Life of Moses 1 part 7/8

What, then, is being suggested? That just as falling bodies, if they take some impetus down a slope, even though no one keeps pushing after the first motion, are driven of themselves down the descent in an ever more violent rush, so long as the ground beneath the motion is sloping and descends in its shape, with nothing found to check the impetus by resistance—so, conversely, the soul, released from earthly attachment, becomes upward-tending and swift toward the upward motion, soaring from below to the height.

And since there is nothing from above to cut off the impetus (for the nature of the good is attractive to itself for those who look up toward it), it always altogether becomes higher than itself, stretching forward together, by the desire of heavenly things, to the things ahead, as the Apostle says, and ever making its flight toward the higher.

For longing, through what it has already attained, not to leave the height that lies above, it makes its upward motion ceaseless, ever renewing, through what has already been accomplished, the vigor for its flight.

For virtuous activity alone nourishes its power by toil, not slackening its vigor through the work, but increasing it.

For this reason we say that the great Moses too, ever becoming greater, nowhere stood still in his ascent, nor set himself any limit of upward motion, but, having once set foot on the ladder on which God was leaning, as Jacob says, he forever

set foot on the higher step and never ceased rising, because he always found a step higher than the one attained at the height.

He renounces the falsely claimed kinship with the princess of the Egyptians.

He becomes the avenger of the Hebrew.

He migrates to the manner of life in the wilderness, which human life had not disturbed.

He shepherds within himself the flock of tame animals.

He sees the brightness of the light.

He makes his ascent toward the light unburdened, by the removal of his sandal.

He delivers to freedom his kinsmen and his own people.

He beholds the enemy sinking beneath the waves.

He encamps under the cloud.

With the rock he relieves the thirst.

From heaven he harvests the bread.

Then by the stretching out of his hands he overcomes the foreigner.

He slips into the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle not made with hands.

He learns the unspeakable things of the divine priesthood.

He recovers the law that was shattered in the wickedness of the Jews.

And having been lifted up through so many heights, he still teems with desire and is insatiable for more; and that of which he was continually filled to his fill, he still thirsts after; and as though he had not yet partaken, he asks to attain it, beseeching that God appear to him—not as he can be partaken of, but as he is.

And it seems to me that he experienced such a thing because his soul was disposed by a kind of erotic love toward the beautiful that is by nature, which hope ever drew on from the beauty seen toward that which lies beyond, ever kindling the desire for the hidden through that which is continually grasped—whence the ardent lover of beauty, receiving what is ever manifested as an image of what is longed for, longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype.

And this is what that bold request, overstepping the bounds of desire, wishes: to enjoy the beauty not through certain mirrors and reflections, but face to face.

But the divine voice grants what is asked by the very things in which it refuses, displaying in a few words a certain measureless depth of meanings.

For God’s great-giving bounty consented to fulfill the desire for him, but did not promise any cessation or satiety of the longing.

For he would not have shown himself to his servant, if what was seen were such as to bring the desire of the beholder to a stop—since the true seeing of God consists in this: that he who looks up toward him never ceases from his desire.

‘You shall not be able to see my face;

for no man shall see my face and live.’

And the text does not show this as though it became a cause of death to those who see.

For how could the face of life ever become a cause of death to those who draw near to it? But since the Deity is by nature life-giving, and the distinctive mark of the divine nature is to transcend every mark, therefore he who supposes God to be some one of the things knowable—having turned aside from the truly Existent to that which by his comprehending imagination is reckoned to exist—does not have life.

For the truly Existent is the true life.

And this is unattainable to knowledge.

If, then, the life-giving nature transcends knowledge, that which is comprehended is altogether not life.

And that which is not life does not have the nature to be productive of life.

Thus, then, what was longed for is fulfilled for Moses by the very things in which his desire remains unfulfilled.

For he is taught through what was said that the Deity is by its own nature unbounded, hedged in by no limit.

For if the Deity were conceived in some limit, of all necessity that which is beyond the limit must be contemplated together with the limit.

For that which is bounded altogether terminates in something, just as the air is the boundary of birds and the water of aquatic creatures.

As, then, the fish is encompassed on all its parts by the water, and the bird by the air, and the outermost surface of the boundary is midway between the water and the swimmer, or the air and the bird—the surface that encompasses the bird or the fish, which the water or the air succeeds—so necessarily, if the Deity were conceived within a boundary, it must be encompassed by that which is heterogeneous to it in nature.

And that the encompassing is many times greater than what is enclosed is attested by the consequence of the argument.

But indeed the Deity is confessed to be by nature good.

And that which is of a different nature from the good is altogether something other than the good.

And that which is outside the good is apprehended within the nature of evil.

And it was shown that the encompassing is many times greater than the encompassed.

It is therefore altogether necessary that those who suppose the Deity to be in a boundary and to be encompassed should join this together with evil.

And since the encompassed is altogether less than the nature of the encompassing, it would follow that the prevailing of the greater comes about.

Therefore he who hedges the Deity within some boundary establishes that the good is dominated by its opposite.

It will not, then, be reckoned that there is any comprehension of the unbounded nature.

And the uncomprehended does not have the nature to be comprehended.

But all desire for the good which draws toward that ascent stretches forward ever together with the course of him who presses on toward the good.

And this is truly to see God: never to find a satiety of the desire.

But one must always, looking through what is possible to see, be kindled toward the desire of seeing more.

And thus no limit would cut off the increase of the ascent toward God, both because no limit of the good is found, and because the advance of the desire for the good is cut off by no satiety.

But what is that place conceived as being with God? And what is the rock? And again, what is the cavity in the rock? And what is the hand of God that bounds the opening of the rock’s hollow? And what is the passing by of God? And what is his back, which God promised to give to Moses when he asked for the face-to-face sight? For each of these must altogether be something great and worthy of the bounty of the Giver, so that this promise is believed to be more magnificent and lofty than every theophany that had already come to the great servant.

How, then, might one understand the height [indicated] by the things said, in regard to which, after so many ascents, both Moses longs to ascend, and he who works all things together for good for those who love God smooths the way for the ascent by his guidance:

‘Behold, a place with me,’ he says. The meaning perhaps accords with what was contemplated before.

For in saying ‘place’ he does not hedge in by quantity what is being shown (for of the quantity-less there is no measure), but by the omission of any circumscription according to measure he leads the hearer by the hand toward the infinite and unbounded.

It seems, then, that the word hints at some such sense as this:

since your desire is stretched out toward what lies ahead, and there is for you no satiety of the course, nor do you know any limit of the good, but your longing ever looks toward the more—so great is the place with me, that he who runs in it can never be able to cease from his course.

But the running is, in another sense, a standing still;

for ‘I will set you,’ he says, ‘upon the rock.’

And this is the most paradoxical of all—how the same thing is both a standing and a motion.

For he who goes up altogether does not stand still, and he who stands still does not go up.

But here the going up comes about through the standing.

And this means that the more firm and immovable one remains in the good, the more he completes the course of virtue.

For he who is unsteady and slippery in the footing of his reasonings, having an unstable standing in the good, tossed and carried about, as the Apostle says, and wavering and shaking in his suppositions concerning beings, would never run up to the height of virtue.

Like those who walk through sand toward an uphill slope: even if they take great strides with their feet, they labor in vain, the footing ever sliding down with the sand toward the bottom, so that motion is exerted, but no advance of the motion comes about.

But if one, as the psalmody says, having drawn his feet up out of the sediment of the deep, should plant them upon the rock (and the rock is Christ, the perfect virtue), the more

firm and immovable he becomes in the good, according to Paul’s counsel, the more swiftly he completes the course, using his standing as a kind of wing, and being winged in heart toward the upward journey through the steadfastness of the good.

He, then, who showed Moses the place urges him on toward the course.

And by promising the standing upon the rock, he indicates to him the manner of that divine race.

And the cavity in the rock, which the word names a ‘hole,’ the divine Apostle has well interpreted in his own words, saying that there is laid up in hope a heavenly house not made with hands for those who have dissolved the earthly tent.

For truly he who has completed the course, as the Apostle says, in that broad and spacious stadium—which the divine voice names a ‘place’—and has truly kept the faith, as the riddle says, having planted his own feet upon the rock, this one will be adorned with the crown of righteousness from the hand of the umpire of the contest.

And such a reward is named variously by the Scripture.

For the same thing is here called the cavity of the rock, but in other places the delight of Paradise, and the eternal tabernacle, and the abode with the Father, and the bosom of the patriarch, and the land of the living, and the water of rest, and the Jerusalem above, and the kingdom of heaven, and the prize of the calling, and the crown of graces, and the crown of delight, and the crown of beauty, and the tower of strength, and the joy at the table, and the session with God, and the throne of judgment, and the place of renown, and the hidden tabernacle.

This too, then, we say, is one of the things that bear toward this meaning—the entrance of Moses into the rock.

For since the rock is understood by Paul to be Christ, and all hope of good things is believed to be in Christ, in whom we have learned that all the treasures of good things are—he who has come to be in any good is altogether in Christ, who comprehends every good.

And he who has reached as far as this and has been sheltered by the hand of God, as the word promised (and the hand of God would be the creative power of beings, the Only-begotten God, through whom all things came to be, who is both a ‘place’ to those who run, becoming the way of the course, according to his own word, and becomes a ‘rock’ to the steadfast and a ‘house’ to those at rest)—then he will hear him who calls and will be seen behind the one calling, that is:

he will go after the Lord his God, as the law enjoins.

This the great David also understood when he heard it, saying of him who dwells in the help of the Most High that:

‘with his back parts he will overshadow you’—which is equal to being behind God (for the back is among the hinder parts)—and crying out this concerning himself, that:

‘my soul cleaves after you, and your right hand has upheld me.’

Do you see how the psalmody agrees with the narrative?

For just as the psalmist says that the right hand's support belongs to the one who has clung to God's back, so too here the hand touches the one who, standing in the rock, awaits the divine voice and prays to follow behind.

But the Lord too, who then spoke as an oracle to Moses, and who became the fulfiller of his own law, deals likewise with the disciples, laying bare to plain view the meaning of what had been said in enigma:

saying, "If anyone wishes to come after me," and not before.

And to the one who entreated him concerning eternal life he proposes this very same thing:

"Come," he says, "follow me."

And the one who follows looks at what is behind.

Therefore Moses, who was eager to see God, is now taught how it is possible to see God: namely, that to follow God wherever he may lead—this is to behold God.

For his passing by signifies the guidance of the one who follows.

For it is not possible otherwise for one who is ignorant of the way to traverse it safely, except by following behind the one who leads.

So the guide, by going ahead, shows the way to the one who follows.

And the follower will then not stray from the straight path, if he always looks at the back of the one leading.

For the one who in his movement is carried off to the sides,

or who turns his gaze face-to-face with the guide, charts for himself another course—not the one the guide points out.

For this reason he says to the one being guided:

"My face shall not be seen by you," that is to say:

"Do not become face-to-face with the one who leads."

For then the running will be entirely in the opposite direction.

For good does not look in the face of good, but follows it.

But what is conceived as opposite to the good becomes its face-to-face adversary.

For vice looks at virtue from the opposite side.

But virtue is not viewed face-to-face over against virtue.

Therefore Moses does not look God in the face, but looks at what is behind him.

For the one who looks him in the face will not live, just as the divine voice testifies, that:

"No one shall see the face of the Lord and live."

Do you see how great a thing it is to learn to follow God—that after those lofty ascents and the fearful and glorious theophanies, only near the end of his life is he who has learned to come behind God scarcely deemed worthy of this grace?

And to the one who thus follows God, none of the obstacles arising from vice any longer stands in the way.

For after these things, envy springs up against him from his brethren—envy, the passion that is the origin of evil, the father of death, the first entry of sin, the root of vice, the begetting of grief, the mother of misfortunes, the ground of disobedience, the beginning of shame.

Envy banished us from paradise, having become a serpent against Eve.

Envy walled off the tree of life, and having stripped us of the sacred garments, led us through shame to the fig leaves.

Envy armed Cain against nature itself, and innovated a death avenged sevenfold.

Envy made Joseph a slave.

Envy is the death-dealing sting, the hidden weapon, the disease of nature, the bilious venom, the self-chosen wasting, the bitter arrow, the nail of the soul, the fire within the heart, the flame burning in the bowels—for which the misfortune is not one's own evil but another's good, while its triumph, conversely, is not one's own good but the harm of one's neighbor.

Envy, which is pained at the good fortunes of men and tramples upon their misfortunes.

They say that the carrion-eating vultures perish from perfume.

For their nature has become akin to what is foul-smelling and corrupt.

And the one gripped by this disease is destroyed by the prosperity of his neighbors as by the assault of some perfume; but if he sees any suffering arising from misfortune, he swoops down upon it and applies his crooked beak, drawing out the hidden parts of the calamity.

Envy overcame many who lived before Moses.

But when it was hurled against this great man, it wore itself away upon him—like some vessel of clay dashed against a rock.

For in this above all was shown the gain of that journey with God which Moses made—he who ran in the divine place, stood upon the rock, was enclosed in its cleft, was sheltered by the hand of God, and followed behind the one who led, not looking him in the face but looking at his back.

So it shows that the man who had come into his own was blessed by following God, and that he appeared higher than the reach of the bow's shot.

For envy lets fly its arrow against him too, but the shot does not reach the height at which Moses was.

For the bowstring of wickedness lacked the strength to shoot the passion so far as to pass over from those previously diseased and reach even to him.

But Aaron and Miriam were indeed wounded by the passion of malicious envy and became, as it were, a bow of envy, shooting forth against him their accusing word in place of an arrow.

Yet he was so far from sharing in the sickness that he even healed the passion of those who were diseased—not only himself remaining unmoved toward avenging those who had grieved him, but already interceding with God on their behalf, showing, I think, by what he did, that the one well fenced about with the shield of virtue is not scratched by the points of the arrows.

For the firmness of the weapon blunts the point and turns it back the opposite way.

Now the weapon that guards against such arrows would be God himself, whom

the soldier of virtue puts on:

for it says, "Put on the Lord Jesus"—that is, the unbreakable full armor, with which Moses, being well and trimly fenced about, rendered the wicked archer ineffective.

For neither did the impulse to retaliate against those who had grieved him fall upon him, nor, when they were condemned by the impartial judgment, was he ignorant of what was just toward their nature; but he became a suppliant to God on behalf of his brethren.

This he would not have done, had he not been behind God, who pointed out to him the things behind for the safe guidance of virtue.

And the other matters that follow in sequence are of the same kind.

For since he found no foothold against him for harm, the enemy of human nature turns his war against those more easily captured.

And, hurling like an arrow the passion of gluttony at the people, he made them long in their craving for Egypt, preferring to that heavenly food the flesh-eating of the Egyptians.

But the one lofty in soul, soaring above such a passion, was wholly devoted to the coming inheritance promised by God to those who depart from the Egypt understood spiritually and journey toward that land in which milk gushes forth mingled with honey.

For this reason he made certain spies into teachers of the good things in that land.

These, in my opinion, would be: on the one hand, the reasonings that arise through faith, which hold out good hopes and confirm the hope of the good things laid up; and on the other hand, those that produce despair of the more favorable hopes would be the reasonings from the adversary, which blunt faith in the things promised.

But, paying no heed to any of the contrary arguments, he held trustworthy the one who promised the better things concerning that land.

And Joshua was the leader of the better reconnaissance, the one who by his own confirmation supplied trustworthiness to the things promised.

Looking to him, Moses held firm his hopes for the things to come, making the cluster of grapes, brought by Joshua on a carrying-pole, a token of the delight there.

And surely, hearing of "Joshua" who reveals concerning that land, and of a cluster suspended on wood, you perceive to what he too was looking when he was secure in his hopes.

For what else is a cluster hanging on wood than the Cluster hung upon the wood in the last days, whose blood becomes a saving drink for those who believe—this Moses having foretold to us as it were in an enigma, that:

"They drank wine, the blood of the grape," by which the saving Passion is signified.

Again, the way leads through the wilderness, and the people who had despaired of the good things of the promise are worn down by thirst.

But Moses again floods the wilderness for them by means of the rock.

And such a saying would teach us, through spiritual contemplation, what the mystery of repentance is.

For those who, after once tasting of the rock, turned aside to the belly and the flesh and the pleasures of Egypt, are condemned by separation from participation in the good things.

But it is possible for them again, through repentance, to find the rock they had abandoned, and again to open up the vein for themselves, and again to be filled with the stream which the rock gives forth to the one who has believed Joshua's reconnaissance to be truer than that of his opponents, and who looks to the Cluster hung and bled for our sake, who again caused the rock to gush for them by means of the wood.

But the people had not yet been trained to follow in the footsteps of Moses' greatness of nature.

Still they are dragged down toward slavish desires and incline toward the pleasures of Egypt.

And the narrative somehow shows through these things that human nature is, above all else, prone to fall into such a passion, being drawn down to this disease by ten thousand ways.

But he, like some physician ever standing by his art against the prevailing passion, does not allow the disease to hold dominion over them unto death.

For their desire for unfitting things bred serpents for them, and the bite from these

brought the death-dealing venom upon those torn by the bite; but the great lawgiver, by means of the form of a serpent, rendered powerless the strength of the truly real beasts.

It would be the right moment to uncover the enigma more clearly.

There is one remedy for these wicked passions: the purification of our souls that comes through the mystery of true religion.

And the chief point of the things believed in the mystery is the looking to the Passion of him who took up the suffering on our behalf.

And the Passion is the Cross, so that the one who looks to it, as the discourse explains, is not harmed by the venom of desire.

And to look to the Cross is this: to make one's whole life dead to the world and crucified, immovable toward all sin—truly, as the prophet says, nailing one's own flesh with the fear of God.

And the nail that holds back the flesh would be self-control.

Since, then, the desire for unfitting things draws the death-dealing serpents out of the earth (for every offspring of wicked desire is a serpent), for this reason the law shows us beforehand what appears upon the wood.

And this is the likeness of a serpent and not a serpent, just as the great Paul also says:

"in the likeness of sinful flesh."

But the true serpent is sin, and the one who has deserted to sin puts on the nature of the serpent.

Man, then, is set free from sin through the one who took on the form of sin and became like us who had been changed into the form of the serpent—through whom the death that comes from the bites is prevented, while the beasts themselves are not abolished.

And by "beasts" I mean the desires.

For in those who look to the Cross, the wicked death of sins is not brought to pass, yet the desire lodged in the flesh against the spirit is not utterly destroyed.

For indeed even in the faithful the bites of desire are often felt.

But the one who looks to him who was lifted up upon the wood thrusts away the passion, dissolving the venom as with a drug by the fear of the commandment.

And that the serpent lifted up in the wilderness is a symbol of the mystery of the Cross, the voice of the Lord clearly teaches in these words:

"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

Again, by its own road, in a kind of evil sequence, sin comes forth, advancing consecutively as in some wicked chain.

And the lawgiver, like some physician, extends the treatment to keep pace with the onset of the evil.

For since the bite of the serpents had become ineffective for those who looked to the likeness of the serpent (you surely perceive the enigma through what has been said), another method of sin is devised by the one who in manifold ways plays the sophist against us in such matters—which indeed can even now be seen happening among many.

For whenever some people, by a more temperate life, have chastised the passion of desire, they thrust themselves into the priesthood by human ambitions and self-appointed impulses, outraging the stewardship of God.

To this evil sequence of sin leads the one who through the narrative is accused of working evils for men.

For since the earth ceased to give birth in travail to serpents against those who desired, through faith in the one lifted up upon the wood, and they were persuaded that they were stronger than the venomous bites, then, when the passion of desire had withdrawn, the disease of pride enters in its place.

And judging it lowly to keep to themselves the rank in which they had been appointed, they thrust themselves into the dignity of the priesthood, striving contentiously to push aside those who had received this ministry from God—men who, swallowed up by a chasm, were made to vanish, while all of that company that was above the earth was burned up by lightnings; the word teaching, I think, through the narrative, that the end of self-exalting pride is the descent into the underworld.

And perhaps someone, starting from these things, might not unreasonably define pride as an ascent toward the depths.

But if the understanding is borne toward the opposite of the supposition of the many,

do not be amazed.

For to the many it seems that being above others is what is signified by the name of pride.

But the truth of what has been recounted confirms our definition.

For if those who raised themselves above others sank down somewhere below, when the chasm of the earth gaped open for them, no one would condemn the definition that defines pride as the lowest fall.

Looking to these things, Moses trains us to be moderate and not to be lifted up by our successes, but always to use the present well.

For not because you have become superior to the pleasures is it now permitted you to be caught by another kind of passion.

For every passion is a fall, so long as it is a passion.

And there is no difference among falls in the variation of the passions.

The one who slips on the smoothness of pleasure has fallen, and the one tripped up by pride has been overturned.

For no kind of downfall is desirable to the one who has understanding.

But every fall is equally to be shunned, so long as it is a fall.

So that, if you should see even one of those today who is clean in some part of the sickness of pleasures, but again by ambition, through seeming to be above others, thrusts himself into the priesthood, consider that you are seeing that very man falling underground in the height of his pride.

For in what follows the law teaches that the priesthood is something divine and not human.