Life of Moses 1 part 6/8

Those are our true carrying-poles, who are sent forth for service for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation—who, threaded as it were like rings into our souls, into the souls of those being saved, by their own means bear upward those lying upon the earth to the height of virtue.

And by saying that the cherubim cover with their wings the mysteries lying within the ark of the covenant, the text confirms the interpretation we have given concerning the Tabernacle.

For we have learned that this name belongs to the powers contemplated about the divine nature, which Isaiah and Ezekiel discerned.

And let the ark of the covenant being covered by the wings not be strange to the ear.

For in Isaiah too one may learn the like, spoken by the prophet in a riddle concerning the wings.

For the same thing is here named ‘ark of the covenant,’ but there ‘face’;

and here the ark is covered by the wings, there the face—as though that which is conceived in both were one and the same, which seems to me to hint at the incomprehensibility of the contemplation of unspeakable things.

And if you hear of lamps, many-branched, rising from a single lampstand, so that the light shining on all sides is abundant and lavish, you would not err in reckoning that the manifold radiances of the Spirit shine forth in this Tabernacle, as Isaiah says, dividing the brightnesses of the Spirit sevenfold.

As for the mercy seat, I think it needs no interpretation, since the Apostle has uncovered what was hidden, who says that:

‘whom God set forth as a propitiation for our souls.’

And hearing of the altar and the altar of incense, I understand the worship of the heavenly beings continually performed in this Tabernacle.

For he says that not only of things on earth and under the earth, but also of the heavenly beings, the tongue sends up praise to the Source of all.

And this is the sacrifice well-pleasing to God—the fruit of the lips, as the Apostle says, and the sweet fragrance of prayers.

And if among these there is also seen a skin reddened with dye, and woven hairs, not even thus will the connected thread of the contemplation be cut off.

For the prophetic eye, coming to be in the vision of divine things, will there behold the saving Passion foreordained, which is signified in each of the things mentioned;

the redness signifying the blood, and the hair interpreting the mortification.

For the hair on the body is without share in sensation;

therefore it properly becomes a symbol of deadness.

When, therefore, the prophet looks upon the upper Tabernacle, these are the things he sees through these symbols.

But if one should contemplate the lower Tabernacle—since in many places Christ is named ‘the Church’ by Paul—it would be well to consider that these names mean the ministers of the divine mystery, whom the text also names ‘pillars of the Church,’ namely apostles and teachers and prophets.

For not only Peter and John and James are pillars of the Church, nor was John the Baptist alone the lamp that burned; but all who by themselves support the Church, and who by their own works become luminaries, are called both pillars and lamps.

‘You are the light of the world,’ the Lord says to the Apostles.

And again the divine Apostle bids others to be pillars, saying:

‘Be steadfast and immovable.’

And he fashioned Timothy into a noble pillar, making him, as he says in his own words, ‘a pillar and ground of the truth.’

In this Tabernacle there is continually seen the sacrifice of praise and the incense of prayer, performed at morning and at evening.

And the great David gives us to understand these things, directing toward God the incense of prayer as a sweet-smelling savor, and offering the sacrifice in priestly fashion through the lifting up of his hands.

And one who hears of lavers will surely understand those who, through the mystical water, wash away the defilement of sins.

A laver was John, washing in the Jordan with the baptism of repentance; a laver was Peter, bringing three thousand

at once on the same day down to the water; a laver was Philip to the eunuch of Candace; and all those, of all who partake of the gift, who effect the grace.

And as for the court-hangings, which by being joined one to another encompass the Tabernacle in a circle, one who supposes them to be the loving and peaceful concord of believers would not miss what is fitting, since David interpreted it thus, who says that:

And the reddened skin and the coverings of hair, which contribute to the adornment of the Tabernacle, would fittingly be understood as the mortification of the sinful flesh—of which the reddened skin is the riddle—and the rough manner of life lived in self-control, by which above all the Tabernacle of the Church is beautified.

For the skins, not having in themselves the vital power from nature, become blooming by the dye of redness, which teaches that the grace blossoming through the Spirit does not come to be in men unless some put themselves to death with respect to sin.

And whether also chaste modesty is signified by the word in the dye of redness, I leave the judgment to whoever wishes.

And the interweaving of the hairs, producing a rough and hard-to-touch fabric, hints at this rough and consuming self-control over the passions that beset us.

And all such things the life lived in virginity displays in itself, the life that buffets the flesh of those who so live.

And if the inner part, which is called the Holy of Holies, is inaccessible to the many, let us not reckon even this to be out of tune with the sequence of what has been conceived.

For truly the truth of beings is a holy thing—a Holy of Holies—and to the many it is ungraspable and inaccessible.

And since it is enshrined in the inmost and unspeakable parts of the Tabernacle of the mystery, the understanding of things beyond comprehension must be left uninvestigated—believing that the object sought exists, yet that it does not lie open to all eyes, but remains unspeakable in the inmost places of the mind.

Having been instructed in these and such things through the vision of the Tabernacle, that purified eye of Moses’ soul, being exalted through such sights, is again raised up to the summit of other conceptions, being taught the vestment of the priesthood—among which are the undergarment, the overgarment, and that breastpiece, radiant with the varied gleams of the stones, and the headband about the head and the plate upon it, the leggings, the pomegranates, the bells, then above all the oracle and the manifestation and the truth contemplated in both, and the shoulder-pieces joining these on either side, with the names of the patriarchs engraved upon them—whose multitude the precise contemplation of each cuts short by [giving only] the names of the vestment itself.

For what bodily garment bears the name ‘manifestation’ or ‘oracle’ or ‘truth’? Is it not clearly shown through these things that it is not this sensible vesture that is being described to us by the narrative, but a certain adornment of the soul, woven through the practices that accord with virtue?

The dye of the full-length robe is hyacinth-blue.

And some of those before us who contemplated the text say that the air is signified by the dye.

But as for me, whether this kind of bloom of color has any kinship with the airy color, I cannot precisely affirm.

Yet I do not reject the interpretation.

For the thought tends toward the contemplation that accords with virtue, in that it means that the one who is to be priest to God and to bring his own body to the sacred service and to become a victim—not slain, but in the living sacrifice and rational worship—must not harm the soul by a coarse and over-fleshly wrapping of life, but must refine, like a spider’s thread, by the purity of life all the pursuits of this life, and be near to that which is upward-tending and light and airy, having spun this bodily nature into something else; so that, when we hear the last trumpet, found weightless and light at the voice of him who commands, we may be borne aloft through the air together with the Lord, dragged down to earth by no weight.

For he who, according to the

counsel of the psalmist, has melted away his own soul like a spider, has clothed himself with that airy tunic reaching from head to the tips of the feet.

For the law does not wish virtue to be cut short.

Now the splendor of good works are the golden bells, swinging amid the pomegranates.

For these are the two practices by which virtue is gathered together: faith concerning the Deity, and conscience concerning life.

These pomegranates and bells the great Paul adds to the garment of Timothy, saying that he must have faith and a good conscience.

Therefore let faith sound pure and loud-voiced in the proclamation of the Holy Trinity, and let life imitate the nature of the fruit of the pomegranate.

For the outward appearance of that fruit is inedible, enclosed by a firm and astringent rind; but what lies within is both pleasant to see, by the varied and well-ordered arrangement of the fruit, and sweeter to the taste, gladdening the sense.

And the philosophic and austere way of life, being something hard to grasp and unpleasant to the senses, is full of good hopes, ripened in its own due season.

For when our husbandman unfolds the pomegranate of life in its own season and shows the beauty of the hidden things, then the partaking of its own fruits becomes sweet to those who enjoy it.

For the divine Apostle somewhere says that all discipline for the present does not seem to be of joy but of sorrow (that is, the pomegranate as first encountered by those who touch it), but afterward yields the peaceable fruit;

this is the sweetness of the edible things within.

And the text bids this tunic to be fringed as well.

And the fringes for it are the spherical pendants hung on, beyond what is necessary, for the sake of adornment.

And through these we learn that virtue must not be measured by the commandment alone, but that something must also be devised by us, through things additionally contrived from without, so that some addition of adornment may come to the garment—such as Paul was, weaving from himself good fringes onto the commandments.

For though the law commands that those who attend at the altar share in the altar, and that those who proclaim the Gospel live from it, he makes the Gospel free of charge, hungering and thirsting and going naked.

These are the good fringes, those who adorn the tunic of the commandments with their own addition.

Then two robes are cast over the full-length garment from above, reaching from the shoulders to the chest and the back, joined to one another by two clasps on each shoulder.

And the clasps are stones, bearing in their engravings the names of the patriarchs, six on each side.

And the weaving of the robes is varied.

Hyacinth-blue is interwoven with purple, and the redness of scarlet is mingled with fine linen.

And with all these the thread of gold is sown in together, so that from this manifold dye a single blended beauty shines forth from the fabric.

And what we learn through these things is this: that the upper parts of the vesture, all that which becomes properly the adornment of the heart, are blended together out of many and varied virtues.

So then the hyacinth-blue is interwoven with the purple.

For to the purity of life is yoked the kingdom.

And scarlet is mingled with fine linen, because it is somehow natural for the brightness and purity of life to grow together with the redness of modesty.

And the gold, shining together amid these flowers, hints at the treasure laid up for such a life.

And the patriarchs inscribed on the shoulder-pieces contribute no small thing to such adornment for us.

For the life of men is the more adorned by the foregoing examples of good men.

And again upon the adornment of the robes another adornment is cast from above.

Shields of gold hung down from each of the shoulder-pieces, and by themselves holding up something wrought of gold in a square shape, gleaming with twelve stones arranged in rows.

And the rows were four, each containing a triad of stones.

It was not possible to find one of the same kind as another, but each was beautified with its own distinctive gleams.

Such, then, is the form of the adornment.

But the meaning: that of the shields hanging from the shoulders hints at readiness on either hand in the arming against the adversary, so that—since, as was said a little before, virtue is rightly achieved on both sides, through faith and through a good conscience in this life—one is fortified on both sides by the bucklers of the shields, remaining unwounded by such darts through the weapons of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.

And that square ornament suspended on either side from the shields, in which are the patriarchs that name the tribes, inscribed upon the stones—this becomes a covering for the heart, the word teaching us through the form that he who, by these two shields, has warded off the wicked archer will adorn his own soul with all the virtues of the patriarchs, each shining in his own way in the robe of virtue.

And let the square shape be to you an indication of stability in the good.

For such a shape is hard to overturn, resting equally on its corners upon the straight line of its sides.

And the straps, by which these ornaments are bound to the arms, seem to me to furnish a doctrine for the lofty life: that one must join the practical philosophy to that which is worked out in contemplation, so that the heart becomes the symbol of contemplation, and the arms of works.

And the head adorned with the diadem signifies the crown laid up for those who have lived well, which is adorned by the one sealed on the golden plate with unspeakable engravings.

But he does not put a sandal on him who has put on such adornment, lest he be weighed down for the course and be hard to move by the wrapping of dead skins, according to the meaning that arose in the contemplation on the mountain.

For how could the sandal become an adornment to the foot, when at the first initiation it was cast off as a hindrance to the ascent?

And he who has thus passed through the ascents successively contemplated by us carries in his hand the God-wrought tablets, which contain in themselves the divine law.

But these are shattered, worn away by the hardness of the resistance of those who had sinned.

And the form of the sin was idol-making, in the likeness of a calf carved out as the image set up by the idolaters.

This, ground to powder by Moses, was wholly dissolved with the water and became a drink for those who had sinned, so that in every way the material that had served the impiety of men passed over to annihilation.

These things above all the narrative then proclaimed prophetically also concerning the things that have come to pass in our own time.

For all the error concerning idols has been utterly wiped out of life, swallowed up by the pious mouths of those who, through the good confession, accomplished in themselves the annihilation of the impious material.

And the mysteries long ago established among the idolaters have become simply transient and insubstantial water, water swallowed down by the very mouths of those who once raved after idols.

For when you see those who formerly bowed to such vanity now destroying and obliterating those things in which their confidence lay, does not the narrative seem to you to cry out plainly that:

every idol shall one day be swallowed down by the mouths of those who have been transferred from deception to piety? And Moses arms the Levites against their own kinsmen.

And passing through the camp from one extreme end to the other, they carry out an indiscriminate slaughter of those they met, committing to the edge of the sword the verdict against those who were slain.

And the slaughter being carried out equally against everyone they encountered, there was, among those slain, no distinguishing of the slaughter—whether enemy or friend, stranger or household member, kinsman or alien.

But there was one onset of the hand against everyone alike that fell before them.

And the account concerning this would furnish us with this benefit.

Since all together, as a whole people, were of one mind toward evil, and the whole camp became as it were one in the principle of wickedness, the scourge against them comes indiscriminately.

For just as one who scourges with blows someone caught in wickedness lacerates with the scourge whatever part of the body he happens upon, knowing that the pain in a part passes through to the whole, so, as the whole body grown together into wickedness is alike punished, the scourge applied to a part brought the whole to its senses.

Therefore, if ever, when the same wickedness is seen in many, the wrath of God acts not against all but against some, it is fitting to understand the correction wrought through love for mankind—not all being smitten, yet all being brought to their senses, through the partial blows, toward turning away from wickedness.

But this is still the meaning of the things written according to history.

And the anagogical sense would benefit us in this manner.

Since the lawgiver says in a common proclamation to all that:

‘If anyone is for the Lord, let him come to me’—which is the voice of the law enjoining upon all this:

if anyone wishes to be a friend of God, let him become a friend to me, the law (for the friend of the law is altogether a friend of God too)—and to those gathered to him through such a proclamation he enjoins them to use the sword against brother and friend and neighbor.

And we understand, looking to the consistency of the contemplation, that everyone who looks toward God and the law is purified by the slaying of those things wrongly made familiar to him.

For not every brother, nor friend, nor neighbor is named by the Scripture in the better sense.

But there is a brother who is also an alien, and a friend who is an enemy, and a neighbor who stands in opposition.

These we understand to be the reasonings that grow up together with us, whose life works our death, but whose death works our life.

And such a thought agrees with what was already examined concerning Aaron—when, through his association, we understood the ally and helper angel, the one who worked the signs together against the Egyptians, reasonably understood as prior, because the angelic and bodiless nature was prepared before our nature, and clearly a ‘brother’ because of the kinship of that intelligible to our intelligible part.

Now, since the objection arises—how it is possible to take Aaron’s company in the better sense, seeing that he became the minister of idol-making to the Israelites—there too the text moderately disclosed the homonymy of ‘brotherhood,’ since the same thing is not always signified by the same word, when the same name is taken in contrary senses.

But the brother who casts down the Egyptian tyrant is one, and the one who again moulds the idol for the Israelites is another, even though the name be one for both.

Against such brothers, then, Moses bares the sword.

For what he enjoins on others, he plainly lays down as law for himself as well, an equal precept.

And the slaying of such a brother is the annihilation of sin.

For everyone who has wiped out some evil implanted through the counsel of the adversary has slain in himself that which once lived through sin.

And the doctrine concerning this would be the more confirmed for us, if we should bring in also certain other things from the history toward this contemplation.

For it is said that by the command of that Aaron it came about that they must take off from themselves their earrings.

And the removal of these became material for the idol.

What, then, do we say? That Moses adorned the hearing of the Israelites with the earring-ornament, which is the law, but the falsely-named brother, through disobedience, strips away the ornament set in the hearing and makes from it an idol.

And at the very first entrance of sin, the taking away of a certain earring was the counsel to disobey the commandment, through which the serpent was reckoned by the first-formed as friend and neighbor,

counseling, as something useful and good, the departure from the divine command—this is the taking away from the hearing of the earring of the commandment.

Therefore the slayer of such brothers and friends and neighbors will hear from the law that voice which the history says was uttered by Moses to those who had slain such ones:

‘You have filled your hands today for the Lord, each in his son or his brother, that a blessing may be given upon you.’

And it seems opportune that the memory of those who admitted the sin has also entered into the account, so that we may learn how Moses again recovers the God-wrought tablets, in which the divine law had been engraved, which fell to the earth from Moses’ hands and were shattered by the resistance of what lay beneath—no longer the same throughout, but only the writing upon them.

For taking the tablets from the lower material, he submits them to the power of him who engraves the law upon them.

And thus he recalls the grace, bearing the law on tablets of stone, God himself having imprinted the words upon the stone.

For perhaps it is possible, being led by these things, to come into a deeper insight of the divine providence on our behalf.

For if the divine Apostle speaks truly in naming the tablets ‘hearts,’ that is, the ruling part of the soul—and he certainly speaks truly, who through the Spirit searches the depths of God—it is possible from this to learn, by consequence, that human nature was at the beginning unshattered and immortal, fashioned by the divine hands and beautified with the unwritten engravings of the law, the will according to the law being naturally implanted in us, in the turning away from evil and in the honoring of the Deity.

But when the sound of sin fell upon it—which the first Scripture names ‘the voice of the serpent,’ and the history concerning the tablets names ‘the voice from the wine of rulers’—then, having fallen to the earth, it was shattered.

But again the true Lawgiver, of whom Moses was a type, hewed out for himself from our earth the tablets of [our] nature.

For no marriage made for him the God-receiving flesh, but he himself becomes the hewer of his own flesh, written upon by the divine finger.

For the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her.

And when this came to pass, nature again had what is unshattered, having become immortal by the engravings of the finger.

And the ‘finger’ is in many places named by the Scripture as the Holy Spirit.

And thus the transformation of Moses into the more glorious becomes such and so great that the manifestation of that glory is uncontainable to the lower eye.

And surely he who has been instructed in the divine mystery of our faith is not ignorant of how the anagogical contemplation befits the history.

For the restorer of our shattered nature (and surely you understand by what is said that One who healed our fractures)—since he again led back to its ancient beauty the shattered tablet of our nature, beautified, as was said, by the divine finger—is no longer containable to the sight of the unworthy, becoming, by the surpassing excess of glory, unapproachable to those who look toward him.

For truly, when he comes, as the Gospel says, in his glory and all the angels with him, he scarcely becomes containable and visible even to the righteous.

But the impious one and the one who judaizes in his heresy, as Isaiah says, remains without share in that sight:

‘Let the impious one be taken away,’ he says, ‘that he may not see the glory of the Lord.’

But these things, following the sequence of what was examined before, we were led into for the surmise of the contemplation concerning this passage.

Let us return, then, to the matter before us.

How is it that he who is attested by the divine voice as clearly seeing God in so many theophanies—in which it says that:

‘face to face, as one might speak to his own friend’—being in such a state, as though he had not yet attained what he is believed by the scriptural testimony to have attained, asks God to appear to him, as though he who is ever appearing had never yet been seen?

And the voice from above now consents to the desire of the one asking and does not refuse him the addition of this grace; but again it leads him to despair through the things by which it declares that what is sought from him is uncontainable to the life of men.

But God says that there is a certain place with him, and in that place a rock, and a hole in the rock, in which he bids Moses to come; then that God will lay his hand upon the opening of that hole and, passing by, will call him; and that Moses, being called and coming outside the hole, will see the back parts of him who called, and thus he will seem to see what is sought, and the promise of the divine voice will prove not false.

For if one should look at these things according to the letter, the meaning will not only be obscure to those who seek, but neither will it be free from an unfitting supposition concerning God.

For only of things contemplated in shape are there a front part and a back part.

And every shape is a boundary of a body.

So that one who conceives shape concerning God will also suppose him not to be free from a bodily nature.

And every body is altogether composite.

And the composite has its constitution from the concurrence of heterogeneous things.

And no one would say that what is compounded is indissoluble.

And that which is dissolved cannot be incorruptible.

For corruption is the dissolution of what is constituted.

If, then, one should conceive the back parts of God according to the letter, he will be carried by consequence, of necessity, into this absurdity.

For front and back are altogether in shape, and shape is in a body.

And this is dissoluble according to its own nature.

For all that is composite is dissoluble.

And that which is dissolved cannot be incorruptible.

Therefore he who is a slave to the letter would, by the consequence of the concepts, conceive corruption concerning the Deity.

But indeed God is incorruptible and bodiless.

But what meaning, then, will fit the things written, beyond what is conceived offhand? And if this part of the things written in the context of the passage compels us to find another meaning, it is altogether fitting to think the same concerning the whole as well.

For whatever we conceive in the part, of necessity we apprehend the whole to be such also.

For there could be no whole not made complete out of its parts.

Therefore the place with God, and the rock in the place, and the cavity in it, which is named a ‘hole,’ and Moses’ entrance there, and the laying of the divine hand upon the opening, and the passing by, and the calling, and after this the contemplation of the back parts, will be contemplated more reasonably by the law of anagogy.