摩西的生平 第 1 章 第 4/8 段

For truly, for those freed from such a disease, after the deadening of the creeping movements, the remembrance of their former way of life becomes something absurd and foul-smelling, making the soul nauseated through shame—as the Apostle says to those who pursue virtue out of the change from evil:

"What fruit then had you at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed?" According to this meaning, understand for me also the air, made—through the rod—dark to the eyes of the Egyptians,

but, in the case of the Hebrews, illumined by the sun.

By this especially is confirmed the account of the meaning that has been given: that no compelling power from above prepares the one to be in gloom and the other in light, but we human beings have from within ourselves, in our own nature and choice, the causes of light and of darkness, becoming in whichever of these we will.

For indeed, according to the history, it was not through some wall or mountain coming in front, casting the sights into shadow and shading off the rays, that the eye of the Egyptians was in darkness;

but, the sun lighting up all things equally with its rays, the Hebrews reveled in the light while the others were insensible of the grace.

Thus, the luminous life being equally set before all according to their freedom of choice, some make their way in darkness, being driven through wicked practices toward the gloom of vice, while others are made resplendent by the light of virtue.

But if, after the three-day suffering in darkness, the partaking of light comes also to the Egyptians, perhaps someone, starting from this, might lead the thought toward the restoration—that which is afterward expected, in the kingdom of the heavens—of those who have been condemned to Gehenna.

For that palpable darkness, as the history says, has much kinship, both in word and in thought, with the outer darkness.

And each of these is loosed when Moses, as was understood in the preceding section, stretches out his hands on behalf of those in darkness.

Likewise too that furnace-ash, which brought the painful blisters upon the Egyptians, might reasonably be understood, through the riddle implicit in the name of the furnace, to be the punishment threatened through fire at Gehenna, which fastens only on those who play the Egyptian in their life.

But if anyone is truly an Israelite and a son of Abraham, and looks to that one in his life, so as to show by his choice his kinship of race with the elect, this one is kept unharmed by that furnace-pain.

And there might come to be even for those others, at some time, the interpretation that has been given of the stretching out of Moses' hands—a healing of the pain and a release from the punishments.

As for those slender gnats, which pain the Egyptians with their unseen stings, and the dog-fly, painfully implanting itself in their bodies through its bite, and the husbandry destroyed by the locusts, and the fiery bolts from above falling together with the hailstones—one would not, following the sequence of what has been examined before, grow weary in fitting each detail to its corresponding meanings; all of which the Egyptian choice does as the leading cause, while the impartial justice of God brings them on as a consequence, following according to desert upon the choices.

For let us not, following the off-hand letter of the history, suppose that the painful things come from God upon those deserving such things, but that each man becomes the craftsman of his own plagues, preparing through his own choice the supply of grievous things—as the Apostle says, speaking to such a one:

"according to your hardness and impenitent heart you are storing up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation and righteous judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works."

For just as, from a more disordered diet, some destructive and bilious humor forms in the inward parts, which the physician, drawing it out to vomiting by his art, would not become liable to the charge of having himself produced the diseased humor in the body—rather, the disorder of nourishment produced it, while the medical science brought it into the open—so too, even if the grievous recompense be said to come from God upon those wicked in their choice, it would be reasonable to understand that such passions take their beginnings and causes from ourselves.

For to the one who has lived without sin there is no darkness, no worm, no Gehenna, no fire, nor any other of the fearful names and things—as indeed the history too says that the Egyptian plagues did not exist for the Hebrews.

If, then, in the same place, for the one there is evil and for the other there is not, the difference of the choices showing each

—in those who correspond—it would be plain that none of the evils can subsist apart from our own choice.

But let us proceed to what follows in the discourse, having been instructed thus far through the things examined: that that Moses, and the one who, after his pattern, raises himself up through virtue—whenever, through both the long attention to the mountainous and lofty life and the illumination that comes from above, his soul is empowered—deems it a loss not also to lead his kindred toward the free life.

And coming to them, by setting before them the worse passions, he implants in them a more vehement desire for freedom;

and being about to deliver his kindred from evil, he brings death upon every Egyptian firstborn—by what he did legislating for us that one must make the first birth of evil disappear;

for it is not otherwise possible to escape the Egyptian life.

And it seems good to me not to pass by this meaning unconsidered.

For if one should look only to the history, how will the conception worthy of God be preserved in the things said to have happened? The Egyptian does wrong, and in his stead his newborn infant is punished, in whom, because of the immaturity of its age, there is no discernment of good and of what is not such.

Its life is outside the passion that is according to vice;

for infancy does not admit passion;

it does not know the difference of right hand and left;

it looks up only to the nipple, and has the tear as its one sense expressive of what grieves it;

and, if it should chance upon something that nature longs for, it signifies its pleasure with a smile.

If, then, this infant pays the penalty for the father's vice, where is justice? where is piety? where is holiness? where is Ezekiel crying out that:

the soul that sins, it shall die; and that:

the one begotten from him shall not bear the father's sin? How does the history legislate against the discourse? It would therefore be easier, looking toward the elevation of the meaning, even if something happened typologically, to believe that the lawgiver sets forth a doctrine through the things said.

And the doctrine is of this sort: that one who, through virtue, grapples with vice must bring the first beginnings of evils to destruction.

For by the removal of the beginning, what comes after it also vanishes together—as the Lord teaches through the Gospel, all but openly crying out to destroy the firstborn of the Egyptian evils, by which He commands that, having done away with desire and anger, we should no longer fear either the defilement of adultery or the pollution of murder.

For neither of these two could subsist by itself, unless anger brought murder, and desire adultery, to their consummation.

Since, then, the one who breeds toward vice gives birth to desire before adultery, and to anger before murder, the one who has destroyed the firstborn has altogether destroyed along with it also the offspring that follows the firstborn—just as, in the case of the serpent, he who struck the head deadened along with it the whole trailing coil it drags behind.

But this could not come to pass unless that blood, which turns back the destroyer, had been poured upon the entrances of our dwelling.

And if one must understand the meaning that has been given more exactly in what has been said, the history gives this to be understood through both things—both from the destroying of the firstborn and from the entrance being secured by blood.

For there the first impulse of evil vanishes, and here the first entrance of vice against us is turned back through the true Lamb.

For we do not, by some device, cast out the destroyer once he has gotten inside, but we make a guard through the law so that he may not slip in even at the beginning.

And the guard and safety is to mark, with the blood of the lamb, both the lintel and the doorposts of the entrance.

While the word was thus discoursing to us about the soul through riddles, the outside learning also presented itself, dividing the soul into the rational, the desiring, and the spirited.

And of these they say that the spirited and the desiring are placed below, supporting the deliberative part of the soul on either side, while the reason is yoked upon both

—both holding them together and being upheld by them, being sharpened toward courage by the spirited part, and lifted up toward the partaking of the good through desire.

So long, then, as the soul happens to be made secure in this arrangement, having stability as it were by certain pegs—the conceptions according to virtue—there comes about in all respects, through one another, the cooperation toward the good, the reason now of itself supplying security to the lower parts, and in turn receiving from them an equal grace.

But if the arrangement should be inverted and the upper become the lower, so that the reason, having fallen to the part that is trodden underfoot, sets above itself the desiring and spirited disposition, then the destroyer too slips into the inner parts, no antipathy from the blood resisting him at the entrance—that is, the faith in Christ not allying itself with those so disposed.

For He commands first to anoint with the blood the upper lintel, then in this way to touch the doorposts on either side.

How, then, could one anoint the upper part first, if it is not found above? But if even the two things did not literally happen to the Israelites—the destruction of the firstborn and the pouring out of the blood—do not be surprised at all, nor on this account reject the contemplation that has been given concerning the destruction of evil, as though it were invented outside the truth.

For just now, by the difference of the names—the Israelite and the Egyptian—we understood the difference of virtue against vice.

If, then, the elevation supposes us to understand the Israelite as the virtuous, one would not reasonably seek that the firstfruits of the offspring of virtue be slain, but rather those whose destruction is more profitable than their rearing.

We have therefore learned, consistently, that the firstfruits of the Egyptian offspring must be destroyed by God, so that evil may fail, being consumed together with the destruction of its beginning.

And the thought coincides with the history.

For of the Israelite offspring, through the pouring out of the blood, there comes about a safeguard, so that the good may come to perfection;

but whatever, when perfected, would contribute to the Egyptian people—this was made to vanish before its perfecting in evil.

And what follows in sequence, taken up together with the contemplation of the discourse, also cooperates toward our proposed elevation of the meaning.

For He wills that our food become the body whence flowed the blood which separates the destroyer from the firstborn of the Egyptians, being displayed upon the entrances.

And the posture of those who partake of this food is to be intent and earnest, not such as is seen among those who fare delicately at banquets—whose hands are relaxed, whose throwing-on of garments is light, and whose feet are free of any equipment for travel.

But the very opposite in all respects.

Feet bound about with sandals, a belt drawing tight the flowing folds of the tunic at the waist, and in the hand the staff for warding off dogs.

And in this posture the food is set before them, without any cookery of relishes, hastily prepared over fire from whatever was at hand—which the banqueters consume ravenously, in all haste, until the whole body of the animal is consumed.

And eating around the bones whatever is edible, they do not touch what is within.

For to break the bones of this animal is among the things forbidden;

and whatever might be left over of the food is consumed by fire.

From all of which it is plain that the letter looks toward some higher meaning, the law not instructing us in the manner of eating (for nature is a sufficient lawgiver of such things, having implanted in us the appetite for food), but something else is signified through this.

For what would there be toward virtue or vice, from taking food in this way or that—loosed or girt with the belt, bare-footed or shod with sandals, holding the staff in hand or having laid it aside? But it would be plain what the array of the traveling posture shows through itself.

For it commands us outright to recognize the life here, that we sojourn in this present life as passers-by, being driven from birth itself toward our exit by the very necessity of things—for which we must be prepared with hands and feet and the rest of the safety needful for the road.

For, so that we may not be hurt with bare and unguarded feet by the thorns of this life (and the thorns would be the sins), let us put forward the firmness of sandals for the feet;

and this is the continent and austere life, which of itself breaks and crushes the points of the thorn, and prevents sin from slipping into the inner parts from a slight and unseen beginning.

And the tunic poured down around the feet and let fall to the soles would be a hindrance to the one who completes this road earnestly according to God.

And the tunic might consistently be understood by us as the enjoyable breadth of the things zealously pursued in this life, which the temperate reason draws in to a small compass, becoming a belt for the traveler.

And that the belt is temperance is attested by the place around which it is wound.

And again, the staff for warding off beasts is the word of hope, by which we both prop up the wearied part of the soul and ward off what barks at us.

And the food set before us from fire—I mean this warm and fiery faith, which we receive without delay—of which, having eaten as much as becomes readily graspable to the eater, we leave the reason hidden in the firmer and harder-to-rub conceptions uninvestigated and unmeddled-with, setting such food before the fire.

And that the riddles concerning these matters may be made clear, we say this: that of the divine precepts, those that have a ready understanding we ought to pursue, not sluggishly nor by constraint, but, as it were, hungering and with appetite to fill ourselves with what is set before us, so that the food may become for us a provision toward good health; but those of the conceptions that are hidden—such as the inquiry into what is the essence of God? what was before creation? what is outside the things that appear? what is the necessity of things that come to be? and all such things searched out by the over-curious—these we say to leave to the Holy Spirit alone to know, who searches the depths of God, as the Apostle says.

For that, in place of the Spirit, fire is in many places mentioned and named by Scripture, no one of those educated in the Scripture could fail to know.

And the precept of Wisdom also leads us toward such an understanding, that:

"Seek not things stronger than you"—that is, do not break the bones of the discourse;

for you have no need of the hidden things.

Thus Moses leads the people out of Egypt.

And everyone who follows in Moses' footsteps in this manner frees from the Egyptian tyranny all those whom the word leads.

But it is necessary, I think, that those who follow the one who leads toward virtue should not be poor in the Egyptian wealth, nor destitute of the foreigners' treasures, but, having taken all that belongs to the adversaries, should keep it for their own use—which the people are then commanded by Moses to do.

But no one, understanding this off-hand, would accept the lawgiver's intent, if he were enjoining the people to defraud those who lent, and were becoming an instigator of injustice.

Nor would anyone truly say that the lawgiver ordained these things, looking to the laws that follow, which up and down forbid injustice against one's neighbor—even if to some it might seem reasonable that the Israelites exacted from the Egyptians the wages of their labors through this device.

For it is no less a matter of accusation that such a precept does not keep clear of falsehood and deceit.

For the one who has taken something on loan and not given it back again to the lender—if it be another's, he has wronged him as one who defrauds; but if he keeps what is his own, as one who has cheated the lender who lent in hope of enjoying its return, he is altogether named a swindler.

Therefore the higher meaning is more fitting than the off-hand sense—the one that commands those who pursue the free life

through virtue to provide for themselves also the wealth of outside education, with which the foreigners according to faith adorn themselves.

For moral and natural philosophy, geometry and astronomy, and the discipline of logic, and all that is zealously pursued among those outside the Church—the one who leads toward virtue commands us to receive on loan from those rich in such things in Egypt, as being useful in due season, whenever it is needful that the divine temple of the mystery be adorned through the wealth of reason.

For those who have treasured up such wealth for themselves bring it to Moses, who labors over the tabernacle of testimony, each one contributing what is from himself toward the construction of the holy things—which indeed may be seen coming to pass even now.

Many bring the outside education to the Church of God as a kind of gift—such as was the great Basil, who nobly trafficked in the Egyptian wealth in the time of his youth, and dedicated it to God, and with such wealth adorned the true tabernacle of the Church.

But we must return to where we departed: that for those who already look toward virtue and follow the lawgiver in their life, whenever they leave behind the borders of the Egyptians' dominion, the onslaughts of temptations somehow follow after, bringing on straits and fears and the dangers concerning the last extremities.

Through which the understanding, still newly fixed in the faith, being terrified, falls into utter despair of good things.

But if Moses, or one of those after his pattern who oversee the people, should chance to be present, he will set counsel against fear, taking courage for the cowering understanding by the hope of divine alliance.

Which could not come to pass unless the heart of the one set over them speaks to God.

For by most of those appointed to such leadership, only the outward appearance is zealously cared for, that it may be well-disposed;

but of the hidden things, which are beheld by God alone, little account is made.

But in the case of Moses it was not so;

rather, in the very moment when he bids the Israelites take courage, having made, to outward appearance, no utterance to God, he is testified to as crying out from God Himself—the word teaching, I think, that that voice is well-sounding and ascends to the divine hearing, not the clamor made with a certain straining, but the reflection sent up from a pure conscience.

And to the one so disposed, the brother now appears as small help toward the alliance in the greater contests—that brother who met Moses as he was going down to the Egyptians according to the divine will, whom the word understood as in the rank of an angel.

But then there comes about the manifestation of the higher nature, manifested in such a way as the recipient can contain—which indeed we hear from the history happened then, and which we learn from the contemplation of the word comes to pass forever.

For whenever one flees the Egyptian, and, having come outside the borders, turns cowardly before the onslaughts of temptations, the guide points out from above the salvation that comes contrary to expectation, whenever the enemy, having walled in the pursued one with his own power, by necessity makes the sea passable for him—into which the cloud, the guide, leads the way;

for this is the name of the one who guides—which was well taken over by those before us as referring to the grace of the Holy Spirit, from whom comes the guidance toward the good for those who are worthy; following whom one passes through the water, the leader making the journey through it possible for him, by whom there comes about the security of his freedom, the one pursuing for slavery being made to vanish in the water.

And anyone hearing this would not fail to recognize the mystery according to the water, in which one, having gone down with the whole army of the enemy, comes up alone, the hostile host being drowned in the water.

For who does not know that the Egyptian army is the manifold passions of the soul, by which a man is enslaved? Those horses, those chariots and those who ride upon them, archers and slingers and heavy-armed men, and the rest of the throng of the

For in what would one say the spirited reasonings differ, or the impulses toward pleasure and grief and covetousness, from the army that has been mentioned?

Downright a stone from a sling is reviling, and a spear brandishing its point is the spirited impulse;

and let the passion concerning pleasures be understood as the horses, which by some unrestrained impulse drag the chariot along by themselves, in which are the three riders, whom the history names "chosen captains" (tristatai);

and you will understand these three, who are altogether borne along by the chariot, having been taught beforehand, in the mystery concerning the doorposts and the lintel, the threefold division of the soul, referring the thought to the rational, the desiring, and the spirited.

All these, then, and whatever is akin to them, fall in together with the one who leads the wicked assault upon the Israelite at the water;

in whose case the nature of the water, with the faith according to the staff leading and the illuminating cloud, becomes life-giving for those who flee into it, but destructive of the pursuers.

Toward which the history instructs, through these things, what sort the ones who pass through the water ought to be: drawing along nothing of the hostile army after they come up from the water.

For if the enemy came up together with him, he remains in slavery even after the water, having brought out along with himself the tyrant alive, whom he did not drown in the deep.

And this is of such a sort as one might make clear, changing the riddle into something plainer: that all those who pass through the mystical water in baptism must make dead in the water the whole array of vice—such as covetousness, unrestrained desire, the rapacious mind, the passion according to vainglory and pride, the spirited impulse, anger, rancor, malice, envy, jealousy, and all such things, since the passions somehow naturally follow upon nature—both the wicked movements of the mind themselves and the effects from them; just as in the mystery of the Pascha (for this is the name for the sacrifice whose blood becomes a preventer of death for the one who uses it).

Just as there He commands to eat unleavened bread along with the Pascha (and unleavened it would be that is unmixed with the staler leaven), and gives us to understand through these things that the law means to mix none of the remnant of vice into the life that follows, but to begin from a proper beginning the life that comes after—the one who has cut off, by the change toward the better, the continuity of the sequence of evils—so here too He wills that, having drowned every Egyptian face, that is, every form of sin, as it were in some deep, in the saving baptism, we should come up alone, dragging along nothing foreign in our life;

for this is what we hear through the history, which says that in the same water, by death and by life, the hostile and the friendly are distinguished—the enemy being destroyed, the friend being brought to life.

Since indeed the many of those who have received the mystical baptism, through ignorance of the law's precepts, mix the past leaven of vice into the life of their subsequent way of life, and bring along the Egyptian army living with themselves through their practices even after crossing the water.

For he who has become rich through plunder or injustice, or has acquired some land by perjury, or has cohabited with a woman through adultery, or has dared in his life some other of the forbidden things before the gift of baptism, thinks that, having continued even after the washing in the enjoyment of the evils that wickedly accrued to him, he has been freed from the slavery of sins—as though, forsooth, not seeing himself bowed down under wicked masters.

For the unrestrained passion is a kind of master, savage and raging, to the slavish reasoning, tormenting it as with certain scourges, with the pleasures.

Another such master is covetousness, providing no respite to its slave, but, even if he works much, serving the commands of the master, and acquiring for him what is according to his desire, is ever driven on toward more.

And all the rest, whatever is worked through vice, is an enumeration of tyrants and masters, serving whom one—even if he should chance to have passed through the water—

has not yet, according to my account, touched the mystical water, whose work is the destruction of the wicked tyrants.

But let us again proceed to what follows in the discourse.

For he who has passed through the sea we have spoken of, and has seen the Egyptian we contemplated dead in it, no longer looks toward Moses alone, the rod-bearer of virtue, but believes, as the primary thing, in God—as the word of the history says—and is persuaded also by His servant Moses; which even now we see coming to pass among those who truly cross the water, who, having dedicated themselves to God, are also persuaded by and yield to those who minister to the Divine through the priesthood, as the Apostle says.

After the sea, a journey of three days succeeds, in which, when they had encamped at a certain place, the water that was found appeared at first undrinkable through bitterness.

But the wood, when thrown in, made the drink agreeable to the thirsty.

The history coincides with what happens;

for to the one who has left behind the Egyptian pleasures, to which he was enslaved before crossing the sea, the life separated from pleasures seems, at first, hard to take and unpleasant.

But if the wood be cast into the water—that is, if one takes up the mystery of the resurrection, which had its beginning through the wood (and hearing "wood" you certainly understood the cross)—then the life according to virtue becomes sweeter and more drinkable than any sweetness that tickles the sense through pleasure, being sweetened by the hope of things to come.

And the next resting-place of the journey, made luxuriant with palm trees and springs, gives rest to the labor of the travelers.

And the springs of waters are twelve, of pure and most pleasant stream, and the palm trees seventy, well-grown and lofty-crowned, time having raised the trees to a height.