and therefore it came to pass that Moses put a veil over his face, lest the children of Israel should gaze upon it and be greatly troubled. At the same time a mystery was declared, that the veil which was bodily placed upon the face of Moses was mystically placed upon the hearts of the Jews, in that they could not see the true brightness of the law. For the countenance of Moses is the splendor of the law; but the splendor of the law is not in the letter, but in the spiritual understanding. And so, as long as Moses lived and addressed the people of the Jews,
he had a veil upon his face; but when Moses was dead, Joshua son of Nun addressed both the elders and the people no longer through a veil, but with face unveiled, and no one trembled—since indeed God had said to him too that He would be with him as He was with Moses, and would likewise enlighten him with the glory of his deeds, not of his countenance; the Holy Spirit signifying by this that the true Jesus was to come, to whom if anyone should turn and be willing to hear Him, the veil would be taken from his heart and with unveiled face he would see the true Savior.
Therefore God the omnipotent Father, who in the face of Moses blinded the people of the Jews not by harshness but by foreknowledge, not by malice but by equity and justice—for they set the veil upon themselves who were unwilling to understand the law; for the law is spiritual, as the Hebrew said—He indeed, according to that which He gives to each one of us, in which the fault is not of the One who bestows but of the one who loves wrongly—this Lord, I say, enlightened the heart of the people of the nations in the face of Christ Jesus through His coming; which is plainly declared by the apostolic example, as we have it written: 'For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus.'
For this reason, then, David says to the Lord Jesus: 'Make Thy countenance to shine upon Thy servant.' He desired to see the face of Christ, that his mind might be enlightened. And it can also be understood according to the Incarnation; for many prophets and righteous men desired to see, as the Lord Himself declared. But what had been denied to Moses he did not seek—to see the countenance of the incorporeal God bodily—if indeed even Moses, so wise and learned, could have asked this in simplicity rather than in mystery. Yet it is human to stretch our desires beyond ourselves; and not without reason did he seek to see the face of Him who was to come from the Virgin, that he might be enlightened in heart, even as those were enlightened who said: 'Did not our heart burn within us,
when He opened to us the Scriptures?' But if anyone wishes it to be understood as said to God the Father, the Son can be taken as the countenance of the Father; for he who sees the Son sees the Father also. Yet the countenance of God enlightens according to that which His eyes are held upon the righteous. And although this is to be proved spiritually, nevertheless, since the history of the enlightening of the face of Moses has come up, lest anyone should suppose it could not have happened bodily, let him learn. For indeed by the action of the sun the figure of the whole body is changed, many being even wasted to pallor; and to those warmed by the breath of fire the appearance of a glowing countenance is suffused; at the rising of the day the lands grow red, suffused with a saffron hue, borrowing the image from the benefit; the sparkling necklaces of gems too transmit to the things near them what they themselves have radiated:
and do you marvel if the face of Moses was infected with the brightness of the divine presence? Do you marvel if, at the radiance of God's grace, the natural endowment of the righteous is set aglow? The prophet did not hesitate, who first asked to be enlightened, that he might be able to learn the justices of the Lord. 'My eyes have gone down as streams of waters, because I have not kept Thy law.' He expressed in grand fashion the feeling of one doing penance, saying that his eyes had gone down as streams of waters—either because through them, as through channels of surging floods, a certain current of such overflowing tears poured itself out, and a continual, perpetual flowing of weeping that waters; or because his very eyes had gone down.
For the force of extreme grief has this property, that with the tears the eyes themselves seem in a manner to go down, in that the force of the tears is so great that the eyes are thought to be dissolved into weeping and poured out into tears. The eyes themselves therefore go down as into streams of waters; by which word the vehement onrush of those who lament is more expressly conveyed, according to that which is written in the Canticles: 'A fountain of gardens, a well of living water, and a rushing stream descending from Lebanon.' This rush led the Church from Lebanon; by this rush sins are washed away; by this rush the spirit of the pure fountain of the Holy Spirit came from Lebanon to the bride, and from the beginning of faith she passed through the world and crossed over to the kingdom. To some grace is a fountain, to others a well, according to our capacity for spiritual grace.
To some it is a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed; to others a fountain of garden beds, which is reckoned among the dowry of the Church; to others a rushing stream descending from Lebanon, and a great rush which never fails. For the breasts do not fail from the rock, nor the snow from Lebanon, nor the water that is borne by the strong wind of the virgin Jerusalem. The rush descended from Lebanon when, the apostles being gathered into one and very many believing, there was suddenly a sound from heaven, as if a mighty rushing wind of the Spirit were borne, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, who granted diversities of tongues. A good rush, that knows not how to harm but knows how to fill. If anyone, then, wishes to merit this rush of grace coming upon him from heaven, let him himself also go down with his eyes into the streams of waters.
He who shall first have poured forth this rush will merit that one. He went down with his eyes into these channels of waters—the waters with which she watered the feet of the Lord in the Gospel with her tears, and therefore by the price of her faith she bought the health of her soul and body, no longer the issue of blood, but of spiritual grace. David the prophet, then, went down; therefore from sin he brought back grace. He went down into the channels of waters—that is, he filled them and heaped up their streams with the tears of running waters, or filled with weeping alone the empty and void channels of the sun. Or—as a certain sense of moral expression shows—he went down into the channels of waters, he passed over them, and we might say:
'he crossed over them and passed beyond.' But the force of the expression is diminished, by which the greater force of an abundance descending rather than ascending is conveyed. See, I pray, what bearing the words have from usage, so that the prophetic discourse may not lose its impetus, although usage itself is wont to serve the sense of the writers with greater grace. He signified this diversely and often, and almost always took on increases. For he said first: 'I will wash my bed every night, I will water my couch with tears.' He said again: 'My tears have been my bread.' He said also: 'And I mingled my drink with weeping.' Here he added, saying: 'My eyes have gone down as streams of waters.'
Following this, Jeremiah in the Lamentations expressed the feeling of grief, imitating the force of the eye going down; for thus you have it: 'My eyes have failed into tears; my eyes have grown dim.' As it were, the eyes go down that fail into tears. And elsewhere: 'My eye was swallowed up.' But it is more to overcome the water with tears than for the eyes to be swallowed up in weeping. And again the same Jeremiah: 'Their heart cried out to the Lord: O walls of the daughter of Zion, let down torrents, let tears flow day and night; give thyself no rest, let not the pupil of thine eye be silent.' The eyes, therefore, which let down torrents with their tears, themselves go down as channels of waters—that is, they heap them up, that they may make them overflow with the rush of torrents, increasing them with their own weeping.
There are nevertheless manuscripts which have: διεξόδους ὑδάτων κατεβίβασαν οἱ ὀφθαλμοί μου—that is, 'my eyes brought down channels of waters.' But I, in my own Greek manuscript, read κατέβησαν—that is, 'they went down.' In which case it may be that the scribe erred into either of the two readings by the addition or removal of letters. And indeed he had many things to weep over—either the incest of his daughter or the destruction of his sons. But here he does not say that he wept over this, but because he had not kept the law of the Lord. By a holy man the fault is bewailed more than the calamity. He wept, then, when Nathan announced to him the Lord's indignation concerning the death of Uriah, and he acknowledged his sin in the transgression of the law.
In short, when his son was laid low by sickness, he neither took food nor mounted his royal throne or couch, but, stretched upon the ground, washed his fasting face with tears, desiring to wash away in that son not so much the son's death as the punishment of his sin. He wept when, the people having been numbered, he was suddenly struck in heart. In short, 'I have sinned,' he says, 'grievously, I have sinned foolishly.' He wept first, then, because, lifted up by royal power in seeking the number of the people, he had overstepped the measure of the human condition; then because at the price of his own error vengeance was taken upon the people. But this punishment had been set forth by the Lord; it was not requested by the king.
Yet by committing himself to the mercy of the Lord he proved the reason for his choice; and at the same time, because the people labored on his account, by offering himself for the people he atoned for the injury of his pride and proved the affection of his piety. XVIII. THE LETTER TSADHE. There follows of the hundred and eighteenth psalm the eighteenth letter 'Tsadhe,' which in Latin interpretation is called 'consolation.' After tears flowing in the manner of torrents and the heavy weeping of grief, it was fitting that consolation should follow. For both those who are in sorrows need consolation, and those who by grievous calamities have paid the penalties of the crimes they committed hope for indulgence, and those who by weeping and tears have washed away their own faults earn rest.
Whoever seeks all these things in the divine Scriptures finds them. For that first thing—that we should console those set in sorrow—is taught by her who in the book of Jeremiah cries out lamentingly to the captives and exiles of the Jews: 'Go, set forth, my children; for I am left desolate, forsaken. I have put off the robe of peace, and have put on the robe of my supplication, and I will cry to the Most High in my days. Be of good courage, my children; cry to the Lord, and He will draw you out of the hand of the hostile princes. For I have hoped in that Eternal One for your salvation.' To those who believe in the Lord, therefore, there is consolation in the mercy of the Lord. There is also another kind of consolation for those who have paid grievous penalties, as you have it written in the book of Isaiah:
'Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith the Lord. O priests, speak to the heart of Jerusalem, comfort her, for her humiliation is filled up; her sin is loosed, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for her sins.' Even if faith was lacking, the penalty had made satisfaction; those who are not absolved by the commendation of their merits are relieved by the discharge of their penalties. The third is when by tears the crime is washed away, as is that saying: 'Depart from me, all ye that work iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping.' Which is also easily found in this place and in very many places in the book of Psalms.
The first consolation, then, in order, is that God does not forget to show mercy, nor does He cast off forever those whom He has thought fit to chastise. The second is that, the punishments having run their course which we have endured on account of our sins, we attain to pardon. Hence some philosophers have argued that absolution harms the wicked but death profits them, because in the former there is an incentive to sin, but in death an end of sinning. That this was taken from our writings—who can doubt? Since in the Proverbs of Solomon it stands: 'He who spares the rod hates his son; but the Lord chastises whom He loves.' And below: 'A whip for the horse, and a goad for the ass, but a rod for the foolish nation.' For punishment corrects and amends the one who errs.
If he be such a one as cannot be amended, he is taken from our midst, lest he commit graver things; for the dead man now knows not how to err. And therefore Ecclesiastes says: 'And I praised the dead more than the living, and better than both is he who has not yet been born, who has not seen this work of evil.' The dead man is preferred to the living, because he has ceased to sin. To the dead man is preferred he who has not been born, because he has not known how to sin. Now let us also speak of those who have paid the penalties of their crimes. Have not these borne the price of their fault, and is no longer the full penalty owed by them? The Lord cries through Isaiah: 'Comfort My people, for she has received from the Lord's hand double for her sins.' Learn whence Plato took these things.
Having set out into Egypt for the sake of learning, that he might come to know the oracles of the law of Moses and the sayings of the prophets, he heard the consolation of a people which seemed to have been punished beyond the measure of its sin, and he transferred this passage, veiled with a certain dowry of words, into the dialogue which he wrote concerning virtue. Which passage, nevertheless, the Lord in the Gospel more fully comprehended and more openly declared, saying through the person of Abraham to that rich man of this world: 'Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy life, and Lazarus likewise evil things; but now he is comforted here, and thou art tormented. And in all these things, between you and us a great chaos has been fixed, so that they who would pass hence to you cannot, neither cross over from thence hither.'
But now let us hear what the righteous man says in consoling himself. 'Thou art just, O Lord, and right is Thy judgment. [Thou hast commanded justice, Thy testimonies, and Thy truth exceedingly.]' Truly a just man, who, overflowing with tears, wrapped in calamities, paying off his faults with grievous punishment, is not overcome by weariness, not broken by fear, not wearied by toil, is not ungrateful or sad. For most of the common run of men, not reckoning their own faults, think they unjustly endure what they suffer. But the just man, who accuses himself at once at the very outset of his speech, proclaims the justice of the Lord, in that he suffers things worthy of his deserts. And by calling God just, he first indeed pronounces concerning his own injustice, but from the justice of the Lord he hopes even for pardon.
For the just one is not always angry; as He is the avenger of fault, so He is the moderator of punishment; as He is the punisher of sins, so He is the rewarder of virtues and of the best deserts. He who wishes to give the prize ought to look for the contest, because no one is crowned without a contest. He allows us, therefore, to be often tempted, willing justly to give rewards to one who strives, surely, not to one who sleeps. The crown does not befit those wreathed with flowers, but those covered with dust; nor does victory adorn the soft, given to delights, but those exercised by toil. The just man, therefore, in his adversities praises the justice of God. But the parent does not feel this when bereaved of his tender children, nor the husband widowed of a bride's untimely fellowship, nor the sick man in pain, nor the shipwrecked in peril, nor the accused in judgment, nor the captive in the snare.
Yet Jeremiah cries out, when, announcing to the peoples the calamity of the coming captivity, he was to be put to death, sunk in the filthy slime of a foul pit: 'Thou art just, O Lord.' He cries out again, when he was distressed by the pitiable servitude of the conquered people: 'The Lord is just, because I have provoked His mouth. From without it has made me childless, and from within is death.' The Hebrews cried out, when for the virtue of their devotion and the grace of their faith they were encompassed by the fires of the burning furnace: 'Thou art just in all that Thou hast done'; and therefore they merited to proclaim, unharmed by the fires, the justices of the Lord. The prophet Daniel too, sent a second time into the den of lions, surrounded by the savagery and horror of monstrous beasts, declared with undaunted cry that all things were right in the sight of the Lord.
Shut in the belly of a beast, scarcely having passage for his panting breath, the just man condemned to the lot of the unjust cried out from the belly of the whale in the sea: 'With the voice of praise and confession I make supplication to Thee.' David, when he fled from the face of Absalom, driven out by parricidal arms and weapons and gone forth from his kingdom, when he offered himself for the destruction of the whole people, said: 'Thou art just, O Lord, and right is Thy judgment. What has this innocent flock done? I the shepherd have done the wicked thing. Before the just God let the punishment be taken from the author of the fault.' Abraham himself, the father of faith, when his only son was demanded of the old man for sacrifice, tempered the affection of fatherly piety by the confession of divine justice, saying: 'Thou art just, O Lord. For Thou dost not demand what is another's, but Thou dost demand back what is Thine own.'
I restore to You the very one whom You gave. In imitation of this, Job, when his children had been destroyed and he was stripped of his lost patrimony, rending the garment of his own body, said: 'Naked was I born, naked,' he says, 'shall I also die. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' Let us all therefore proclaim the Lord just. Both he who lays his dying limbs to rest in the tomb and he who is smitten by loss or by the death of his children, let him say: 'You are just, O Lord.' For what of ours do we lose? The Apostle cries out: 'What have you that you did not receive?' What we have, therefore, we have received; what we lose, therefore, we give back, we do not lose.
The Lord is just in dangers, just in losses, just in His acts of vengeance; not only because each one justly pays the price of his own fault, but also because, while one is punished, very many are corrected. Ananias, in the Acts of the Apostles, committed the crime of defrauding the price which he had received from the sale of his field—he who might have offered nothing and so escaped the crime. But lest anyone should think the Apostles could be cheated with impunity, or should defile the gift of His mercy by the fraud of faithlessness, being condemned to eternal death he composed all men, by a just terror, to zeal for the faith. Pharaoh, drowned with his people in the waves, is an example for our worldly conduct, that no one should persecute the people of God.
Indeed God could have made him obedient to His will, but He willed that all should be amended by his punishment; and therefore the Lord says to him: 'For this very purpose have I raised you up, that I might show My power in you and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.' The Lord assuredly was seeking not the increase of His own praise, but of our correction. Let all the wise therefore say: 'You are just, O Lord, and right is Your judgment.' For neither are we handed over to our adversaries without His judgment, nor do we come into tribulations without His judgment. This is the consolation of the just, this is the judgment of the Lord; and indeed above you have it: 'I was mindful of Your judgments which are from of old, and I was consoled.' You perceive, therefore, that the Lord's judgments are consolations.
'You have commanded justice, Your testimonies, and Your truth exceedingly.' Did He 'command exceedingly,' or did He command 'exceeding truth'? But even exceeding truth is full of praise, and to command exceedingly belongs to providence and care. For He knew the weak; therefore He admonished them the more often, that they might not forget. There follows the third verse: 'The zeal of Your house has consumed me, because my enemies have forgotten Your words.' There is a zeal unto life and there is a zeal unto death. A zeal unto life is to keep the divine precepts and out of love of the Lord to guard His commandments, as did Phinehas, of whom we read in Numbers, the Lord saying to Moses:
'Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned away My wrath from the children of Israel, in that he was jealous with My jealousy among them. And I did not consume the children of Israel in My jealousy. Therefore I have said: Behold, I give to him a covenant of peace; and it shall be to him and to his seed after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the children of Israel.' Twenty-four thousand of the people lay slain; the plague was reaching out upon all, and there was no end to the destruction. Phinehas seized the spear, slew the two who were joined together in forbidden intercourse, redeemed all, mitigated the indignation of the Lord, and gave victory to those to whom He was denying salvation. How salutary, then, is the zeal of God! That vice belonged not to one time only;
even now the Midianitish woman is mingled with the Jew. The Midianitish woman is she who is joined by no lawful wedlock of a wife, allied by no fellowship of faith. The Midianitish woman is the faithlessness of heretics, when it tempts the people of God. To how many peoples has that deadly harlot crept in, who has buried a whole people with a common death in one public destruction! Come now also, Phinehas, seize the sword of the word, slay faithlessness, cut down heresy, lest on its account the whole people perish. The wrath of heaven presses on:
strike the very womb of impiety and the breeding-place of faithlessness, lest an unhappy offspring be formed, lest an adulterous conception spread the seed-bed of transgression and crime, so that the Lord may establish with you a covenant of peace, and a covenant of grace, a covenant of the heavenly promises. The priest ought to have zeal, who is eager to keep the chastity of the Church inviolate; and therefore the prince of priests says: 'The zeal of Your house gnaws at me.' And Phinehas was a priest, and grandson of a priest, and son of a priest. Good and useful is zeal in a priest, especially that he be not negligent, not slack. It is better that by the condemnation of one or two many be set free, than that by the absolution of two more be endangered.
'The zeal of Your house,' he says, 'has consumed me.' You see that the zeal of God is grace, which seeks out, which comes upon, which pours itself into the breast of the just. The zeal of God is life. And indeed the Lord says: 'The zeal of Your house has devoured me.' For as formerly in Adam prevailing death had devoured man, so zeal devoured him whom it quickened in Christ. Elijah had zeal, and therefore he was caught up to heaven—'with zeal,' he says, 'I have been zealous for the Lord.' Mattathias the Maccabee had zeal, who roused up the people of God against the sacrileges of Antiochus. They who have zeal count as their own enemies all who are enemies of God, even though they be father, brothers, sisters; of all such David says: 'They have become enemies to me.' Why say more?
An apostle of the Lord too was distinguished by this name, so that he was called Jude the Zealot, as we read in the Gospel. By the zeal of faith the people of the Gentiles acquired for itself eternal life; by negligence and sloth the Jewish people lost it. And therefore it is written: 'Zeal shall lay hold of an untaught people.' For the people which had been taught in the law had no ardor of faith. Zeal betook itself to the nations, whose grace is so great that it overcame the prerogative of election and surpassed the diligence of learning. And so, laying hold of an untaught people, it made it to be better. Thus that grace wrought in the people of the nations, that it might merit the inheritance of the Lord; by which the Lord wrought, that He might join to Himself a Church from the nations.
Zeal, then, is love. For 'love is strong as death, zeal hard as hell.' Hard is the zeal which no allurement of this life overcomes; hard as hell, through which we die to sin, that we may live to God. The angels too without zeal are nothing and lose the prerogative of their substance, unless they sustain it by the ardor of zeal. Indeed in the Apocalypse of John the Lord says to the angel of Laodicea: 'I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! But because you are lukewarm, I will begin to vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, I am rich and enriched and have need of nothing, and you know not that you are wretched and pitiable and a beggar and naked and blind, I counsel you to buy from Me gold tried in the fire.'
This is the zeal of God, this is the warmth of faith and the fervor of devotion, which softens and forms us like sweet food in Christ. How great is the Lord's grace, that He sets us in His own mouth and feasts, as it were, on certain dishes of our merits, and—if we deserve it—devours us, if He is delighted by the sweetnesses of our food! Blessed is he whom wisdom has devoured, whom virtue has drunk in, whom righteousness has received. Fault can have no portion in him whom the remission of sins has absorbed. Where shall error find him whom unstained integrity has taken up? And why should we wonder if the angels have him? God the Father Himself says: 'With jealousy I will be jealous for Jerusalem with great jealousy.'
Because God is great, therefore His zeal also is great; and according to the measure of each one's power, so his zeal is either moderate or great. By zeal Jerusalem is vindicated, by zeal the Church is gathered, by zeal faith is acquired, by zeal chastity is possessed. The Lord Jesus too says: 'The zeal of Your house has eaten me,' rebuking the Jews because they had made the house of prayer a den of thieves and had made it a house of merchandise. But we ought to be zealous not only for the place of the Church, but also for this inner house of God within us, that it be not a house of merchandise or a den of thieves. For if we hunt after gains, profits of money, and emoluments, we have made it a house of merchandise;
if we invade the possessions of others, the boundaries of a widow or of orphans, we have made a den of thieves. Let the word of God come, therefore, and cast out from this house the thieves, the plunderers, the traffickers, that your heart, your breast may be clean. But there is a zeal unto fault, and there is a zeal unto grace. For David himself says: 'I was envious at sinners, beholding the peace of the wicked'; and in Ecclesiasticus it is written: 'Be not jealous over the wife of your bosom, lest she show against you the malice of evil instruction'; and a jealous woman is justly rebuked against a faithful woman. We perceive, therefore, that there is a certain measure and discipline of zeal, just as there is a discipline of virtue.
And therefore blessed is he who has learned the discipline of zeal and hates those who, forsaking the grace of the Lord, abandon their own salvation and take to themselves the error of deceit. And therefore he says: 'because my enemies have forgotten Your words.' Who are these enemies? If the Jewish people, how were they enemies, set under his rule? For David governed all the Jews in his own kingdom. If the Gentiles, how had they forgotten the words of God, who knew not the law of the Lord? For no one can forget except that which he has received. Those, then, are my enemies who are Your enemies, who were not going to receive the Lord when He came in His own. These the prophet testifies to be his grievous foes, his enemies—not those who were against himself, but those who were rebels against Christ.