Life of Moses 1 part 1/8

ON THE LIFE OF MOSES THE LAWGIVER, OR ON PERFECTION IN VIRTUE. Spectators who love watching horse races behave in a certain way: even when those they are eager for fall short of nothing in their drive for speed, still, out of their zeal for victory, they shout from above, turning their eyes round and round with the course, and they spur on the charioteer—so they imagine—to a sharper effort, leaning forward together with the horses and stretching out their hands against them in place of a whip and brandishing them; not that what they do contributes anything to the victory, but, out of goodwill toward the contestants, they signal their eagerness by voice and gesture out of fervor. Something of this kind, I think, I too am doing, most honoured of my friends and brothers: since you are contending nobly in the stadium of virtue in the divine race, straining toward the prize of the upward calling with frequent and nimble leaps, I cheer you on and urge you forward and bid you press your speed yet more zealously.

I do this not because I am carried toward it by some irrational enthusiasm, but as one bestowing on a beloved child the things that bring him delight.

For since the letter you recently sent me conveyed the request that some counsel toward the perfect life be given you by us, I thought it fitting to provide it—

perhaps nothing else useful to you will come from what I say, yet this very thing is by no means useless: that it become for you an example of ready obedience.

For if we, who are set in the rank of fathers over so many souls, think it fitting to this grey head of ours to accept a charge from youth that is of sound mind, it is much more likely that the achievement of ready obedience be strengthened in you, since your youth has been trained by us toward willing submission.

And so much for these matters.

We must now set our hand to the task before us, making God the guide of our discourse.

You asked, O dear friend, that we sketch out for you in outline what the perfect life is—plainly looking to this, that, if what you seek were discovered by the discourse, you might transfer into your own life the grace made known by that discourse.

But I am equally at a loss with regard to both;

for both to comprehend perfection in words, and to display in one's life whatever the discourse might apprehend—each of these, I say, is beyond my power;

and perhaps not I alone, but many even of the great and of those pre-eminent in virtue will confess that such a thing is unattainable for them.

But that I may not seem, as the psalmist says, to fear with fear where there is no fear, I will set before you more clearly what I mean.

Perfection, in the case of everything else that is measured by sense perception, is bounded by certain defined limits—as in the case of quantity, both continuous and discrete.

For every measure within quantity is contained within its own particular bounds;

and one who looks to the cubit or to the decade of number knows that it begins from something and ends in something, within which lies the having of completeness.

But in the case of virtue we have learned from the Apostle one single limit of perfection: that it has no limit.

For that great and lofty-minded man, the divine Apostle, ever running through virtue, never ceased reaching out to the things ahead;

for a halt in the race was not safe for him.

Why? Because every good has by its own nature no limit, but is bounded only by the presence of its opposite, as life by death and light by darkness;

and every good whatsoever terminates in all those things conceived as the opposites of good.

As, then, the end of life is the beginning of death, so too the halting of the race of virtue becomes the beginning of the race of vice.

Our argument, then, did not speak falsely when it said that the grasping of perfection in virtue is impossible;

for it was shown that what is bounded by limits is not virtue.

And since I said that it is impossible even for those who pursue the life of virtue to set foot upon perfection, the discourse will now make this matter too clear.

That which is primarily and properly good, whose nature is goodness itself—the Divine itself—whatever it is conceived to be by nature, that it also is and is named.

Since, then, no limit of virtue was shown except vice, and the Divine is incapable of admitting its opposite, the divine nature is therefore apprehended as unbounded and infinite;

but indeed, the one who pursues true virtue partakes of nothing other than God, because He Himself is perfect and complete virtue;

since, then, that which is by nature beautiful is altogether desirable for participation to those who know it, and this has no limit, of necessity the desire of the one who participates, stretching out alongside the unbounded, has no stopping point.

It is therefore wholly impossible to attain the perfect, because perfection, as has been said, is not bounded by limits, while the one limit of virtue is the limitless.

How then could anyone reach the end he seeks, when he does not find the end? Yet it is not because the discourse has shown that what is sought is in general unattainable that we should neglect the commandment of the Lord, which says:

“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

For in the case of things naturally good, even if it is not possible to attain the whole, yet not to fall short of even a part would be a great gain, at least for those who have understanding.

We must therefore display all eagerness not to fall away utterly from the perfection that is possible, but to acquire of it as much as we can encompass within what is sought;

for perhaps to be so disposed—always to wish to have more in the good—is itself the perfection of human nature.

It seems good to me to make use of Scripture as a counsellor on this matter;

for somewhere, through the prophecy of Isaiah, the divine voice says:

“Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who travailed with you.”

For the discourse certainly enjoins these things upon those who wander outside virtue, so that—just as those carried out of the straight course to the harbour upon the open sea bring themselves back according to some visible sign of their wandering, whether seeing a beacon raised on high or some mountain peak appearing—in the same way it may again direct toward the harbour of the divine will those who, with an unguided mind, wander over the sea of life, by the example set in Sarah and Abraham.

For since human nature is divided into female and male, and to both alike, according to free choice, the option of virtue or vice lies open, for this reason a fitting example of virtue was shown beforehand by the divine voice to each part, so that, each looking to its own kind—the men to Abraham, the other part to Sarah—both might be directed by their proper examples toward the life of virtue.

Perhaps, then, it might suffice for us too that the remembrance of some one person of repute in life should fill the need of a beacon, and show how it is possible to anchor the soul in the unshaken harbour of virtue, never storm-tossed amid the squalls of life nor shipwrecked in the depths of vice by the successive surges of the passions.

For perhaps it is also for this reason that the conduct of those lofty men has been recorded with precision, so that, through imitation of those who succeeded before, the life that follows might be directed toward the good.

“What then,” someone will say, “if I am neither a Chaldean, as Abraham is remembered to be, nor a nursling of the Egyptian's daughter, as the account holds concerning Moses, nor have anything at all in such respects in my life corresponding to one of the ancients—how shall I set myself in the same rank as one of these, having no means by which to imitate one so far removed through his pursuits?” To him we shall say that we do not judge being a Chaldean to be either vice or virtue, nor the life in Egypt, nor the sojourn in Babylon to be the substance of the good or bad life.

...nor again is God known to the worthy only in Judaea, nor is Zion, in the obvious sense, the dwelling place of the Divine; but we have need of a subtler mind and a sharper sight, so as to discern from the narrative from what sort of Chaldeans or Egyptians we must come far away, and from what kind of Babylonian captivity we must be set free, in order to set foot upon the blessed life.

Let Moses, then, be set before us by the discourse as an example of life; and having first gone through his life in a rapid survey, just as we have learned it from divine Scripture, we shall then seek out the meaning fitting to the history as a counsel toward virtue, through which we may come to know the perfect life so far as it is possible among men.

It is said, then, that Moses was born at the time when the tyrant's law forbade the male among those being born to be kept alive, and that by grace he forestalled all the contribution that comes from time;

and that, appearing at once from his swaddling clothes a goodly child, he instilled in his parents a reluctance to do away with such a one by death;

and then, when the tyrant's threat prevailed, that he was not simply cast into the stream of the Nile, but, placed in an ark smeared at its joints with bitumen and pitch, was thus given to the current (for this is what those who have carefully recorded his story have related);

and that, with some divine power steering the ark, it was brought to rest at a bank on one side, the ark having of its own accord been carried over to that part by the movement of the waters;

and that, as the king's daughter was coming upon the meadows of that bank where the ark happened to have run aground, he became a find for the princess, having cried out in infant fashion within the chest;

and that, having been seen together with the grace shining forth upon him, he at once endeared himself by goodwill to the princess and was taken up into the rank of a son;

and that, naturally turning away from the foreign breast, he was, by some contrivance of his own kindred, nursed at his mother's breast.

And when he had now passed beyond the age of children, having been reared in royal nurture and educated in the learning of the outsiders, he did not choose those things reputed to bring glory among outsiders, nor would he any longer consent to acknowledge as mother that woman of false pretence into whose place as son he had been adopted, but returned again to his natural kindred and mingled with his own people;

and when a fight arose between a certain Hebrew and an Egyptian, he sided with his own kinsman and slew the foreigner;

then, when two Hebrews were grappling with each other, he tried to quell their strife, counselling them that, being brothers, it was right not to make wrath the arbiter of their disputes, but nature.

But being thrust off by the one who had an eye to wrongdoing, he made this dishonour an occasion for greater philosophy, and, withdrawing far from association with the many, he lived apart in his subsequent life. He allied himself by marriage with one of the foreigners, a man discerning of the better course and practised in judging the characters and lives of men, who through a single deed--I mean the assault upon the shepherds--perceived the young man's virtue: how, not looking to his own gain, he championed justice, but judging justice itself to be precious by its own nature, he punished the injustice of the shepherds, who had wronged him in nothing. Admiring the young man for these things, and judging his virtue, amid his apparent poverty, to be more precious than wealth of many talents, he gave him his daughter in marriage and left him free, at his own discretion, to follow the life he desired.

And his life was mountainous and solitary, freed from all the turmoil of the marketplace, as he lived apart in the care of sheep throughout the wilderness.

And when a time had passed in such a manner of life, the history says that a fearful theophany came to him: in the steady noonday a light other than the sun's flashed about his eyes;

and he, astonished at the unwonted sight, looked up toward the mountain and saw a bush from which the radiance, fire-like, was kindled;

and as the branches of the bush flourished together with the flame as though in dew, he said these words to himself, namely:

and that, having spoken, he no longer received the wonder of the light with his eyes alone, but--what is most marvellous of all--his hearing too was illumined by the rays of that radiance;

for the grace of the light, divided toward both senses, illumined his sight with the dazzling of its rays, and led his hearing into light by its undefiled doctrines.

At any rate, the voice of that light forbids Moses to approach the mountain while weighed down with dead sandals, but bids him loose the sandal from his feet and so tread upon that ground which was illumined by the divine light.

Upon this (for I think one ought not to linger too long over the bare history concerning the man, so that we may also hold to the matters set before us), being empowered by the theophany that had appeared, he is commanded to deliver his kinsfolk from the slavery of the Egyptians.

And that he might above all learn the strength entering into him from God, he is made to test it, by a divine command, on the things in his hands.

A rod that fell from his hand was endowed with life and became an animal (the animal was a serpent), and again, when taken up by his hand, it became that which it had been before the bestializing.

And the surface of his hand, now--when drawn forth from his bosom--was changed into the whiteness of snow, and again, when put back inside the same bosom, returned to its own nature.

And as Moses was going down to Egypt, taking along with him both his foreign wife and the children born to him by her, when it is said that a certain angel also met him, bringing upon him the fear of death--which his wife appeased by the blood of the child's circumcision--then there takes place his meeting with Aaron, who had himself been urged on by God toward the encounter.

Then by both of them the people in Egypt are gathered into a common assembly, and release from slavery is proclaimed to those already worn out by the hardship of their labours, and concerning this a word is brought before the tyrant himself.

The tyrant's indignation at this, against both the overseers of the works and against the Israelites themselves, became greater than before;

and the tribute of brickmaking is increased and a more burdensome charge is sent down, as they were afflicted not only with the clay but also distressed over the straw and the stubble.

And when Pharaoh (for this was the name of the tyrant of the Egyptians), attempting to counter with sophistry the God-given signs done by them, through the trickery of the sorcerers--again, when Moses bestialized his own rod before the eyes of the Egyptians--the sorcery was thought to perform an equal wonder in the rods of the magicians.

And the trick was refuted by the effect, when the dragon transformed from Moses' staff devoured the sorcerers' wooden rods--the supposed serpents--showing that the sorcerers' rods had no defensive or vital power whatsoever, but only the appearance which the sorcery, deceptively contrived, displayed to the eyes of the easily deluded.

Then Moses, seeing all those under the leader of vice in agreement together, brings a common plague upon the whole nation of the Egyptians, exempting no one from the experience of the evils.

And there was set in motion together with him, toward such an assault upon the Egyptians, the very elements of existence beheld in the universe--earth and water and air and fire--as a kind of subject army, changing their operations in accordance with the choices of men;

for by the same power, at the same time and place, the disordered was punished and that which was free from vice remained unaffected.

For when the whole nature of the waters throughout Egypt was, at Moses' command, turned into blood--so that even the fish, with the water transformed into a fleshy thickness, were destroyed--for the Hebrews alone, when they drew it, the blood was water; whence the sorcery too found occasion to counterfeit the bloody appearance in the water found among the Hebrews.

Likewise also, when the frogs crawled over Egypt,

all at once--whose generation was poured forth into so great a multitude not by any natural sequence held to be customary, but the very command for the constituting of the frogs newly fashioned the nature of the creature then made manifest--all Egypt was destroyed, hemmed in by these creatures throughout their dwellings, while the life of the Hebrews was kept pure of this loathsomeness.

Thus the air gave the Egyptians no distinction between night and day, as they remained in a like gloom, while for the Hebrews nothing in these matters was altered from their wont.

And all the rest in the same manner--the hail, the fire, the boils, the gnats, the dog-flies, the cloud of locusts--each operated against the Egyptians according to its nature, while the Hebrews learned of the suffering of their neighbours by reports and accounts, receiving in themselves no assault of such things.

Then the destruction of the firstborn made the distinction between the Hebrew and the Egyptian still more precise: the one group confounded with lamentations over the loss of their dearest, the other remaining in all quietness and security, for whom salvation was secured by the sprinkling of the blood, the lintels along with the doorposts on either side being marked with the blood at every entrance.

Upon this, while the Egyptians were stricken with the calamity of the firstborn and bewailed their sufferings each by himself and all in common, Moses leads the Israelites out, having prepared them beforehand to carry off the wealth of the Egyptians with them under the guise of a loan.

And when they had gone a three days' journey outside Egypt, the history again says that the Egyptian took it ill that Israel should not remain in slavery, and, having armed for war all his subjects, he overran the people with his force of cavalry; and that the people, beholding the array of horses and weapons--being inexperienced in war and untrained in such spectacles--were at once stricken with fear and rose up against Moses. At that point the history relates the most marvellous thing concerning Moses: that he was divided in two as to his activities--by voice and word encouraging the Israelites and bidding them have good hope, while inwardly, in his mind, he was bringing before God supplication on behalf of the terrified and being guided by counsel from above as to how he might escape the danger; God Himself, as the history says, hearkening to the unutterable cry.

And when a cloud led the people by divine power--not according to common nature (for its constitution was not from any vapours or exhalations, the air being thickened by the vapours through a misty condensation and compacted upon itself by the winds, but it was something better and loftier than human comprehension)--for that cloud, as Scripture testifies, the wonder was such that, while the sun's ray shone hotly, it was a partition-wall before the people, both shading what lay beneath it and moistening the fiery quality of the air with a fine dew, and through the night it became fire, from evening until dawn lighting up the radiance for the Israelites with its own light.

Looking to this cloud, and having taught the people to follow what appeared, Moses--when they came to the Red Sea, the cloud guiding them there on their way, and the whole army of the Egyptians had encircled the people from behind, no escape from the terrors being left them on any side, hemmed in by enemies and by water in the midst--then, urged on by divine power, accomplished the most incredible thing of all.

For drawing near to the shore, he strikes the sea with his rod;

and it was split apart at the blow, and--just as is wont to happen with glass: if the fracture takes a beginning at some part of it, it runs straight across to the other edge--so, of the whole sea,

that sea being broken open at its surface by the rod, the breach of the waves passed clear across to the opposite bank.

And going down into the depth, Moses, where the sea had been cut through, was, together with the whole people, in the deep yet with body unwetted and sun-lit; and passing on foot through the abysses upon the dry bottom of the sea, he did not fear that improvised wall-building out of the waves on this side and that, fixed beside them like a wall, of the brine on either flank.

And when Pharaoh, with the Egyptians, had rushed in together upon the sea along that newly-made road in the waters, again the water joins to the water, and--the sea surging back upon itself into its former shape--one surface and aspect of the water comes to be, the Israelites by now on the far shore resting from the long and strenuous passage through the sea, when they also sang the victory song to God, who had then raised up a bloodless trophy on their behalf, all the host of the Egyptians, with their very horses and weapons and chariots, having been made to vanish beneath the water.

Then Moses goes forward, and having traversed a waterless road of three days, he is at a loss, having no way to relieve the army's thirst.

For there was a certain pool of sea-water, around which they encamped--indeed more bitter than the sea.

Since, then, sitting beside the water, they were parched with thirst for water, counsel having come to him from God, he found a certain piece of wood about the place and casts it into the water;

and it was at once drinkable, the wood by its own proper power having tempered the nature of the water from bitterness into sweetness.

And when the cloud removed forward, they too removed along with the movement of their guide, always doing this--ceasing from their journey wherever the halting of the cloud gave the signal for rest, and setting out again wherever the cloud led the way of their journey.

They reach, then, following this guide, a place watered with drinkable water, abundantly washed about by twelve springs and shaded by a grove of palms.

Seventy were the palms, sufficient even in their small number to work for beholders a great wonder, by surpassing in beauty and size.

Again from there the guide, the cloud, leads the army to another place, having set it on the march;

and this was a certain wilderness, in arid and scorched sand, with no moisture of waters wetting the region, in which, again, when thirst had worn down the people, a certain rock upon a hill, struck with the rod by Moses, gives out water both sweet and drinkable and more abundant than the need of so great an army.

And there too, when the provision of food which they had supplied themselves from Egypt for the journey had given out, and the people were pressed by famine, there comes to pass the most incredible wonder of all: food not growing up from the earth according to what was customary for them, but flowing down from above out of heaven in the manner of dew;

for dew was poured out upon them at dawn, and the dew became food for those who received it.

For what was poured out was not a watery droplet, as is wont to occur with dew, but instead of drops there came down certain clots, crystalline in appearance, rounded after the shape of coriander seed, the taste of which feigned the sweetness of honey.

And along with this wonder another was beheld together: that all who went out for the gathering, being, as is likely, of differing ages and strengths, gathered neither more nor less, one than another, according to the difference of strength, but what was collected was measured to each one's need, so that neither did the stronger have more, nor was the weaker diminished from an equal share.

Again upon this the history tells of another wonder: that what each gathered for the day they laid up nothing of it for the next; but for the one who, out of some niggardliness, stored up some of the present food for the morrow, the stored portion was useless for food, being turned into the nature of worms.

There is yet something else marvellous attaching to the history concerning this food;

for, one of the days of the week being honoured with rest according to a certain mystical principle, on the day before it--the inflow being equal as compared with the previous time, and the eagerness of the gatherers being likewise equal--what was collected was found to be double the customary measure, so that they might have no occasion, through the necessity of food, to break the law of the day of rest.

In this the divine power was shown yet more, in that, while on the other days the surplus was rendered useless, on the day of preparation before the Sabbath alone (for this is the name of the day of rest) what was stored up remained incorrupt, so as to seem in no way staler than the fresh.

Then a war is mustered against them with a certain foreign nation.

The account names the Amalekites as those who then arrayed themselves against them.

And then for the first time the Israelite host is armed for battle-array, not with all set in motion at once for the fight, but with the best men chosen out and the picked among them taking up the war; in which again Moses showed a new manner of generalship.

For when Joshua, who after Moses led the people, was then leading the army out against the Amalekites, Moses, apart from the weapons, on a certain hilltop lookout, looks up toward heaven, with two of his close associates standing on either side of him.

Then we hear from the history such a wonder in what took place:

if Moses lifted up his hands toward heaven, his people prevailed against the enemies;

but if he let them down, the army too gave way to the foreigners' assault; which, when those standing by him perceived--Moses' hands having become, from some hidden cause, heavy and hard to move--they propped them up, going under on either side;

and since they were too weak to hold him up in an upright posture, they propped his seat with a stone, and thus, by themselves, caused Moses to lift his hands to heaven; and when this was done, the foreign people is utterly defeated by the Israelites.

And while the cloud which led the people's journey remained over the same place, there was every necessity that the people too should not remove, there being nothing to lead them to remove.

And thus, with abundance for living present to them without toil--from above the air raining down ready bread for them, and from below the rock providing drink, and the cloud again remedying the discomfort of the open air, so that it became both a partition against the heat by day and by night dispelled the gloom, shining with a certain fiery radiance--their sojourn in that wilderness, at the foot of the mountain where the camp was established, was free of grief.