ℹ️ This corpus has no verse-level morphological tagging. Lemmas come mainly from word-level tagging of other books in the same language (not from this verse), falling back to dictionary form-matching for the rest. Rare homographs can still be misread; verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
The holy prophetic Spirit taught us these things, saying through Moses that God spoke thus to the first-formed man: "Behold, before your face are good and evil; choose the good." And again through Isaiah, the other prophet, it was said to this same effect, as from the person of the Father of all and Master, God: "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away wickedness from your souls; learn to do good, render judgment for the orphan and justice for the widow; and come, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as wool; and though they be as crimson, I will make them white as snow. And if you are willing and obey me, you shall eat the good things of the earth; but if you are not willing and do not obey me, a sword shall devour you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things." Now the foregoing words "a sword shall devour you" do not mean that the disobedient shall be slain by swords, but the sword of God is fire, of which those who choose to do evil become the food. Therefore he says: "A sword shall devour you, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." For if he had been speaking of a sword that cuts and dispatches at once, he would not have said "shall devour." So that Plato too, when he said "The blame is his who chooses; God is blameless," took it from Moses the prophet and said it; for Moses is older than all the Greek writers. And all that the philosophers and poets said concerning the immortality of the soul, or punishments after death, or the contemplation of heavenly things, or doctrines of the like, they took the starting points from the prophets, and were enabled both to understand and to expound them. Whence among all there seem to be seeds of truth; but they are convicted of not having understood accurately, when they contradict themselves. So that, when we say that things to come have been prophesied, we do not say that they are brought about by the necessity of fate; but, since God foreknows the things that all men will do, and since it is a decree of his that each of men shall be requited according to the merit of his deeds, he foretells through the prophetic Spirit the things that will befall them according to the merit of their deeds, ever leading the race of men to attention and recollection, showing that he both cares for them and provides for them. But by the operation of the wicked demons, death was decreed against those who read the books of Hystaspes or of the Sibyl or of the prophets, so that through fear they might turn men who read them away from receiving knowledge of good things, and might keep them in slavery to themselves; which, however, they were not able to accomplish to the end. For not only do we read them fearlessly, but, as you see, we bring them to you for your examination, knowing that they will appear acceptable to all; and even if we persuade only a few, we shall have gained the greatest things; for like good farmers we shall have our reward from the Master.