these paradoxical and irrational-seeming things are God's playthings, once he had turned his gaze to the things that are truly great and worthy of earnest attention: the birth of heaven, the choral dance of the planets and fixed stars, the kindling of light—by day the sun's, by night the moon's—and the fixing of earth in the very middle of the universe, the surpassing sizes of continents and islands, the untold forms of animals and plants, and further the outpourings of the seas, the courses of native rivers and winter torrents, the streams of everflowing springs, some of which pour forth cold water and others hot, the manifold changes of the air, the distinctions of the yearly seasons, and countless other beauties besides.

A lifetime would fail anyone who wished to recount each of these in detail—or rather, even one of the more general parts of the cosmos—even if he were to be the longest-lived of all men. But these things, though truly wondrous, are held in contempt through familiarity, while things not customary, however small, we marvel at, giving way to strange impressions through our love of novelty.

Having now traveled through much trackless country, certain boundaries of an inhabited land began to appear, and the outskirts of a country to which they were shifting course; it was inhabited by the Phoenicians. Hoping that a calm and untroubled life awaited them there, they were mistaken in their judgment.

For the king presiding there, fearing plunder, called up the young men from the cities, and met them, wishing above all to hold them off, but if they should use force, to defend himself by arms with troops fresh and just then coming freshly into the contest, against men worn out by travel and by lack of food and drink, which he had in turn withheld from them piece by piece.

But Moses, learning from his scouts that the enemy army was encamped not far off, enrolled the young men of fighting age, chose one of his officers, Joshua, as general, and himself hastened to the greater alliance; for, having sprinkled himself with the customary purifications, he ran up in haste to the nearby hill and implored God to shield the Hebrews and grant them victory and mastery—the Hebrews whom he had already rescued from harsher wars of other evils, not only scattering the calamities hanging over them from men, but also those which the upheaval of the elements had newly wrought in Egypt, and the unrelenting famine on their journeys.

And now, when they were about to engage in battle, a most portentous thing happened concerning his hands: they became by turns lightest and heaviest; and whenever they were lifted, made light, and raised on high, the allied force grew strong and, showing valor, gained the greater glory, but whenever they sank down, the opponents grew strong—God signaling through these signs that to the one side belongs the earth and the outermost regions of the universe as their proper portion, but to the other the most sacred ether, and that just as in the universe heaven reigns and holds sway over earth, so too this nation would prevail over those warring against it.

For a while, then, his hands, like the pans of a balance, were lightened in turn and inclined downward in turn, and during that time the contest too was evenly matched; but suddenly, becoming weightless, using his fingers as if they were wings, they were lifted aloft on high, like winged creatures coursing through the air, and remained there unmoving until the Hebrews won an unopposed victory, the enemy being slaughtered down to the youth, having suffered in just measure for what they had improperly ventured to do.

Then Moses also set up an altar, which from what had happened he named "the refuge of God" (Exodus 17:15), on which he offered the victory sacrifices, rendering thanksgiving prayers.

After this battle he judged it necessary to survey the land into which the nation was being resettled—it was now the second year of their journeying—wishing that they should not, as tends to happen, contend in ignorance over what they did not know, but rather, having learned of it beforehand by report and possessing sure knowledge of the conditions there, reckon out what was to be done.

He chose twelve men, equal in number to the tribes, one head of tribe from each, selecting the most highly esteemed by merit, so that no portion should have contributed more or less and thereby cause dissension, but all alike, through their leading men, might learn the truth about the inhabitants, if those sent should be willing to report without deceit.

Having chosen them, he spoke as follows: "The prize of the struggles and dangers which we have undergone and still endure to this day is the allotted portions of land; may we not be disappointed of that hope, as we escort so vast a nation to its new settlement. Knowledge of places, people, and affairs is most useful, just as ignorance of them is harmful.

"We have therefore chosen you by vote, so that through your eyes and minds we may view what is there; become, then, the ears and eyes of so many tens of thousands, for the clear grasp of what it is necessary to know.

"What we long to know is these three things: the number and strength of the inhabitants; the position of the cities, whether favorably situated, and the strength or otherwise of their fortifications; and whether the land is deep-soiled and rich, good for producing crops of every kind, both sown and grown on trees, or, on the contrary, thin-soiled—so that against the strength and number of the inhabitants we may arm ourselves with matching forces, and against the natural strength of their positions, with siege engines and machines; and it is also necessary to know whether the land is fertile or not, for it is folly to undergo voluntary dangers for a barren country.

"But our weapons and engines and our whole strength lie in this alone: trust in God. Possessing this equipment, we shall yield to nothing fearsome; for it is sufficient, by a great margin, to overpower with irresistible might through good condition, daring, experience, and numbers—that power through which, even in the deep desert, there are provisions of everything that exists in the prosperity of cities."

Our weapons and siege-engines and all our strength lie in one thing alone: trust in God. Armed with this equipment, we will yield to nothing that seems fearsome, for it is enough to overpower forces that seem irresistible in vigor, daring, experience, and numbers, with a great margin to spare — the very power by which, even in the depths of the desert, we have had abundant supply of everything that a prosperous city could offer.

The season in which the excellence of a land is best put to the test is spring, which is now upon us. In the season of spring the sown crops come to fruit, and the natures of the trees are just beginning. It would be better still to wait until summer is in full bloom and to bring back

fruits as samples, so to speak, of a blessed land." Hearing this, they went out on their reconnaissance, escorted by the whole people, who were afraid that they might be captured and killed, and that two of the most terrible things might happen at once: the deaths of men who were the very image of each tribe, and ignorance of what lay in store from the enemies lying in wait — knowledge that would have been of great use.

Taking guides and leaders of the way, they followed as they advanced; and when they came near, they climbed to the highest mountain in the region and surveyed the land, much of whose plain was rich in barley and wheat and good pasture, while the hill country was no less full of vines and other stocks, entirely well-wooded, thick with growth, and girded with rivers and springs for abundant water, so that from the foothills to the peaks the whole slopes of the mountains were woven together with shady trees, and especially the ridges and all the deep ravines.

They also surveyed the cities, which were exceedingly well fortified in two respects — by the natural advantage of their sites and by the strength of their walls. And examining the inhabitants, they saw that they were countless in number, giants of enormous height, or men whose bodily proportions, in size and strength, were gigantic.

Having observed these things, they stayed on for a more exact grasp of them — for first impressions are slippery things, and are only fixed with time, and hardly at that — and at the same time they made haste to pick some of the tree-fruits, not those just now beginning to harden but already turning ripe, so as to display to the whole people fruits that would not easily spoil.

What amazed them most of all was the fruit of the vine, for the clusters of grapes were enormous, stretching out alongside the branches and young shoots — an unbelievable sight. Indeed, when they cut off a single cluster and hung it from the middle of a carrying-pole, putting the two ends on two young men, one on this side and one on that, they had to relieve each other in turn, since the one bearing it grew tired — for it was a very heavy load —

and so they carried it, though they did not agree among themselves about the necessities of the matter. They had countless disputes even before they got back on the road home, but these were milder ones, meant to keep the different men from clashing in their judgments and reporting contrary things, which might have caused a riot among the people; but the disputes grew harsher after their return.

For some of them, describing the strength of the cities and how populous each one was, and magnifying everything in their account to the point of exaggeration, instilled fear in their hearers; while others, diminishing the sheer scale of all they had seen, urged the people not to lose heart but to hold fast to the colony, since they would prevail without even a fight — for no city, they said, would hold out against the onslaught of so great a force converging all at once, but would be crushed by its sheer weight and fall. Each side, moreover, added their own private feelings to the souls of their hearers: the cowardly instilled cowardice, the undaunted instilled courage joined with good hope.

But these latter were only a fifth part of those who had turned cowardly, while the noble-minded were, conversely, five times as many as the cowards. Yet a small measure of courage is swallowed up by an abundance of timidity, as indeed is said to have happened then: for against the two who described the best course, there were ten who said the opposite, and they prevailed to such a degree that they won over the entire multitude, estranging it from the two and making it their own.

About the land itself, however, all gave the same report with one accord, describing the beauty of both the plain and the hill country. "But what use to us," they cried out at once, "are goods belonging to others, and goods, moreover, guarded by a mighty hand so that they cannot be taken away?" And they rushed upon the two men and very nearly stoned them, having preferred the pleasure of hearing what was expedient to the truth that deceived them.

At this the leader was indignant, and at the same time fearful that some god-sent calamity might fall upon people so vehemently disbelieving the oracles — which is exactly what happened. For of the spies, the ten cowardly ones perished by a plague, along with those of the multitude who had shared their folly, while only the two who had advised them not to be afraid but to press on for the colony were saved, because they had trusted the divine sayings, receiving as their special reward the privilege of not perishing with the rest.

This was the reason they did not arrive sooner in the land to which they were migrating. For though they could have taken possession of the cities of Syria and their allotted territories in the second year after their departure from Egypt, they turned aside from the direct and short road and wandered, discovering one impassable and long trackless waste after another, to an endless weariness of both soul and body, undergoing the necessary penalties for their excessive impiety.

For thirty-eight years, apart from the time already passed — the span of a human generation — they were worn out wandering up and down and measuring out the trackless wilderness, and only in the fortieth year did they at last arrive at the borders of the land, the very borders they had reached before.

Near the entrances to the land dwelt others, kinsmen of theirs among them, whom they expected either to join in fighting the war against their neighbors and to cooperate fully in the colonizing effort, or, if they should shrink from that, at least to stand aside from both sides with hands raised in truce.

For the ancestors of both nations, the Hebrew nation and the nation that dwelt in the surrounding country, were two brothers, sharing the same father and the same mother, and twins besides. From them, as their households increased in number of children and their descendants enjoyed a certain fruitfulness, each house grew into a great and populous nation. But the one loved its own land and stayed, while the other, as was said before, migrated to Egypt because of famine and, after a long time, was now returning.

One house kept faith with their kinship, even though separated for so long a time, toward those who no longer preserved any of their ancestral ways but had abandoned everything belonging to the old way of life, judging it fitting for gentle natures to give and grant something in the name of kinship;

the other, by contrast, turned all friendly feeling into hostility, in disposition, in speech, in counsel, and in deeds admitting no truce and no reconciliation, rekindling an ancestral enmity — for the founder of that nation had himself sold his birthright to his brother, and shortly afterward claimed back what he had given up, breaking the agreement and threatening murder if it were not returned — and this ancient enmity of one man against one man, that nation renewed after so many generations had passed.

Now Moses, the leader of the Hebrews, though he could have taken the cities by storm without even a battle, did not think it right to do so, because of the kinship mentioned, but asked only to use the road through their land, promising to do everything according to the treaty: not to cut down any land, not to seize any livestock, not to carry off any plunder, to pay for water if there should be a shortage of drink, and for anything else needed that was not otherwise supplied. But they, in the face of such peaceful overtures, resisted with all their might, threatening war if they so much as perceived them setting foot on or touching their borders.

When the answers were received with indignation and the people were already rushing to take vengeance, he stood where all could hear and said: "Men, your indignation is reasonable and just; for when we offered good things from a gentle disposition, they answered with evil things from a malicious mind. But it is not...

"...because those men deserve to pay the penalty for their cruelty that it is fitting for us to rush to take vengeance on them; rather, for the sake of honoring our own nation, so that in this too we may show ourselves good in the face of wickedness, we must consider not only whether some deserve punishment, but whether it is fitting for us to be the ones who inflict it."

Then, turning aside, he led the people by another route, since he saw that all the roads through that land were girded with garrisons — not by men who would suffer any harm, but out of envy and malice, refusing to let them pass by the short way.

This was the clearest proof of the distress they felt at the nation's coming to freedom — distress that plainly showed they had rejoiced when it endured its bitter slavery in Egypt. For it is inevitable that those for whom the good fortune of their neighbors brings pain should also rejoice at their neighbors' misfortunes, even if they do not admit it.

For it happened that they had reported both their painful experiences and their pleasant ones to these kinsmen as though to people of like mind who wished them well, not knowing that they had gone so far in wickedness, and were so given to enmity and quarrelsomeness, that they were bound to groan over their good fortunes and rejoice over the opposite.

But when the ill will of these kinsmen was uncovered, the people were kept from coming to blows by their leader, who displayed at once the two finest qualities, prudence and goodness together: prudence, in guarding against suffering any harm; goodness, in refusing to take vengeance even though they were kinsmen —

and so he passed by the cities of these people. But a certain king of the neighboring land of Canaan, when his scouts reported that the marching army was not very far off, supposing that it was in disarray and that he could easily defeat it if he struck first, set out with his own well-armed young men, attacked the vanguard, who were not prepared for battle, and routed them; and having taken captives, puffed up by his unexpected success, he advanced, thinking that he would subdue all the rest as well.

But they were not bent by the defeat of the force that had gone before them; instead they drew on still greater daring than before, and, eager to make up in eagerness what they lacked from having lost that engagement, they rallied one another not to grow faint, saying, “Let us take heart. We are only now entering this land: let us be undaunted, holding fast to our confidence. Outcomes are often decided by beginnings. Since we stand at the point of entry, let us strike fear into the inhabitants, as men who possess the abundance of their cities in prospect, in exchange for the scarcity of necessities we have brought with us out of the wilderness.”

By such words they spurred themselves on, and at the same time vowed that they would dedicate to God, as firstfruits of the land, the king's cities and the citizens in each of them. God assented to their prayers, and by breathing courage into the Hebrews he brought it about that the opposing army was captured.

Having taken the cities by main force, they carried out their vows of thanksgiving, appropriating nothing for themselves from the plunder, but consecrating the cities, with the very men and treasures in them, to God; and from what had happened they named the whole kingdom “Anathema” [a dedicated offering].

For just as each individual pious person offers the firstfruits of the annual crops he gathers in from his own possessions, in the same way the whole nation, of the great land into which it was migrating, dedicated a great portion—the kingdom it had just captured—as a kind of firstfruits of its colonization. For they did not think it right to divide up the land or settle in its cities before offering the firstfruits of both the land and the cities.

A little later they discovered a spring of good water, which supplied drink for the whole multitude—the spring was in a well, at the very borders of the country—and, as though they had drunk not water but unmixed wine, their souls were unloosed in gladness; and out of joy and delight those beloved of God formed choruses around the well in a circle and sang a new song to the God who had allotted them their portion, the true leader of their colonization, because, on first setting foot in the inhabited world after their long journey through the wilderness, they had found, in the very land they were about to occupy, water in abundance—and they judged it fitting not to let the spring pass unmarked.

For it happened that the well had been dug not by the hands of common men but by kings, who had vied with one another, as the story goes, not only over the finding of the water but also over the construction of the well itself, so that from its costliness the work might appear worthy of kings, and might display the sovereignty and grandeur of mind of those who had built it.

Moses, rejoicing in the unexpected blessings that kept continually befalling them, advanced further, having assigned the young men to the vanguard and the rearguard, and stationed the elderly, the women, and the children in the middle, so that they might be under guard from both sides, whether an enemy host should attack from in front or from behind.

A few days later, having invaded the country of the Amorites, he sent envoys to their king—his name was Sihon—urging on him the same terms he had previously urged on his kinsman. But Sihon not only answered the envoys with insolence and very nearly put them to death, had not the law governing ambassadors stood in his way, but also gathered his whole army and rushed to attack, thinking he would immediately prevail by war.

In grappling with them Sihon discovered that he was engaging not untrained and unexercised men, but athletes truly unconquered in war, who not long before had performed many great feats of courage, displaying strength of body, resolve of mind, and a height of virtue, by which they had overcome, with great superiority, all who had opposed them, yet had touched nothing of the spoil, being eager to dedicate the first of their prizes to God.

These same men now, having likewise fortified themselves resolutely with the same counsels and preparations, met the attack, and at the same time enjoyed the unfailing alliance of justice, through which they became bolder still and eager combatants.

Clear proof of this is that a second battle was not needed; the first and only one sufficed, in which the whole opposing force was routed and, overturned, vanished at once, root and branch.

At the same time the cities became both empty and full: empty of their former inhabitants, full of their conquerors; and in the same way the farmsteads scattered through the countryside, left desolate of their former occupants, received in their place men altogether better.

This war struck terror into all the peoples of Asia, and especially into their neighbors, in proportion as the danger was expected to come nearer to them. Now one of the neighboring kings, named Balak, who held sway over a great and populous portion of the East, having renounced any thought of coming to blows before it happened, did not venture to meet the Hebrews openly, shunning a war of conquest fought with weapons; instead he turned to omens and divination, believing that by certain curses he could bring down the invincible strength of the Hebrews.

There was at that time a man renowned for divination, living in Mesopotamia, who had been initiated into every kind of prophetic art but had made himself especially expert, and was admired, in the reading of omens from birds, having given many demonstrations, many times, of things scarcely credible and of great import.

For he had foretold to some heavy rains at the height of summer, to others drought and scorching heat in the depth of winter, to others famine after abundance and, conversely, abundance after famine, and to some the flooding of rivers and their subsiding, and cures for pestilential diseases and countless other things; and for each of these, the man who was thought to foretell them was most celebrated, advancing to great renown through the report, which always ran ahead of him and reached every place before he did.

To this man Balak sent some of his companions, urging him to come; some gifts he offered at once, and promised to give others, making clear the need for which he was summoning him. But the man, not from any noble or steadfast resolve, but for the most part out of affectation, as though he had indeed become one of the notable prophets and were accustomed never to act at all without oracles, held back, saying that the divine did not permit him to go.

So those who had come returned to the king empty-handed, but others among the more distinguished men were at once chosen for the same task, bringing more money and promising still greater gifts.

Enticed both by what was already offered and by the hopes held out for the future, and abashed by the standing of those who urged him, he gave way, though again, to no wholesome purpose, alleging the divine. On the next day, then, he made ready to set out, relating dreams by which he said he had been struck with vivid visions and was compelled no longer to remain, but

to follow the envoys. But already, as he went forward, there occurred to him along the road a sign, plain enough, that the errand on which he was bent was one condemned in advance. For the beast of burden on which he happened to be riding, though it had been going straight ahead, suddenly came to a halt for the first time;

then, as though something were pushing it back or holding it in check by force from in front, it gave way underfoot, and again, carried now to the right and now to the left, wandering this way and that, it would not stay still—as though heavy-headed with wine and drunkenness—and though struck repeatedly it took no notice of the blows, so that it very nearly threw its rider, and, even while he sat on it, still caused him distress.

For on either side of the road there were enclosures and fences nearby; so whenever the animal, carried along, was driven against these, its master's knee, shin, and foot were bruised and scraped as it was pressed and crushed against them.

It was, it seems, a divine apparition, which the animal, seeing it approach from far off, cowered before, while the man did not see it at all—a proof of his lack of perception. For he who boasted that he could see not only the world but even the maker of the world was outdone in his powers of sight by an irrational creature.

At last, when he did see the angel standing in his way—not because he was worthy of such a sight, but so that he might grasp his own dishonor and worthlessness—he turned to entreaty and supplication, begging forgiveness for having sinned through ignorance and not by deliberate intent.

At that point, since he ought to have turned back, he asked the vision that had appeared to him whether he should retrace his steps homeward; but the vision, perceiving his irony and indignant—for why should he need to ask about a matter so plain, one that carried its own proof and needed no confirmation from words, unless indeed ears are more truthful than eyes, and deeds than speech?—said, “Go on the road you are hastening toward; you will gain nothing by it, for I shall prompt the words that must be said, without any thought of your own, and shall turn the very organs of your voice as is right and expedient; for I myself shall guide your speech, pronouncing through your tongue, though you understand none of it, whatever I ordain.”

When the king heard that he was already near, he went out with his bodyguard to meet him, and when they met, as one would expect, there were at first greetings and courtesies, then a brief reproach for his slowness in not coming more promptly; after this came feasting and lavish banquets and all else that custom prepares for the reception of guests, everything made to outdo itself in magnificence and solemn grandeur through royal displays of honor.

The next day, at dawn, Balak took the seer and led him up onto a hill, where there stood a monument to some spirit, which the local people worshipped; from there part of the Hebrews' encampment could be seen, displayed to the magician as though from a watchtower.

Seeing this, he said, "Build seven altars, O king, and sacrifice a calf and a ram on each. I will go aside and inquire of God what must be said." Going outside, he immediately became inspired, as a prophetic spirit descended upon him, which drove all his skilled divination into exile — for it was not right for magical sophistry to dwell together with the most sacred possession. Then he turned back, and seeing the sacrifices and the altars ablaze, like an interpreter prompted by another, he pronounced this oracle:

"Balak summoned me from Mesopotamia, sending me on a long journey from the east, so that I might curse the Hebrews. But how shall I curse those whom God has not cursed? I will see them with my eyes from the highest mountains and grasp them with my mind, but I could not harm a people who alone will dwell apart, not counted among other nations — not by allotment of place or division of territory, but by the distinctiveness of their special customs, not mingling with others in the abandonment of their ancestral ways.

"Who has found with precision the first foundation of their origin? Their bodies were formed from human seed, but their souls grew from divine seed; hence they are close kin to God. May my soul die the bodily life, that it may be numbered among the souls of the righteous, such as theirs have proven to be."

Hearing this, Balak was in labor within himself. When Balaam paused, unable to contain his feeling, Balak said, "Summoned to curse enemies, do you not blush to offer prayers on their behalf? It seems I did not notice that I had, unknowingly, stationed you as though on the side of a friend — in fact on behalf of my enemies, a fact now made plain. Perhaps you even made your delays in coming here because of a hidden affinity in your soul toward them, and an estrangement toward me and mine; for, as the old saying goes, visible things are the proof of things unseen."

Released from his trance, Balaam said, "I am enduring a most unjust accusation, being slandered; for I say nothing of my own, but only what the divine prompts — and this is not the first time. I spoke and you heard, but also before, when you sent the envoys, to whom I gave the very same answer."

The king, supposing that either the seer was deceiving him or that the divine changed its mind and altered its firm intent along with changes of place, led him away to another spot, and from a very long ridge showed him a part of the opposing army; then again he set up seven altars, sacrificed the same victims as before, and sent the seer out to observe omens and favorable utterances.

Left alone, Balaam suddenly became possessed by god, and, understanding nothing — as though his reasoning had departed — he blurted out in prophecy what was suggested to him: "Rise up and listen, O king, turning your ears attentively. God is not like man, that he can be deceived, nor like a son of man, that he changes his mind; having once spoken, he does not fail to abide by it. He will utter nothing at all that will not be firmly fulfilled, since for him word is deed. I was brought here for blessings, not curses — I.

"There will be no toil or hardship among the Hebrews. Their God shields them manifestly — he who scattered the onrush of Egyptian evils, leading up so many myriads as though a single man. And so, disregarding omens and everything to do with divination, trusting in the one ruler of the universe alone, I see a people rising up like a lion's cub and exulting like a lion. It will not turn to sleep, but wide awake will sing the song of victory."

Bearing it badly that the results of the divination fell out against his hopes, Balak said, "Man, neither pronounce curses nor make blessings; silence free of risk is better than words that give no pleasure." And having said this, as though forgetting what he had said, because of his unsteady judgment, he led the seer away to another place, from which, pointing out a part of the Hebrew army, he urged him to curse it.

Balaam, since he was subordinate to that god, though he had one true defense against the accusations brought against him — that he said nothing of his own, but, possessed and inspired, was interpreting another's words — even though he ought no longer to have followed along but to have gone home, ran ahead more eagerly than the one escorting him, pressed both by self-conceit, a great evil, and also by a longing to curse them in his mind, even if in speech

he was prevented. Arriving at a mountain greater than the previous ones and stretching a long way, he ordered the same sacrifice to be performed, seven altars again constructed and fourteen victims brought — a calf and a ram to each altar. But he himself no longer, as one might expect, resorted to omens and auguries, having much reviled his own art as having become, with time, like a picture faded, its accurate conjectures dimmed; and besides, he scarcely realized that the intention of the king who had hired him did not accord with the will of God.

Turning then toward the desert, he saw the Hebrews encamped by tribes, and, struck by their multitude and order, as of a city rather than a camp, he became inspired and cried out as follows:

"Thus speaks the man who truly sees, who in sleep saw a clear vision of God with the sleepless eyes of his soul. How beautiful are your houses, army of the Hebrews, your tents like shaded glens, like a garden by a river, like a cedar beside the waters.

"There will one day come forth from you a man who will rule over many nations, and his kingdom, advancing day by day, will be raised to the heights. This people has taken God as guide for the whole journey from Egypt, leading the multitude with a single horn.

"Therefore it will devour many nations of enemies and take all their fat, even to the marrow, and with its far-reaching shots destroy the hostile. It will rest, lying down like a lion or a lion's cub, utterly contemptuous, fearing no one, having instilled fear in others; wretched is he who rouses it by provoking it. Those who bless you deserve praise, and those who curse you, curses."

Greatly angered at this, the king said, "Summoned to pronounce curses on my enemies, you have now made three sets of blessings on their behalf. Flee at once — anger is a swift passion — lest I be driven to do something even more severe.

"How much wealth, you utter fool, and how many gifts, how much honor and glory have you deprived yourself of, being out of your mind! You will return from abroad to your own land bringing nothing good, but reproach and, it seems, great shame, since your claims to expertise, on which you previously prided yourself, have been laughed to scorn."

Balaam said, "Everything said before were oracles and divine utterances, but what is now going to be said are conjectures of my own judgment." And taking him by the right hand, alone with him alone, he advised him by what means, so far as possible, he might guard against the opposing army — thereby accusing himself of the greatest impiety; for, one might ask, why do you take him aside privately and advise the opposite of what the oracles laid down, unless indeed

your own counsels are more powerful than the oracles? Come, then, let us examine his fine advice, devised as it was to bring about the acknowledged defeat of those who are always able to win. For knowing that the one path to the Hebrews' capture was lawlessness, he was eager to lead them, through licentiousness and self-indulgence — a great evil — toward a greater evil, impiety, setting pleasure as bait.

"There are," he said, "women of this country, O king, surpassing others in beauty; and no man is more easily captured than by a woman's beauty. So if you allow the most beautiful of them to hire themselves out and offer themselves publicly, they will hook the youth of the opposing side.

"They must be instructed not to yield their charms at once to those who desire them; for coyness, by irritating desire, arouses impulses all the more and inflames passion; and men, driven headlong by their appetites, will endure doing and suffering anything.

"To a lover so disposed, let one of the women anointed for the hunt say haughtily, 'It is not right for you to enjoy intimacy with me until you abandon your ancestral customs and, having changed, honor what I honor. Proof of your firm conversion would become clear to me, were you willing to share in the same libations and sacrifices that we perform to images, statues, and other such objects.'"

"He, caught in manifold snares — by beauty and by the guiding hand of flattering talk — with no reply, his reason pinioned, will wretchedly serve what is commanded, enrolled as a slave of passion."

Such was his counsel. And the king, thinking what had been said not beside the mark, veiled over the law against adulterers and did away with those laws set against seduction and prostitution, as though they had never been written at all, permitting the women, without restraint, to consort with whomever they wished.

Once the license had been granted, they set about seducing the great mass of young men, deceiving their minds and turning them by their sorceries toward impiety, until Phinehas, son of the high priest, roused to fierce anger at what was happening—for it seemed to him a monstrous thing that at one and the same moment both bodies and souls had surrendered themselves, the former to pleasures, the latter to lawbreaking and impiety—performed a young man's exploit worthy of a noble and good man.

For seeing one of his own people sacrificing and then going in to a prostitute, not bowing his head to the ground, not trying to escape the notice of the crowd, not stealing his way in as is usual, but with shameless boldness displaying his disorder and swaggering as if over some solemn matter, when it was in fact laughable, Phinehas, embittered and filled with righteous anger, rushed in on them as they still lay together on the bed, and killed both the lover and the courtesan, cutting through their generative organs as well, because they had lent themselves to unlawful begetting.

Some who witnessed this example of men zealous for self-mastery and reverence toward God imitated it at Moses' command, and rising up in a body they killed all who had been initiated into the man-made gods, together with their kinsmen and friends, thereby cleansing the nation's pollution through the relentless punishment of the original offenders, and by this providing the clearest possible defense of their own piety for the rest. They pitied none of their blood relations who stood condemned, nor let mercy pass over their crimes, but judged those who did the killing to be pure; hence they granted no one an appeal, and thereby won for those who did the deed praise beyond all dispute.

They say that twenty-four thousand were killed in a single day, and along with them the common pollution that had defiled the whole army was destroyed at once. When the rites of purification had been completed, Moses sought to bestow a prize worthy of his valor upon the son of the high priest, who had been first to rush to vengeance. But God anticipated him, granting Phinehas by oracle the greatest of goods—peace, which no man is able to bestow—and besides peace, the supreme authority of the priesthood as well, an inalienable inheritance for himself and his line.

Since none of the internal evils any longer remained, and all who were suspected of desertion or betrayal had perished, it seemed the fittest moment for the campaign against Balak, a man who had contrived countless evils and had also carried them out—contrived them through the seer, by whose curses he hoped to be able to bring down the power of the Hebrews, and carried them out through the licentiousness and intemperance of the women, who corrupted the bodies of those who consorted with them through lust and their souls through impiety.

Moses did not think it wise to make war with the whole army, knowing that such excessive numbers would only get in each other's way, and that a reserve of allies would also be advantageous as support for those who wearied first. So he chose by merit those in their prime, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand in all—for there were that many tribes—and having chosen as general of the war Phinehas, who had already given proof of a general's boldness, he sent the armed men forth over splendid sacrifices, and encouraged them with words to this effect:

"The present contest is not for supremacy of rule, nor to acquire the possessions of others, the aims for which wars are fought either solely or chiefly, but for piety and holiness, from which our enemies have alienated our kinsmen and friends, becoming the accessory cause of the grievous ruin of those they led astray.

It is therefore absurd that we should have become the slayers with our own hands of our own people when they broke the law, yet hold back from those who did us far graver wrong—that we should have killed those who merely learned to do wrong, yet leave unpunished those who compelled and taught it, who are in fact responsible for everything, whatever those others did or suffered."

So strengthened by his exhortations, and rekindling whatever nobility already lay in their souls, they rushed to the contest with unconquerable resolve, as toward a victory already agreed upon; and when they engaged, they showed such an abundance of strength and daring that they slaughtered their opponents like sacrificial victims, while they themselves all returned safe, no one having died, nor even been wounded.

Anyone unaware of what had happened, seeing them return, would have supposed they were coming not from war and battle but rather from the kind of exhibition displays made under arms, which it is customary to hold in time of peace—exercises and drills carried out among friends in imitation of what is done against enemies.

The cities they destroyed, either razing or burning them, so that one could not even say they had originally been settled; and having led away a countless number of captive persons, they judged it right to kill the men and the women—the men because they had begun the unjust plots and deeds, the women because they had bewitched the young men of the Hebrews, becoming the accessory cause of licentiousness and impiety for them and, in the end, of death. But quite young children and virgins they spared, their age drawing forth an amnesty.

And having gained an abundance of plunder from the palaces and from private houses, and also from the farmsteads in the countryside—for the wealth in the rural areas was no less than that in the cities—they came to the camp laden with all the riches taken from the enemy.

Moses praised the general Phinehas and those who had fought in the line, both for their successes and because they had not rushed upon the spoils intending to appropriate the booty for themselves alone, but had brought it out into the open, so that those who had remained in the tents might also share in it. He then ordered those who had fought to remain outside the camp for some days, and directed the high priest to purify from bloodshed those of the allies who had come from the battle line.

For even if killings of enemies are lawful, still the one who kills a man—even justly, in self-defense, and under compulsion—seems to bear some guilt, because of the highest and universal kinship of all mankind; and for this reason those who had done the killing needed purification rites, to be released from what was regarded as pollution.

Not long afterward he also distributed the spoils, giving half to those who had gone to war—and they were few compared to those who had stayed behind—and the other half to those who had remained in the camp. For he judged it right that these too should share in the gain, since even if not with their bodies, at least with their souls they had shared the struggle; for those held in reserve, being no less eager than the combatants, fall short of them only in time, and only because the others got there first.

Since the few had taken more, because they had risked danger first, and the many had taken less, because they had stayed behind, he judged it necessary to consecrate the firstfruits of all the spoil: those held in reserve contributed a fiftieth, and those who had fought in the front contributed a five-hundredth part. Of these firstfruits, he ordered that those from the combatants be given to the high priest, and those from the men who had stayed in the camp to the temple attendants, who are called Levites.

The commanders of thousands and of hundreds, and the whole company of captains and officers, on behalf of their own safety and that of their fellow soldiers, and of a victory beyond all reckoning, voluntarily brought choice firstfruits—all the gold ornaments that each had found among the spoil, and the most costly vessels, whose material again was gold. These Moses took, and admiring the piety of those who brought them, dedicated them in the consecrated tabernacle as a memorial of the men's gratitude.

Most beautiful was the distribution of the firstfruits: the offerings of those who had not fought, who had shown only their eagerness apart from any deed—half of virtue, so to speak—he assigned to the temple attendants; the offerings of those who had struggled, who had risked body and soul and displayed complete manly excellence, he assigned to the high priest who presided over the temple attendants; and the offerings of the captains, since these were fit for leaders, he assigned to God, the leader of all.

All these wars were fought before they had yet crossed the Jordan, the river of that region, against the inhabitants of the land on the far side, a land prosperous and deep-soiled, in which there was a broad plain rich in grain and good for producing fodder for cattle.

When the two tribes that raised cattle, a sixth part of the whole army, saw this land, they begged Moses to allow them to take their allotments there and settle at once, saying that the place was most suitable for pasturing and grazing livestock, being well-watered and rich in grass, and producing of its own accord an abundance of herbage fit for flocks.

But Moses, supposing that they were either demanding, by a kind of precedence, to receive their rewards before the proper time, or shrinking back from the wars still to come—since more kings still lay in wait, who had divided among themselves the land within the river—was thoroughly displeased, and answered in anger, saying:

"So you will sit here at your ease, having leisure when you ought not and idleness, while wars yet unresolved will fall heavy on the necks of your kinsmen and friends whom you leave behind; and shall the rewards be given to you alone, as though all had been achieved by you, while battles and toils and hardships and the very gravest dangers await others?

But it is not just that you should enjoy peace and the good things that come from peace, while the rest struggle in wars and untold evils, nor that the whole should count as merely an addition to a part; on the contrary, it is for the sake of the whole that the parts are deemed worthy of their inheritance.

You are all of equal honor, one people, the same fathers, one household, the same customs, a shared community of laws, and countless other things, each of which binds your kinship together and disposes you toward goodwill. Why then, having been judged worthy of equal shares in the greatest and most essential matters, will you claim more than your share in the distributions, as though you were rulers despising subjects, or masters despising slaves?

You ought to have been instructed by the blows others suffered; for it is the mark of prudent men not to wait until terrors come upon themselves. But now, though you have before you as household examples your own fathers, who spied out this land, and the disasters that befell them and those who shared their folly—for all of them perished except two—instead of refusing to be implicated in any similar wrongdoing, you are emulating their cowardice, you empty-minded men, as though you yourselves would not be just as easily overcome, and you are tripping up the eagerness of those who are resolved to act with manly courage, unstringing and relaxing their resolve. So then, in your haste to do wrong, you will hasten also toward your punishment."

For justice is accustomed to move slowly, but once it has been set in motion it overtakes and catches those who are fleeing.

So then, whenever all the enemies have been laid low and no further war is expected to threaten, and in the final review the allies are found blameless — guilty of no desertion of post or of the field, nor of any other conduct tending to defeat, but shown to have remained steadfast from beginning to end, both in body and in spirit — and the whole land has been emptied of its former inhabitants, then the prizes and rewards of valor will be given to the tribes in equal measure."

They took this admonition mildly, as true sons of a father who wished them very well — for they knew that he did not lord it over them with the arrogance of power, but cared beforehand for all, honoring justice and equality, and never turned his hatred of wickedness into reproach, but always used it to correct those capable of being made better — and they said, "You are right to be indignant, if you have supposed this: that by abandoning the alliance we are hurrying to seize our allotments before the proper time.

But you should know clearly that nothing which comes bound up with virtue frightens us, however burdensome it may prove to be. We judge it a work of virtue both to obey a leader such as you and not to lag behind in dangers, and to be found taking our place in all the campaigns yet to come, until our affairs reach a happy conclusion.

We ourselves, then, drawn up as before, will cross the Jordan under full arms, giving none of the soldiers any pretext for staying behind. But our infant sons and daughters, our wives, and the multitude of our livestock will, if you allow it, be left behind, once we have built houses for the children and the wives and folds for the animals, so that they suffer no harm from a raid, caught unprepared in places without walls or guards."

And he, with a gracious look and a gentler voice, said, "Since you do not deceive me, the allotments you have asked for will remain secured to you. Leave behind your wives and children and livestock, as you wish, but cross over yourselves by companies with the rest, armed and drawn up for battle, ready to fight at a moment's notice, should the need arise.

And afterward, when all the enemies have been laid low, and peace has come, and the conquerors have divided the land, you too will return to your own households, to enjoy the good things that fall to you and to reap the portion you have chosen."

When he had said this and given his promise, filled with good cheer and joy, they settled their families together with their livestock safely within strongholds difficult to capture, most of them built by hand, and then, taking up their weapons, they rushed out ahead of the other allies more eagerly than any, as though they alone were going to fight, or would lead the contest for all; for a man who has received a gift in advance is more eager for the alliance, since he counts it a debt he must repay, not a favor he is doing.

Such, then, are the deeds recounted that were accomplished by him in his kingship. Next must be told all that he achieved through the high priesthood and through lawgiving, for he acquired these offices too as being most fitting for a king.

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