On the Life of Moses II

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

For some say, not unreasonably, that cities can improve only in this way—if either kings become philosophers or philosophers become kings. But Moses will be shown to have exhibited not merely these two abilities together, the royal and the philosophical, but three others besides: one devoted to legislation, one to the high priesthood, and the last to prophecy.

It is about these that I have now chosen to speak, taking it as necessary that all of them fit together in one man. For by the providence of God he became king, lawgiver, high priest, and prophet, and in each office he carried off the highest honors. I must show why all these fit together in the same person.

It belongs to a king to command what must be done and to forbid what must not be done; and the commanding of what is to be done and the forbidding of what is not to be done is the peculiar function of law, so that a king is straightway a living law, and law a just king.

A king and lawgiver ought to oversee not only human affairs but divine ones as well; for the affairs of kings and their subjects are not set right without divine forethought. For this reason such a man needed the highest priesthood as well, so that, having perfect rites and perfect knowledge of the service of God, he might ask, both for himself and for his subjects, the turning away of evils and a share in good things, from one who is gracious and assents to prayers. For how could he fail to bring prayers to fulfillment, being by nature benevolent and holding those who serve him genuinely worthy of special favor?

But since countless things, both human and divine, are unclear even to a king, lawgiver, and high priest—for he is no less a created and mortal being, however great and abundant a portion of good fortune has been thrown about him—he necessarily obtained prophecy as well, so that whatever reasoning cannot grasp, he might find through the providence of God. For where the mind falls short, there prophecy arrives.

A fine partnership indeed, and a wholly harmonious one, this of the four powers; for, interwoven and clinging to one another, they dance together in a chorus, receiving benefits from each other and repaying them in turn, imitating the maiden Graces, whom the unshakable law of nature does not allow to be parted. Of these it would be fitting to say what is customarily said of the virtues: that whoever has one has them all.

First I must speak of the qualities pertaining to the capacity for lawgiving. I am not unaware that the man who is to become the best possible lawgiver ought to possess all the virtues in their fullness and completeness. But since even within families some are nearest of kin, others more distant, though all are related to one another, so too some virtues must be considered more closely attached to particular matters, others less intimately connected.

To the lawgiving capacity these four are especially akin and kindred: love of humanity, love of justice, love of the good, and hatred of wickedness. For by each of these every man is roused who feels the zeal for lawgiving—by love of humanity, to set forth publicly the judgments that benefit the community; by justice, to honor equality and to render to each what is due according to worth; by love of the good, to welcome what is naturally noble and to offer it to all who are worthy, without stint, for the most generous use; by hatred of wickedness, to stand guard against those who dishonor virtue and to regard them with suspicion as common enemies of the human race.

It is a great thing, then, if anyone should manage to acquire even one of the qualities named; but it is astonishing, it seems, that one should be able to grasp all of them together, which Moses alone appears to have achieved, expressing the aforesaid virtues with the utmost clarity in the ordinances he laid down. Those who study the sacred books know this well—books which he would not

have composed, had he not been a man of this nature, but composed under the guidance of God and handed down for the worthy to use—the finest of possessions, likenesses and copies of the patterns carried like statues in the soul, which the aforementioned laws have indeed become, displaying most clearly the virtues already named.

That he himself, as lawgiver, is the best of all who ever arose anywhere, among Greeks or barbarians, and that his laws are the finest and truly divine, omitting nothing that is needed—here is the clearest proof.

If one examines with reason the legal customs of other peoples, one will find that they have been shaken by countless causes—by wars, by tyrannies, or by other unwanted circumstances that fall upon them through the shifting of fortune. Often, too, excessive luxury, swelling through abundant supplies and unstinted resources, has overturned laws, since the majority cannot bear "too much of a good thing," but through satiety fall into wanton excess.

And wanton excess is the enemy of law. But the laws of this man alone remain firm, unshaken, unmoved, sealed as it were with the very seals of nature itself, abiding steadfastly from the day they were written until now, and it is hoped that they will remain for all future time as well, as though immortal, for as long as the sun and moon and the whole heaven and universe exist.

For although the nation has undergone so many changes, both in prosperity and its opposite, not the smallest part of what was ordained has been disturbed, since all, it seems, have held their solemnity and their fitness for God in the highest honor.

But those laws which no famine, plague, or war, no king or tyrant, no uprising of soul or body, of passions or of vices, nor any other calamity, whether sent by God or by man, has ever dissolved—how are these not worthy to be fought for, and

found superior to every argument? Yet this is not the most astonishing thing, though it would rightly be considered great in itself—that the laws have been preserved secure through the whole of time. Rather, more astonishing still, it seems, is this: that not only Jews but nearly all other peoples as well, and especially those who value virtue most highly, have come to hold them in reverence and honor. For this is the special privilege they have won, one that belongs to no other laws.

Here is the proof: among the cities of Greece and of the barbarian world, one might almost say there is not a single one that honors the customs of another; indeed, each barely holds fast even to its own, as it adapts them to the shifting demands of circumstance and occasion.

The Athenians have rejected the customs and laws of the Lacedaemonians, and the Lacedaemonians those of the Athenians; nor, among the barbarian nations, do the Egyptians keep the laws of the Scythians, or the Scythians those of the Egyptians; nor, to put it briefly, do the peoples of Asia keep the laws of those in Europe, or the peoples of Europe those of the Asian nations. Rather, virtually everyone from the rising of the sun to its setting—every country, nation, and city—turns away from foreign customs, and imagines that it will increase acceptance of its own laws by dishonoring those of others.

But our own case is not so; for it draws in and turns toward itself all peoples—barbarians, Greeks, mainlanders, islanders, nations of the east and of the west, Europe, Asia, the whole inhabited world from one end to the other.

For who has not honored that sacred seventh day, granting relief from toil and rest to himself and to those near him, not only the free but slaves as well?

Or rather, granting it even to beasts of burden? For the truce reaches every herd, and everything created for the service of man, which like slaves attend upon their natural master; it reaches also to every kind of tree and plant. For it is not permitted to cut a shoot or a branch, no, not even a leaf, nor to pluck any fruit whatsoever, since all things are released on that day and, as it were, keep a kind of freedom, none being touched, in accordance with a common proclamation.

And who has not marveled at, and reverenced, the fast that is observed, kept yearly with a stricter and more solemn form of that sacred season? For at other times there is much unmixed wine and costly tables and all manner of abundance in food and drink, through which the insatiable pleasures of the belly are increased, further inflaming the desires below it.

But on that day it is not permitted to partake of any food or drink, so that with minds made pure, with no bodily passion troubling or hindering them, of the sort that tends to arise from satiety, they may keep festival, propitiating the Father of the universe with auspicious prayers, through which they are accustomed to ask for forgetfulness of past sins and the acquisition and enjoyment of new blessings.

That the solemn sanctity of this legislation has been admired not only among the Jews but among all other peoples as well is clear both from what has already been said and from what is about to be said.

In ancient times the laws were written in the Chaldean language, and for a long time they remained in that same form, not changing their dialect, until they had not yet revealed their beauty to the rest of mankind.

Once these men had, through their daily continuous study and practice, come to be perceived by others as well, and their fame traveled everywhere -- for beautiful things, even if envy overshadows them for a little while, shine out again in due season by nature's kindness -- some people thought it a grave thing that the laws should be examined by only half of the human race, the barbarian half, while the Greek half would have no share in them at all, and so they turned to translating them.

Since the undertaking was both great and of common benefit, it was entrusted not to private persons, nor to rulers, of whom there is a great number, but to kings, and to the most highly esteemed of kings.

Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, was the third from Alexander, who had taken possession of Egypt, and in the virtues of leadership he was the best not only of his own contemporaries but of all who had ever lived before, so that even now, so many generations later, his fame is sung, since he left behind in cities and lands many proofs and monuments of his greatness of spirit -- so much so that already, as a kind of proverb, extravagant ambitions and grand constructions are called "Philadelphian" after him.

Taken as a whole, the house of the Ptolemies flourished more than other royal houses, and among the Ptolemies, Philadelphus flourished most: for whatever praiseworthy things this one man accomplished, all the rest together could scarcely match, since he became, as it were, the head that rules in a living body, in a certain sense the head of the kings.

This man, then, having conceived a zeal and longing for our legislation, resolved to have it turned from the Chaldean tongue into Greek, and at once sent envoys to the high priest and king of Judea -- for he was one and the same person -- making known his wish and urging him to choose, on the basis of merit, men who would translate the law.

The high priest, delighted, as was natural, and believing that the king had set his heart on such a task not without divine guidance, examined the most highly esteemed of the Hebrews among his people, men who, besides their ancestral education, had also been trained in Greek learning, and gladly sent them off.

When they arrived, they were invited to be his guests, and with witty and earnest words they entertained their host in return, matching him course for course: he tested the wisdom of each by putting forward novel questions rather than the customary ones, and they, aptly and unerringly -- since the occasion did not allow for long speeches -- resolved the problems set before them as if delivering oracles.

Once approved, they set at once to carrying out the tasks of their honorable embassy, and, reckoning among themselves how great a thing it was to translate laws that had been divinely proclaimed by means of human utterance, being able neither to take anything away nor to add anything nor to alter anything, but preserving the original form and pattern of the laws, they looked about for the purest of the places in that region, outside the city; for the places within the walls, being full of all kinds of living creatures because of illnesses and deaths and the unclean practices even of the healthy, were suspect.

The island of Pharos lies off Alexandria; a narrow strip stretches from it toward the city, enclosed by a sea that is not sheer and deep but for the most part shallow, so that the great noise and crash of the waves' onrush dies away long before it reaches the shore.

Judging this, out of all the places round about, to be the most suitable for finding quiet and stillness, and for the soul alone to hold converse with the laws alone, they settled there, and taking the sacred books they lifted up, along with the books, their hands to heaven, asking God that they might not fail of their purpose. And he assented to their prayers, so that the greater part, or even the whole, of the human race might be helped by making use, for the amendment of life, of philosophical and altogether beautiful

decrees. Sitting apart, with no one present except the elements of nature -- earth, water, air, heaven -- concerning whose coming-into-being they were first to prophesy as sacred interpreters (for the making of the cosmos is the beginning of the laws), they, as though inspired, prophesied, not different things, different men, but the very same words and phrases, all of them, as though an unseen prompter were speaking into the ear of each.

And yet who does not know that every language, and Greek especially, abounds in words, and that the same thought can be given many different shapes by translating it now this way, now that, fitting different expressions to it at different times? This, they say, did not happen in the case of this legislation, but proper words came together to match proper words, the Greek matching the Chaldean, each fitted exactly to the things signified.

For just as, I think, in geometry and in logic the things signified do not admit variety of expression, but what was laid down from the beginning remains unaltered, so too, it seems, these men in the same way discovered the words that ran in exact accord with the things themselves, words that alone, or most of all, were bound to make plain, with full clarity, the things signified.

The clearest proof of this is this: if Chaldeans learn Greek, or Greeks learn the language of the Chaldeans, and come upon both texts, the Chaldean and the translated one, they marvel at them and revere them as sisters, or rather as one and the same, both in their matter and in their wording, and they call the translators not interpreters but hierophants and prophets, since it was granted to them, with minds of pure reasoning, to run together with the utterly pure spirit of Moses.

This is why, even to this day, every year a feast and a general assembly is held on the island of Pharos, to which not only Jews but a great multitude of others sail across, both to honor the place where the light of that translation first shone out, and to give thanks to God for a benefaction that, old as it is, is always young again.

After the prayers and the thanksgivings, some pitch tents on the shore, while others, reclining on the sand of the beach in the open air with their households and friends, feast there, considering the shore at that time more luxurious than any furnishing found in palaces.

In this way the laws show themselves to be objects of envy and of contention for all, both private persons and rulers, and this even though the nation has for a long time now not been prosperous -- for the affairs of those not at their peak tend somehow to be overshadowed.

But if some opportunity should arise for something more splendid, how great an advance is it reasonable to expect? I think that people would abandon their own ways, and, bidding a hearty farewell to their ancestral customs, each nation would change over to honoring these laws alone; for once the nation's good fortune causes the laws to shine forth together with it, they will dim all the others, just as the risen sun dims the stars.

What has been said, then, is enough to constitute great praise of the lawgiver. But there is another and greater praise, contained in the most sacred books themselves, to which we must now turn, as a demonstration of the virtue of their author.

Of these books, one part is the historical, and the other concerns commands and prohibitions; of this latter part we shall speak second, having first given a precise account of the part that comes first in order.

Of the historical part, one portion concerns the coming-into-being of the cosmos, the other is genealogical; and of the genealogical portion, one concerns the punishment of the impious, the other, in turn, the honoring of the righteous. We must explain for what reason he began the legislation from this point, placing the part on commands and prohibitions second.

For he did not, like some historian, make it his business to leave behind for those who came after him records of ancient deeds, for the profitless delight of the soul; rather, he engaged in this account of origins by beginning from on high, from the coming-into-being of the universe, in order to demonstrate two most necessary things: first, that the same being is both the father and maker of the cosmos and, in truth, its lawgiver; and second, that the one who is to make use of the laws will embrace the order of nature and will live in accordance with the arrangement of the whole, in harmony and concord between deeds and words and between words and deeds.

Now of the other lawgivers, some straightway laid down what one must do and what one must not, and fixed penalties against transgressors, while others, thought to be better, did not begin from this point, but first founded and established in speech the city they considered most fitting and appropriate to the constitution they had founded, and then fitted the constitution to it by the enactment of laws.

But our lawgiver, holding the first of these methods to be, as it indeed was, tyrannical and despotic -- giving commands without persuasion, as to slaves rather than to free men -- and the second, though harmonious, still not entirely praiseworthy in the judgment of all critics, as it seems, differed from both of the methods just described.

For in his commands and prohibitions he mostly lays a foundation and offers persuasion rather than issuing orders outright, attempting, by means of prefaces and epilogues, to guide his hearers in most of the most necessary matters, for the sake of exhortation rather than because he considered it beneath the dignity of the laws to write in this fashion; for, looking with the most precise vision of the mind upon the magnitude and beauty of the whole legislation, and judging it to be too great and too divine to be bounded within any circle drawn upon the earth, he introduced the coming-into-being of the great city, the laws being a most faithful image of the constitution of the cosmos.

This he judged to be the case, for anyone willing to examine closely the powers of the individual provisions laid down will find that they aim at the harmony of the universe and are in accord with the reason of eternal nature.

Therefore, those who were granted goods in abundance—everything that makes for bodily health, wealth, reputation, and the other external strokes of fortune—but who rebelled against virtue, and, not by necessity but by deliberate choice, pursued cunning, injustice, and the other vices as though they were the greatest gain when in fact they were the greatest loss, treating them as enemies not merely of other men but of the whole heaven and cosmos—these, he says, did not undergo the customary punishments, but altogether novel and extraordinary ones, which Justice, seated beside God and hating wickedness, brought about on a grand scale, when the most active elements of the universe, water and fire, attacked them, so that in the cycle of the seasons some were destroyed by floods and others perished by burning.

Seas were lifted up, and rivers, both those already existing and sudden torrents, swelled and overflowed, sweeping away all the cities on the plain; while those in the hill country were destroyed by the continuous and unrelenting downpours of rain, day and night alike.

But afterward, in time, when the race had grown again from those who survived and had increased into a great multitude, since the descendants did not make the suffering of their ancestors into a lesson in self-control, but turned instead to license, becoming zealots for still harsher practices, God resolved to consume them with fire.

Then, as the sacred sayings report, lightning bolts poured down from heaven and burned up the impious and their cities; and to this day the memorials of that unspeakable disaster are shown in Syria—ruins, ash, sulfur, smoke, and a faint flame still rising, as though from a fire still smoldering.

And in this same event it happened both that the impious were punished with the penalties just described, and that those who excelled in nobility of character fared well, receiving rewards worthy of their virtue.

For while the fiery bolt was falling and the whole land was ablaze together with its inhabitants, one man alone, a resident foreigner, was saved by divine forethought, because he had embraced none of the local transgressions—though resident foreigners are accustomed, for the sake of their own safety, to honor the customs of the land, since danger from the native population follows those who dishonor them. And yet he had not attained to the summit of wisdom, such that he was judged worthy of so great a reward through the perfection of his own nature; rather, he alone had refused to go along with the many, who had turned toward soft living and had kindled every pleasure and every desire with lavish supply, as though feeding a flame with a mass of dense fuel.

And at the great flood, when nearly the whole human race perished, one household alone, tradition says, remained untouched by any evil—the eldest and head of the house, since it happened that he had never laid hold of any wrongdoing by his own will. The manner of his deliverance, as the sacred books record it, deserves to be told, both for its greatness and for the improvement of character it teaches.

For being judged fit not only to escape the common disaster but himself to become the beginning of a second generation of mankind, by divine commands which the oracles set forth, he built a great work of wood, three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth, and thirty in height, joined together, and fitted inside it with level chambers and upper stories—three and four stories high—and having prepared provisions, he brought in from every kind of animal, both those that walk on land and those that fly, breeding pairs of male and female, so as to leave seed for the renewal of times yet to come.

For he knew that God's nature is gracious, and that even if particular forms should perish, the imperishability residing in the kinds themselves remains, on account of their likeness to him and because nothing that has come to be by his purpose is ever utterly dissolved. For this reason all the animals obeyed, and even those that until then had been thoroughly wild grew tame, and, like beasts broken in by a herdsman or shepherd, followed along.

After the entrance of them all, anyone who beheld the fullness within would not have been wrong to say that it carried in itself a replica of the whole earth, bearing all the countless kinds of living things which the whole earth had produced before and would perhaps produce again.

And what had been foreshadowed came to pass not long afterward. For the suffering abated, and the force of the flood diminished day by day, as the rains were held back and the water that had been poured out over the whole earth was in part consumed by the burning of the sun and in part receded into ravines, gorges, and the other hollow places of the earth. For, as though at God's command, each nature took back what it had lent, as it were, on necessary loan—sea, springs, and rivers; for every stream returned to its own proper place.

And after the purification of the region beneath the moon, when the earth had been washed clean and appeared new, such as it is reasonable to suppose it was when in the beginning it was created together with the whole cosmos, he came forth from the wooden structure—himself, his wife, his sons, and their wives—and together with the household, the kinds of animals that had gathered there came out in herds, for the sowing and generation of their own likenesses.

These are the prizes and rewards of good men, through which not only did they themselves and their kin obtain deliverance, escaping the greatest dangers that beset all people everywhere at the upheaval of the elements, but they also became the leaders of a new birth and the founders of a second cycle—left behind like sparks kept alive of the best kind of living things, mankind, which alone was allotted dominion over all earthly creatures, having become a replica of God's power, a visible image of the invisible nature, an eternal thing that has come into being.

We have now gone through two parts of the life of Moses—that concerning kingship and that concerning lawgiving; a third remains to be rendered, that concerning priesthood. Now the greatest and most necessary quality that must belong to a high priest is piety, and this above all Moses practiced, having also been blessed with a fortunate nature, which philosophy, taking it up like good soil, improved through the contemplation of the noblest doctrines, and did not let go until the fruits of virtue had come to full ripeness through both words and deeds.

And so, along with a few others, he became a lover of God and beloved by God, inspired by a heavenly love, and having honored above all the ruler of the universe, he was honored in return by him; and the honor fitting for a wise man is to serve that which truly is, and the priesthood has made it its practice to serve God. Of this reward, than which there is no greater good among existing things, he was judged worthy, being instructed in each particular by oracles

for the liturgies and sacred services. But first it was necessary that, like the soul, the body too be made pure, touched by no passion, but purified from everything belonging to mortal nature—food, drink, and intercourse with women.

The last of these he had already despised for a long time, indeed almost from the moment he first began to prophesy and to be possessed by God, considering it fitting to keep himself always ready to receive the oracles; and he disregarded food and drink altogether for forty days in succession, clearly because he had better nourishment, that which comes through contemplation, by which, inspired from above out of heaven, first his mind and then, through the soul, his body as well was made better, improving in both strength and vigor in each respect, so that those who saw him afterward could scarcely believe it.

For having gone up, by divine commands, onto the highest and most sacred of the mountains in that region—one that was inaccessible and untrodden—he is said to have remained there that whole time, taking with him nothing needed for the necessary enjoyment of food; and after, as has been said, forty days, he came down more beautiful in appearance than when he had gone up, so that those who saw him were awestruck and astonished, and could no longer bear to fix their eyes upon him because of the sunlike radiance that flashed from him.

While still lingering above, he was initiated, being taught all the matters concerning the priesthood, and first, in the order of things, those first in importance—the matters concerning the construction of the sanctuary and everything within it.

Now if they had already taken possession of the land into which they were migrating, it would have been necessary to establish a most conspicuous temple, built of the purest stone and costly materials, and around it to build great walls and countless houses for the temple attendants, naming the place a holy city.

But since they were still wandering in the wilderness, not yet settled permanently, it was fitting for them to have a portable sanctuary, so that on their journeys and encampments they might offer sacrifices and perform all the other rites of worship, lacking nothing that those who dwell in cities ought to have.

He resolved, then, to construct a tabernacle, a most sacred work, the design of which Moses was taught on the mountain through divinely given oracles, beholding in his soul the incorporeal patterns of the bodies that were to be made, according to which, as from an archetypal drawing and intelligible models, the perceptible copies were to be fashioned.

For it was fitting that to the true high priest should also be entrusted the construction of the sanctuary, so that out of his great abundance he might render the services in the priesthood harmonious and in accord with what had been fashioned

in the exercise of the priesthood. So the pattern of the model was sealed upon the mind of the prophet, sketched out and shaped in advance invisibly, without matter, in forms unseen; and the finished work was fashioned to match the pattern, the craftsman impressing the seals upon the appropriate material substances for each part.

This was how it was constructed: forty-eight pillars of the most incorruptible cedar, cut from the finest-grown trunks, were overlaid with thick gold; then under each two silver bases were set, and at the top of the pillar a golden capital was fitted.

In length the craftsman arranged forty pillars, twenty on each half, leaving no gap between them but fitting and joining them in sequence, so that a single continuous face might appear, like a wall; and for the innermost width the remaining eight — six along the middle space, and two at the corners on either side of the middle, one on the right and one on the left; and at the entrance four more, like the others in all respects except that one base took the place of two of those opposite; and after these, five furthest out, differing only in their bases, for these were of bronze.

So that the pillars of the tabernacle in all amounted — apart from the two hidden ones at the corners — to fifty-five visible, completing the number that runs from the unit up to the ten of perfection. But if one wished to set apart, separately, the five in the forecourt that join the open space,

which he has called the courtyard, there will remain the most sacred number of fifty, which is the power of the right-angled triangle — the very principle of the coming-to-be of the universe — completed from the pillars within: forty of those along each side, twenty on each, six of those in the middle apart from the ones hidden at the corners, and four of those opposite, on which the veil hangs.

I will explain the reason why I place the five together with the fifty and yet set them apart from them. Five is the number of the senses, and sense-perception in a human being inclines partly toward external things and partly bends back toward the mind, being a servant of the mind under nature's laws.

For this reason he assigned the borderland to the five: for what is within them inclines toward the innermost sanctuary of the tabernacle, which stands symbolically for the realm of the mind, while what is outside inclines toward the open space and the courtyard, which are the realm of the senses; and this is also why they differ in their bases, for these are of bronze; and since, of the sense-perception within us, the mind is the head and ruling part, while the extremity and, as it were, base is the object of sense, he likened the mind to gold and the object of sense to bronze.

These are the measurements of the pillars: ten cubits in length, one and a half in width, so that the tabernacle might appear equal in all its parts.

He clothed it in beautiful and varied woven fabrics, using hyacinth-blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen in the weaving. For he fashioned ten curtains — so named in the sacred writings — from the kinds just mentioned, each twenty-eight cubits in length and extending to four cubits in width, so that they might have both the ten of perfection and the four that is the substance of the ten, and the number twenty-eight, which is perfect, equal to its own parts, and the forty, most productive of life, in which they say a human being is shaped in nature's workshop.

The twenty-eight cubits of the curtains, then, are divided as follows: ten along the roof — for that is the width of the tabernacle — and the rest along the sides, nine on each, extending to cover the pillars, with one cubit left short of the ground, so that the beautiful fabric might not drag.

Of the forty cubits reckoned from the width of the ten curtains, thirty are taken up by the length — for that is also the length of the tabernacle — nine by the rear chamber, and the remainder at the forecourt, so that it forms a binding for the whole enclosure; and over the forecourt hangs the veil.

In a sense the curtains themselves are also veils, not only because they cover the roof and the walls, but also because they are woven of the same kinds — hyacinth-blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen. From these same materials both the veil and what is called the covering were made: the one within, at the four pillars, so that the innermost sanctuary might be concealed; the other outside, at the five pillars, so that no one could

of the unconsecrated behold from a distance the holy things. He chose the materials of the fabrics by the finest selection, out of the countless materials available, selecting those equal in number to the elements out of which the universe was fashioned, and having a proportion corresponding to them — earth, water, air, and fire: for fine linen is likened to earth, purple to water, hyacinth-blue to air (for this is by nature dark), and scarlet to fire, since both are flame-colored; for it was necessary, in constructing a hand-made sanctuary for the Father and Ruler of the universe, to take substances resembling those out of which he fashioned the whole.

The tabernacle, then, was constructed in the manner described, like a sacred temple. Around it a sacred precinct was set, a hundred cubits in length and fifty in width, having pillars standing an equal distance of five cubits apart, so that they numbered sixty in all, distributed as forty along the length and twenty along the width, half on each side.

The material of the columns was cedar within, silver on the surface, and the bases of all of them bronze, and the height equal to five cubits; for it seemed fitting to the craftsman to make the height of the so-called courtyard exactly half, so that the tabernacle, raised aloft, might appear twice as high. Fine linen curtains, like sails, were fitted along the length and width to the pillars, so that none of the impure

might enter. The arrangement was as follows: the tabernacle stood in the middle, thirty cubits in length and ten in width including the depth of the pillars, standing apart from the courtyard on three sides at an equal distance — two along the sides and one at the rear chamber — the distance being measured at twenty cubits; but at the forecourt, naturally, because of the crowds entering, the distance was greater, fifty cubits: for in this way the hundred cubits of the courtyard were to be filled out, the twenty at the rear chamber and the thirty taken up by the tabernacle being combined with the fifty at the entrances.

For the forecourt of the tabernacle stood, as it were, at the middle boundary of a double fifty — the one toward the east, where the entrances are, the other toward the west, where both the length of the tabernacle and the enclosure behind it lie.

Another forecourt, most beautiful and greatest, was constructed at the beginning of the entrance into the courtyard, by means of four pillars, across which was stretched a varied fabric, made in the same manner and from the same material as those within, by the tabernacle.

Along with these, sacred vessels were also made: the ark, the lampstand, the table, the incense altar, and the altar. The altar was set up in the open air, opposite the entrances of the tabernacle, at a distance sufficient for the ministers to perform the sacrifices offered daily.

The ark stood in the innermost, inaccessible sanctuary within the veils, gilded richly both within and without; its lid, as it were a cover, is what the sacred books call the mercy seat.

The length and width of this are given, but no depth, since it is made most nearly like a geometrical plane surface — which seems to be a symbol, in a more natural sense, of the propitious power of God, and in a more ethical sense, of the mind's disposition when it is propitious to itself: that it ought to lower and bring down, out of love for freedom from vanity joined with knowledge, the irrational conceit that lifts itself up and swells with pride.

The ark, then, is a vessel for the laws, for in it are deposited the oracles that were given; and the lid, called the mercy seat, is the base for two winged beings, which in the ancestral tongue are called Cherubim, but which, as the Greeks would say, mean 'full knowledge and much understanding.'

Some say that these are symbols of the two hemispheres set facing one another, the one beneath the earth and the one above it; for the whole heaven is winged.

But I would say that what is disclosed through these, by way of hidden meaning, are the two most ancient and highest powers of the One who Is — the creative and the kingly. The creative power is named God, by which he set in place and made and ordered this universe; the kingly is named Lord, by which he rules over what has come to be and holds sway over it firmly and with justice.

For he alone, being truly real, is also truly a maker without falsehood, since he brought into being what did not exist, and he is by nature a king, because none of the things that have come to be

could rule more justly than the one who made them. In the space between the four and five pillars — which, properly speaking, is the forecourt, closed off by two hangings, the inner one called the veil and the outer one called the covering — the remaining three of the vessels mentioned above were set up: in the middle the incense altar, a symbol of the thanksgiving owed to earth and water for what comes from each of them; for this occupies the middle place of the cosmos.

As for the lampstand: since the moon and the other planets, being far removed from the northern region, make their circuits toward the south, six branches, three on each side, grow out from the middle lamp, making a total of seven.

Above them all are seven lamps and lights, symbols of what the natural philosophers call the planets. For the sun, like the lampstand's central branch, is stationed in the fourth place among the six and gives light to the three above it and to the equal number below it, tuning what is truly a musical and divine instrument.

The table is set toward the north, bearing bread and salt, since the northern winds are the most nourishing, and because nourishment comes from heaven and earth alike — heaven by sending rain, earth by bringing seeds to maturity through the inflow of waters.

The symbols of heaven and earth stand beside one another, as our argument has shown: of heaven, the lampstand; of the regions around the earth, from which the vapors rise, the altar rightly called the altar of incense.

The altar standing in the open air he is accustomed to call the altar of sacrifice, as though it were something that preserves and guards sacrifices rather than consumes them — hinting thereby not at the limbs and parts of what is offered, which by nature are consumed by fire, but at the intention of the one who makes the offering.

For if he is thankless and unjust, the sacrifices are unsacrificed, the rites unholy, and the prayers ill-omened, admitting total ruin; for even when they seem to occur, they produce not release from sins but a reminder of them.

But if he is devout and just, the sacrifice remains secure even though the meat is consumed — or rather, even if no victim at all is brought. For what could true sacrifice be, other than the piety of a soul that loves God? Its gratitude is made immortal, and, inscribed as on a monument, it is enrolled before God, enduring forever together with the sun and the moon and the whole universe.

Next the craftsman fashioned a sacred garment for the man who was to be established as high priest, altogether beautiful and most admirable, with an intricate weave in its fabrics. The woven pieces were of two kinds: the undergarment, and the one called the ephod.

The undergarment, then, was made of simpler, unmixed material; for it was ornamented with golden pomegranates, bells, and floral wreaths.

The ephod, a most distinguished and skillfully wrought work, was made with the most perfect craftsmanship from the materials already named — violet, purple, fine linen, and scarlet — with gold interwoven; for sheets of gold, cut into fine threads, were woven together with every strand.

On the shoulder-pieces were set two most precious stones of costly emerald, on which were engraved the names of the tribal leaders, six on each — twelve in all. And on the breast were placed twelve other precious stones, differing in color, resembling seals, arranged in four rows of three; these were fitted onto what is called the oracle.

The oracle was made square and doubled, as it were a base, so that it might bear the image of two virtues, manifestation and truth. The whole was hung by golden chains from the ephod, fastened firmly to it so that it should never come loose.

A golden plate, like a crown, was made bearing four engraved letters of a name which only those whose ears and tongue have been purified by wisdom may lawfully hear and speak in the holy places, and by no one else at all, anywhere.

The theologian says the name is of four letters, perhaps setting these down as symbols of the first numbers — one, two, three, and four — since all things consist in four: the point, the line, the surface, and the solid, which are the measures of everything; and likewise the finest harmonies in music: the fourth in the ratio of four to three, the fifth in the ratio of three to two, the octave in the ratio of two to one, and the double octave in the ratio of four to one. The number four has countless other virtues too, most of which we have set out precisely in our treatise On Numbers.

Beneath it was a turban, so that the plate should not touch the head. In addition a headdress was made; for the kings of the East are accustomed to use a headdress in place of a diadem.

Such, then, was the garment of the high priest. But the meaning it carries, both as a whole and in its parts, must not be passed over in silence. As a whole it became an image and likeness of the world, and its parts are likenesses of the world's individual parts.

We must begin with the ankle-length robe. This entire garment is violet, an impression of the air; for by nature the air is dark and, in a sense, reaches to the feet, stretching from the region beneath the moon down to the boundaries of the earth, poured out in every direction. Hence the robe too is poured out over the whole body, from the chest down to the feet.

From it, at the ankles, hang pomegranates, flowers, and bells: the flowers are a symbol of earth, for all things flower and sprout from it; the pomegranates are a symbol of water, aptly named from their flowing; and the bells are a symbol of the harmony and concord between the two — for earth is not sufficient for generation without water, nor water without the substance of earth, but only the union and blending of both.

The very placement bears the clearest witness to this meaning: for just as the pomegranates, flowers, and bells are at the lowest part of the robe, so too the things of which they are symbols, earth and water, have been allotted the lowest region in the world, and, sounding in harmony with the whole, display their own powers at fixed periods of time and at the seasons proper to them.

Of the three elements, then, out of which and within which all mortal and perishable kinds exist — air, water, earth — the robe together with the ornaments hanging at the ankles has fittingly been shown to be a symbol. For just as the robe is one, the three elements named are also of a single kind, since everything below the moon undergoes change and alteration; and just as the pomegranates and flowers hang from the robe, so in a sense earth and water are suspended from air, for air is their vehicle.

The ephod, our argument will show by plausible conjectures, is a symbol of heaven. First, the two round emerald stones on the shoulder-pieces indicate, as some suppose, the two stars that govern day and night, the sun and the moon; but as one would say who comes nearer the truth, they indicate each of the two hemispheres — for, like the stones, the part above the earth and the part below it are equal, and neither by nature waxes and wanes as the moon does.

The color too bears further witness; for the appearance of the whole sky, as it strikes the sight, resembles emerald. And necessarily on each of the two stones six names are engraved, because each of the two hemispheres, cutting the zodiac in half, takes in six constellations.

Then the twelve stones on the breast, unlike one another in color, distributed into four rows of three — of what else are these tokens than the zodiac circle? For this too, divided fourfold out of three signs each, produces the seasons of the year — spring, summer, autumn, winter — four turnings, each bounded by three signs, made known through the revolutions of the sun according to that unshaken, most steadfast, and truly divine principle found in numbers.

Hence they were also fitted onto what is fittingly called the oracle; for the turnings and yearly seasons are constituted by a fixed and settled principle — the most paradoxical thing — displaying, through their timely change, their own perpetual permanence.

It is well, and altogether fitting, that the twelve stones differ in color and that none is like another; for each of the signs in the zodiac produces its own proper effect upon air, earth, and water and their affections, and further upon all the kinds of animals and plants.

The oracle is doubled, and not without reason: for reason is twofold, both in the universe as a whole and in human nature. In the universe as a whole there is the reason concerned with the incorporeal, paradigmatic Forms out of which the intelligible cosmos was framed, and the reason concerned with visible things, which are imitations and likenesses of those Forms, out of which this perceptible cosmos was fashioned; while in a human being one reason is internal, the other uttered — the one like a spring, the other its outward flow issuing from it. The seat of the one is the ruling faculty of the soul; the seat of the other, in its utterance, is the tongue and mouth and all the rest of the apparatus of the voice.

The craftsman gave the oracle a square shape, hinting very beautifully that both the reason of nature and the reason of man must stand firm on every side and be shaken by nothing whatsoever. For this reason he also assigned to it the two virtues already named, Manifestation and Truth: for the reason of nature is true and manifests all things, and the reason of the sage, in imitating it, ought fittingly to be utterly truthful, honoring truth, and to overshadow nothing out of envy — since the disclosure of these things will benefit those who are thereby instructed.

Moreover, to the two reasons within each of us — the uttered and the internal — he assigned two virtues proper to each: to the uttered, Manifestation; to the one according to the mind, Truth. For it befits the mind to admit no falsehood, and the expression of it to hinder nothing that belongs to the most exact manifestation.

There is no benefit in a reason that speaks solemnly of noble and serious things but is unaccompanied by a corresponding sequence of proper deeds; hence he hung the oracle from the shoulder-piece, so that it should not hang loose, refusing to allow reason to be uncoupled from deeds — for he makes the shoulder a symbol of activity and action.

Such, then, are the things hinted at through the sacred vestment. In place of a diadem he sets the tiara on the head, judging that the one consecrated to God, for as long as he holds the priesthood, should take precedence over everyone — not only private citizens but kings as well.

Above it is the golden plate, on which the engravings of the four letters were stamped, letters from which, they say, the name of the One who is is signified — since it is not possible for anything among beings to come to be without the invocation of God; for goodness and his gracious power are the harmony of all things.

In this manner the high priest, thus arrayed, sets out for the sacred rites, so that when he enters to offer the ancestral prayers and sacrifices, the whole cosmos may enter with him through the imitations he bears: of air, the ankle-length robe; of water, the pomegranate; of earth, the flower; of fire, the scarlet; of heaven, the shoulder-piece; and, in the likeness of the two hemispheres, the round emeralds on the shoulder-clasps, on each of which are six engravings; of the zodiac, the twelve stones on the breast in four rows of three; and of that which holds together and governs the universe, the oracle itself.

For it was necessary that the one consecrated to the Father of the cosmos should employ as intercessor a son most perfect in virtue, both for the forgetting of sins and for the provision of the most abundant goods.

Perhaps, too, he thereby instructs beforehand the servant of God that, even if he cannot be the maker of the cosmos, he ought at least to strive continually to be worthy of the cosmos — since, by putting on its likeness, he must in his mind straightway carry about the pattern, and himself, in a manner, be transposed from a man into the nature of the cosmos and — if it is permitted to say so, and it is permitted, since one speaks the truth — be a miniature cosmos.

Outside the forecourt, by the entrances, stands a bronze basin, made by the craftsman not from raw, unworked material — as commonly happens — but from vessels carefully wrought for another use, which the women brought forward with all zeal and eagerness, vying with the men in piety, having resolved to undertake a noble contest and striving, so far as their power allowed, not to fall short of the men's devotion.

For their mirrors, with which they were accustomed to adorn their beauty, they offered up — no one having commanded it, but of their own spontaneous eagerness — as the most fitting firstfruits of self-control, of chastity in marriage, and, one might say, of the beauty of the soul.

The craftsman resolved to take these and melt them down, and to fashion from them nothing else but the basin, so that the priests who were to enter the sanctuary, in order to perform the appointed services, might use it for their ablutions, washing above all their hands and feet — a symbol of a blameless life and of a manner of living pure in praiseworthy deeds, directing itself not along the rough road of vice — or, more properly, the pathless waste — but along the highway that leads through virtue.

'Let him who is about to be sprinkled be reminded,' it says, 'that the material of this vessel was mirrors, so that he too may gaze, as into a mirror, upon his own mind, and if any disgrace appears there arising from irrational passion — whether from pleasure exalting and lifting it beyond due measure, or, conversely, from grief compressing and casting it down, or from fear turning it back and deflecting its onward impulse, or from desire dragging and straining it violently toward things not present — he may attend to this and heal it, laying claim instead to genuine and unadulterated beauty.'

For the beauty of the body lies in symmetry of parts, in good complexion and good flesh, and has but a brief season of bloom; but the beauty of the mind lies in harmony of doctrines and concord of virtues, which does not wither with length of time but, the longer it endures, the more it is renewed and grows young, adorned with the surpassing color of truth and of the agreement of deeds with words, of words with deeds, and further of counsels with both.

When he had been taught the patterns of the sacred tabernacle, and had in turn taught those who were keen in mind and naturally suited for undertaking and bringing to completion the works that necessarily had to be made — since, once the sanctuary had fittingly been constructed, it was necessary also that the fittest priests be chosen and instructed beforehand in the manner in which they ought to offer up the sacrifices and perform the sacred rites.

His brother, then, he judged by merit above all others and appointed high priest, and ordained that brother's sons as priests, granting the privilege not to his own kin as such, but to the piety and holiness which he discerned present in these men. Clear proof of this: he deemed neither of his own two sons worthy of this honor — though he would necessarily have chosen both, had he assigned any honor out of favoritism to his own family.

He instituted this, with the assent of the whole nation, in a wholly novel manner, as the sacred oracles relate it to have been done: first he washes them with the purest and most life-giving water from a spring, and then hands over the sacred vestments — to his brother the ankle-length robe and the shoulder-piece, like a breastplate, the many-colored fabric that is an image of the universe; to his nephews, linen tunics, girdles, and drawers for all.

The tunics, so that they might be unimpeded and readier for the sacred services, the loose folds being girded up; the drawers, so that nothing that ought to be hidden should be exposed, especially as they went up to the altar or came down from it and performed everything with haste and urgency.

For if the vesture had not been made this precise, as a safeguard against the uncertainty of what was to come, then, on account of the intense swiftness required in the services, they would have been stripped of the propriety

owed to sacred things and sacred persons, unable to preserve it. When he had trained them in their vestments, he took the sweetest-smelling ointment, prepared by the perfumer's art, and first anointed, out in the open, the altar and the basin, sprinkling them seven times; then the tabernacle and each of the sacred vessels — the ark, the lampstand, the incense altar, the table, the libation vessels, the bowls, and everything else necessary and useful for the sacrifices; and finally, bringing the high priest forward, he anointed his head with abundant oil.

Having accomplished this in due form, he commanded that a calf and two rams be brought — the calf, so that he might sacrifice it for the remission of sins, hinting that for everything that comes into being, however excellent it may be, insofar as it has entered into becoming, sinning is innate, on whose behalf it is necessary that the divine be propitiated with prayers and sacrifices, lest it be provoked to anger;

and of the rams, the one for a whole burnt offering of thanksgiving for the governance of the universe, in which each part has its allotted share, enjoying the benefit that comes from the elements: of earth, for dwelling and the nourishment it yields; of water, for drink, for washing, and for sailing; of air, for breath and for the perceptions received through the senses — since air is the instrument of them all — and further for the seasons of the year; of fire, the useful kind for cooking and warming, and the heavenly kind for light and for all visible things;

and the other ram for the complete consecration of those made priests through purifying cleansing, which he fittingly called 'of perfection' (Exod. 29:26; Lev. 8:22), since they were about to be initiated into the rites befitting servants and ministers of God.

Of its blood he takes some and pours it around the altar, and, holding out a bowl, receives some in it, and with this anoints three parts of the body of the priests being consecrated — the tip of the ear, the tip of the hand, the tip of the foot, all on the right side — hinting that the perfect man must be pure in word, in deed, and in the whole conduct of life; for the ear judges word, the hand is a symbol of deed, and the foot of the course of one's life.

And since each of these parts is both an extremity and on the right side, we must understand this to signify progress in each of them carried out with dexterity — a progress that reaches after the summit of happiness and after the end toward which it is necessary to press on and to refer all our actions, taking aim, as in archery, at the target set for our life.

In earlier times he anointed the three parts just mentioned on the priests with the unmixed blood of a single victim, the one called the offering "of consecration." But now, taking blood from that portion by the altar which came from all the victims that had been sacrificed, and mixing it with the oil of the anointing already described, which the perfumers had prepared, he sprinkled the resulting compound on the priests and on their garments. His purpose was that they should share not only in the purification proper to the outer, open-air precinct, but also in that of the innermost sanctuary, since they were about to minister there as well; for everything within had been anointed with oil.

Once other sacrifices had been offered in addition to the earlier ones—some by the priests on their own behalf, others by the council of elders on behalf of the whole nation—Moses entered the tabernacle, bringing his brother with him. It was the eighth day of the rite of consecration, and the last, for on the seven preceding days he had performed the sacred initiation of Aaron and his nephews. Having gone in, he instructed him, as a good teacher instructs an apt pupil, in what manner the high priest must perform the services within.

Then both came out, and, raising their hands before their heads, offered on behalf of the nation the prayers that were fitting, from a pure and most reverent disposition. And while they were still praying, something utterly astonishing occurred: out of the inner sanctuary—whether it was a portion torn from the purest ether, or air resolved into fire through the natural transformation of the elements—a sudden, unbroken flame burst forth and rushed with concentrated force upon the altar, consuming everything on it. This was, I think, the clearest possible demonstration that nothing was accomplished there without divine providence.

For it was fitting that an extraordinary gift be granted to holy things, not only among those that human craftsmen produce, but also from the purest fire of all being—so that the fire used for ordinary human purposes should not touch the altar among us, since it is mingled, perhaps, with countless forms of defilement.

For that fire touches not only the flesh of irrational animals roasted or boiled to satisfy the unjust gluttony of the wretched belly, but also human beings destroyed by treachery—not three or four of them, but whole crowded gatherings of people.

Indeed, before now, great fleets full of marines have been consumed by fire-bearing arrows shot against them, and whole cities have been utterly destroyed, smoldering down to their foundations and reduced to ash, so that not even a trace was left of the settlement that had once stood there.

For this reason, it seems to me, he drove the fire used for ordinary purposes away from the most holy and purest altar as something defiled, and in its place rained down from heaven an ethereal flame, to mark the distinction between the holy and the profane, between what belongs to humankind and what belongs to God. For it was fitting that a more incorruptible substance than the fire that serves the needs of daily life should be allotted to the sacrifices.

Since many sacrifices were necessarily brought each day, and especially at festivals and gatherings, both privately on behalf of each individual and communally on behalf of everyone, for countless and varied reasons—the nation being extremely numerous and devout—a multitude of temple attendants was also required for the sacred services.

The selection of these came about once again in an entirely novel manner, not the customary one. He set apart one of the twelve tribes and appointed it by merit, proposing prizes and rewards of excellence for a task pleasing to God.

The occasion for this was as follows. When Moses had gone up onto the mountain nearby and spent many days there alone with God, those of unsteady character judged his absence a fitting opportunity, as though anarchy had set in; released from restraint, they rushed headlong into impiety, and, forgetting the reverence due to Him who is, became zealous devotees of Egyptian fabrications.

They fashioned a golden bull, an imitation of the animal held most sacred in that country, and offered sacrifices that were no sacrifices, set up dances that were no dances, and sang hymns indistinguishable from dirges. Gorged with unmixed wine, they were overcome by a double drunkenness, one from the wine itself, the other from folly, reveling and carousing through the night, blind to what was coming, living amid pleasant evils while Justice lay in wait, seeing them though they could not see, and seeing too the punishments they deserved.

Since the continual outcries in the camp, from the crowded throngs gathering together, carried a great distance—so far that the echo reached even the mountain ridge—Moses, his ears struck by the din, was at a loss, being at once devoted to God and a lover of humankind. He could not bear to cut short his converse with God, which he held alone with the Alone in private, nor could he disregard the multitude, filled as they were with the evils born of lawlessness; for, being keen of perception, he recognized from the noise—

—even though the sound was inarticulate and indistinct—the particular character of feelings hidden and invisible to others in the soul: that the disturbance holding them was the disturbance of drunken revelry, since intemperance breeds satiety, and satiety breeds insolence.

Torn and pulled this way and that between the two considerations, he was at a loss what to do. But as he was weighing the matter, this oracle was given to him: "Go down from here quickly; the people have rushed into lawlessness. Having made a bull-shaped god, a work of human hands and no god, they worship and sacrifice to it, forgetting everything they saw and heard that leads to true piety."

Struck with amazement and compelled to believe deeds scarcely credible, he did not, as a mediator and reconciler might, leap into action at once; rather, he first offered supplications and entreaties on behalf of the nation, begging forgiveness for their transgressions. Then, once he, their guardian and advocate, had propitiated the Ruler, he went back up, rejoicing and downcast at the same time: rejoicing, because God had accepted his supplication; downcast and swollen with grief, because of the people's lawlessness.

Coming into the midst of the camp, and marveling at the sudden derangement of the multitude and at how much falsehood they had exchanged for how much truth, he perceived that the disease had not spread to everyone, but that some remained sound, still moved by a hatred of wickedness. Wishing to distinguish those who were incurably afflicted from those who were distressed at what had been done, and to discover whether any who had sinned were repenting, he issued a proclamation—which was in fact a precise test of each person's mind, of where it stood with respect to reverence and its opposite. "Whoever is for the Lord," he said, "let him come to me."

The words spoken were brief, but their significance was great; for what was meant was this: whoever considers nothing made by human hands, nor anything that has come into being, to be gods, but holds that there is one Ruler of all things, let him come to me.

Of the rest, some, out of their zeal for the Egyptian delusion, refused to listen to what was said and would not comply; others, perhaps out of fear of punishment, did not dare to come nearer, dreading either retribution from Moses or an uprising from the multitude, for the many always turn against those who will not join in their madness.

But one tribe out of all of them, the one called Levitical, on hearing the proclamation, ran with eager haste as though at a single signal, displaying by the swiftness of their feet the readiness and keenness of their soul's impulse toward reverence.

When Moses saw them racing as though from a starting line, he said, "If you hasten to come to us not only with your bodies but with your minds as well, this will be proven at once. Let each of you take up a sword and kill those who have committed deeds deserving countless deaths—those who, abandoning the true God, fashioned falsely named gods and applied to corruptible and created substances the title belonging to the incorruptible and uncreated one—kill your kinsmen and friends, holding that the only true kinship and friendship is the reverence of good men."

They outran even the exhortation in their readiness, since their minds had already become estranged from those men almost from the moment they saw the transgression committed. In one sweep they killed about three thousand of those who, just a little before, had been dearest to them. As the bodies lay in the middle of the marketplace, the crowd, seeing them, felt pity for the slain, but, terrified by the still-burning, wrath-filled resolve of the killers, was brought to its senses by fear.

Moses, approving this act of valor, devised a reward and confirmed it by an act appropriate to the deed: for it was fitting that those who had taken up a voluntary war on behalf of God's honor, and who had succeeded in a brief span of time, should be found worthy of His service and allotted the priesthood.

Since the ranks of those consecrated to the priesthood were not all one—some being entrusted with the prayers, sacrifices, and other sacred rites, going even into the innermost sanctuary, while others had none of this but only the daytime and nighttime care and guarding of the sanctuary and its contents, whom some call temple attendants—the strife over primacy, the cause of countless troubles for many people in many places, broke out here as well, when the temple attendants attacked the priests, intending to seize their honor for themselves; and they hoped this would easily succeed, since they were many times more numerous.

So that they should not appear to be introducing this innovation on their own private judgment, they persuaded the eldest of the twelve tribes to join their cause; and many of the more thoughtless people followed that tribe, supposing it capable of holding the privilege of leadership.

Moses recognized that this great fortification was being built up against him; for he had chosen his brother as high priest in accordance with the oracles delivered to him, yet there were slanders that he had falsified the oracles and made the choice out of family favoritism and affection for his brother.

Reasonably distressed by all this - not only was he disbelieved even after demonstrating his own fidelity through so many proofs, but disbelieved also in matters that concern the honor of God, matters in which alone a man whose character had been falsely maligned in everything else was bound to be found truthful, for truth is the attendant of God - Moses did not think it right to teach them otherwise by mere words, knowing that it is a hard thing to attempt to change the minds of those already gripped by opposing opinions. Instead he beseeched God to furnish them with a visible demonstration that nothing false lay behind his choice of the priesthood.

God commanded him to take twelve rods, equal in number to the tribes, and to inscribe on eleven of them the names of the other tribal leaders, and on the remaining one the name of his brother, the high priest, and then to bring them into the temple as far as the inner sanctuary. Moses did as he was commanded and waited anxiously to see what would come of it.

On the next day, struck by an oracle, with the whole nation standing by, he went in and brought out the rods. All the others were unchanged, but the one on which his brother's name had been inscribed had been made a wonder: for like some noble plant it had put forth fresh

shoots and, from the abundance of its fruit, hung heavy. The fruits were nuts, which have a nature opposite to that of other fruits: in most - the grape, the olive, the apple - the seed and the edible part are distinct, and being distinct they are also separated in place, the edible part lying outside and the seed enclosed within. But in the nut the seed and the edible part are one and the same, both resolved into a single form, and there is one place, the interior, fortified and guarded by a double wall, one of very deep bark, the other in no way inferior to a structure of wood.

By this he hints at perfect virtue. For just as in the nut the beginning and the end are the same thing - the beginning insofar as it is seed, the end insofar as it is fruit - so it is also with the virtues. Each of them happens to be both a beginning and an end: a beginning, because it grows not from some other power but from itself; an end, because it is toward this that the life lived according to nature strains.

This is one explanation, but another is given, more vivid still than the first: the outer husk of the nut is bitter, and what lies within it is like a wooden wall, very hard and strong, and by both of these the fruit is shut in and is not easily seized.

This he makes a symbol of the soul in training, from which he thinks it right to draw the lesson that one must first encounter toil - toil is bitter, resistant, and hard - out of which the good is born, and for the sake of which one must not grow soft.

For the one who flees toil flees also the good things, while the one who endures the hard-to-bear with fortitude and courage presses on toward blessedness. Virtue is not disposed to dwell among those who live delicately, whose souls have been made effeminate and whose bodies dissolve through the unbroken indulgence of every day; when ill-treated it departs, having first served notice of its abandonment on right reason, its ruler.

But if the truth must be told, the most sacred company of prudence, self-control, courage, and justice pursues those in training and all who, with frugality and contentment with little, emulate the austere and hard life, self-mastery and endurance, through which reasoning, the most sovereign faculty within us, is brought to unfailing health and good condition, having thrown down the heavy siege-wall of the body, which drunkenness, gluttony, lechery, and the other insatiable desires have built up together, giving birth to the corpulence that stands opposed to keenness of mind.

It is said, moreover, that among the trees accustomed to bud in spring, the almond both flowers first, announcing good news of a harvest of fruit, and sheds its leaves last, extending the good old age of its yearly foliage to the greatest length. Each of these facts Moses makes a symbol of the priestly tribe, hinting that it will flower both first and last of the whole human race, at whatever time it seems good to God to liken our life to the turning of spring, having done away with covetousness, that scheming source of misery.

Since, then, we said that four things must belong to the most perfect leader - kingship, the disposition of a lawgiver, priesthood, and prophecy - so that through his lawgiving he may command what must be done and forbid what must not, through his priesthood he may administer not only human affairs but divine ones as well, and through his prophecy he may declare by oracle whatever is not grasped by reasoning; and since I have already discussed the first three and shown Moses to be the best of kings, lawgivers, and high priests, I come at last to show that he also became a prophet of the highest repute.

I am not unaware that everything written in the sacred books is oracular, delivered through him; but I will speak of what is peculiarly his own, first stating this: of the oracles, some are spoken in the person of God, through the interpretation of his divine prophet; others were declared through question and answer; and others in the person of Moses himself, when he had become inspired and was possessed by God.

The first, then, are through and through demonstrations of divine virtues, the merciful and the beneficent, through which he anoints all men toward nobility of character, and especially his own suppliant people, for whom he lays open the road leading to happiness.

The second class has a mixture and a partnership: the prophet inquiring about what he seeks, and God answering and teaching. The third class is assigned to the lawgiver himself, God having imparted to him the power of foreknowledge by which he foretells what is to come.

The first class, then, must be set aside, for these are too great to be praised by any human being - they could scarcely be worthily celebrated even by heaven, the cosmos, and the nature of the whole - and besides, they are spoken as though through an interpreter; and interpretation and prophecy are different things. Of the second class I will try at once to give an account, weaving into it also the third form, in which the inspired ecstasy of the speaker is most clearly displayed, the form by which, above all and properly, one is deemed a prophet.

The fulfillment of this promise must begin here. There are four instances in which the law was given by oracles through question and answer, oracles of mixed power: in one part the prophet, in a state of inspiration, inquires; in the other the Father declares by oracle, imparting speech and answer. The first is one which provoked to anger not only Moses, the most devout man who ever lived, but even one who had tasted piety only slightly.

A man of mixed descent, born of an Egyptian father and a Jewish mother, disregarded the ancestral customs of his mother's people and inclined, it is said, toward Egyptian impiety, emulating the godlessness of that people.

For the Egyptians, alone of almost all nations, have fortified earth against heaven, deeming earth worthy of honors equal to the gods while assigning to heaven no special prerogative - as though the outlying province ought to be cared for ahead of the royal palace. For in the cosmos, heaven is the most sacred royal seat, and earth the outlying province - worthy of regard in itself, but falling as short of the ether, when brought into comparison, as darkness falls short of light, night of day, corruption of incorruption, and the mortal of God.

For since their land is not watered by rain as other lands are, but is accustomed every year to be flooded by the risings of the river, the Egyptians, in their account, deify the Nile as a rival image of heaven, and speak of their land in solemn terms.

This man of mixed blood, then, having quarreled with one of the race gifted with vision and knowledge, and being unable to master himself through anger, and at the same time an emulator of Egyptian godlessness, extended his impiety from earth to heaven, cursing with an accursed, polluted, and defiled soul and tongue and every instrument of voice - through an excess of wickedness - him whom it is not lawful for all to bless, but only for the best, those who have received the perfect purifications.

Moses, then, marveling at the man's derangement and the excess of his recklessness - though full of noble spirit and eager to put the man to death with his own hand - feared that he might thereby exact too light a punishment; for no human being could devise a penalty equal in weight to so great an impiety.

And since irreverence toward God is followed also by failure to honor parents, homeland, and benefactors, what excess of depravity is left for one who, not content with irreverence, dares also to revile? And yet reviling is the lesser offense in comparison with cursing; but when loose talk and an unbridled mouth are put in the service of lawless folly, some new outrage against the sacred is always devised. O man, does anyone curse God?

Calling on what other god to confirm his curse? Or is it not plain that he calls on God himself, against God himself? Away with such profane and unholy thoughts! It would be well to wash clean the wretched soul that has been assailed by mere sound, using its ears as servants, with blind perception.

And was the tongue of the man who uttered so great an impiety not paralyzed? Were the ears of those about to hear it not stopped up? Unless indeed this happened by the providence of justice, which thinks it right that neither surpassing good nor greatest evil should be kept in shadow, but brought to the clearest proof, whether of virtue or of vice, so that it may deem the one worthy of acceptance and the other of punishment.

For this reason Moses commanded that the man be led away to prison and bound, while he himself besought God, seeking to propitiate him for the compulsions of the senses through which we see things it is not lawful to see and hear things it is not lawful to hear, to declare what ought to befall the man who had devised so strange and outlandish an act of impiety and sacrilege.

He ordered him to be stoned—a punishment fitting, I think, for a man with a stony and unyielding soul—and at the same time he wanted everyone from the nation to have a share in the punishment, since he knew they had reacted very harshly and were murderous with rage; and it seemed that only stoning could give so many tens of thousands a part in it.

After the punishment of the impious and accursed man, a new decree was written, one that had never before been thought worthy of being put in writing; but unexpected innovations call for new laws to check offenses. And so the following was at once legislated: whoever curses God shall be guilty of sin, but whoever names the name of the Lord shall die (Lev. 24:15–16).

Well said, all-wise one—you alone have partaken of unmixed wisdom! Did you really suppose that naming is worse than cursing? Surely you would not lighten the penalty for the man who committed the gravest impiety, treating him more leniently than those who genuinely sinned, while for the one who seemed to have done a lesser wrong you fixed

the highest penalty, death. But it seems that “God” is here meant not of the first and uncreated God of the universe, but of the gods in the cities; and these are falsely so named, fashioned by the arts of painters and sculptors. For the inhabited world has become full of carved images and statues and fabrications of that kind, and it was necessary to restrain blasphemy against them, so that none of Moses's disciples might grow accustomed to disregarding the address to God altogether; for the title is one most worthy to be won and most worthy of love.

But if anyone—I will not say blasphemes against the God of men and gods, but even dares to utter his name at an improper time—let him submit to death as his punishment.

For not even those who have been begotten, mortal though they are, do people whose care is for their parents' honor speak by name; rather, out of reverence for them, they keep silent about their given names and address them by the titles that belong to nature, calling them father and mother, by which they immediately hint at the surpassing benefits received from them and at their own grateful disposition.

Shall those who thoughtlessly, by the mere sliding of the tongue, treat as filler for their speech the most holy and divine name, still be thought deserving of forgiveness?

After the honor paid to the begetter of all things, the prophet also hallowed the sacred seventh day, having seen with keener eyes its extraordinary beauty, stamped upon heaven and the whole cosmos and borne along, like a statue, by nature herself.

For he found it, first, motherless, having no part in the female line of descent, sown by the father alone without seed and begotten without conception; and then he perceived not only this, that it was altogether beautiful and motherless, but also that it was ever a virgin—neither born of a mother nor herself a mother, neither born of corruption nor destined for corruption; and thirdly, examining it further, he recognized it also as the birthday of the cosmos, which heaven celebrates, and earth celebrates, and all things on earth that rejoice and delight in the all-harmonious seventh.

For this reason the truly great Moses judged it right that those enrolled in his sacred constitution, following the ordinances of nature, should keep festival, passing their time in cheerful good spirits: refraining in practice from the arts and occupations pursued for profit and from business dealings connected with the search for a livelihood, and observing a holiday, released from every toilsome and wearisome care, at leisure not, as some are, for laughter or games or the displays of mimes or dancers—over which theater-mad people waste away and suffer a lingering death, and by means of the poisons of the most authoritative senses, sight and hearing, enslave the soul that is by nature a queen—but at leisure for philosophy alone,

not the kind that word-hunters and sophists contrive, selling doctrines and arguments in the marketplace as if they were some other kind of merchandise—people who use philosophy against philosophy (O healer and sun!) throughout their lives without blushing—but the philosophy that is truly philosophy, which is woven together out of three things: intentions, words, and deeds, harmonized into a single form for the acquisition and enjoyment of happiness.

Now someone, disregarding this decree, though he still had ringing in his ears the oracles concerning the sacred seventh day—which God had proclaimed without a prophet, through a voice (the most paradoxical thing) that was visible, and which aroused the eyes of those present more than their ears—went out to gather sticks through the middle of the camp, knowing that everyone was resting quietly in their tents, and, caught in the very act of wrongdoing, was exposed so that it could not escape notice.

For some people, having gone out beyond the gates into the wilderness in order to pray in the purest and quietest place, saw the lawless sight of him gathering a supply of wood, and, indignant, were on the point of killing him themselves; but, restraining by reasoning the stirring of their anger, so that they might not appear to be private individuals punishing someone ahead of the rulers—and that too without trial, however evident the transgression otherwise was—nor might they, even in the most just case, bring upon that holy day the pollution of murder, they seized him instead and brought him before the ruler, before whom the priests were sitting in council, while the whole multitude stood by to listen.

For it was the custom, always as opportunity allowed but chiefly on the seventh days, as I have shown before, to practice philosophy, with the leader expounding and teaching what ought to be done and said, while the others advanced toward nobility and were improved in both character and manner of life.

From that time on, even now, the Jews philosophize on the seventh days, devoting that time to the knowledge and contemplation of the things of nature; for what else are the houses of prayer in the various cities but schools of prudence, courage, temperance, justice, piety, holiness, and every virtue, by which both human and

divine matters are understood and set right? At that time, then, the man who had committed so great an impiety was led away to prison. But Moses, at a loss as to what should be done with the man—for he knew that his deeds deserved death, but what manner of punishment would be fitting?—approached the invisible tribunal with his invisible soul and inquired of the judge who knew everything even before hearing it, what had been decided.

And he declared his knowledge, that the man must die, and in no other way than by stoning, since in this case, as in the former one, the mind had been turned into a deaf stone by working the most complete transgression, in which nearly all the other things legislated concerning the reverence due the seventh day are included. Why is this?

Because not only the vulgar crafts but also the other arts and occupations, and especially those concerned with earning a livelihood, either involve fire or are not carried on without things that involve fire; hence he often forbids the kindling of fire on the seventh days, as being the most primary cause and the oldest of works, since when it rests it was thought likely that the particular activities dependent on it would rest along with it.

The material of fire is wood, so that the man who gathered wood was committing an offense akin and related to the man who kindles fire, doubling the transgression: in one respect, because though ordered to remain still he was gathering material together, and in another, because what he was gathering together was precisely the material of fire, the origin of the arts.

Both of the cases mentioned, then, involve punishments of the impious confirmed by inquiry and answer. There are two others, not of the same kind but of a different sort, of which one concerns the succession to an inheritance, and the other concerns matters where a sacred rite appeared to be performed out of its proper time—about which I must speak first.

Moses records the beginning of the vernal equinox as the first month in the cycles of the year, giving precedence not, as some do, according to mere chronological order, but according to the graces of nature, which she caused to rise for humankind; for at this time the sown crops, our necessary food, come to full growth, while the fruit of the trees, only now coming into their prime, is produced in a second rank, and is accordingly later-born; for in nature the things that are not so strictly necessary always come second to the things that are utterly necessary.

Wheat and barley, then, and the other kinds of food without which it is impossible to live, are utterly necessary; but oil and wine and tree-fruits are not among the necessities, since even without them people live on to the most advanced old age, extending their lives through many years.

In this month, then, around the fourteenth day, when the lunar cycle is about to become full, the Crossing-Feast is celebrated, a festival open to all the people, called in Chaldean Pascha, in which it is not that private individuals bring the victims to the altar while the priests do the sacrificing, but by the ordinance of the law the whole nation acts as priests, each person individually bringing forward and performing with his own hands the sacrifices on his own behalf.

Now all the rest of the people were rejoicing and cheerful, each one considering himself honored with a priesthood; but certain others went about in tears and groaning, since relatives of theirs had recently died, and, mourning them, they were held fast by a double grief, having added to the grief for their dead kin the grief of being deprived of the pleasure and honor connected with the sacred rite—and it was not even possible for them to purify themselves and be sprinkled on that day, since the period of mourning had not yet run its course and expired.

These men, after the festival, came to the ruler full of dejection and gloom, and related what had happened—the recent death of their relatives, the mourning they had been compelled to observe, and their consequent inability to take part in the sacrifice of the Crossing-Feast.

These men came to the leader after the festival, full of gloom and dejection, and told him what had happened: the recent death of their relatives, the mourning this required of them, and their consequent inability to take part in the sacrifice of the Passover.

Then they asked that they not receive less than everyone else, and that their misfortune in losing family members not be reckoned as a wrongdoing that earns punishment rather than pity. They thought they would suffer worse than the dead themselves, if those who died no longer had any share in things they had not wished for, while the living, though they still had feeling, would seem to have died along with them.

On hearing this, Moses saw that their plea was not unreasonable, that their excuse for not having performed the sacred rite was likewise a compelling one, and that a natural sympathy was mixed in with all this. Yet his judgment wavered, tipping first one way and then the other as on a scale — on one side pity and justice weighed down, on the other the law of the Passover sacrifice pressed back, which had specified both the first month and the fourteenth day for the rite. Carried between denial and assent, he begged God to become the judge and to reveal the decision by an oracle.

And God, hearing him, pronounced an oracle not only about the matter he had been asked, but also about cases that would arise later, should the same circumstances recur; and he went further still, extending his generosity even to those unable, for other reasons, to perform the sacrifice with the whole nation, and gave a further oracle about them.

What, then, were the oracles given about these people must be told. "Mourning for kin," he said, "is a necessary grief for blood relations, and it is not written down among offenses.

So then, as long as it remains within the appointed time, let the mourner be kept outside the sacred precincts, which must be kept pure from every pollution, not only the involuntary kind but also that which is not deliberate. But once the appointed time has passed, let them not be deprived of equal participation in the sacred rites, so that the living are not treated as mere appendages of the dead. Let them go as being second, in the second month, again on the fourteenth day, and let them sacrifice according to the same rules as the first group, and use the victim as they did, by the same law and in like manner.

The same provision is granted also to those kept, not by mourning, but by a long journey abroad, from joining in the sacrifice with the whole nation together; for those living abroad or dwelling elsewhere do no wrong such that they should be deprived of equal honor — especially since the nation, because of its great numbers, could not be contained within a single land, but has sent out colonies in every direction."

Having said this much about those who, through unwanted circumstances, were late in offering the Passover sacrifice with the multitude but were eager, even though late, to make up of necessity what had been lacking, I now turn to the last enactment, concerning the succession of inheritances, which likewise arose in mixed fashion, from a question and an answer.

There was a man named Zelophehad, a man of standing and of no undistinguished tribe. To him were born five daughters, but no son. After their father's death, suspecting they would be deprived of their father's portion because inheritances were given to males, they approached the leader with the modesty befitting young women — not in pursuit of wealth, but eager to preserve their father's name and standing — and said:

"Our father has died, and he died having taken part in none of the rebellions in which thousands perished, but pursued a peaceable, private life — unless indeed it should be counted a fault that he lacked male offspring. We stand here seemingly orphans, but in truth we shall have you as a father; for the lawful ruler is closer kin to his subjects than the one who begot them."

Moses, admiring the good sense of the young women and their devotion to the one who had begotten them, was nonetheless held back, drawn by another consideration: that inheritances were owed to men who were to receive them as a reward for the campaigns and wars they had endured, whereas nature, by exempting women from such struggles, plainly withholds from them also a share in the prizes set for them.

So it was reasonable that, his mind being pulled both ways and torn between opposing claims, he referred the perplexity to God, whom alone he knew to distinguish even the smallest differences by criteria that never lie and never err, in order to display truth and justice.

But the maker of all things, the father of the universe, who holds together and governs earth and heaven, water and air, and all that is composed of each of these, the ruler of gods and men, did not disdain to give an oracle to orphaned girls. And in giving it, he granted something even greater than a judge would: being gracious and merciful, he who has filled all things through all things with his beneficent power delivered a eulogy of the young women.

"O Master, how could anyone hymn you — with what mouth, what tongue, what instrument of voice, what governing faculty of the soul? Could the stars, joined into a single choir, sing any song worthy of you? Could the whole heaven, dissolved into a single voice, be able to recount any part of your virtues? 'Rightly,' he says, 'have the daughters of Zelophehad spoken.'"

How great a eulogy this is, coming from the testimony of God, who does not know? Come forward now, you boasters, you who breathe great things over your own good fortune, who raise your necks beyond what nature allows and arch your eyebrows — you among whom the widowhood of women is mocked as laughable, a pitiable evil, and the desolation of orphaned children is jeered at as more pitiable still.

And seeing that those who seem so lowly and unfortunate are not classed by God among the despised and obscure — he whose most dishonored possession is the kingdoms scattered everywhere across the inhabited world, since the whole circuit of the earth is but the furthest edge of his works — receive this necessary admonition.

Yet, though he praised the petition of the young women, he neither left them without reward nor brought them to equal honor with the men who had fought; rather, to the men he assigned the inheritances as prizes proper to their own valorous deeds, while to the women he granted them as a matter of grace and kindness, not as a reward — which he makes perfectly clear through the words "gift" and "you shall give" (Num. 27:7), and not "repayment" or "you shall repay"; for the latter belong properly to those who receive what is owed, the former to those who bestow a favor.

Having given his oracle concerning what the orphaned young women had petitioned, he also lays down a more general law about the succession of inheritances: first, sons are called to share the father's goods; if there are no sons, then daughters come second, and to them, he says, the inheritance must be attached as an outward adornment, not as an inherited possession belonging to them by nature; for what is merely attached has no intrinsic kinship with what it adorns, being foreign to its harmony and unity.

After daughters, he calls brothers third, and assigns fourth rank to paternal uncles, hinting thereby that fathers too could become heirs of their sons; for it would be quite foolish to suppose that, in assigning an inheritance to a father's brother on account of his kinship with the father, he thereby excluded the father himself from succession.

But since it is the law of nature for parents to be inherited by their children, and not for parents to inherit from them, he passed over in silence that which is unwished for and ill-omened, so that father and mother should not seem to be profiting from the inconsolable grief over children who died before their time; instead, he called upon them obliquely, by naming the uncles, so as to aim at both what is fitting and at preventing the estate from passing to strangers. After the uncles comes the fifth rank, the nearest relatives, to whom he always gives the inheritance if none of those before them remain.

Having necessarily gone through these oracles concerning inheritances of a mixed character, I will next set forth the oracles pronounced through the prophet's inspiration alone; for this is what I promised to show. The beginning, then, of his divinely possessed rapture is also the beginning of the nation's good fortune, when it set out from Egypt for the cities of Syria in a migration of many tens of thousands.

For men and women together, having crossed a vast, untrodden wilderness, arrived at the sea called the Red Sea. Then, as was likely, they found themselves at a loss, unable to cross for want of boats, and not considering it safe to turn back the same way.

While they were in this state, a still greater evil fell upon them: the king of the Egyptians, having taken a considerable force, both cavalry and infantry, set out in pursuit, hastening to overtake them, so as to punish them for the departure he had permitted them to make under clear divine warnings. But, as it seems, the disposition of wicked men is unstable, swaying to opposite extremes on the slightest pretext, as on a small scale.

Caught between enemies and the sea, they despaired of their own safety: some thought the most pitiable destruction a thing to be wished for; others resolved it would be better to throw themselves into the sea, and, loading themselves with something heavy, waited at the shore so that, when they saw the enemy drawing near, they might leap down and be more easily carried into the depths.

But while they were terrified at the helplessness of their plight, dying a thousand deaths, the prophet, seeing in his amazement the whole nation caught as in a fisherman's net, was no longer himself; he became possessed by God and uttered these oracles:

"Fear is inevitable; the danger near and great. Before us lies a gaping sea, no refuge to flee to, no boats to be had; behind us press the ranks of the enemy, advancing without pause in pursuit. Which way can one turn, which way escape? Everything, from every side, has suddenly assailed us — earth, sea, men, the elements of nature."

"But take courage, do not despair. Stand firm in your minds and do not waver — expect the invincible help that comes from God. It will arrive of its own accord, and unseen it will fight for you before you even engage; you have already experienced it many times, defending you invisibly. I see it now, already raising dust, throwing nooses around the necks of your adversaries; it is dragging them down into the sea. Like lead they are sinking to the depths. You perceive them still living, but I already have a vision of them as dead men. And today you too will see them as corpses."

So he uttered these words, greater than any hope could conceive, and the people found by experience the truth of that oracle. For what came to pass through divine power turned out to be more incredible than any fable: the splitting of the sea, the withdrawal of each of its two divided masses, the congealing of the waves along the whole depth of the breach on either side, so as to form walls of the greatest strength, and the straight-cut incision of the road wrought so mightily, which ran between the frozen walls —

the nation's journey, walking through the sea on foot without danger, as on a dry path and a rocky floor (for the sand had been dried hard and its scattered substance fused into one) — the enemy's headlong pursuit without pause, as they rushed to their own destruction — the guidance of the cloud bringing up the rear, in which there was a certain divine sight, a flash of fire gleaming out — the returning surge of the waters that had until then stood apart, held back — the sudden re-flooding of the section that had been split open and dried — the enemy's destruction,

whom the frozen walls, now overturned, lulled to their end, and the floodwaters of the sea, sweeping down upon the road as into a ravine, engulfed; the display of their destruction through the bodies that floated to the surface and covered the face of the sea; and the violent surging of the waves, by which all the corpses were cast up in heaps onto the shores opposite, providing a spectacle that those who had been saved needed to see — for it fell to them not only to escape the dangers but also to look upon their enemies punished, beyond all telling, by powers not human but divine.

For this reason he rightly honors his benefactor with hymns of thanksgiving. Dividing the nation into two choirs, one of men and one of women, he himself leads the men, and he appoints his sister to lead the women as well, so that they might sing hymns to their Father and Maker, sounding together in responsive harmonies, through a blending of both character and melody — the two choirs pursuing the same refrain in turn, the harmony being built on the concord of low pitch with high; for the voices of the men are deep, and those of the women are high, and when their blending is proportioned rightly, the result is a melody most sweet and wholly harmonious.

And he persuaded so many tens of thousands to think as one and to join together in singing the same hymn about those astonishing, mighty works which I recounted a little earlier. At this the prophet rejoiced, and seeing the nation's own great joy, no longer able to contain his own delight, he led off the song, and those who heard it, gathered into two choirs, sang back what he had sung.

This is the beginning and prelude of the prophecy of Moses that came by inspired possession. Next he prophesies about the first and most necessary thing, food — which the earth did not bear, for it was barren and unfruitful, but heaven rained down, not once, but every day for forty years before dawn, an ethereal fruit in the dew, resembling millet.

Seeing this, Moses commands them to gather it, and, moved by inspiration, declares: "Those who have experienced God's beneficence in matters beyond all hope must trust him. Let there be no storing, no hoarding of this food; let no one leave over any part of it until morning."

Hearing this, some of those with no ballast of piety, supposing perhaps that what was said was not an oracle but merely a ruler's advice, left some of it over until the next day. But what putrefied filled the circuit of the camp first with a foul stench, then turned into worms, whose generation comes from decay.

Seeing this, Moses was naturally embittered against the disobedient. For how could he not be? After witnessing such great and manifold things — things impossible to accomplish by any plausible or reasonable expectation, yet brought to completion with ease by divine forethought — how could the most obtuse of all men not merely hesitate but actually disbelieve?

But the Father established the prophet's oracle by two most evident proofs, of which he immediately displayed the first through the decay and foul smell of what was left over and its transformation into worms, the most contemptible of creatures; the second he displayed later — for whatever surplus remained from what had been gathered, in whatever abundance, was always dissolved by the sun's

rays and, melting, wasted away entirely. Second, not long after, moved by inspiration, he pronounced an oracle concerning the sacred seventh day. For humankind had been ignorant that this day possessed a privilege in nature — not merely from the time the world was fashioned, but even before the coming-to-be of heaven and every object of sense-perception — perhaps because of the continuous and successive destructions that occurred by water and by fire, which prevented earlier generations from handing down to later ones the memory of the sequence and order that unfolds through the ages. What was thus hidden he revealed, moved by inspiration, in an oracle attested by a clear sign.

The sign was this: the food that came down from the air was less abundant on the earlier days, but on that day it was double; and whatever remained over from the earlier days would melt away, dissolving until it was entirely wasted away into moisture, but on that day, admitting of no such change, it stayed the same. Struck by these things, both announced and seen, Moses did not merely conjecture but, carried by God, pronounced the sanctity of the seventh day.

I need not say that such inferences too are akin to prophecy; for the mind could not have hit its mark so unerringly had there not also been a divine spirit guiding it toward the truth itself.

The marvel was made plain not only by the doubling of the food, nor merely by its remaining uncorrupted contrary to established practice, but also by the fact that both these things occurred on the sixth day, from which the food began to be supplied from the air, after which the seventh day, most sacred of numbers, was about to rise. So that one who reasons rightly would find that the heavenly food given corresponds to the order of the world's own creation; for he began to fashion the world too on the first day of the six,

and to rain down the food I have mentioned. The image is most exact: just as he brought forth out of not-being into being the most perfect work, the world, so in the same manner he transformed the elements to meet the pressing need, providing abundance in the wilderness, so that instead of the earth, the air might bring nourishment without labor and without toil, for those who had no way to withdraw and prepare provisions at their leisure.

After this he utters, third, a most portentous oracle, declaring that on the seventh day the air will not furnish its accustomed food, and that nothing, not even the smallest amount, will be brought down to earth as usual.

This was confirmed by what actually happened. For on the day before he had proclaimed this, yet some of unsteady character set out to gather food, and, disappointed in their hope, returned empty-handed, reproaching themselves for their lack of faith and calling the prophet a true seer, one who speaks the word of God and alone foresees what is hidden.

Such, then, are the things he prophesied, possessed by God, concerning the heavenly food. Next come other necessary things, which might seem to resemble exhortations more than oracles. Among them is what was declared during the greatest defection from ancestral ways, of which I spoke earlier — when they fashioned a golden bull, an imitation of Egyptian arrogance, and set up choruses and built altars and offered sacrifices, forgetting the true God and casting down the nobility of their ancestors, which had been built up through piety and holiness.

At this Moses was overwhelmed with grief — first, that the whole people had suddenly become blind, they who until just before had been the keenest-sighted of all nations; and second, that a fabricated, false invention had had the power to extinguish so great a light of truth, a light which neither the eclipsing of the sun nor the whole chorus of stars could ever overshadow — for it is illumined by its own light, intelligible and incorporeal, in comparison with which the light perceived by the senses might be reckoned as night compared to day —

and for this reason, no longer remaining the same man, he was transformed in both appearance and thought, and, moved by inspiration, he declared: "Who is he who has not been swept along by the error, nor ascribed authority to what has none? Let every such person come to me."

When one tribe came forward, no less in mind than in body — men who had long burned with hatred against the godless and unholy, and who sought to find a leader and commander who would justly show them the occasion and manner of vengeance — finding them eager and full of daring and resolve, he, carried by God even more than before, said: "Let each of you take up his sword and rush through the whole camp, and let him kill, not only strangers, but also his nearest and dearest among friends and kin, one after another, judging this deed most righteous, done on behalf of truth and the honor of God, for whom to fight and to strive is the lightest of labors."

And they, killing on the spot three thousand men, who had been the chief instigators of the impiety, not only cleared themselves of any complicity in that outrage, but were also enrolled among the noblest of the brave, and were deemed worthy of the prize most fitting to their deeds — the priesthood. For it was right that those who had shown valor and fought in the front rank on behalf of holiness should become its ministers.

I have another oracle to disclose, more significant still, which I also related earlier, when I was recounting the matters of the prophet's high priesthood — one which he himself, again possessed, uttered, and which was fulfilled not long afterward, but immediately, at the very moment it was prophesied.

Among those who minister about the temple there are two ranks: the higher, that of priests, the lesser, that of temple-attendants. At that time there were three priests, but many thousands of temple-attendants.

These men, puffed up by the superior number of their own following, held the priests' small numbers in contempt, and wove together two crimes at once: the pulling down of their betters and the raising up of their inferiors -- the sort of thing that happens when subjects set themselves against their leaders, to the ruin of that order which is best and most useful to the people.

Then they gathered together and formed a faction, and shouted against the prophet, claiming that out of favoritism toward his brother and his nephews he had granted them the priesthood, and had lied about their being chosen "by divine appointment," as we have already related -- events that never happened.

Distressed and deeply pained by this, though he was the gentlest and mildest of men, he was so sharpened toward righteous anger by a passion that hates wickedness that he begged God to turn away from their sacrifice -- not because the most just Judge was ever going to accept the sacred rites of impious men, but because the soul of one beloved of God does not, for its own part, stay silent, but presses eagerly that unholy men should not prosper, but should always fail of their purpose.

Still boiling and inflamed with righteous indignation, he fell into inspiration, was changed into a prophet, and pronounced this oracle: "A hard thing is unbelief, but only for the unbelieving; these men are schooled not by argument but by deeds; once they have suffered, they will know that my word is not false, since though they were taught, they did not understand.

This will be decided by the end of their lives. For if they meet the death that is according to nature, then my oracles are fabrications; but if some strange and altered death, then my love of truth will stand as my witness. I see chasms of earth opening and widening to their utmost extent, populous clans perishing, whole households with all their people being swept down and swallowed up, living men descending into Hades."

When he had fallen silent, the earth was shaken by an earthquake and split open, and it split open precisely where the tents of the impious stood, so that they were carried down all together and hidden from sight; for the parted portions of earth came together again once the purpose for which they had been divided was accomplished.

A little later, thunderbolts fell suddenly upon the leaders of the faction, two hundred and fifty men, and consumed them all together, leaving behind no part of their bodies to receive burial.

The succession of these punishments, one upon another, and the magnitude of each, made clear and famous the piety of the prophet, who had made God his witness to the truth of his oracles.

It is worth not passing over this too: that earth and heaven, the first principles of the universe, divided between themselves by lot the punishments against the impious. For these men had rooted their wickedness in the earth, but had stretched it up into the upper air, raising it to so great a height.

Hence each of the elements supplied its own punishment: the earth, splitting apart and gaping open, so as to drag down and swallow those who at that time were weighing upon her; and heaven, so as to burn up and destroy them, pouring down a most strange rain -- a downpour of abundant fire.

And the end was the same both for those who were swallowed up and for those destroyed by the thunderbolts: neither group was ever seen again. The former were hidden within the earth, when the chasm's parted sides came together and were made level once more; the latter were consumed entirely, through and through, by the fire of the thunderbolt.

Some time later, when he was about to make his migration from here to heaven, and, leaving behind his mortal life, to be made immortal at the summons of the Father, who transformed him, a duality of body and soul, wholly and entirely into the nature of a single unity, remolding him into a mind like the sun in its brightness -- then, possessed by God, he no longer appeared to prophesy collectively to the whole nation gathered together, but to each tribe separately, concerning what would happen to it and what its outcome would be. Some of these things have already come to pass, and others are still awaited, since the fulfillment of what has already happened is the guarantee of what is still to come.

For it was fitting, since the tribes differed even in their manner of birth, especially in their maternal lines, and in the manifold forms of their counsels, and in the untold differences of their pursuits in life, that they should also obtain, as if by a kind of lot,

an apportionment of oracles and prophecies suited to each. These things, then, are marvelous; but most marvelous of all is the end of the sacred writings, which, like the head in a living creature, stands at the summit of the whole legislation.

For already being taken up, and standing at the very starting-line from which he was to take his winged course to heaven, inspired and possessed by God, while still alive he prophesies concerning himself as though already dead, with unerring accuracy: how he died without yet having died; how he was buried with no one present -- clearly by hands not mortal but immortal; how he was not laid to rest in the tomb of his forefathers, but obtained a tomb all his own, which no human being has ever seen; how the whole nation mourned him, weeping for an entire month, displaying a grief both private and public because of the ineffable goodwill and care he had shown to each one and to all together.

Such was his life, and such also was the end of Moses, king and lawgiver and high priest and prophet, as it is recorded in the sacred writings.

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