The Special Laws II

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

In the treatise before this one, two chapters were treated with precision, out of the ten commandments: the one concerning not believing there are other gods with sovereign power, and the one concerning not fashioning any handmade image as a god. And we also stated the particular laws that fit each of these. Now let us discuss, in turn, the three commandments that come next in order, again fitting the particular laws that belong to each.

The first of the three is not to take the name of God in vain. "Let the word of the virtuous person," it says, "be an oath" — firm, unwavering, utterly truthful, grounded in truth. But if need should compel someone to swear, then let one swear by the health and good fortune of one's father or mother while they are living, or by their memory once they have died; for these are likenesses and imitations of the divine power, since they have brought into being those who did not exist.

It is recorded in the laws that one of the patriarchs, a man especially admired for wisdom, swore "by the fear of his father" (Gen. 31:53) — for the benefit, I think, and the necessary instruction of those who would come after, so that they might honor their parents in the proper manner, cherishing them as benefactors and revering them as rulers established by nature, and not readily attempt to name God.

Worthy of praise, too, are those who, if ever compelled to swear, instill fear not only in onlookers but even in those who provoke them to the oath, by their hesitation, their delay, their reluctance; for they are accustomed to utter only the words "by him" or "no, by him," adding nothing further, and by the very abruptness of the break they make plain that no oath has actually been sworn.

But one may also, if one wishes, add something further — not, however, straightaway naming the highest and most venerable cause, but rather the earth, the sun, the stars, the heaven, the whole universe; for these are most worthy of regard, being older than our own coming into being and

moreover ageless, enduring forever by the will of their Maker. But some display such recklessness and carelessness that, passing over all these things that belong to the realm of becoming, they dare in their speech to run straight up to the Maker and Father of all, without first examining whether the places are profane or sacred, whether the times are fitting, whether they themselves are pure in body and soul, whether the matters are weighty, whether the needs are urgent — but, as the saying goes, muddying everything "with unwashed hands," as though, because nature gave them a tongue, they must use it loosed and unbridled toward things that are not permitted.

They ought instead to have used the finest of instruments — the one by which voice and speech, the most beneficial of things and the causes of human fellowship, are articulated — for the honor and reverence and blessed praise of the cause of all things.

But as it is, through excessive impiety, they utter the most horrifying invocations concerning whatever chance matter comes up, and heaping name upon name without shame, they think that by the sheer frequency and continuous piling-up of successive oaths they will prevail in what they have in mind — being altogether foolish, since among people of sound judgment, a multitude of oaths is not evidence of trustworthiness but of untrustworthiness.

But if someone, under compulsion, swears about any matter whatever that the law has not forbidden, let him confirm the oath with all his strength and by every means, placing no obstacle in the way of fulfilling what he has resolved — especially when it is not untamed anger, or raging passions, or uncontrollable desires that have driven his reason to madness, so that he no longer knows what he is saying or doing, but rather he makes the oath with sober reckoning and clear judgment.

For what is better than to be free of falsehood throughout one's whole life, and this while using God as one's witness? For an oath is nothing other than God's testimony concerning a disputed matter; and to call upon God when the matter is not true is the most impious thing of all.

For the one who does this all but cries aloud, even if he seems to keep silent: "I am using you as a screen for my wrongdoing. Since I am ashamed to appear to be doing wrong, help me in this; take on the blame in place of me who am acting wickedly, for I care about not being thought base while I do wrong — but you have no regard for reputation among the many, and are not concerned at all for a good name." To say or even to think such things is utterly impious; for not only would God, who has no share in any evil, be indignant, but even a father, or a stranger not wholly untouched by virtue, would be indignant to hear such things.

All oaths, then, as I have said, must be kept firm — all those that concern noble and beneficial things, made for the correction of private or public affairs, under the guidance of prudence, justice, and piety (and along with these belong also the most lawful of prayers, made because of an abundance of good things, whether present or hoped for) — but it is not a holy thing to ratify oaths made for the opposite ends.

For there are some who swear, as it may happen, that they will commit thefts and temple robberies, or seductions and adulteries, or woundings and murders, or some other such evil, and they carry these out without delay, making their claim to keep their oath a pretext — as though doing no wrong were not better and more pleasing to God than the confirming of oaths, since justice and every virtue is an ancestral law and an ancient ordinance; and what else are laws and ordinances but the sacred words of nature, having from themselves their firmness and stability, so that they differ not at all from oaths?

Let everyone who does wrong under oath know this: he does not keep his oath well, but rather overturns the oath — which deserves great care and guarding, since it seals what is noble and just — for he adds guilty acts to guilty acts, since the oaths themselves, sworn where they should not have been, would have been far better left unspoken, and now he adds to them unlawful deeds.

Let the one, then, who abstains from wrongdoing implore God, so that God may grant a share of his gracious power, forgiving him for what he swore in his lack of forethought; for to choose double evils, when one is able to unload half of them, is madness and derangement hard to cure.

There are some who, by nature unsociable and unable to share in common life, either because of an excess of hatred for humankind, or because compelled by anger — as by a harsh mistress — confirm the savagery of their character with an oath: they declare that they will not share table or roof with so-and-so, or so-and-so, nor ever again provide any benefit to a certain person or receive anything from him, even until death. And sometimes they preserve this irreconcilability even after death, not even permitting, in their wills, that the customary rites be given to the dead bodies.

To these I would give the same advice as to the previous group: to propitiate God with prayers and sacrifices, so that they may find some necessary healing for the sicknesses of the soul, which no human being is capable of curing.

There are others who are boastful, puffed up with vanity, who, starving for reputation, think it beneath them to make use of any of the most beneficial forms of restraint in desire; rather, even if someone urges them, for the sake of curbing the unruliness of their appetites, they regard the admonition as an insult, and, pressing on toward a life of soft luxury, they pay no heed to those who would correct them, treating the noble and altogether most profitable teachings of prudence as objects of laughter and mockery.

And if such a person happens to have abundance and plenty in the affairs of life, they seal with oaths their use and enjoyment of extravagance. Here is the sort of thing I mean: recently one of those who possess no small wealth, having embraced a loose and dissolute way of living, when an elderly relative — or, I suppose, a friend of his father's — who was present admonished him, urging him to change his manner of life to something more dignified and austere, took great offense at the advice and, out of contentiousness, swore that as long as he had his resources and his supplies, he would make use of nothing that belonged to frugality, neither in the city nor in the countryside, neither sailing nor traveling on foot, but would always and everywhere make a display of his wealth. But this, it seems, is a display not so much of wealth as of vanity and lack of self-control.

And yet, among those in the great positions of power, there are even now not a few who, though they possess vast supplies and resources without limit, as though wealth flowed to them ceaselessly from some ever-running spring, nevertheless turn at times to the very things we poor people also turn to: earthenware cups, and loaves baked on a spit, and olives, or cheese, or vegetables as a relish; in summer, a loincloth and light linen, in winter a thick, sturdy cloak, and sometimes, for their bed, simply the bare ground — bidding a hearty farewell to couches made of ivory, or tortoiseshell, or gold, and coverlets dyed with flowers, and purple-dyed garments, and the elaborate confections of honeyed cakes, and the extravagance of well-laden tables.

The cause of this, I think, is not only that they were allotted a fortunate nature, but also that from their earliest years they laid hold of a right education, one which taught them, before all positions of rule, to honor what is human; an education which, dwelling in the soul, reminds them almost daily of their common humanity, drawing them back and reining them in from what is lofty and overblown, and healing inequality with equality.

Therefore they have filled their cities with abundance, prosperity, good order, and peace, keeping back none of the good for themselves but bestowing everything ungrudgingly and without stint. These, then, are the deeds of the truly well-born and truly ruling, and all that resembles them.

But the deeds of the newly rich are quite different — those who have arrived at great wealth by some wandering stroke of fortune, who know not even in a dream the true and seeing wealth that is composed of perfect virtues and the actions that accord with virtue, but have stumbled against the blind kind of wealth, and, leaning on it of necessity, unable to see the road that leads onward, turn aside into pathless places, admiring what deserves no serious regard and laughing at what is honorable by nature. It is these whom the sacred word rebukes and reproaches without restraint, for swearing oaths at times when they should not; for they are hard to cleanse and hard to cure, so that not even before God, whose nature is gracious, are they deemed worthy of pardon.

From young unmarried women and from married women, God took away full authority over their own vows, appointing the fathers of unmarried women, and the husbands of married women, as the ones with authority to confirm or annul their oaths; and not without reason. For the former, because of their youth, do not understand the force of oaths, so that they need those who will judge for them; while the latter often swear, out of thoughtlessness, things that will not be to their husbands' advantage. For this reason he entrusted to the men the authority either to let stand what has been sworn, or the opposite.

But let widows not swear readily — for they have no one to appeal to on their behalf, neither the husbands from whom they have been separated, nor the fathers from whose homes they departed when they set out on the journey of marriage — since it is necessary that their oaths remain in force, confirmed by the very absence of anyone to care for them.

Let widows not swear oaths lightly — for they have no one to release them from their vows, neither the husbands from whom they were separated nor the fathers from whose homes they departed when they set out on marriage's migration — since their oaths must necessarily stand, confirmed by the very absence of anyone to care for them.

If anyone, knowing that another is committing perjury, fails to denounce or expose him, giving more weight to friendship, shame, or fear than to piety, let him be liable to the same penalties; for to add one's signature alongside a wrongdoer's is no different from doing wrong oneself.

Penalties against perjurers are of two kinds: some belong to God, others to human beings. To God belong the highest and greatest — for he does not become gracious to those who commit such impiety, but lets them remain forever difficult to purify, justly, I think, and fittingly; for what is so terrible if the one who has been neglectful is himself neglected in return, reaping the same measure he has given?

But those from human beings vary: death or blows. The better, those exceptional in piety, confirm the penalty of death; those who deal with their anger more leniently strike the offender openly in public with the public whip. And for those not of servile character, blows are no lesser penalty than death.

This, then, is what the explicit commandments contain. But it is also possible to allegorize this subject, which admits of contemplation through symbols. It is fitting to know, then, that the right reason of nature has the power of both father and husband, under different conceptions: of a husband, because it sows the seed of the virtues into the soul as into good farmland; of a father, because it is by nature able to beget good counsels and noble, serious actions, and having begotten them, to nurture them with wholesome doctrines, which education and wisdom supply.

The mind is likened at one time to a virgin, at another to a woman who is either widowed or still joined to a husband. The mind as virgin is one that keeps itself pure and uncorrupted from pleasures and desires, and also from griefs and fears, those treacherous passions, and its protection is undertaken by the begetting father. But for the mind that lives as a wife, in cultivated reason, according to virtue, this same reason promises its care, sowing, in the manner of a husband, the best thoughts.

But the soul that is orphaned both of offspring according to prudence and of marriage according to right reason, being widowed of the noblest things and bereft of wisdom, having chosen a blameworthy life, let it be liable for what it has determined against itself, having as physician for its errors neither reason-according-to-wisdom as a cohabiting husband nor as a begetting father.

For those who, in their vows, make an offering not only of their possessions or parts of them but of themselves, he fixed valuations, looking not to beauty or stature or anything of that kind, but to an equal reckoning, distinguishing men from women alone, and infants from adults.

For he commands that from twenty years to sixty years the valuation of a man be two hundred drachmas in coin of pure silver, and of a woman one hundred and twenty; from five years to twenty years, eighty drachmas for the male and forty for the female; from infancy to five years, twenty drachmas for the male and twelve for the female; and for those who have lived beyond sixty years, sixty drachmas for old men and forty for old women.

He set the same amounts for males of each age and likewise for females, for three most necessary reasons: first, because the worth of a vow is equal and alike whether it is made by someone great or someone of little account; second, because it was not fitting for those who make vows to be subjected to the fortunes of slaves — for slaves are valued according to bodily condition and good looks, or conversely undervalued for the opposite; and third, which is also the most necessary, because inequality is prized among us, but equality is prized with God.

This applies to human beings; but for cattle the following is legislated: if someone sets apart an animal, and it is clean, of one of the three kinds assigned for sacrifice — ox, sheep, or goat — let him sacrifice that very animal, not exchanging a worse one for a better or a better for a worse; for God does not delight in the bulk and fatness of animals, but in the blameless disposition of the one who vows. But if he does exchange it, let him consecrate two instead of one, both the original and the one substituted for it.

But if someone vows one of the unclean animals, let him bring it to the most reputable of the priests; and let the priest set its value without exceeding its worth, adding also a fifth to the valuation, so that, should it be necessary to sacrifice a clean animal in its place, the price should fall no short of its proper value — and also, for another reason, to shame the one who made the vow, on the ground that he made his vow without reasoning it through, having supposed at the time, I think, through a wandering of mind, that the unclean animal was clean, overpowered as he was by passion.

But if a house becomes a votive offering, let it likewise have a priest to appraise it; and let those who wish to buy it back not pay the same amount — rather, if the one who made the vow chooses to reclaim it, let him pay generously beyond, adding the fifth, thereby penalizing both his rashness and his desire, a twofold evil: rashness in the making of the vow, and desire in now craving what he had earlier renounced. But if it is someone else buying it, let him pay no more than its worth.

Let the one who has made a vow not create long delays before fulfilling what he vowed; for it is absurd to try to shorten agreements made with human beings, while allowing those made with God — who needs nothing and lacks nothing — to run past their due time, convicting oneself by hesitation and slowness of the greatest of wrongs, namely disregard toward him, whose service must be reckoned the beginning and end of happiness. Let this suffice, then, concerning oaths and vows. On the Seventh Day.

The next chapter concerns the sacred seventh day, in which countless necessary matters are treated: the kinds of festivals; the manumissions, in the seventh year, of those who are free by nature but have been serving as laborers on account of unwanted circumstances; the acts of kindness shown by creditors toward their debtors, who forgive loans to their kinsmen in the seventh year; the rest given to the deep-soiled plain and to the hill country, which occur every six years; and the laws laid down concerning the fiftieth year. Even a plain account of these things, without effort, is enough to bring the naturally gifted to perfection in virtue, and to render the unruly and hard of character more compliant.

Now the properties of seven as a number have already been discussed at greater length earlier — the nature it has within the decad, its kinship both with the decad itself and with the tetrad, the beginning and source of the decad; how, when the numbers from one are added together in sequence, it generates the perfect number twenty-eight, equal to the sum of its own parts; and how, when brought into proportion, it produces both a cube and a square at once; and how it displays countless other beauties of theory from itself, matters which it is not the occasion to discuss at length. We must now examine each of the topics proposed and included, beginning from the first. The first was concerning the festivals. On the Ten Festivals.

There are, then, ten festivals in number, which the law records. The first, which one might perhaps be surprised to hear, is every single day. The second is the seventh day that comes every six days, which the Hebrews call in their ancestral tongue the Sabbath. The third is the new moon, following the conjunction according to the moon. The fourth is the festival of the Crossing, called Passover. The fifth is the first fruits of the ears of grain, the sacred sheaf. The sixth is Unleavened Bread. After this comes the truly seventh of the weeks. The eighth is the sacred month. The ninth is the Fast. The tenth is the festival of Tabernacles, which is the conclusion of the yearly festivals, ending in the perfect number, ten. We must begin from the first.

The law records every single day as a festival, fitting it to the blameless life of holy people who follow nature and its ordinances. And if the vices had not gained the upper hand, overpowering the reasonings about what is beneficial and driving them out of each person's soul, but the powers of the virtues had remained wholly unconquered, then the entire span of time from birth to death would be one uninterrupted festival, and houses and cities alike would be full of all good things, living in security and truce, enjoying fair weather in their affairs.

But as things now stand, the acts of greed and mutual aggression that men and women alike contrive, against themselves and against one another, have cut off the continuity of cheerful good spirits. And there is clear proof of what has been said.

For all those, whether among Greeks or barbarians, who practice wisdom, living blamelessly and irreproachably, choosing neither to suffer wrong nor to return it, avoid the company of meddlesome people and have shut themselves off from the places where such people spend their time — courts, council chambers, marketplaces, assemblies, and in general wherever there is any gathering or association of more frivolous people —

such men, having devoted themselves to a peaceable and untroubled life, are the finest observers of nature and of everything within it, investigating earth and sea, air and heaven and the natures found in them, journeying in their thoughts alongside the moon and sun and the circling dance of the other stars, both wandering and fixed, their bodies settled below on solid ground but their souls made winged, so that, walking the upper air, they may survey closely the powers found there — truly good citizens of the world, who have considered the cosmos to be a city, and its citizens to be the companions of wisdom, enrolled by virtue, which is entrusted with presiding over that common constitution.

Full, then, of nobility of character, accustomed to disregard the evils of the body and of external things, practicing indifference toward the truly indifferent, trained against pleasures and desires, and altogether always striving to stand above the passions and being taught to demolish, with every power, the fortress the passions raise against them, and not bent by the assaults of fortune, because they have already reckoned out its attacks in advance — for anticipation lightens even the heaviest of unwanted events, since the mind no longer takes what happens as anything new, but treats its perception of it as already dulled, as if by something old and stale — such people, reasonably rejoicing in the virtues, keep their entire life as a festival.

These, then, are few in number, a smoldering ember of wisdom kept alight in the cities, so that virtue should not be wholly extinguished and vanish from our race.

But if people everywhere came to share the same mind as these few, and all became what nature wishes them to be — blameless and irreproachable, lovers of prudence, rejoicing in the noble for its own sake and holding this alone to be good, with everything else obedient and enslaved to them as though they were rulers — then the cities would be filled with happiness, having no share in whatever causes grief or fear, but full of what produces joy and true well-being, so that no occasion would be lacking

for a cheerful life, and the whole cycle of the year would be a festival. For this reason, when truth sits in judgment, not one of the base ever celebrates a festival, not even for the briefest time, being throttled by consciousness of his own wrongdoings and downcast in soul, even if he feigns a smile on his face. For where would a man of the worst counsel find occasion for unfeigned gladness, living as he does with folly and misusing every opportunity — with tongue, belly, and the organs of generation?

For this reason Moses, who was great in all things, saw that the surpassing beauty belonging to the true festival was too perfect to fit human nature, and so dedicated it to God, speaking in these very words:

"The feasts of the Lord" (Lev. 23:2). For considering how sorrowful and fearful our race is, and how full of countless evils—evils bred by the soul's own excesses, bred too by the body's afflictions, and inflicted by the irregularities of fortune and the counterattacks of those around us, who do and suffer a thousand ills—he reasonably wondered whether anyone, carried along on so vast a sea of circumstances both willed and unwilled, never able to find rest nor to anchor in a life free of danger and secure, could truly keep the festival that is not merely so called but is one in reality: rejoicing and delighting in the contemplation of the world and its contents, in following nature, and in the harmony of deeds with words and words with deeds.

Hence he was compelled to say that the feasts belong to God alone. For God alone is happy and blessed, partaking of no evil, full of perfect goods—or rather, to speak the truth, himself being the Good—who rained down upon heaven and earth their several good things.

For this reason a certain mind of virtue in ancient times, when its passions had grown calm within it, smiled, pregnant with joy and filled to overflowing; and reflecting within herself that perhaps rejoicing belongs to God alone, and that she erred in appropriating to herself pleasures beyond what is human, she grew cautious and denied her inward laughter until she was reassured.

For the gracious God lightened her fear by an oracle bidding her to confess that she had laughed, so as to teach us that what is created is not utterly deprived of joy, but that there is one joy unmixed and perfectly pure, admitting nothing of the opposite nature, reserved for God alone, and another that flows from that one, mixed, blended with a small measure of pain—a joy already given as the greatest gift to the wise man, in whom such a mixture contains more of the pleasant than the unpleasant. So much on this subject.

After the continuous, unbroken, and everlasting festival comes the second, the sacred seventh day observed every six days. Some have called it "virgin," looking to its surpassing purity, and the same writers have also called it "motherless," as sown from the Father of all alone, an image of the male generation with no share in that from women; for the number seven is most manly and vigorous, well suited by nature for rule and leadership. Others have named it "season," inferring its intelligible essence from things perceived by sense.

For whatever is best among perceptible things, through which the yearly seasons and the cycles of the times are accomplished in due order, has a share in the number seven—I mean the seven planets, the Bear, the Pleiades, the recurring cycles of the waxing and waning moon, and the harmonious revolutions of the others, which surpass all reckoning.

But Moses, from a more solemn consideration, called it "completion" and "consummation," attributing to the number six the coming-into-being of the parts of the world, and to the number seven their perfecting. For six is an even-odd number, formed from twice three, having the odd as male and the even as female, from which come births according to nature's unshakable laws.

But seven is utterly unmixed, and is, to speak the truth, the light of six; for what six generated, seven displayed as brought to completion. For this reason it might fittingly be called the world's birthday, on which the Father's work appeared perfect, made of perfect parts, on which day all works have been commanded to cease—

not because the law is a teacher of idleness—for it always accustoms one to endure hardship and anoints one for toil, and it drives away those who wish to be idle and at leisure, since it has in fact ordained that one work for six days—but so that it might release people from continuous and unrelenting labors and, by restoring their bodies through measured periods of rest, renew them again for the same tasks. For those who take a breath, not only ordinary people but athletes too, gather strength, and from a more vigorous power they endure without delay, with fortitude, each of the tasks that must be done.

Yet in commanding that bodies not toil on the sabbath days, he allowed the better activities to be carried out; and these are the activities that come through words and doctrines concerning virtue. For he urges people at that time to practice philosophy, improving the soul and the governing mind.

On the sabbath days, at any rate, countless schoolrooms of prudence, self-control, courage, justice, and the other virtues stand open in every city, in which some sit in order, in silence, with ears pricked up in full attention, out of thirst for words that refresh like drink, while one of the most experienced men rises and expounds what is best and most beneficial, teachings by which the whole of life will be improved.

There are, so to speak, two chief headings among the countless particular words and doctrines: that which concerns God, through piety and holiness, and that which concerns human beings, through love of humanity and justice; and each of these divides into many-branched forms, all of them praiseworthy.

From this it is clear that Moses leaves no season unproductive for those who follow his sacred teachings; but since we are composed of soul and body, he assigned to the body its proper tasks and to the soul what falls to it, and took care that each should watch over the other in turn, so that while the body labors the soul may find its rest, and while the soul enjoys rest the body may labor, and that the best of lives—the contemplative and the active—might alternate, yielding place to one another: the active life receiving the six days for the body's service, and the contemplative life the seventh day for knowledge and the perfecting of the mind.

On this day it is forbidden to kindle fire, as being the beginning and seed of the business of life, since without fire nothing can be accomplished among the necessary requirements for living; so that, by forbidding this one thing—the highest and most venerable cause employed in the arts, especially the manual crafts—the particular services dependent on it are also thereby prevented.

But it seems that, because of those more disobedient people who pay least attention to what is commanded, he added further legislation on other points as well, not only requiring that free persons cease from work on the sabbath days, but also granting the same to menservants and maidservants, proclaiming to them freedom from constraint—almost liberty itself—every six days, so as to teach both parties a most excellent lesson:

that masters should accustom themselves to do things with their own hands, not waiting upon the services and ministrations of their household servants, so that, should some unwanted occasion arise amid the changes of human affairs, they might not, worn out by unfamiliarity with working for themselves, give up under such demands, but rather, using the more agile parts of their bodies, might act with ease and without difficulty; and that the household servants should not give up hope of better things, but, having their release every six days, might look forward—as to a spark and kindling ember of freedom—to complete release, should they continue to be good and devoted to their masters.

And from the fact that the free sometimes endure the services of slaves, and that household servants come to share in this freedom from constraint, it will follow that human life advances toward the most perfect virtue, as both those who seem eminent and those more obscure are reminded of equality and pay back to one another the debt that is due.

But indeed the law granted rest on the sabbath days not to servants alone but to cattle as well; and yet servants have by nature been born free—for no human being is by nature a slave—while irrational animals, prepared for the use and service of human beings, hold the rank of slaves; but nevertheless, though they are bound to carry burdens and to bear the toils and labors undertaken for their owners' sake, they find rest on the sabbath days.

And why need we recall the rest? Not even the ox, born for the most necessary and useful tasks in life—plowing the earth in preparation for sowing, and again threshing the sheaves once gathered in, for the cleansing of the grain—is yoked on that day, keeping instead the world's birthday festival. So thoroughly, then, has its sanctity spread through all things.

So great is the reverence he requires for the seventh day that whatever else partakes of it is likewise honored by him. Thus every seventh year he always introduces a cancellation of debts, assisting the poor and calling the wealthy to love of humanity, so that by sharing their own goods with those in need they may also have good expectations for themselves, should some misfortune befall them; for human affairs are many, and life does not rest fixed on the same footing but shifts to its opposite like an unstable wind.

It would be good, then, for the kindness shown by lenders to extend to all debtors; but since not all are by nature disposed to magnanimity, and some are weaker where money is concerned, or not especially well off, he judged it right that even these should be required to contribute only what will not grieve them to give.

For not allowing debts to be exacted from fellow countrymen, he permitted collection from others, rightly calling the former "brothers," so that no one should begrudge his own kin, as being by nature joint heirs with his brothers, while he named those not of the same nation, as was fitting, "strangers."

But this strangeness admits no fellowship, unless someone should transform it, through surpassing acts of virtue, into a kinship as of one's own family; for altogether the true commonwealth and its laws lie in the virtues, which introduce only the beautiful as good. But lending at interest is culpable; for a man borrows not because he lives in abundance but plainly because he is in need, and being compelled to pay interest on top of the principal, he is of necessity reduced to the utmost poverty, and though he thinks he is being helped, he is being harmed all the more—like those senseless animals lured by the bait set before them.

But to you I would say, O moneylender: why do you cloak an unsociable manner under the name of partnership? Why do you pretend to be kind and humane in appearance, while in your actions you display inhumanity and a terrible harshness, exacting more than you gave—sometimes even double—and making the poor man poorer still?

So no one shares his suffering when he has coveted more and swallowed up another's property as well as his own; everyone rather takes pleasure in it, calling him a usurer and a money-grubber and names of that sort, since he sits in wait for other people's misfortunes and counts another man's calamity his own good luck.

But, as someone has said, vice is blind, and so is the man who lends at interest: he does not see the time of repayment, in which he will barely obtain, or will not obtain at all, what he expected to gain through his greed.

Let this man, then, pay the penalty for his love of money, recovering only what he actually advanced, so that he may not, by drawing profit from what was not his due, work misfortune for other people. But let debtors be judged worthy of the humanity the laws provide, paying no interest or additional charges, but repaying only the principal itself; for in due season they in turn will repay the same benefit, requiting with equal services those who first showed them kindness.

Having ordained such things, Moses next records a law full of gentleness and humanity. If, he says, one of your brothers is sold to you, let him serve six years, and in the seventh let him be set free without payment.

Again he called the fellow countryman a "brother," sowing in the soul of the owner, through this form of address, a sense of kinship with his subject, so that he should not disregard him as a stranger, toward whom no affection of goodwill exists, but rather, having already conceived through this teaching—which the sacred word whispers into him—a feeling of family affection, should not be vexed when the man is about to be set free.

For it happens that such people are called slaves, but in reality they are hired workers rendering service out of necessity, even if some threaten them ten thousand times with absolute mastery and lordship over them.

They must be tamed by having those good precepts of the law repeated to them: the one called a slave, my good man, is a hired laborer, and he too is a human being, having with you the very highest kinship, and moreover being of the same nation, and perhaps even of the same tribe and township, brought down to this condition only through want.

Root out, then, from your soul that treacherous evil, arrogance, and treat him as a hired worker, both giving and receiving in turn; for he will render his services most readily, always and everywhere, delaying nothing, but anticipating your commands with speed and eagerness. And you, for your part, give him in return food and clothing and the rest of his care; do not yoke him like an irrational animal, nor crush him with burdens heavier than his strength, nor treat him insolently, nor drive him by threats and menaces into harsh despondency, but grant him periods of respite and measured relaxation; for "nothing in excess" is best in all things, and above all for masters toward their household servants.

When he has served you for a term that is fully sufficient, six years, and the most sacred number, the seventh year, is about to begin, release him free—one who is free by nature—without any hesitation, but rather, noble sir, grant the favor with joy, since you have received the opportunity to confer the greatest benefit upon the finest of living creatures, a human being; for there is no greater good for a slave than freedom.

So, rejoicing, add something further of your own out of every part of your property, providing for the man you have benefited; for it redounds to your credit if he leaves your house not as a poor man, but well supplied with the resources he needs, so that he may not again, through want, be reduced to his former misfortune, forced by scarcity of the necessities of life to serve as a slave once more, and so your kindness be undone. So much, then, concerning the poor.

Next he commands that the land be left fallow in the seventh year, for many reasons. First, so that it may honor the number seven throughout all periods of time, of days, months, and years; for every seventh day is sacred, what is called among the Hebrews the Sabbath, and the seventh month has, throughout every year, been allotted the greatest of the festivals, so that reasonably the seventh year too, receiving its share of the reverence paid to that number, has been honored.

And here is the second reason: do not, he says, count everything as gain, but willingly endure loss as well, so that you may bear with ease any unintended damage, should it ever occur, and not be dispirited, as if it were something strange and unfamiliar, and lose heart. For some of the rich are so unfortunate in their outlook that, when a shortage arises, they groan and grow downcast no less than if they had been stripped of their entire fortune.

But those among Moses' companions who are genuine disciples, trained from their earliest years in fine customs, are accustomed to bear want with ease, precisely through the practice of leaving the fertile land fallow; at the same time they are taught magnanimity, and learn to let go, almost out of their own hands, of income that is undeniably due to them, and to do so of their own free will.

And a third point too seems to me to be hinted at here: that it is not fitting for anyone at all to weigh people down and oppress them with burdens. For if a share of rest must be given even to portions of the earth, which by nature can partake of neither pleasure nor pain, how much more should it be given to human beings, who possess not only the perception common to irrational animals as well, but also a distinguished reasoning faculty, by which the painful effects of toil and exhaustion are impressed upon them with sharper images?

Let those called masters, then, put a stop to the harsh and scarcely bearable commands they lay upon their slaves, which break their bodies by force and compel their souls to give out even before their bodies do.

For there is no grudging in prescribing moderate tasks, through which you yourselves will enjoy the service that is fitting, and your attendants will perform what is ordered without strain, and will endure their duties not for a short time only—if I must speak the truth, growing old at their labors—but for a very long time, renewed like athletes, not those who fatten themselves into excessive flesh, but those accustomed to train through dry sweat toward the acquisition of what is necessary and useful for life.

Let the governors of cities too put a stop to breaking their citizens' necks with continual and heavy tributes and taxes, men who fill their own private coffers, and along with the money store up as well their own base and servile vices, which defile their whole life.

For they deliberately choose as tax collectors men utterly without pity and full of inhumanity, giving them thereby the means for their own greed; and these men, having in addition to their natural crudeness the license granted by their masters' orders, and having resolved to do everything to please them, leave out none of the harshest measures, knowing not even in a dream what fairness and gentleness are.

And so they throw everything into turmoil and confusion in their extortion of money, exacting it not only from people's property but from their very bodies, with outrages, assaults, and tortures devised for extreme cruelty; indeed, I hear that some do not even spare the dead, through savagery and a monstrous frenzy, men so brutalized that they even dare to strike the dead with whips.

And when someone reproached them for such excessive cruelty, saying that not even death, the release from all evils and the true end of life, would secure for the departed freedom from outrage, but that instead of burial and the customary rites they would undergo further abuse, they used a defense worse than the accusation, claiming that they insult the dead not in order to outrage senseless and unfeeling dust—for that would serve no purpose—but in order to move to pity those connected to the deceased by family or by friendship, and to induce them to pay a ransom for the bodies, granting this as a final favor.

Then, most base of all men, I would say to them: have you not learned beforehand what you teach others? To call others to pity, even though you yourselves have been carved out of the cruelest stock? And this when you are not at a loss for good instructors, above all our own laws, which even released the land from its yearly tributes and granted it relief and rest?

And the land, though it seems to be lifeless, stands ready to make a return and repay the favor, hastening to give back as a gift what it has received; for having obtained immunity in the seventh year and not been worked, but having been set wholly free through the entire cycle of the year, in the years that follow it bears, out of its abundance, double crops, and sometimes even many times over.

One can see something similar too in what trainers do with athletes; for when they have driven them hard with repeated and continuous exercises, before they reach the point of utter exhaustion, they restore them, granting relief not only from the toils of the contest but also from strict regimens of food and drink, relaxing the hard discipline for the good spirits of the soul and the well-being of the body.

And surely those whose profession is to train men for hardship are not teachers of idleness and self-indulgence; rather, by method and skill, they build up strength stronger than strength and powers more vigorous than powers, increasing the athlete's vigor, as if tuning a harmony, through alternating relaxation and exertion.

I learned this from all-wise nature, which, knowing the toil and weariness of our race, divided time into day and night, granting waking to the one and sleep to the other.

For a concern like that of a most solicitous mother came over her, that her offspring should not be worn down: by day she rouses bodies and stirs them to all the uses and services of life, chiding those who grow accustomed to a life of idleness and soft living; but at night, sounding the recall as in war, she calls them back to rest and to the care of their bodies.

And people, setting down the great weight of business with which they had been laden from morning to evening, and returning home, turn to quiet, and falling into deep sleep, nurse away the day's toil, and becoming fresh and untired once more, hurry each to their own accustomed pursuits.

This long course nature has apportioned to human beings through sleep and waking, so that in one part they may be active, and in the other, being at rest, may keep the parts of the body more ready and more agile.

With this in view, the man who prophesied our laws proclaimed a release for the land, holding back its farmers every six years. But he introduced this not only for the reasons I have mentioned, but also out of that habitual kindness to humanity which he thinks fit to weave into every part of his legislation, stamping sociable and gracious character on those who come to the sacred writings.

For he commands that in the seventh year no plot of ground be enclosed, but that all vineyards and olive groves be left open, and all other possessions of sown land or of trees, so that the poor may use the self-grown fruits without fear, no less than those who own the land.

Hence he did not permit the owners themselves to work the land, aiming at this: that he should not become the cause of any grief to them, since they would be providing the expenses but not receiving the revenues in return; while he thought it right to release the poor, as though the produce were their own, since for that time at least what belonged to others was considered common, freeing them from a humbled posture and from the reproaches attached to begging.

Is it not fitting to fall in love with these laws, so full of such gentleness? Through them the rich are taught to share and hold in common what they have, while the poor are consoled, not being compelled to haunt the houses of the well-off at all times to make up what they lack, but sometimes even drawing an income, as though from their own possessions, from the fruits that grow of themselves, as I have said.

Widows and orphaned children, and all the others among the neglected and unregarded, because they possess nothing, at that time come to possess much, suddenly grown rich through the gifts of God, who has called them to share in the possessions of the landowners in the number of the sacred seventh.

And all who keep herds, too, lead their own animals to graze without fear, choosing fields rich in grass and most suitable for pasture, taking full advantage of the license of the truce; and no resentment at all is met with from the owners, since they are mastered by a most ancient custom which, having become their companion over long ages, has overcome nature itself.

Laying this as a foundation stone, so to speak, of fairness and love of humanity, he combined seven weeks of years and declared the whole fiftieth year sacred, legislating for it distinctions and excellences beyond all the others that share in this fellowship.

First, this: he holds that estates which have passed to others must be given back to their original owners, so that the allotments may be preserved for the families, and none of those who were assigned a portion should be deprived of the gift forever.

For since unwanted circumstances often fall upon people, forcing some to sell their own property, he took thought also for the proper use of these transactions, and prevented buyers from being deceived, permitting some to sell while instructing the others very clearly about the terms on which they were to buy.

"Do not," he says, "give the price as for outright possession, but only for a fixed number of years, those within the fifty-year period. For sales ought to be of fruits, not of properties, for two most necessary reasons: one, that the whole land is called a possession of God, and it is not holy for others to have themselves inscribed as masters of God's possessions; the other, that a portion has been allotted to each of the heirs, and the law did not think it right that one who had drawn a lot should be deprived of it."

So then, whoever is able within the fifty years to recover his own property, or one of his nearest kin by blood, is called upon by every means to pay back the price he received, and not to become the cause of loss to the purchaser who had been of service at the proper time.

But to the one in poverty he showed compassion, and granted him a share of mercy, restoring to him again his original substance, apart from the fields consecrated by vow and placed in the category of dedications; for it is not holy for a dedication to be annulled by time. Therefore it has been ordained to select their fair value, giving no favor at the expense of the one who made the dedication.

These, then, are the ordinances concerning the distribution and allotment of land; but there are others concerning houses. Since some of these are within city walls, and others are farmhouses in the fields outside the walls, the law permitted those in the countryside always to be redeemed, and those not redeemed by the fiftieth year to be given back without payment to their former owners, just as with landed property; for farmhouses are a portion of one's estate.

But those within walls have a right of return to the sellers only up to a year; after the year they are confirmed forever to the purchasers, the release of the fiftieth year doing no harm at all to the buyers.

The reason is his wish to give even to newcomers a firm foundation for settling there; for since they have no share in the land, not having been numbered among the allotments, the law assigned to them the possession of houses, taking care that the suppliants and refugees of the laws should not become homeless wanderers.

For the cities, when the land was allotted by tribe, were not themselves divided up, nor indeed had they even been built from the start, since the inhabitants made their homes in farmhouses in the fields; from these, later rising up and coming together, as fellowship and friendship naturally grew over a long time, they built houses together and cities as well, in which, as I said, they also gave a share to the newcomers, so that these should not be lacking in either the country dwellings or those in the cities.

Concerning the priestly tribe the following is legislated: the law assigned no allotted portion of land to the temple attendants, judging the firstfruits to be sufficient income for them, but allotted forty-eight cities for their dwelling, and to each two thousand cubits of surrounding suburb.

As for the houses in these cities, the law did not treat them in the same way as the others within walls, where those who bought them, if the sellers were unable to redeem them within a year, kept them permanently; instead he allowed these to be redeemed at any time, just as with the farmhouses belonging to the rest of the nation, to which they are equivalent, since out of so vast a territory they were allotted only these houses, of which he did not think those who received them ought to be deprived, any more than the heirs of the farmhouses. So much, then, concerning houses.

Concerning debtors and their creditors, and servants and their masters, he legislates in the same way as before: that creditors should not exact interest from their fellow countrymen, but should be content to recover only what they had advanced; and that masters should treat those bought with silver not as slaves by nature but as hired workers, granting them the freedom to go, at once to those able to pay the price of their own ransom, and later to those without means, either when the seventh year from the beginning of their servitude arrives, or when the fiftieth year comes, even if one happens to have been brought into servitude the day before; for that time is, and is reckoned to be, a release, since all things run their course back, as on a double track, and return to their original good fortune.

He permits the acquiring of household servants from those not of the same people, [that is, those from other nations,] wishing first that there be a distinction between one's own and what belongs to others, and second, that he should not shut out from his own commonwealth altogether the most necessary of possessions, servants; for countless matters in life require the services of slaves.

Let sons be heirs of their parents, and if there are none, daughters. For just as in the nature of women men take precedence, so also in matters of kinship let them hold the privilege, succeeding to the estates and fulfilling the place of the deceased, since they are held fast by the law of necessity, which makes nothing born of earth immortal.

But if unmarried daughters are left behind, their dowry not having been fixed while their parents were still alive, let them share equally with the males. And let the presiding authority take care for the protection of those left behind, and for their upbringing, and for the expenses needed for the diet and education fitting for girls, and, when the time comes, for a suitable marriage, with men of proven worth in every respect chosen by merit.

These heirs should above all be relatives, or failing that, at least fellow demesmen and fellow tribesmen, so that the dowry allotments not be alienated by intermarriage but remain within the portions assigned from the beginning according to tribes.

If a man happens to die without offspring, his brothers should come forward to the succession; for after sons and daughters, the next rank in kinship belongs to brothers. If a man dying has no brother, his paternal uncles should inherit the estate; and if there are no uncles, his aunts, then the nearest of his other household members and relatives.

But if such a scarcity of kin should occur that nothing is left from the bloodline, the tribe should be the heir; for the tribe too is a kind of kinship, only marked out on a larger and more complete scale.

It is worth pausing over a question some have raised: why, after mentioning all relatives, demesmen, and tribesmen in the successions to estates, does the law pass over parents alone in silence, when it would seem reasonable that, just as they are inherited from, they should inherit what belongs to their children? The reason, good sir, is this: being divine and always looking to the sequence of nature, the law thought it should never introduce anything that runs counter to nature's order. For it is the prayer of parents to leave behind them, while still living, the children they begot, who will inherit their name, their line, and their property; whereas it is the curse of implacable enemies that the opposite should happen — that sons and daughters should die before their parents.

So then, in order that nothing discordant or out of tune should sound within the harmony and concord by which the whole universe is governed, the law — recognizing that children die and parents survive them — did not, out of both necessity and propriety, command mothers and fathers to inherit from their sons and daughters, knowing that such a thing does not accord with life or with nature.

Guarding, then, against naming parents outright as heirs to the estates of their deceased children — lest, by assigning them a benefit they would pray never to need, it should seem to reproach mourners or remind them of their misfortunes — the law apportioned the estates to them by another route, a slight consolation for a great evil. What, then, is this route?

The law names a father's brother as heir to his brother's children, honoring, no doubt, the father through the uncle — unless someone is foolish enough to suppose that in honoring one person he thereby chooses to dishonor another. Do people who look after the acquaintances of their friends thereby neglect their friends? Or do those who care for everyone connected with people they esteem also welcome those people as companions? In just the same way, the law, by naming a father's brother to a share in the inheritance for the father's sake, calls upon the father himself far more directly — not in so many words, for the reasons stated, but by a meaning more recognizable than any spoken word, one that makes plain the lawgiver's intention.

The eldest of the children does not receive an equal share with those born after him, but is deemed worthy of double, first because the man and woman, who had until then simply been husband and wife, became father and mother through the one born first, and because this firstborn was the one who began to call his parents by these names; and — the most essential reason — because a household previously without offspring became rich in children for the continuance of the human race, whose sowing is marriage and whose fruit is the birth of children, of which the eldest is the beginning.

For this reason, I think, the firstborn of implacable enemies who had acted without any pity — as the sacred writings show — were all destroyed together in a single night, in the full flower of their youth, while the firstborn of the nation were consecrated and dedicated to God as a thank-offering; for it was fitting that the one people be weighed down with the heaviest and most inconsolable grief, through the destruction of those who stood at the front rank of their households, while the saving God be honored by the other with firstfruits, which by lot hold the position of leadership among children.

Since there are some who, after marriage and the begetting of children, in later life unlearn self-control and run aground on incontinence, and, becoming infatuated with other women, mistreat their former wives and no longer treat the children of those wives as a father but as a stepfather, imitating the impiety of stepmothers toward stepchildren, and altogether hand themselves and all that is theirs over to their second wives and to the children of these — overcome by pleasure, the most shameful of passions — the law would not have hesitated, if it were somehow possible, to put a rein upon their desires so that they might not leap up still further.

But since it is difficult, or rather impossible, to cure a madness driven wild by such a goad, the law left the man himself, as one held fast by an incurable disease, but did not overlook the son of the wife who had been wronged on account of his father's later infatuations, ordering that he receive double the share in the distribution among the brothers.

There are many reasons for this. First, the law punishes the guilty party by imposing on him the necessity of benefiting the very person he has chosen to treat badly, and it renders his ungracious intention void, in that through the very means by which he means to injure the one at risk, he is instead penalized himself, being placed in the same rank the true father left for the eldest child.

Second, the law shows pity and compassion for those who have been wronged, lightening their heaviest grief through a share in this favor and gift; for it was reasonable that the mother should take no less pleasure than the inheriting son in the double portion, being consoled by the law's humanity, which did not allow her and her offspring to be utterly diminished in the eyes of their enemies.

Third, the law, being a good arbiter of what is just, reasoned within itself that the father had lavished provisions upon the children of the wife he loved, out of longing for her, while he considered the children of the wife he had come to hate worthy of nothing at all, out of hatred for their mother — so that the former had, even while he still lived, already received more than an equal share in advance, while the latter risked being deprived of their entire paternal inheritance even after his death. In order, then, to equalize the distribution between the children of both wives, the law fixed the double portion as the birthright of the child of the wife who had been put aside. So much, then, for this matter.

Following the order, we now record a third kind of festival, which we shall explain. It is the new moon, reckoned by the moon's course, the period from one conjunction to the next, which the disciples of mathematics have calculated with great precision. The new moon holds its rank among the festivals for many reasons: first, because it is the beginning of the month, and the beginning of both number and time is honorable; next, because on that day nothing in heaven is without light. For at the conjunction, when the moon runs beneath the sun, the side of it facing earth is darkened, but at the new moon it naturally begins to shine again.

Third, because at that time the greater and more powerful body shares a necessary benefit with the lesser and weaker; for at the new moon the sun begins to illuminate the moon with perceptible brightness, and the moon in turn displays its own beauty to those who behold it. This is, it seems, a clear lesson in kindness and humanity, teaching that human beings should never begrudge others their own goods, but, imitating the blessed and happy natures in heaven, should drive envy far from the soul, bringing what belongs to them out into the open, sharing it in common, and giving freely to those who deserve it.

Fourth, because the moon, of all the bodies in heaven, traverses the zodiac in the shortest time, completing its circuit within the span of a month. For this reason the law has honored the completion of this cycle — when the moon, ending its course, returns to the point from which it began to move — by calling that day a festival, so as to teach us once again a most excellent lesson: that in the actions of our life we should make our endings harmonious with our beginnings. And this will come about if we guide our first impulses by reason, not allowing them to run wild and leap about like cattle that have no herdsman.

As for the benefits the moon provides to all things upon the earth, why should I dwell on them at length in the telling? The evidence is plain for all to see. Is it not by the moon's waxing that rivers and springs swell, and by its waning that they diminish again? Do not the seas at times withdraw and, ebbing, draw back, and at other times suddenly rush in with the returning tide? Does not the air, through clear skies and clouds and its other changes, undergo transformations of every kind? Do not the fruits of crops and trees grow and reach fulfillment, nourished through the moon's cycles, each thing that grows being ripened by its dews and gentlest breezes?

But this is not the occasion, as I said, to speak at length in praise of the moon, cataloguing all the benefits it provides to living things and to everything upon the earth. For these reasons, then, and others like them, the new moon has been honored and has taken its place among the festivals.

After the new moon comes the fourth festival, the Crossing-Feast, which the Hebrews call by that name in their ancestral tongue. On this day the whole people sacrifice, offering countless myriads of victims from midday until evening — the entire nation, old and young alike, honored on that day with the dignity of the priesthood. For at other times the priests perform both the public sacrifices and each individual's private ones, according to the prescriptions of the laws, but on this day the whole nation, with full license, performs the sacred rite and serves as priests with pure hands.

The reason is this: the festival is a memorial and thank-offering for the greatest of migrations, which was set out from Egypt by more than two hundred myriads of men and women together, in accordance with the oracles that had been given. At that time, then, as was natural, having left behind a land teeming with inhumanity and hostility to strangers, and — the harshest thing of all — a land that assigned the honors due to God to irrational animals, not only tame ones but wild ones as well, the people themselves, overcome with sheer joy, sacrificed out of unspeakable eagerness and hurried haste, not waiting for the priests. And what was then done under an impulse that was self-prompted and freely willed, the law has since permitted to be done once each year, as a reminder for giving thanks. This much is recorded according to ancient tradition.

But for those whose custom it is to turn the literal text toward allegory, the Crossing-Feast hints at the purification of the soul; for they say that the lover of wisdom pursues nothing other than the crossing away from the body and the passions, each of which floods over him like a mountain torrent, unless one holds back and checks its rush with the doctrines of virtue.

At that time each household takes on the appearance and solemnity of a temple, as the victim that has been slaughtered is made ready for the fitting feast, and those gathered for the common meal have been purified with sanctifying lustral rites — people who have come not, as to other banquets, to gratify the belly with wine and food, but to fulfill an ancestral custom with prayers and hymns.

It is worth noting also the day of this feast celebrated by the whole nation, for it is held on the fourteenth of the month, a number made up of two sevens, so that it should not lack any of the honor due to the number seven, but that this number should preside over the whole occasion with its distinction and solemnity.

Following the Crossing-Feast comes a festival with a distinctive character and an unaccustomed use of food: Unleavened Bread, from which it takes its name. There is a twofold account of it: one particular to the nation, on account of the migration already mentioned; the other general, according to the sequence of nature and the harmony of the whole universe. That this claim is no falsehood must now be examined. This month, seventh in number and order according to the solar cycle, is first in importance, and for this reason it is recorded first in the sacred books.

The reason, I think, is this: the vernal equinox has come to be a kind of image and imitation of that beginning at which this world was fashioned. For then, as the elements were being separated out and taking on their harmonious order in relation both to themselves and to one another, the heaven was being adorned with the sun and moon and the choruses and cycles of the other planets and fixed stars, and the earth too was being adorned with every kind of plant, and all the rich and deep soil of both the hill country and the plain was in flower and putting forth green growth.

So each year, by way of reminding us of the world's coming-into-being, God brings forth the spring, in which everything blooms and buds. It is therefore not without purpose that this month is recorded first among the laws, since it is in a way an impression of that first beginning, stamped from it as from an archetypal seal.

But the month that falls at the autumnal equinox, though it too is first in the solar cycles, is not called first in the Law, because at that time, once all the crops have been gathered in, the trees shed their leaves, and everything that the flourishing spring had brought forth withers and dries up under the dry winds of the air, which turn parched from the sun's scorching.

To designate as first, then, a month in which both the hill country and the plain are barren and unfruitful he judged to be altogether discordant and unfitting; for what has been allotted the first and leading rank must be attended by the most beautiful and desirable things, those through which living creatures, crops, and plants come into being and grow, and not by the ill-omened processes of decay.

The festival begins at the mid-month, the fifteenth day, when the moon becomes full, by the providential design that on that day there should be no darkness at all, but everything filled with light through and through — the sun shining from morning until evening, and the moon from evening until morning giving the same... , the two lights

yielding their place to one another in unshadowed brightness. The festival is then kept for seven days, since the number seven has been allotted preeminence and honor in the world, so that nothing that belongs to good cheer, to the joy and thanksgiving of the whole people toward God, should be missing from the sacred week, which he intended to be the beginning and source of all good things for humankind.

Of the seven days he called two, the first and the last, "holy," giving distinction, as is fitting, to the end as well, and at the same time wishing, as in a musical instrument, to bring the boundary notes into harmony with one another — and perhaps also wanting to make both the time past and the time to come concordant with the festival, joining the past to the first day and the future to the last, each of which has taken on the force of the other. For the first day is the beginning of the festival but the end of the time that has gone by, while the seventh is the end of the festival but the beginning of the time to come, so that, as I said before, the whole life of the virtuous person may be reckoned a festival of equal honor, once it has driven out grief, fear, desire, and the other passions and sicknesses of the soul.

The bread is unleavened, either because our ancestors, when by divine escort they were setting out on that migration, in their utmost haste carried with them dough made without leaven, or because at that season — I mean the season of spring, in which it happens that the festival is kept — the crop of grain is not yet complete, the fields bearing ears but not yet ready for the harvest. It was to the crop still incomplete but soon, a little later, to reach completion, that he judged it right to liken this unleavened food — for it too is incomplete — as a reminder of a good hope, since nature is already preparing her yearly gifts to the human race in the abundance and plenty of what is needed.

It is also said by the expositors of the sacred writings that unleavened food is a gift of nature, while leavened food is a work of art; for through the pursuit of pleasure, striving to mix the pleasant with the necessary, men have by art rendered smooth what by nature was austere.

Since, then, the spring festival is, as I have shown, a memorial of the world's coming-into-being, and since the most ancient people, born of the earth and from earth-born parents, necessarily made use of the world's gifts unaltered, pleasure not yet having gained the upper hand, he ordained as the food proper to that season, wishing every year to kindle afresh the embers of a solemn and austere way of life, and at the same time, in the truce of the festival, to marvel at and honor the ancient life of frugality and simplicity, and to make our own life, so far as possible, resemble that ancient one.

What has been said is confirmed above all by the setting out, on the sacred table, of twelve loaves equal in number to the tribes; for all of them are unleavened, a most evident sign of food unmixed, prepared not by art for pleasure but by nature for necessary use. So much, then, on this.

There is a festival within the festival, the one that falls immediately after the first day, which is named, from what is done, the Sheaf; for this is brought to the altar as a firstfruit both of the land which the nation has been allotted to inhabit and of the whole earth, so that the firstfruit is at once the nation's own and common on behalf of the whole human race.

The reason is that the relation a priest bears to a city, the nation of the Jews bears to the whole inhabited world. For it acts as priest, if the truth must be told, employing all the purifications proper to holiness, both of body and of soul, under the guidance of divine laws which have restrained the pleasures of the belly and those below it, and have bridled the unruly mass of the soul, giving reason as charioteer over the irrational senses, and have checked and reined in the soul's unjudged and excessive impulses, some by gentler instruction and philosophical exhortation, others by weightier and sterner rebukes and by fear of the punishment they hold in store.

Apart from the fact that the legislation is, in a sense, a teaching in priesthood, and that whoever lives according to the laws is at once a priest, or rather a high priest, in the judgment of truth, there is this further distinguished point: unbounded and uncontainable has proved to be the multitude of gods honored city by city, male and female, whom the race of poets and the mass of men have fashioned into myths — men for whom the search for truth is impassable and unexplored; and indeed not all honor the same gods, but different peoples hold different ones in reverence and worship, so that they do not even recognize as gods those of a foreign land, but treat the acceptance given them as a laughing matter and mockery, and condemn as great folly those who honor them, as men who have missed a sound judgment.

But if there exists — as with one accord all agree, both Greeks and barbarians together — one who is the highest Father of gods and men and the maker of the whole universe, whose nature, being invisible and hard to conceive, all who occupy themselves with the sciences and the rest of philosophy long to search out, not only to see but even to comprehend by thought, leaving nothing undone toward its discovery and its worship, then all men ought to have been bound fast to him, and not, as though summoned in from a stage machine, to induct others into equal honors.

But since they stumbled in the most necessary part, the nation of the Jews — to speak in the most proper terms — set right the failure of the rest, passing over everything that has come into being, as generated and by nature perishable, and choosing the worship of that alone which is ungenerated and eternal; first because it is noble, and then because it is also profitable, to honor the elder before the younger, the ruler before the ruled, and the maker before what has come into being —

these are truths that stand and are to be held fast. Hence it occurs to me to marvel how some dare to accuse this nation of misanthropy, when it makes use of such an excess of fellowship and goodwill toward all people everywhere, that it offers prayers, festivals, and firstfruits on behalf of the common race of men, and worships the truly existent God both for itself and for the others, who have run away from the service they owe.

This, then, is on behalf of the whole human race. But privately, again, they give thanks for many things: first, because they do not go on wandering scattered over land and sea, and, as strangers without a settled place, are not reproached for occupying the goods of others and lying in wait for what belongs to other men, having borrowed no portion of so much land in order to be resettled, but having acquired territory and cities, they possess for a long time now their own allotted portion, out of which it is a holy duty to offer firstfruits.

Second, because the land they were allotted is not a rejected or ordinary one, but good and all-bearing, suited both for the fruitful breeding of tame animals and for the boundless abundance of crops; for in it there is no poor soil, but even what seems rocky and hard is girded with soft and very deep veins, which, because of their richness, are good for nurturing life.

Furthermore, they did not receive a deserted land, but one in which there was a populous nation and great cities thriving with men; yet these cities were emptied of their inhabitants, and the whole nation, apart from a small remnant, was destroyed, in part by wars, in part by god-sent visitations, on account of the strange and monstrous practices of wrongdoing and the impieties they committed in their great undertakings against the ordinances of nature, so that those who came to settle in their place might be schooled by the evils of others, taught by the facts themselves that those who become zealots of the works of wickedness will suffer the same fate, while those who honor virtue will possess the allotted portion given them, examined not as resident aliens but as native-born.

That the Sheaf, then, is a firstfruit both of the nation's own land and of the whole earth, offered in thanksgiving for the prosperity and good harvest which the nation and the whole human race longed to enjoy, has now been shown. But one should not fail to note that many, and most beneficial, things present themselves through the firstfruit: first, remembrance of God, than which no more perfect good can be found, and then, a most just recompense to him who is, in truth, the cause of the good harvest.

For what comes from the farmer's art is little, or rather nothing — to open furrows or dig round a plant and mound it, or deepen a trench, or cut away superfluous growths, or do some other such task — whereas everything necessary and useful comes from nature: the most fertile soil, regions well watered by native springs and rivers, by winter torrents and the yearly rains, a good tempering of the air breathing with its most life-giving breezes, and the countless forms of seed-crops and plants. Which of these has man either discovered or produced?

Nature, then, who gave birth to these, has not begrudged man her own good things, but, deeming him the most commanding of mortal creatures because he has a share in reason and understanding, chose him as of the highest merit and called him to partake in what is her own; for which the host, God, deserves to be praised and marveled at, who provides the earth, the truest hearth, always full not only of what is necessary but also of what belongs to a life of refined ease.

Besides this, there is the duty not to be unreasoning: for he who has grown accustomed to gratitude toward God, who lacks nothing and is full in himself, will surely have become accustomed to it toward men too, who are in need of countless things.

The sheaf of the firstfruit is of barley, for the blameless use of those of lesser station; for since it was not pure and holy to offer firstfruits from everything — most things having come into being more for pleasure than for necessary use — nor was it lawful to enjoy and partake of any food meant for eating without having first given thanks in the manner that is fitting and right, the Law ordained that the offering of firstfruits be made from the kind of food honored with second place, barley; for the crop of wheat has won the seniority, and its firstfruit, being the more distinguished, he assigns to a more fitting season, not sending it forth prematurely but storing it up for the present time, so that acts of thanksgiving might be fitted to their appointed periods of time.

Possessing so many privileges as the law has shown, the festal gathering held over the sheaf is, if we are to speak the truth, a festival preliminary to another and greater festival. For from that day the fiftieth day is reckoned by seven weeks, the unit that seals a sacred number of release, which is the bodiless image of God, to whom it is made like through its solitary oneness. This, then, is the first beauty that the number fifty displays.

Another point must be mentioned. The nature of this number is marvelous and worth contending for, among other reasons because it is composed of the most elemental and most venerable of the things comprised within substances, as the mathematicians say — the right-angled triangle. For the sides of this triangle, being three, four, and five in length, complete the number twelve, the model of the zodiacal circle, by the doubling of the six, the most fruitful number, which is the beginning of perfection, being completed out of its own parts, to which it is equal. But in power, it seems, they beget the fiftieth, through three times three and four times four and five times five, so that one must necessarily say that the fifty is as much greater than the twelve as the power is greater than the length.

But if the fairest of the spheres in heaven, the zodiacal, is the image of the lesser number, of what could the greater number, the fifty, be the model, if not altogether of some better nature? Of this it is not the occasion to speak; for the present it is enough to have noted the difference, so as not to treat as incidental a matter that ought to take the lead.

The festival that falls on the fiftieth number has received the name of first-fruits, on which it is customary to offer two leavened loaves made of wheat as the first-fruits of grain, the finest of foods. It was named 'of first-fruits' either because, before the year's crop comes into use for human beings, the first offspring of the new grain and the first crop to appear are brought as a first-fruit offering —

for it is just and pious that those who have received from God the greatest gift — abundance of food that is at once most necessary, most beneficial, and also most pleasant — should neither enjoy it nor taste it at all before offering first-fruits to its provider, giving him nothing (for all things, both possessions and gifts, are his), but through a small token displaying a grateful and God-loving disposition toward him who, needing no favors himself, waters us with continuous and unfailing favors —

or because the crop of wheat is, above all, the first and best offspring, the other sown crops being ranked in second place. For just as a ruler is said to be first in a city, and a pilot first on a ship, because the one leads and takes precedence in the city, the other on the ship, in the same way the crop of wheat too was named by a compound word 'first-offspring,' because it is best of all things sown; for it had to be food for the best of living creatures as well.

The loaves are leavened, since the law forbids bringing leaven up to the altar, not so that there might be some conflict among its commands, but so that in a certain way, through a single kind of offering, one might both receive and give: receive the thanksgiving from those who bring it, and give back at once, without delay, the offerings to those who brought them — yet not so that they might make ordinary use of them;

for they will make use of things once they have been consecrated, of what it is lawful and permitted to use — and it is lawful for the priests, who have received a share in whatever is brought to the altar and not consumed by the unquenchable fire, a share given by the law's kindness to humanity, either as wages for their services, or as a prize for the contests they undertake on behalf of piety, or as a sacred allotment, since in the land they did not, like the other tribes, receive by lot the portion falling to them.

Leaven is also a symbol of two other things: one, of the most complete and whole nourishment, than which none better or more useful can be found in daily use; and the crop of wheat is likewise the strongest among sown crops, so that it is fitting that the best first-fruit be made from the best food.

There is another, more symbolic reason: everything leavened is raised up; and joy is a reasonable raising up of the soul. Man by nature rejoices at nothing more than abundance and plenty of necessities; for these it is right to give thanks while rejoicing, making the invisible well-being of the mind perceptible through the thanksgiving of the leavened loaves.

The first-fruit offering consists of loaves, not of wheat itself, because nothing further is lacking for the enjoyment of food once the wheat has been made into bread; for it is said that of all sown crops wheat by nature is the last to be produced and the last to come to harvest.

There are two best forms of thanksgiving for two periods of time: for the past, in which we did not experience the evils of want and famine, but passed our days in prosperity; and for the future, because we have made ready the provisions and preparations for it and, full of good hopes, we store up the gifts of God, bringing them forward each day for our daily sustenance, as much as is needed according to the laws of household management as a virtue.

Next comes the sacred-month festival, during which, together with the sacrifices offered, it is customary to sound trumpets in the temple. From this it is properly called the Feast of Trumpets, and it has a twofold meaning, one particular to the nation, the other common to all mankind. The particular meaning is a reminder of a portentous and mighty deed, at the time when the oracles of the laws were being proclaimed;

for then a voice of a trumpet sounded from heaven, which was likely to reach even to the ends of the universe, so that even those not present, dwelling almost at the very extremities, might be turned by the awe caused by that event, reasoning, as was likely, that things so great are signs of great accomplishments. And what could come to mankind greater or more beneficial than the general laws, which God proclaimed as a prophet, not through an interpreter, as he did the particular ordinances?

This is the meaning peculiar to the nation; but that which is common to all mankind is this: the trumpet is an instrument of war, both for the charge against enemies, whenever it is time to engage in combat, and for recall, whenever armies returning to their own camps need to be distinguished from the enemy. But there is also another war, driven by God, whenever nature is in strife within herself, her parts set against one another, when the most lawful equality is overpowered by the greed of inequality.

By both these wars the things of earth are destroyed: by enemies, through the cutting down of trees, ravaging, and burning of crops and grain-bearing fields; by the workings of nature, through droughts, floods, the violence of south winds, scorching by the sun, and freezing snow, when the harmony of the yearly seasons turns into disharmony — because of, I think, the impiety that spreads not little by little but pours out in a sudden flood, wherever such things occur among men.

For this reason the law appointed a festival named after the trumpet, an instrument of war, as an act of thanksgiving to the God who makes and guards peace, who, by removing the factions both in cities and among the parts of the universe, has produced prosperity and abundance and plenty of other good things, allowing no spark of destruction to the crops to be kindled into flame.

After the Feast of Trumpets comes the fast, a festival. Perhaps someone of those who hold different views, and are not ashamed to disparage what is good, might ask: what kind of festival is it in which there are no banquets, no common meals, no gathering of hosts and guests, no abundance of unmixed wine, no lavish tables, no supplies and preparations for a public feast, no merriment and revels with games and jesting, no play accompanied by flute and lyre and drums and cymbals and all the other things which, belonging to the effeminate and softened kind of music, stir up unrestrained desires through the ears?

In these things and through these, it seems, people set their idea of rejoicing, in ignorance of true joy. This the all-wise Moses, seeing with the sharpest of eyes, declared the fast to be a festival, and the greatest of festivals, calling it in his ancestral tongue 'Sabbath of Sabbaths,' or as the Greeks would say, a week of weeks and holier than the holy, for many reasons:

first, on account of self-mastery, which he always commands us to display in all matters of life, in what concerns the tongue and the belly and what is below the belly, but now bids us observe with special care, having set apart an exceptional day for it. For anyone who has learned to disregard food and drink, things so necessary, would he not look down on any of the superfluous things which have come to be not for the sake of survival and preservation but for the sake of the most harmful pleasure?

Second, because the whole day is devoted to prayers and supplications, people from dawn to dusk having leisure for nothing else but the most earnest prayers, by which they strive to make God gracious, asking pardon for sins both willing and unwilling, and hoping for good things, not on their own account but because of the merciful nature of him who sets forgiveness before punishment.

Third, because of the season in which the fast happens to be held; for by this time everything that the earth has produced through the year has already been gathered in. To gorge oneself at once on what has been produced he considered a work of insatiable greed, but to fast and abstain from food entirely a work of complete piety, which teaches the mind not to trust in what has been prepared and made ready as the cause of health or life; for these things, even when present, have often done harm, and, when absent, have done good.

Nearly as if speaking outright, even if they utter no sound at all, those who abstain from food and drink after the gathering of the crops cry out with their souls and say this: we have received the gifts of nature gladly and we store them up, but we never ascribe to anything perishable the cause of our survival, but to the begetter and father and savior of both the cosmos and the things within it, God, whom it is right to thank, both through these things and apart from them, for nourishing and preserving us.

Behold, indeed, our own ancestors too, in their many tens of thousands, passing their life through a trackless and utterly barren desert for forty years, he nourished as though in the deepest and most fertile land, cutting open springs then for the first time for abundant use of drink, and raining down food from heaven neither more nor less than sufficed for each day, so that, using necessities that could not be stored up, they might not sell for lifeless things — whatever they might have hoarded up — their good hopes, but, caring little for the things provided, might marvel at and worship the provider, and honor him with fitting hymns and proclamations of blessedness.

The day of the fast is held, by the law's command, always on the tenth of the month. And why on the tenth? As we have set out precisely in the discourses concerning it, it is called by wise men 'complete perfection,' for it contains within itself all the proportions — the arithmetical, the harmonic, and the geometric — and moreover the harmonies: 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; it also has the ratio of nine to eight, so that it is the most perfect fulfillment of the principles of music, from which it has also been named 'complete perfection.'

So the law's command is that the abstinence which is fasting must be observed each year on the tenth day of the month, always at the sacred food-taking. He has prescribed that the deprivation of food and drink take place according to the perfect and complete number of ten, for the sake of the best nourishments of the best part in us, so that no one should suppose that the high priest is introducing famine, the most unbearable of all evils, but rather a brief check on the influx that streams toward the body's receptacles.

For in this way the stream from the rational spring was meant to flow smoothly into the soul, clear and pure, since continual and successive feedings, flooding the body, drag down reasoning along with it; whereas if they are held back, the soul, firmly grounded as on a dry and open road, will be able to make its journey without stumbling, reaching after the things worthy of sight and hearing.

It was fitting, besides, that once all things had gone according to plan toward abundance, arriving at perfect and complete goods, people should take, amid prosperity and plenty of supplies, a reminder of want, through abstaining from food and drink, and should offer prayers and supplications — both so as not to come to a genuine trial of need for necessities, and also in thanksgiving, because in the midst of abundant goods they remember evils that never came to be. So much, then, for this.

The last of the yearly festivals is the one called Tabernacles, whose season is that of the autumn equinox; from which two things follow: that those who hate inequality must honor equality — for equality is the origin of justice, while inequality is the origin and source of injustice, and the one is kin to unshadowed light, the other to darkness — and that, after the completion of all the fruits, it is fitting to give thanks to the God who brings all things to completion and is the cause of every good.

For autumn, as indeed its very name shows, is the season after the ripe fruit has already been gathered in, and after the seeded crops and all the produce the earth has yielded for the countless kinds of living creatures, tame and wild, have brought in their yearly tribute and their necessary due, abundantly supplied not only for present and momentary enjoyment but also for the future, owing to the forethought of a nature that loves living things.

And indeed the command is to spend the time of this festival dwelling in tabernacles, either because there is no longer any need to live out in the open working the fields, since nothing has been left outside, but all the fruits are stored away in pits and places of that kind against the usual damages that follow from the sun's scorching and the onrush of rains —

for when the crops that sustain you are still in the fields, you must not shut yourself away like a woman confined to her chamber, but go out as their overseer and guard of what is necessary; and if, while you remain in the open, cold and heat assail you, there are the leafy shade trees standing by, under whose cover you can easily escape harm from either extreme; but when all the fruits have been brought in, you go indoors too, to reach a more sheltered way of living, for rest from the labors you endured while working the land — or else the command is meant as a reminder of the ancestors' long journey, which they made through a vast wilderness, dwelling in tents for many years at each stopping place.

It is fitting, too, to remember poverty in the midst of wealth, and obscurity in the midst of fame, and a private station in the midst of positions of rule, and the dangers of war in time of peace, and storms at sea while on land, and desolation while in the midst of cities; for there is no greater pleasure than to keep, in the midst of great prosperity, a recollection of former misfortunes.

And beyond the pleasure, no small benefit for the practice of virtue arises as well; for having set before their eyes both the better and the worse condition, and having thrust away the one while enjoying the fruit of the better, people necessarily become grateful in disposition and are spurred on toward piety by fear of a change to the opposite state. Hence, even in the midst of present goods, they honor God with songs and words, and beg that they may never again be tried by evils, and win his favor with supplications.

Again, the beginning of this festival falls on the fifteenth of the month, for the same reason given in the case of the spring season, so that the world may be full, not only by day but also at night, of light that is by nature altogether beautiful, sun and moon on that day rising opposite each other with unbroken rays, between which no darkness draws a dividing line.

After seven days he seals it with an eighth, which he calls the 'closing festival' — not, it seems, of that festival alone, but of all the yearly festivals he has numbered and gone through; for it is the last of the year, and its conclusion.

Perhaps, too, the first cube, the number eight, was assigned to this festival for the following reason: it is, in its potential, the beginning of solid substance according to the transition from things incorporeal, but the conclusion of the intelligible; and the intelligible realities, by their successive increases, move toward solid nature * * *.

And indeed the autumn festival, as I said, appears to be a kind of fulfillment and conclusion of all the festivals within the year, more settled and stable than the rest, since people have already received the produce of the land and no longer wander in uncertainty and fear over whether the harvest will fail or succeed; for the anxieties of farmers remain unfixed until the crops have been gathered in, on account of the losses that lie in wait from countless quarters, affecting both people and livestock.

I have dwelt on these matters at greater length because I wished to show, with regard to the sacred seventh, that all the yearly festivals turn out to be, so to speak, offspring of the seven-day period as a mother * * * follies and joys, and because in festal gatherings and a cheerful life there arise delights untouched by gloom and dejection, which relax both bodies and souls — the bodies through luxurious living, the souls through the practice of philosophy.

There is, alongside these, a certain gathering that is not exactly a festival of God, but a festal assembly connected to a festival, which they call the 'Basket,' from what happens at it, as I shall shortly explain. That it does not have the rank and order of a festival is clear from many considerations: it does not belong to the whole nation in common, as does each of the others, nor is anything brought or offered at it consecrated on the altar and given over to the undying and sacred fire,

nor has any number of days been fixed on which it must be kept as a festival. Yet one could easily see that it has a festal character and stands close to the license of a festal gathering. For each person who owns fields and property, having filled vessels — which, as I said, they call 'baskets' — with each kind of tree fruit, brings the firstfruits of the good harvest to the temple in joy, and standing before the altar gives them to the priest, reciting the beautiful and wonderful song, or, if he happens not to remember it, listening to it from the priest with the closest attention.

The song runs as follows: 'The founders of our race left Syria and moved to Egypt. Being few in number, they grew into a multitude of a nation. Their descendants, suffering countless wrongs at the hands of the local people, with no help any longer appearing from human quarter, became suppliants of God, taking refuge in the help that comes from him.'

He who is kindly disposed toward all who suffer injustice accepted their supplication, struck those who attacked them with terror through signs and wonders and apparitions and all the other marvels wrought at that time, and rescued those who were being maltreated and who endured every kind of plot, not only choosing them out into freedom but also giving them a land bearing every kind of produce.

'From the fruits of this land, O Benefactor, we bring you the firstfruits, if indeed it is right to say that one brings anything to the one who is the giver; for yours, Master, are the graces and the gifts, all of them, in which we take pride and rejoice, being counted worthy of unlooked-for goods'

'which you gave us though we had not hoped for them.' This song is sung, without interruption, by one group after another, from roughly the beginning of summer to the end of autumn, over two seasons together making up a whole half of the year, because it is not possible for everyone all at once, by a fixed deadline, to bring in the ripe produce, but different people do so at different times, and sometimes even the same people from the same places.

For since some fruits ripen sooner and others later, and this is so both because of differences in locality — some being warmer, some colder — and for countless other reasons, it is reasonable that the time for the firstfruit-offering of tree fruits is undefined and unbounded, extending over a very long span.

The use of these offerings has been entrusted to the priests, since they were allotted no portion of land nor any revenue-bearing property, but their inheritance is the firstfruits from the nation, in place of the services they perform by day and by night.

So much, then, have I set out concerning the seven-day period and the things connected to it in days, months, and years, and concerning the festivals that have kinship with the number seven, following the sequence of the topics laid out at the start, in the order the discussion requires. I shall next examine the topic that comes after, which has been written concerning the honor due to parents. On the Honor Due to Parents.

Having first spoken of four kinds, which were truly first in both order and power — that concerning the sole rule by which the world is ruled as a monarchy, and that concerning the making of no image or likeness of God, and that concerning not swearing falsely or, in general, swearing in vain, and that concerning the sacred seventh day, all of which tend toward piety and holiness — I now pass on to the fifth, concerning the honor due to parents, which, as I showed in my separate treatise on the subject, stands on the boundary between things human and things divine.

For parents occupy a place between divine and human nature, partaking of both: of human nature, clearly, in that they have come into being and will perish; of divine nature, in that they have begotten and have brought what did not exist into existence. For what God is to the world, this, I think, parents are to their children, since just as he brought existence out of what did not exist, so too parents, imitating his power so far as they are able, immortalize the race.

Father and mother are worthy of honor not only for this reason but for several others. Wherever virtue is valued, the older are ranked above the younger, teachers above their pupils, benefactors above those who have benefited from them, rulers above the ruled, and masters above slaves.

Parents, then, are placed in the higher rank, for they are elders, guides, benefactors, rulers, and masters, while sons and daughters occupy the lower one, being younger, pupils, recipients of benefits, and subjects and servants. That none of this is a false claim is evident from plain experience, and the arguments from reason set an even stronger seal upon the truth.

I say, then, that the maker is always older than the thing made, and the cause older than that of which it is the cause. Parents are, in a sense, the causes and craftsmen of their children. Some of them also hold the rank of teachers, insofar as they happen to have the knowledge to instruct their children from the very beginning of life, imprinting reasoning upon young minds not only in the sciences but also, most essentially, in the choosing and avoiding that matters most — choosing the virtues, avoiding the vices and their corresponding acts.

Who could be greater benefactors than a child's own parents, who brought them out of nonexistence, then thought them worthy of nourishment, and after that of an education for both body and soul, so that they might not merely live, but live well?

The body they benefited through gymnastic and athletic training, giving it strength, good condition, and ease of movement and posture, never without rhythm and propriety. The soul they benefited through letters and numbers, geometry and music, and philosophy as a whole, which lifts the mind, housed though it is in a mortal body, up on high and carries it as far as heaven, displaying there the blessed and happy natures it contains, and instilling at the same time both zeal and longing for that changeless, harmonious order which never departs from obedience to its commander.

Beyond these benefits, parents also received the authority they hold over those they begot not as officials in cities receive theirs, by lot or by vote — so that one might blame chance for a slip made without reasoning, and the other blame the drift of the crowd, a thing never examined or considered — but by the finest and most perfect judgment of the higher nature, by which both divine and human affairs are administered with justice.

For this reason parents are permitted both to reproach their children and to admonish them, and, if they do not yield to threats spoken aloud, to strike them, to humiliate them, and to bind them. But if, even against this, they turn stubborn, throwing off restraint under the impulse of an incurable depravity, the law allows punishment even to the point of death — though no longer at the hands of the father alone or the mother alone, because of the magnitude of the penalty, which ought to be judged not by one but by both together. For it is not likely that both parents would agree on the destruction of their child unless the wrongs weighed on them and dragged them down with some fixed, overpowering force that overcame the settled goodwill implanted by nature.

Parents received not only authority and headship over their children but also outright mastery, corresponding to both of the highest categories by which servants are acquired — those born in the household and those bought with money. For parents lay out sums many times the ordinary value, for their children and on their children's behalf, to nurses, tutors, and teachers, quite apart from what is spent on clothing, food, and every other kind of care in health and in sickness, from earliest age to full maturity. And those born in the household would be not only those actually born there but also those whom the household's masters have, by contributing what is needed for their birth, brought into being under nature's ordinances,

as a necessary contribution. Given so many grounds, then, those who honor their parents do nothing that deserves praise, since even one of the things mentioned would be enough by itself to call for reverence toward them. But blame, accusation, and the highest penalty of justice fall on those who show no respect for them as elders, no acceptance of them as guides, no gratitude toward them as benefactors, no obedience toward them as rulers, and no wariness toward them as masters.

"Honor your father," it says, "and your mother, next after God," binding them with the second-place honors that nature itself has assigned them in setting the contest's prizes. And you will honor them best of all by striving to be good, and not merely to seem good — the one aim seeking virtue itself, unadorned and unfeigned, the other seeking a good reputation and the praise of those around you.

For parents who care little for their own advantage regard their children's nobility of character as the very goal of happiness — a nobility through which their children will also be willing to obey what is commanded of them and to be persuaded in everything just and beneficial. For a true father will never guide his child toward anything foreign to virtue.

One might find evidence of reverence toward parents not only in what has been said, but also in the respect shown to people of their age. For whoever reveres an old man or an old woman with no family connection to him seems, in some sense, to be reminded of his own father and mother, looking to them as archetypes and setting these others up as their images.

For this reason it is prescribed in the sacred writings not only that the young must yield the seat of honor to the old, but that they must also rise when their elders pass by, honoring gray hair out of reverence for old age — a state which those who claim this privilege hope one day to reach themselves.

It also seems to me an excellent piece of legislation where it says, "Let each person fear his father and his mother" (Lev. 19:3), placing fear before goodwill — not as the better of the two, but as more useful and more advantageous for the present occasion. First, because those still being educated and admonished are necessarily still foolish, and folly is cured by nothing so well as fear. Second, it would not have suited a lawgiver's precepts to teach children the goodwill they owe their parents, since nature demands this of its own accord, unbidden, and implants it in the souls of those so joined by birth from the very cradle.

Therefore he left the affection owed to one's parents alone, as something self-taught and needing no command, but he does command fear, on account of those who tend toward carelessness. For when parents, moved by excessive affection, indulge their children and lavish good things on them from every side, sparing them every hardship and danger, bound as they are by the compelling forces of goodwill, some children do not receive this excessive affection to their benefit; instead, having grown fond of luxury and softness, admiring a soft life while wasting away in body and soul, and letting no part of their own powers stand upright, they trip up and unstring those powers without shame, precisely because they no longer fear the correcting hand of father or mother, giving way and slackening the reins to their own desires.

It is therefore necessary to counsel these parents as well, that they use firmer and weightier admonitions to check the current of their children's ways, and to counsel the children too, that they hold their parents in fear and awe as rulers and, by nature, as masters; for only in this way will they hesitate to do wrong.

I have now gone through the five headings of laws contained in the first tablet, and the particular laws referable to each of them. It remains also to set out the punishments established for their transgression.

Death is the common penalty across all these offenses, on account of the kinship the wrongs bear to one another, though the grounds for the sentence differ. Let us begin with the last of them, the offense against parents, since discussion of it is already fresh in mind. "If anyone strikes his father or his mother," it says, "let him be stoned" — and quite justly, for it is not right that one who abuses those responsible for his life should himself go on living.

But some fine-robed lawgivers, looking more to reputation than to truth, have made a show of refinement by prescribing, for those who strike their parents, the amputation of their hands, thinking it fitting — so as to win applause from the more careless and unreflective — that the very limbs with which they struck their parents should be mutilated.

It is foolish to be angry at the instruments of service rather than at those responsible for the act. For it is not hands that commit the outrage, but the outrageous men who act through their hands, and it is they who must be punished — unless we are also to acquit murderers who used a sword, and instead throw the sword itself beyond the border, and, conversely, refuse honors to those who distinguished themselves in war, giving them instead to the lifeless suits of armor by which they performed their brave deeds.

Or will they also attempt, for those who win the stadion, the double-course, or the long-distance race, or the boxing match or the pankration, to crown only the legs and hands, passing over the athletes' whole bodies? It would be laughable to introduce such practices, punishing or honoring parts apart from the whole to which they belong — for we do not, when someone displays skill on flute or lyre and performs superbly, pass over the instruments and yet still think the player worthy of proclamation and honors.

Why, then, noble lawgivers, would you need to cut off the hands of those who strike their fathers? So that, besides being wholly useless from then on, they might also exact from those they wronged a levy — not annual but daily — of the food they need, being now unable to provide for themselves? For no father is so hard of heart as to look on while his son dies of hunger, especially once time has dimmed his anger.

Even if such a person does not raise his hands but merely reviles those he is bound to speak well of, or in some other way does something dishonoring his parents, let him die. For he is a common enemy and, to speak the truth, an executioner of all mankind — since who else could he ever treat with kindness, when he shows none even to those responsible for his life, to whom he owes his very existence, being, as it were, an addition to them?

Again, whoever profanes the sacred seventh day shall, so far as it depends on him, be liable to death. For, on the contrary, profane matters and profane persons must be given abundant means of purification toward a better change, since, as someone has said, "Envy stands outside the divine chorus." But to dare to falsify and adulterate what has been consecrated shows overwhelming impiety.

In that ancient migration out of Egypt, when the whole multitude was journeying through a trackless wilderness, and the seventh day came, those many tens of thousands I mentioned earlier stayed quietly in their tents; but one man, not among the neglected or the unnoticed, giving little thought to what had been ordained and mocking those who kept watch, went out to gather sticks — an act that in effect amounted to a demonstration of lawlessness.

So he turned back with his arms full, but the people who had poured out of their tents, though they were already provoked, did nothing rash on account of the sacred character of the day; instead they brought the impious man to the ruler and reported the offense. He put him under guard, and when an oracle came forth ordering the man to be stoned, he handed him over for destruction to those who had first seen him. For, I think, just as it is not permitted to kindle fire on the seventh day—for the reason I gave earlier—so too it is not permitted to gather fuel for fire.

For those who call God to witness to something untrue, the penalty fixed is death, and rightly so. For not even a decent human being would ever tolerate being asked to co-sign a falsehood; rather, he would, I think, regard as a faithless enemy the one who urged him to do such a thing.

Hence it must be said: the one who swears falsely for an unjust cause will never be released from his guilt by God, who is by nature gracious, for he remains defiled and impure, even if he escapes punishment at human hands. But he will never escape it; for there are countless overseers, zealots for the laws, most exact guardians of ancestral custom, who act mercilessly to see that such a man is stoned—unless perhaps, while dishonoring one's father or mother is worthy of death, dishonoring, at the hands of the impious, a name more venerable even than that dignity should be treated more leniently.

But no one is so foolish as to kill for lesser offenses while letting the guilty go free for greater ones; and greater than the impiety committed against parents who are slandered and insulted is that committed, through false swearing, against the sacred title of God.

But if the one who swears improperly is culpable, how great a punishment does the one deserve who denies the God who truly exists, and honors the things that have come into being above the one who made them, and thinks it right to worship not only earth or water or air or fire—the elements of the universe—or again sun and moon and planets and fixed stars, or the whole heaven and cosmos, but even the wood and stone that mortal craftsmen have fashioned, shaped into human-like forms?

Therefore let him make himself like the things wrought by hand; for it is right that the one who has honored soulless things should himself have no share in soul—especially if he has become a disciple of Moses, from whom he has often heard, spoken and prophesied, those most sacred and heaven-sent instructions: "You shall not admit the name of other gods into your soul for remembrance, nor interpret it with your voice; rather, having separated both, mind and speech, far from all else, turn them toward the Father and Maker of all things, so that you may think the best and finest thoughts about his sole sovereignty, and speak what is fitting and most beneficial both for yourself and for those who will hear you."

The punishments for those who transgress the five oracles have now been set forth. As for the rewards laid up for those who keep them, even if the law has not announced them in explicit commands, still they are shown by way of implication.

Now, not believing in other gods, not fashioning gods of wrought material, and not swearing falsely have no need of any other reward; for the very practice of these things is itself, I think, the best and most perfect reward. For on what could a lover of truth take greater delight than in devoting himself to the one God and clinging, without deceit and in purity, to his service?

And I call as witnesses not those who worship vanity, but those who have pursued unerring zeal, among whom truth is honored; for wisdom's own reward is wisdom itself, and justice and each of the other virtues is its own reward. But piety, which, as in a chorus, is the most beautiful and leads all the rest, is far more than its own contest and prize, for it grants to those who practice it happiness, and to their children and descendants blessings that cannot be taken away.

Again, those who keep the sacred seventh day happen to be benefited in the two most essential things, body and soul: the body by rest from continuous and unwearied labors, the soul by the best conceptions of God as the maker of the world who cares for what he has begotten; for indeed he brought all things to completion in seven days. It is clear from this, then, that the one who honors the seventh day is found to be honoring the Maker himself.

In like manner, let the one who honors his parents not go hunting for anything further; for he will find, on examining the deed itself, that it carries its own reward. Nevertheless, since this fifth commandment, because it touches on mortal things, falls short of the first four, which were allotted a more divine portion, he offered consolation by saying: "Honor your father, so that it may go well with you and that you may live long" (Exodus 20:12), setting down two rewards.

One is a share in virtue, for to fare well is virtue, or is not apart from virtue; the other, if the truth must be told, is a kind of immortality achieved through a long span of years and a lifetime of many days, which you will nourish, even while still in the body, with a soul that has been purified by a perfect purification. This, then, has been said sufficiently; the matters in the second tablet after these we shall examine when opportunity allows.

← All of Philo of Alexandria: The Complete Works