Now Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, took the beginning of his reign in the forty-first year of his age, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years — although his father Solomon, beginning to reign in his twelfth year, reigned forty years, and thus in his eleventh year could not yet have begotten a son. While I was anxiously turning these things and many of the same kind over in my mind, He who holds the key of David opened the door to me, and led me into His chamber, and set me in the cleft of the rock, that after the raging wind, after the earthquake of my land, after the fire of the ignorance in which I burned, the voice of a gentler breeze might come to me, and I might say: I have found Him whom my soul sought; I will hold Him and not let Him go.
For indeed, although Scripture may seem to contradict itself, both statements are true even while they differ. The children of Israel went out of the land of Egypt in the fourth generation. Trace back the genealogy of Levi: Levi begot Kohath, Kohath begot Amram, Amram begot Aaron, Aaron begot Eleazar, Eleazar begot Phinehas. Kohath entered Egypt together with his father Levi. Again, Eleazar went out of Egypt together with his father Aaron. From Kohath to Eleazar four generations are reckoned, though some prefer to begin from Amram and to arrive at Phinehas, just as we did with Eleazar.
But if you wish to show a different number — how according to Exodus the children of Israel went out of the land of Egypt in the fifth generation — let the order of the tribe of Judah be reckoned for you: Judah begot Perez, Perez begot Hezron, Hezron begot Ram, Ram begot Amminadab, Amminadab begot Nahshon, Nahshon begot Salmon. Perez entered Egypt together with his father Judah; Nahshon is described as prince of the tribe of Judah in the wilderness, and his son Salmon entered the land of promise. Count from Perez to Nahshon and you will find five generations, although some, as we showed in the tribe of Levi, make the beginning at Hezron and come all the way to Salmon. I think the problem is solved.
但這若仍不能令人滿意，我就給出一個簡短的解答，說在希伯來文裡並無出入。因為亞居拉——他逐字翻譯，並非如某些人所想的出於好辯，而是出於對精確的熱忱——在七十士譯本作「以色列人於第五代從埃及地上來」的那段經文中，如此譯出：kai enoplisamenoi anebēsan hoi huioi Israēl apo gēs Aigyptou，即「以色列人全副武裝地從埃及地上來」，儘管在我們譯作「武裝」之處，按希臘語詞的歧義，也可理解為「裝備齊全」或「配備妥當」，因他們擄掠埃及人所得的行裝之故。你以為這番探究就此結束了嗎？
But if this does not satisfy, I will come to a brief solution and say that in the Hebrew there is no discrepancy. For Aquila — who translates word for word not out of contentiousness, as some suppose, but out of zeal for accuracy — in that passage where the Septuagint put: 'and in the fifth generation the children of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt,' rendered it thus: kai enoplisamenoi anebēsan hoi huioi Israēl apo gēs Aigyptou, that is: 'and the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt,' although in place of what we rendered as 'armed,' according to the ambiguity of the Greek speech it might also be understood as 'equipped' or 'furnished,' on account of the baggage with which they despoiled the Egyptians. Do you think the inquiry is finished?
探究的熱情更為高漲，我像耶利米一樣四面消融，難以忍受，不明白為何七十士譯作「第五代」，而亞居拉譯作「武裝的人」。我展開希伯來卷軸——保羅按某些人的說法稱之為「推薦信」——並仔細留意其中的字母，發現如此寫著：vamusim alu bne israhel mearez mezraim。其餘部分的解釋並無分歧；整場爭戰都在 amesim 這個詞上，它由這些字母寫成：heth、mem、sin、iod、mem——究竟它發音為「五」還是「配備齊全」。的確，我們不能否認這個詞可表達「五」，但那是複數的「五」，而非他們所譯的單數的「第五」。
A greater ardor for inquiry arises, and like Jeremiah I am dissolved on every side and cannot bear it, wondering why the Septuagint rendered 'the fifth generation' and Aquila 'armed men.' I unroll the Hebrew scroll, which Paul according to some calls a 'letter of recommendation,' and attentively noting the very characters I find it written: vamusim alu bne israhel mearez mezraim. In the rest the interpretation does not disagree; the whole battle is over the word amesim, which is written with these letters: heth, mem, sin, iod, mem — whether it sounds 'five' or 'furnished.' And indeed we cannot deny that 'five' is expressed by this word, but 'five' in the plural number, not 'fifth' in the singular, as they translated it.
But neither is 'generation' found attached — which in the Hebrew tongue is called dor — so that, if it were 'the fifth generation,' it would be read in their language 'amesa dor.' As it is, however, only amissim, that is 'five,' is written, and the sense is as it were: 'and five went up, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt.' Because this seemed less intelligible, 'generation' was added. But that Aquila translated aptly both in other places and most especially in this passage, all Judaea cries aloud and all the benches of the synagogues resound in agreement — namely that the very same word, written with the very same letters, has among them different sounds and different meanings. Of these, for the sake of example, we set down one, that what we say may become clear:
'shepherds' and 'lovers' are written with the same letters: resh, ayin, iod, mem; but shepherds are read 'roim,' lovers 'reim.' Hence it comes about that, where in the prophets Jerusalem is accused of fornication with her lovers, there in our codices the name of shepherds is put in place of lovers. I know that these things are wearisome to the reader; but one who is disputing about Hebrew letters ought not to seek out the arguments of Aristotle, nor should a rivulet of eloquence be drawn from the Tullian stream, nor should the ears of a Quintilian be soothed with flowers of rhetoric and scholastic declamation. A plain style, resembling everyday speech and smelling of no midnight lamp, is what is needed — one that unfolds the matter, explains the sense,
expounds, and makes plain what is obscure — not one that puts forth leaves in the composition of words. Let others be eloquent, let them be praised as they wish, and with puffed-out cheeks let them weigh their foaming words: for me it is enough so to speak that I may be understood, and, in disputing about the Scriptures, to imitate the simplicity of the Scriptures. Why did Isaac, a just man and dear to God, deceived by error, bless not the one whom he wished, but the one whom he did not wish? I defer the types for a little while and pass over what has been interpreted by our forefathers concerning this passage — not that I do not acquiesce in their opinion, but because you ask only this: why a just man was ignorant of something and acted contrary to his own will.
To this the strict answer is that no human being, except Him who for our salvation deigned to assume flesh, has had full knowledge and most certain truth. Indeed Paul knows in part and prophesies in part, and now sees through a glass in a riddle, and says that we do not know how we ought to pray as we should — for when that which is perfect shall come, then that which is in part shall be done away. Samuel the prophet, numbered together with Moses in the Psalter, when sent to anoint a king, upon seeing Eliab, the greatest of the sons of Jesse, said: 'Behold, before the Lord is His anointed.' And the Lord said to Samuel: 'Look not upon his face nor upon his stature, for I have rejected him; for God will not see as man sees;'
man looks on the face, God looks on the heart. And through each one in turn he is described as always ignorant, right up to David, of not knowing. Elisha too, who was glorified with a double spirit, whose bones restored life to a lifeless corpse — when the Shunammite woman had come to him on the mountain and had fallen weeping at his feet, and Gehazi was trying to prevent her, said: 'Let her alone, for her soul is in bitterness, and the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me.'
There are too many instances for us to need to teach by examples that holy men, dear to God, knew only those things that were revealed to them by the Lord, but were ignorant of those that had not been revealed — and that at each vision Zechariah and Daniel questioned the angel and humbly begged that he would explain to them what those things were which they saw. Hence it is no wonder that Isaac too, most of all to his own advantage, did not know what he was doing, since he was more in error at that time when he wished to exalt the son given over to bloody pleasure — the one who could later murder his brother — passing over the one who innocently dwelt at home, and to do his own will rather than God's. Therefore I think it was of the divine dispensation that his eyes were blinded, so that, though he himself said:
'The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau,' yet did not understand that it was the younger son who stood there, having snatched away his brother's blessing. But since we have promised also to add something about what this signified in figure, we will set down the words of the martyr Hippolytus — from whom our Victorinus too does not greatly differ — not that he has expounded everything more fully, but that he may afford the reader an occasion for wider understanding: 'Isaac bears the image of God the Father, Rebecca of the Holy Spirit, Esau of the former people and of the devil, Jacob of the Church or of Christ. That Isaac grew old shows the consummation of the world; that his eyes grew dim signifies that faith perished from the world and that the light of religion was neglected before him.
That he is called the elder son is the reception of the Law by the Jews; that the father loves his meats and his hunting are the men saved from error, whom each just man hunts by teaching. The word of blessing is the promise and the hope of the kingdom to come, in which the saints shall reign with Christ and shall celebrate the true Sabbath. Rebecca, full of the Holy Spirit and knowing what she had heard before she gave birth — that the elder should serve the younger — or rather the figure of the Holy Spirit, which knew the things to come in Christ, meditates them beforehand in Jacob — speaks to her younger son:
'Go to the flock and bring me from there two kids' — prefiguring the fleshly coming of the Saviour, in which He would set free above all those who were held bound and liable to sins, since in all the Scriptures kids are taken for sinners. And that he is bidden to bring two, the assumption of two peoples is signified; that they be tender and good means souls docile and innocent. Esau's robe is the faith and the Scriptures of the Hebrews, with which the people of the Gentiles was clothed; the skins that were wrapped around his arms are the sins of both peoples, which Christ, in the stretching out of His hands, fixed to the cross together with Himself. That Isaac asks Jacob why he had come so quickly, he marvels at the swift faith of believers;
that delectable foods are offered, the sacrifice pleasing to God is the salvation of sinners. After the eating follows the blessing, and He enjoys its fragrance, foretelling with open voice the power of the resurrection and of the kingdom — how his brethren too shall worship Him and shall serve Him, those from Israel who believe. Since therefore iniquity is the enemy of justice, Esau is stirred up to discord and deceitfully devises murder, saying in his heart: 'Let the days of my father's death draw near, and I will slay Jacob, my brother.' The devil, premeditating beforehand in Cain the mouth of the fratricide Judas, most manifestly confesses in Esau, showing also the time of the killing: 'Let the days of mourning draw near,' he says, 'that I may slay my brother.'
Wherefore Rebecca — that is, patience — announced to her husband the brother's treachery, and having called Jacob commanded him to go to Mesopotamia and there take a wife from the kindred of Laban the Syrian, her mother's brother. So then, just as Jacob, fleeing his brother's wiles, sets out for Mesopotamia, so also Christ, driven by the unbelief of the Jews, journeys into Galilee, thence to take for Himself from among the Gentiles a bride, the Church.' Thus far the aforesaid man. But we say that the Lord came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and did not wish to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs, and that He offered the first blessing to the people of the Jews, to whom the oracles of God were entrusted, and the promise, and the giving of the Law, and the making of the covenant;
但因他們不肯相信，這祝福就轉給了小民雅各。然而長子並未被完全鄙棄，因為到外邦人的數目添滿了，以色列全家都要得救。三十七、致馬爾切拉。近日我讀完了奧頓主教勒提基烏斯論《雅歌》（希伯來人稱之為 sir asirim）的註釋——他從前曾因蒙特努斯派之案，由君士坦丁皇帝在西爾維斯特主教任內差往羅馬——我大為驚訝，這樣一位雄辯之人，除了其他解釋的種種荒謬外，竟以為他施城就是保羅使徒出生的大數，又以為俄法的金子象徵一塊磐石，因為磯法在福音書中被稱為彼得。
but because they refused to believe, the blessing was transferred to Jacob, the younger people. Nor yet was the elder son utterly despised, for when the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in, then all Israel shall be saved. XXXVII. To Marcella. Lately, when I had read through the commentaries on the Song of Songs — which the Hebrews call sir asirim — by Reticius, bishop of Autun, who was once sent to Rome by the emperor Constantine under bishop Silvester on account of the case of the Montenses, I was greatly astonished that so eloquent a man, besides the ineptitudes of his other interpretations, had supposed the city Tharshish to be Tarsus, in which the apostle Paul was born, and that the gold of Ophaz signified a rock, because Cephas is called Peter in the Gospel.
He had certainly had this very word in Ezekiel too, where it is written of the four living creatures: 'and the appearance of the wheels was like the appearance of tharshish'; and in Daniel, of the Lord: 'and His body was like tharshish' — which Aquila renders 'chrysolite,' Symmachus 'hyacinth'; and in the Psalms: 'with a violent spirit Thou shalt break the ships of Tharshish.' And among the stones which are engraved with the names of the tribes for the adornment of the priest, the name of this same stone is inserted, and almost the whole of Scripture is filled with this word. But what shall I say of Ophaz, when the aforesaid prophet Daniel, in the third year of Cyrus, king of the Persians, after three weeks of fasting and mourning, says:
'I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a certain man clothed in linen, and his loins girded with gold of Ophaz'? For among the Hebrews there are several kinds of gold; whence, for the sake of distinction, Ophaz is here put, lest anyone should think it was zaab, which in Genesis is said to be produced together with the carbuncle stone. You might ask, if tharshish is the chrysolite stone or the hyacinth, as the various interpreters would have it, in whose likeness the appearance of God is described, why the prophet Jonah is said to wish to go to Tharshish, and why Solomon and Jehoshaphat had ships in the books of Kings which used to bring goods from Tharshish or to carry on trade there.
To this the easy answer is that it is a word of ambiguous meaning: for both a region of India is so called and the sea itself, because, being blue and often struck back by the rays of the sun, it takes on the color of the aforesaid stones, and has received its name from the color — although Josephus supposes that the Greeks, changing the letter tau, called it Tarsus instead of Tharshish. Innumerable are the things in that man's commentaries which seemed to me squalid. His speech is indeed well-composed and flows with a Gallic loftiness; but what does that matter to a translator, whose profession is not how he himself may appear eloquent, but how he may make the one who is going to read it understand it in the same way as he who wrote it understood it?
I ask: had he not the ten volumes of Origen, or the other interpreters, or at least some of the Hebrews who were indispensable, either to question or to read — so as to learn what those things meant which he did not know? But he thought so ill of posterity that no one would be able to pass judgment on his errors! In vain, therefore, do you demand from me the commentaries of this same man, since in them far more things displease me than please me. But if you object, why then have I given them to others, you will hear that not all feed on the same food. Jesus in the desert feeds more with barley loaves, fewer with wheaten; the Corinthians, among whom fornication was heard of, and such fornication as was not even among the Gentiles, are fed with milk, because they could not yet take solid food.
But the Ephesians, among whom no crime is charged, feed on the very heavenly bread of the Lord, and acknowledge the mystery which had been hidden from the ages. Nor indeed should you be swayed by the authority or the age of those who have received copies from me, since Daniel too judges the elders, and Amos, a herdsman of goats, inveighs against the chief of the priests. XXXVIII. To Marcella. Abraham is tempted in his son and is found more faithful; Joseph is sold in Egypt, that he may feed his father and his brothers; Hezekiah is terrified by approaching death, so that, dissolved in tears, he is prolonged for life for the space of fifteen years; Peter the apostle is shaken by the Lord's passion, so that, weeping bitterly, he may hear: 'Feed My sheep';
Paul, a ravening wolf and the younger Benjamin, is blinded in an ecstasy that he may see, and, encompassed by a sudden horror of darkness, calls upon the Lord whom shortly before he had been persecuting as a man. So also now, my Marcella, we have seen our Blesilla burn continuously with the heat of fevers for nearly thirty days, that she might learn to cast off the delights of the body, which a little later must be furrowed by worms. The Lord Jesus came to her too, and touched her hand, and behold, rising, she ministers to Him. She had a certain smell of negligence, and, bound by the fetters of riches, she lay in the world's sepulchre; but Jesus groaned, and, troubled in spirit, cried out, saying: 'Blesilla, come forth.' And she, being called, arose, and having gone out, feeds with the Lord.
Let the Jews threaten and swell with rage, let them seek to kill the one raised up; let the apostles alone glory. She knows that she owes her life to Him in whom she believed; she knows that she embraces the feet of Him whose judgment shortly before she had dreaded. Her body lay almost lifeless, and approaching death shook her gasping limbs. Where then were the aids of kinsfolk, where the words emptier than all smoke? You owe nothing to her, O ungrateful kindred, she who died to the world and lives again to Christ. Whoever is a Christian, let him rejoice; whoever is angry, shows that he is not a Christian. A widow, who has been loosed from the marriage bond, needs nothing except to persevere. But a darker garment scandalizes someone:
let John scandalize him — than whom among those born of women none was greater, who, called an angel, baptized the Lord Himself, who, clad in the covering of camels' hair, was girded with a leathern belt. Cheaper foods displease: nothing is cheaper than locusts. Rather let those women scandalize Christian eyes who paint their faces and eyes with rouge and certain dyes, whose plastered faces, deformed by excessive whiteness, counterfeit idols; on whom, if by chance a heedless teardrop breaks forth, it flows down in a furrow; whom not even the number of years can teach that they are old crones — who deck the crown of the head with another's hair, and polish over their bygone youth in the wrinkles of an old woman; who, in short, before a troop of grandchildren compose themselves as trembling little maidens.
Let a Christian woman blush if she forces the comeliness of nature, if she cares for the flesh unto concupiscence — those who are in which, according to the Apostle, cannot please Christ. Our widow was formerly adorned with necklaces, and all day long sought at the mirror what she lacked; now she speaks confidently: 'But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.' Then handmaids arranged her tresses, and her harmless head was cramped by curling caps; now her neglected head knows that this alone suffices it — that it is veiled. In those days the hard softness even of feathers seemed harsh, and she could scarcely lie on piled-up couches;
now she rises in haste to pray, and with tuneful voice, forestalling the rest in the 'Alleluia,' is first to begin to praise her Lord. Her knees are bent upon the bare ground, and with frequent tears her face, once soiled with white lead, is cleansed. After prayer the psalms resound, and the wearied neck, the wobbling knees, and the eyes sinking into sleep scarcely obtain, from the too-great ardor of the mind, leave to rest. Her tunic is dark: it is less soiled when she has lain on the ground. Her slipper is cheaper: the price of gilded shoes she will lavish on the needy. Her girdle is not set with gold and gems, but is of wool and in all simplicity most pure, and such as can bind the garments together rather than tear them.
If the scorpion envies this resolve, and with smooth speech persuades her again to eat from the forbidden tree, let an anathema be dashed against him in place of a sandal, and to him as he dies let it be said in his own dust: 'Get thee behind me, Satan' — which is interpreted 'the adversary'; for the adversary of Christ is Antichrist, to whom the commandments of Christ are displeasing. I ask you, what have we ever done such as the apostles did, that men should justly be scandalized? They leave an aged father with his little boat and net; the publican rises from the tax-booth and follows the Saviour; a would-be disciple wishing to return home and first bid farewell to his own is forbidden by the Master's voice; burial is not granted to a father, and it is a kind of piety to be impious for the Lord's sake.
We, because we do not wear silken raiment, are judged to be monks; because we are not drunken nor loosen our mouths in guffaws, we are called self-restrained and gloomy. If a tunic is not white, at once comes that saying from the crossroads: 'He is an impostor and a Greek.' Let them mock with wittier jibes, and carry themselves about, those men stuffed with a fat paunch: our Blesilla will laugh and will not deign to hear the abuse of chattering frogs, since her Lord Himself was called Beelzebub. XXXIX. To Paula, on the death of Blesilla. Who will give water to my head and to my eyes a fountain of tears, and I will weep — not, as Jeremiah says, the slain of my people, nor, as Jesus, wretched Jerusalem, but I will weep — for holiness, mercy, innocence, chastity;
I will weep for all the virtues alike in the death of one — not that she is to be mourned who has departed, but that we must grieve the more impatiently, because we have ceased to see such a one. For who could recall with dry eyes a girl of twenty years, who with such ardent faith raised the banner of the cross, so that she grieved more for her lost virginity than for her husband's death? Who could pass without sobs over her earnestness in prayer, the brilliance of her speech, the tenacity of her memory, the sharpness of her mind? If you had heard her speaking Greek, you would have sworn she knew no Latin; if her tongue turned to the Roman sound, her foreign speech gave off nothing foreign at all.
Indeed now, that for which all Greece admires the famous Origen, she in a few — I say not months, but days — so overcame the difficulties of the Hebrew tongue that in learning and singing the psalms she vied with her mother. The humility of her clothing did not, as in most, betray a swelling mind, but when she had abased herself in her inner mind, between the attire of the handmaid virgins and their mistress there was nothing intermediate — except that in her it was more easily discerned, because she walked the more carelessly. Her step wavered from sickness, and her thin neck could scarcely support her pale and trembling face, and yet either a prophet or the Gospel was always in her hands. Her face is filled with tears, sobs seize her voice, and her stirred vitals do not release her clinging tongue:
When the heat of fevers was consuming her holy little body, and a circle of kinsfolk, half-alive herself, ringed her bed, she gave these as her last words: 'Pray to the Lord Jesus that He would forgive me, because I could not fulfill what I did not wish.' 'Be secure, my Blesilla, we are confident; you prove true the things we say: never is conversion too late.' This word was first dedicated in the case of the thief: 'Verily I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.' But after the burden of the flesh was cast off and the soul flew back to its Author and, long a pilgrim, ascended into its ancient possession, the funeral rites are prepared according to custom, and, with a procession of nobles going before, a golden veil is spread over the bier. It seemed to me then that she cried out from heaven: 'I do not recognize this garment;
this covering is not mine, this adornment belongs to another.' But what are we doing? While meaning to check the mother's tears, we ourselves lament. I confess my feelings: this whole book is written with weeping. Jesus wept for Lazarus, because He loved him. He is no good comforter whom his own groans overcome, whose broken words, in the softening of his vitals, sweat forth in tears. I call to witness, my Paula, Jesus, whom Blesilla now follows, I call to witness His holy angels, in whose fellowship she rejoices, that I suffer the same torments of grief that you suffer: that I am a father in spirit, a foster-parent in charity, and at times I say: 'Perish the day on which I was born,' and: 'Woe is me, my mother, why did you bear me a man to be judged and set apart before all the earth?' But also this:
'Thou art righteous, O Lord, yet I will speak of judgments with Thee: why is it that the way of the wicked prospers?' And: 'My feet were almost moved when I saw the peace of the wicked, and I said: How does God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these sinners, abounding in the world, have obtained riches.' But again this occurs to me: 'If I should say, I will speak thus, behold, I should have transgressed against the generation of Thy children.' Does not this same wave often dash against my mind too? Why do the impious old men enjoy the riches of the world? Why is untried youth and boyhood without sin stripped of its unripe bloom?
What is the reason that often infants of two or three years, still sucking their mother's breasts, are seized by a demon, filled with leprosy, devoured by jaundice — while on the contrary the impious, adulterers, murderers, and the sacrilegious, vigorous and secure in their soundness, blaspheme against God — especially since the father's injustice does not redound upon the son, and the soul that has sinned, it shall itself die? Or if that old sentence still stands, that the sins of the fathers must be requited upon the sons, it would be unjust that innocent infancy should pay back the countless offenses of an aged father: and I said, 'Then in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent, and I have been scourged all the day long.' But when I pondered these things, at once I learned with the prophet, 'and I took it up, that I might know;'
'this was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God, and understood their end.' For 'the judgments of the Lord are a great deep,' and: 'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!' God is good, and all things that the Good One made must needs be good. Widowhood is imposed: I lament what has happened, but because it thus pleases the Lord, I will bear it with equanimity. An only son is snatched away: hard indeed, but tolerable, because He took him away who had given him. If I become blind, the reading of a friend will console me. If deaf ears deny me hearing also, I shall be free from vices; I shall think of nothing but the Lord.
Over and above these there will threaten also harsh poverty, cold, sickness, and nakedness: I shall await the final death, and I shall count the evil brief, since a better end will follow it. Let us consider what that ethical psalm sounds: 'Thou art righteous, O Lord, and Thy judgment is right.' This no one can say except him who, in all that he suffers, magnifies God, and, imputing it to his own desert, glories in His clemency amid adversities. For 'the daughters of Judah rejoiced in all the judgments of the Lord.' If Judah is interpreted 'confession,' and every soul of a believer is confessing, it is necessary that whoever says he believes in Christ should rejoice in all the judgments of Christ. I am well: I render thanks to the Creator. I am sick: in this too I praise the Lord's will.