...unless an Angel sent from heaven should meet her, and restore the maidservant to her former fields, to her gentle mistress, and, refreshed by gentle exhortation, bid her, returning, to hope for better. And he teaches the name of her son, and his character and his hands, and the innumerable flocks to come from such a stock: by which the greater vow she returns, now certain of the future: and by childbirth she first herself made her master a parent. When now, having run through the happy spaces of life, he was excluding more than eighty-six years, to which the just one adding twelve and one more summers besides: the kindly father again, deigning him worthy of accustomed address, approaches: and bade him lead a happy old age: at the same time He unrolls the promises, and where he should expect a reward: then with body bowed, Abram, suppliant, prostrate, adores the Lord.
From whom soon he hears, with confirmed voice, that he shall be the father of an innumerable nation, and the parent of a wide one: and from whose seed kings also shall come. Yet he is bidden to distinguish the Hebrew nation from the peoples by this sign, that, the superfluous flesh being cut off of his own accord, he should circumcise himself, and all the present and future progeny of the male sex; bidden, in the boy fresh from the mother and raw to life, while the mind, ignorant of grieving, is yet, the foreskin being stripped off, to consecrate them on the eighth day's light. And whoever should dare to corrupt so holy a testament, failing to serve the law required: he should be made disinherited of the kingdom and of the future life. But that at the same time he might believe by a true proof that there should one day come from his seed innumerable nations, the Lord changes the name of each.
"Not Sarai," He says to him, "but Sarah shall your wife be called; and you, not Abram, but, more renowned by the increased name of Abraham, shall hereafter be named by the nation to come. This is common to you with your true spouse, because (nothing is more certain than this matter) she shall be the mother of a race, and shall make you a father when the year has measured back the sun, however ridiculous you may think the promises of my power: nor shall your old age hinder but that the sentence of the divine law remain established forever, eternal through the years. Yet I will pardon your doubts, and on the boy to come I will impose a name which shall convict this fault—Isaac: who, the covenant of our pact being kept, shall be the certain heir, with all his stock. Nor yet shall Ishmael, born of the seed of Hagar, be devoid of the dowry..."
"...for, supported by our gift, he shall create many thousands of powerful men to come from him, to be ruled by twelve leaders likewise." He spoke; but he, eager to hasten the resumed covenant, now striking a hundred years, now with a son grown up, signs himself first, and his son, and all his clients and servants with that mark by which it was commanded, and makes them to be a new people, and a fountain of the pious: by one and the same way, so great is his devotion, receiving and fulfilling the law by faith. What then does so present and swift a faith not merit? For it was not fear, but sincere love, and the proving of a just servant. To undergo any command with so calm a mind, whence he merited God for himself: indeed before he was only accustomed to hear, after such merit of His servant He now permits Himself to be seen.
For when just indignation goads Him as Avenger, yet He does not spurn mortal sights: for when He was preparing to condemn the crimes of the earth, and to abolish the guilty by flames, He showed Himself, either true or such as He knew He could be seen, and revealed to Abraham His very name and number. For to him, sitting at home in the valley of Mamre, three suddenly appear, gleaming with a narrow light. Abraham, stirred by the image of so great a vision, runs forward, and prostrate on the ground adores the Lord: and as a suppliant he also venerates three in one form, praying that with pious mind it may be permitted to serve them: and that, as they stretch toward the midday heats in the passing hours, they would not disdain to be refreshed by a servant and tables and food. To such a degree, amid lively senses...
...the substance of man wandered in doubt whether He whom the mind knew to be God might be a man; yet He assented, and not spurning the duty of His pious foster-child, He hallowed the offered foods and the friendly tables. But when, the feast being taken away and the tables removed, it was time to depart thence from the guests, then soon He moves His steps from there. The exulting Guest clings as a companion to the side of those going; and He shakes their breasts, struck with sad dread, and a venerable horror draws on the astonished one, since he sees the silent faces and the stern looks, that the Lord had hurled them against Sodom, Gomorrah being joined, and the servants of peace and the ministers of wrath being sent forth: and when he should learn with what great mass He was accomplishing the secret, God disclosing it, and the cause...
And so, with God himself teaching him, he dared to ask the Lord whether He would destroy the city — that city guilty through all the crimes of an erring people — if He would spare fifty men marked out for the goodness of their piety; and when He told him that, if He found such a number in it, He was resolved to spare them, Abraham added: 'And what if there be five fewer? And what if forty only? What if perhaps ten short of that number? What if twice five innocent men be granted — wilt thou not even then, O most gracious God, spare the city?' And when God had said that He would forgive even at any such number, He left His servant in the midst of his speech as he pressed yet further, and withdrew into His own kingdom. Meanwhile the angelic citizens, sent down from the seat on high into the lands of Sodom, found Loth as he chanced to be sitting before the gates of the city, now that the sun drew near to the earth.
When he saw the angelic men shining with wondrous splendour, he believed them to have descended from highest heaven, and, prostrate upon the ground, he worships them. He invites them into his house, and by his prayers prevails to turn aside the night beneath his roof, and likewise urges them to dine with him, and sets before them harmless food and modest cups. And while, the feast taken, he was making ready to give himself to sleep — behold, at the setting of the light and the return of night, a foul band of the rabble (if it be lawful to say it), a band of males, leaps forth, and young men and boys and old men alike burn with insane fires; and they compel Loth to hand over his guests for their abuse. What will mad lust not dare? But he, willing to soften the frenzy of the insane people, offers his daughters, whose virginity remained inviolate, for whatever uses they might desire.
But the unbridled throng, fallen into the worse part of a deeper wickedness, counts it base to involve itself in a lesser vice, unless it entangle itself even in the highest crimes. Therefore, that they might commit an unspeakable deed, they press upon Loth, and now with greater force than human virtue could repel they rage; whereupon at once both guests, casting off their feigned body, lay bare their angelic powers, and, having struck the mind of the raging people with blindness, draw Loth back; and into the inner recesses of the house they urge him in haste to withdraw from the land that is doomed to destruction. Who they are, why they come, and bearing what commands they will soon fulfil, they now no longer conceal with veiled speech; and they tell him that he can escape safe and sound from this calamity, and they bid him gather his house and kinsfolk and his own relations, and lead them away with him.
But those men, smitten with a like guilt as the common crowd, the same sound counsel involved while they refused to believe the one who warned them; and since they would not believe what they were unwilling to believe, it is no great wonder. That Loth should depart, that too they thought a thing to laugh at, supposing he counselled it in jest. As he, dawdling, drew out slow and endless delays, each guest, seeing it, with his hands seized him together with his wife and his maiden daughters, and led them far beyond the walls; and bade them make haste and escape into the high mountains, with this command given: that no one ill-cautious should look back upon the cities blazing with heavenly fire. But Loth, fearing that, having set out too slowly for the high mountains, the swift wrath of heaven might outstrip him, with mouth and tears sought the safe retreat of the caves of Segor; nor did he feel his tears to be in vain, and it was granted —
a special gift of salvation was granted him, which He imparts to many, and out of the gift He made a merit. And now, no longer the wonted clouds, snatching to overcast the heaven, did God mingle from His native power; He had thickened the gathered clouds into mists — but such clouds as Aetna whirls, as Inarime vomits forth, as Apon exalts with its seething waters, as the earth, shaken near Vesuvius, belches out, as the savage shore of Lycian Chimaera pants from the vast bosom of its threefold furnace, and as in whatsoever place the swift breath, poured along a narrow passage, kindles the deceiving sulphurs and flows forth into the light, steaming as the earth is rent. Not that He who out of nothing could found the whole world could not turn rains also into fires; but the good Judge, with greater preparation, chose rather to condemn those whom, pitying, He punishes for an example, for the ruin of a city and its morals.
Soon the elements threaten a harsh doom, and they run together in a billowing mass; and the food of the flames, each crowded together by its own blast, unite into one body, and the vaulted dome of sulphureous metal, bent in an arch, covers the guilty land and cities with unspeakable horror. There the breath, swift and gathering its strength through a narrow passage, with so great a din compelled the struck mass to crackle, and, driven on by frequent flashing thunder, struck down the minds of all who behold such sights; nay even Loth — alas, his pitiable wife — whether stupefied by so great a terror, or whether it was foolish desire (innate in womanly minds) that rose up against the forbidden covenant: whatever in the end was the cause, gazing back upon Sodom in her mind, straightway she underwent the penalty of the violated law, turned into a pillar of salt, and stripped —
of light. Thus the wretched woman lost her soul together with her whole body, so that no corpse remained, though the form remained. Thence swifter than before, with grief and dread forbidding him, dazed and aghast at the horrific calamity, Loth soon enters in. Again the sun rises, more burning with all its fire, glittering with angry brilliance, and directs its stern rays upon Sodom; and after these had wrapped its lights in their flames, and the sulphurs were dissolved, they cast headlong with themselves the entangled fires, and the conflagrations, parcelled out, drip in dry liquid upon the Medes. A fiery cloud falls headlong, sheer through the dense air, and wraps the cities, and rages over all the fields. With mingled hissing it thunders, and the fiery tempest conquers their laments; and after the flames had found their fuel in the kindled lands, and settled upon the very sands —
the fire, with its joined kindling, raises up an immense pyre, and from the lands the flames return into the stars, until the crags and the rebounding earth pass into ashes, and the sands, sunk deep, are utterly dissolved. And in the hollowed fields, the turf being consumed, the lowered plains open out into basins; and the moisture which had bound the lands, pouring forth through the opened veins and uniting its strength, of itself begets a sea. What are we to think that thing is, which in a flash, by wondrous power, was filled out into a lake, which before was a funeral pyre? Thus the omnipotence of the highest Judge can turn fire into icy waters, and again the waters into burning fire. Nor yet does this lack hidden mysteries; for that here are waves where flame was — that the flame, by waters sent down from above, was extinguished —
perhaps marked this: that the hot fires of luxury, and the kindlings contracted by the sin of the first father, shall one day be extinguished by heavenly waters; and that in place of the fires of sharp justice, by which that hard law of old held sway, men shall be purged by the saving and lustral waters. The end of the third book.