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The first of these kings could have been Cain himself; the second his son Enoch, in whose name the city, where he reigned, was founded; the third Gaidad, whom Enoch begot; the fourth Mevia, whom Gaidad begot; the fifth Mathusael, whom Mevia begot; the sixth Lamech, whom Mathusael begot, who is the seventh from Adam through Cain. But it was not consequent that the firstborn of the kings should succeed their reigning fathers, but rather those whom either merit of ruling—on account of a virtue useful to the earthly city—or some lot might find; or he above all would succeed his father, by a certain hereditary right of ruling, whom he had loved before the other sons.
But it could be that, while Lamech was still living and reigning, the Flood came, so that it found him, with all other men—except those who were in the ark—to destroy. For it is not to be wondered at if, with a varying quantity of number of years interposed through so long an age from Adam to the Flood, each progeny had generations not of equal number, but through Cain seven, and through Seth ten; for Lamech is seventh, as I have said, from Adam, and Noah tenth; and therefore not one son of Lamech, as in the others above, but several are recorded, because it was uncertain who would have succeeded him at his death, if time for reigning had remained between him and the Flood.
But however the order of generations descending from Cain may stand—whether through the firstborn or through kings—this seems to me by no means to be passed over in silence: that, when Lamech was found the seventh from Adam, so many of his children are numbered that the number eleven is completed, by which sin is signified. For three sons and one daughter are added. But the wives may signify something else, not that which now seems to be commended; for now we are speaking of generations, but from whom those wives were born is left untold. Since, therefore, the law is proclaimed by the number ten—whence comes that memorable Decalogue—assuredly the number eleven, since it transgresses ten, signifies transgression of the law, and thereby sin.
Hence it is that in the tabernacle of the testimony, which was on the journey of the people of God as it were an ambulatory temple, eleven curtains of goats' hair were commanded to be made. For in the goats' hair there is a remembrance of sins, on account of the goats that shall be on the left hand; whereby, confessing, we prostrate ourselves in sackcloth, as it were saying what is written in the psalm: 'And my sin is ever before me.' The progeny, therefore, from Adam through the wicked Cain is ended in the number eleven, by which sin is signified; and the number itself is closed by a woman, from which sex the beginning of sin was made, through which we all die. And it came to pass, moreover, that the pleasure of the flesh, which should resist the spirit, followed. For the daughter of Lamech herself, Noemma, is interpreted 'pleasure.'
But through Seth, from Adam down to Noah, the lawful number ten is intimated. To this Noah's three sons are added, whence, one having fallen, two are blessed by their father, so that—the reprobate removed and, the approved sons being added to the number—even the number twelve is signified, which is notable both in the number of the patriarchs and of the apostles, because of the parts of seven multiplied the one by the other. For three fours, or four threes, make that very number.
These things being so, I see that it must be considered and recorded how these two progenies, which by distinct generations intimate two cities—one of the earth-born, the other of the regenerate—afterward became so intermingled and confounded, that the whole human race, except eight men, deserved to perish in the Flood. But first it must be observed how, when the generations from Cain were enumerated, that one being recorded before his other descendants in whose name the city was founded—that is, Enoch—the rest were connected down to that end of which I have spoken, until that race and all its offspring were destroyed by the Flood;
but when the one son of Seth, Enos, had been recorded, before the rest are added down to the Flood, a certain article is interposed, and it is said: 'This is the book of the birth of men, in the day when God made Adam; to the image of God he made him. Male and female he made them, and he blessed them, and he called their name Adam, in the day when he made them.' Which seems to me to have been interposed for this reason, that from here again the numbering of times might begin from Adam himself—which he who wrote these things was unwilling to do in the earthly city; as though God so recorded it as not to count it.
But why is there here a return to this recapitulation, after the son of Seth had been recorded—the man who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God—save because it was thus fitting to set forth these two cities: the one through a homicide down to a homicide (for Lamech too confesses to his two wives that he has committed homicide), the other through him who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God? For this is indeed the whole and chief business, in this mortality, of the city of God sojourning in this world—which had to be commended through one man, whom in truth the resurrection of the slain one begot. For that one man is the unity of the whole supernal city, not indeed yet complete, but to be completed by this prophetic prefiguration sent before.
Let the son of Cain, then—that is, the son of possession (of what, if not earthly?)—have his name in the earthly city, because in his name it was founded. For he is among those of whom it is sung in the psalm: 'They will call upon their names in their lands'; wherefore there follows them what is written in another psalm: 'O Lord, in your city you will bring their image to nothing.' But let the son of Seth—that is, the son of resurrection—hope to call upon the name of the Lord God; for he prefigures that fellowship of men which says: 'But I, like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God, have hoped in the mercy of God'; and let him not seek the empty glories of a name famous on earth;
'for blessed is the man whose hope is the name of the Lord, and who has not looked upon vanities and lying follies.' These two cities, then, being set forth—one in the reality of this age, the other in the hope of God—as it were having gone forth from the common gate of mortality that was opened in Adam, that they may run forward and run out to their own separate and appointed ends, the numbering of times begins. In which other generations also are added, a recapitulation being made from Adam, from whose condemned origin—as it were one mass handed over to deserved condemnation—God makes some vessels of wrath unto dishonour, others vessels of mercy unto honour: rendering to those what is due in punishment, granting to these what is not due in grace;
so that even from the very comparison of the vessels of wrath the supernal city, which sojourns on earth, may learn not to trust in the freedom of its own choice, but to hope to call upon the name of the Lord God. For the will in the nature that was made good by the good God—yet mutable, being from the immutable, because from nothing—can turn away both from good, that it may do evil, which is done by free choice, and from evil, that it may do good, which is not done without divine aid. This, therefore, being so, by this free choice of the will, as the human race went forward and grew, there came to be a mingling, and, through iniquity participated in, a certain confusion of both cities. Which evil again found its cause from the female sex;
not indeed in that manner in which it was from the beginning (for it was not through the deceit of any that those women then persuaded the men to sin); but from the beginning those who had been of depraved morals in the earthly city—that is, in the fellowship of the earth-born—were loved by the sons of God, namely the citizens of that other city sojourning in this age, on account of the beauty of the body. Which beauty is indeed a gift of God; but for that reason he lavishes it even on the wicked, lest it should seem a great good to the good. And so, the great good, proper to the good, being forsaken, there was a fall to a lowest good, not proper to the good, but common to good and bad alike;
and thus the sons of God were captivated by love of the daughters of men, and, that they might enjoy them as wives, they sank down into the morals of the earth-born fellowship, forsaking the piety which they had kept in the holy fellowship. For thus beauty of body—made indeed by God, but a temporal, carnal, lowest good—is wickedly loved when God, the eternal, inward, everlasting good, is set behind it; just as, when justice is forsaken, gold is loved by the avaricious, with no fault in the gold, but in the man. So it is with every creature. For since it is good, it can be both well loved and ill: well, that is, when order is kept; ill, when order is disturbed. Which, in a certain praise of a wax taper, I have briefly said in verses: 'These are yours, they are good, because you, being good, created them.'
'Nothing of them is ours, save that we sin in loving, with order neglected, instead of you, that which is created by you.' But if the Creator is truly loved—that is, if he himself be loved, and not something else instead of him which is not himself—he cannot be ill loved. For love itself must be loved in an orderly way, whereby that is well loved which ought to be loved, so that there may be in us the virtue by which one lives well. Whence it seems to me that the brief and true definition of virtue is 'the order of love'; on account of which, in the holy Song of Songs, the bride of Christ, the city of God, sings: 'Order love within me.' The order, therefore, of this charity—that is, of love and affection—being disturbed, the sons of God neglected God and loved the daughters of men. By which two names each city is sufficiently distinguished.
For neither were those also not sons of men by nature; but they had begun to have another name by grace. For in the same Scripture where the sons of God are said to have loved the daughters of men, the same are also called angels of God. Whence many suppose them to have been not men, but angels. This question, mentioned by us in passing in the third book of this work, we left unsolved: whether angels, since they are spirits, can bodily have intercourse with women. For it is written: 'Who makes his angels spirits'—that is, those who are by nature spirits he makes to be his angels, by enjoining upon them the office of announcing.
For that which in Greek is called angelos—which name, by Latin declension, is rendered angelus—is in the Latin tongue interpreted 'messenger.' But whether he consequently added their bodies by saying, 'and his ministers a burning fire,' or whether it means that his ministers ought to be fervent with charity as with a spiritual fire, is ambiguous. Yet that angels have appeared to men in such bodies that they could not only be seen but even touched, the same most truthful Scripture testifies.
And since it is a most frequent report, and many affirm that they have experienced, or have heard from those who had experienced it—of whose fidelity there is no room to doubt—that Silvani and Pans, whom the common people call incubi, have often shown themselves wicked to women and have sought and accomplished intercourse with them; and that certain demons, whom the Gauls call Dusii, assiduously both attempt and effect this uncleanness—so many and such affirm it, that to deny it would seem impudent: from this I dare define nothing—whether certain spirits, embodied in an airy element (for this element, even when it is stirred by a fan, is perceived by bodily sense and touch), can also suffer this lust, so that, in whatever way they can, they mingle with women who feel it.
Yet that the holy angels of God could in no way have thus fallen at that time, I would believe; nor that the apostle Peter spoke of these when he said: 'For if God did not spare the angels that sinned, but thrust them down, delivering them to the prisons of the gloom of hell, to be reserved to be punished in judgment'; but rather of those who first, apostatizing from God, fell with their prince the devil, who first cast down the first man by envy through the serpent's fraud. But that men also were called angels of God, the same holy Scripture is a most abundant witness. For of John it is written: 'Behold, I send my angel before your face, who shall prepare your way'; and Malachi the prophet, by a certain grace peculiar to him—that is, granted properly to himself—was called an angel.
But this troubles certain people: that from those who were called angels of God, and from the women whom they loved, we read that there were born not men of our own kind, but giants. As though, indeed, bodies of men far exceeding our own measure — which I have also mentioned above — were not born even in our own times! Was there not, a few years ago, when the destruction of the city of Rome that was wrought by the Goths was drawing near, a woman at Rome, together with her father and her mother, who far surpassed all others by a body in a certain way gigantic? To behold her a wonderful crowd would gather from every side. And this was especially a matter of astonishment: that neither of her parents was so tall as we are accustomed to see even the very tallest of men.
Giants therefore could be born even before the sons of God, who were also called angels of God, mingled with the daughters of men — that is, of those living according to man; namely, the sons of Seth with the daughters of Cain. For canonical Scripture also speaks thus, in which book we read these things whose words are these: 'And it came to pass, after that men began to be many upon the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the angels of God, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all which they chose. And the Lord God said: My Spirit shall not remain in these men for ever, for that they are flesh. But their days shall be a hundred and twenty years.'
'Now there were giants upon the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to themselves; these were the giants, men named of old.' These words of the divine book sufficiently indicate that already in those days there were giants upon the earth, at the time when the sons of God took as wives the daughters of men, since they loved them as good — that is, as beautiful. For it is the custom of this Scripture to call those also who are comely in body 'good.' But after this had been done, giants were born as well. For it says thus: 'Now there were giants upon the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men.' Therefore both before, in those days, and after that. But as to what it says:
'And they bore children to themselves' — this sufficiently shows that before the sons of God thus fell, they used to beget children for God, not for themselves; that is, not under the dominion of the lust of coupling, but in service to the office of propagation; begetting not a household for their own pride, but citizens for the city of God, to whom they might announce, as angels of God, that they should set their hope in God, like unto him who was born of Seth, the son of the resurrection, and hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God; in which hope they might be, together with their posterity, coheirs of eternal goods and, under God the Father, brethren of his sons. But that these were not angels of God in such a way as not to be men, as certain persons suppose, but that they were beyond doubt men, Scripture itself declares without any ambiguity.
For when it had been said beforehand that 'the angels of God, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all which they chose,' it was at once added: 'And the Lord God said: My Spirit shall not remain in these men for ever, for that they are flesh.' For by the Spirit of God they had been made angels of God and sons of God, but by declining to lower things they are called men by the name of nature, not of grace; and they are called flesh, as deserters of the Spirit and, by deserting, deserted. And indeed the Seventy translators called these both angels of God and sons of God — which, however, not all the manuscripts have, for some have nothing but 'sons of God.'
But Aquila, whom the Jews prefer above the other translators, rendered them not 'angels of God,' nor 'sons of God,' but 'sons of gods.' And both are true. For they were both sons of God, under whom as Father they were also brethren of their own fathers; and sons of gods, since they were begotten by gods, with whom they too were themselves gods, according to that saying of the psalm: 'I said, Ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.' For rightly are the Seventy translators believed to have received the prophetic spirit, so that if by its authority they altered anything and spoke otherwise than was that which they were translating, neither should it be doubted that this too was divinely spoken. Although in the Hebrew this is said to be ambiguous, so that it could be translated both 'sons of God' and 'sons of gods.'
Let us therefore pass over the fables of those writings which are called apocryphal, for the reason that their hidden origin was not clear to the fathers, from whom by a most certain and well-known succession the authority of the truthful Scriptures has come down even to us. Now in these apocrypha, even if some truth is found, yet on account of the many false things there is no canonical authority. That Enoch, the seventh from Adam, wrote certain things by divine inspiration we cannot deny, since the apostle Jude says this in a canonical epistle.
But not without reason are they not in that canon of the Scriptures which was preserved in the temple of the Hebrew people by the diligence of the succeeding priests, except that on account of their antiquity they were judged to be of suspect trustworthiness, nor could it be discovered whether these were the things which he had written, since they were not brought forward by such persons as could be found to have duly preserved them through the sequence of succession. Whence those things which are brought forward under his name and contain those fables about the giants — that they did not have men for fathers — are rightly judged by the prudent not to be believed to be his;
just as many things are brought forward by heretics under the names of other prophets, and more recent things under the names of the apostles, all of which under the name of apocrypha have by diligent examination been removed from canonical authority. Therefore, according to the canonical Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, there is no doubt that there were many giants before the flood, and that these were citizens of the earthborn society of men; but that the sons of God, who according to the flesh were propagated from Seth, declined into this society, having forsaken righteousness. Nor is it to be wondered at that even from these giants could be born. For not all were giants, but rather there were certainly many at that time, more than in the times after the flood.
These it pleased the Creator to create for this reason: that even from this it might be shown that not only the beauties, but also the great sizes and strengths of bodies, are not to be greatly esteemed by the wise man, who is made blessed by spiritual and immortal goods, far better and more enduring and proper to the good, not common to good and evil alike. Commending this matter, another prophet says: 'There were those renowned giants, who were of great stature from the beginning, skilled in war. These the Lord did not choose, nor did he give them the way of knowledge; but they perished, because they had no wisdom, they perished through their thoughtlessness.' [XXIV] But as to what God said:
'Their days shall be a hundred and twenty years' — this is not to be taken as though it were foretold that after this men would not, in their living, pass beyond a hundred and twenty years, since we find that even after the flood some exceeded five hundred; but it is to be understood that God said this when Noah was near the end of five hundred years — that is, was passing his four hundred and eightieth year of life, which Scripture in its usual manner calls five hundred, most often signifying by the name of the whole its greatest part; for in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the flood came to pass. And thus the hundred and twenty years were foretold as the future span of life for the men who were to perish, at whose completion they would be destroyed by the flood.
Nor is it without reason believed that the flood was so brought about when there were no longer found on earth any who were not worthy to die by such a death as was inflicted in vengeance upon the impious; not that such a kind of death does anything to the good, who must sometime die, which could harm them after death; yet nevertheless none of those whom holy Scripture records to have been propagated from the seed of Seth died in the flood. And thus divinely is the cause of the flood narrated: 'Seeing,' it says, 'the Lord God that the wickednesses of men were multiplied upon the earth, and that every one carefully devises in his heart evil things all the days, then God took thought, because he had made man upon the earth, and he reconsidered, and God said:'
'I will blot out man, whom I have made, from the face of the earth, from man even to cattle and from creeping things even to the fowls of heaven, for I am angry that I made them.' [XXV] The anger of God is not a perturbation of his mind, but the judgment by which punishment is inflicted upon sin. And his thought and reconsideration of things to be changed is the unchangeable reason of changing things. For God does not, as a man does, repent of any deed of his, whose sentence concerning absolutely all things is as fixed as his foreknowledge is certain. But if Scripture did not use such words, it would not in a certain way more familiarly insinuate itself to every kind of men, for whom it wishes to provide, so as both to terrify the proud and to rouse the negligent, and to exercise the seeking and to nourish the understanding;
which it would not do if it did not first incline itself and in a certain way descend to those who lie prostrate. But as to the fact that it also announces the destruction of all earthly and flying animals, it declares the greatness of the disaster to come; it does not threaten destruction to the animals devoid of reason as though they too had sinned.
[XXVI] Now indeed, that God commands Noah — a righteous man, and, as the truthful Scripture says of him, perfect in his generation (not, to be sure, as the citizens of the city of God are to be made perfect in that immortality in which they shall be made equal to the angels of God, but as men can be perfect in this pilgrimage) — that he make an ark, in which he might be delivered from the devastation of the flood together with his own, that is, his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law, and with the animals which by God's command entered into the ark to him: this is beyond doubt a figure of the city of God journeying as a pilgrim in this world, that is, of the Church, which is made safe through the wood on which hung the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
For the very measurements of its length and height and breadth signify the human body, in the truth of which he was foretold to men as about to come, and did come. For the length of the human body from the crown to the soles of the feet has six times as much as the breadth, which is from one side to the other side, and ten times as much as the height, of which height the measure is in the side from the back to the belly; as, if you should measure a man lying on his back or face down, he is six times as long from head to feet as he is broad from right to left or from left to right, and ten times as much as he is high from the ground. Whence also the ark was made three hundred cubits in length, and fifty in breadth, and thirty in height.
And that it received a door in its side — assuredly that is the wound, when the side of the Crucified was pierced through by the lance; for by this those who come to him enter in, since from thence flowed the sacraments by which believers are initiated. And that it is commanded to be made of squared timbers signifies the everywhere-stable life of the saints; for whichever way you turn a square, it will stand. And the other things which are said in the construction of that same ark are signs of ecclesiastical realities. But to pursue them now would be long; and this we have already done in the work which we wrote against Faustus the Manichaean, who denied that anything about Christ was prophesied in the books of the Hebrews.
And it can indeed be that someone may expound these things to us, and one person otherwise than another, more aptly — provided nevertheless that the things which are said be all referred to this city of God of which we are speaking, journeying as a pilgrim in this evil world as in a flood, if he who expounds does not wish to stray far from the intention of him who wrote these things. For example: as if someone, regarding what is here written — 'Thou shalt make it with lower stories of two chambers and of three chambers' — should not wish it to be understood as I said in that work, namely that because the Church is gathered from all nations, it was called two-chambered on account of the two kinds of men, that is, the circumcision and the uncircumcision, whom the apostle also in another manner calls Jews and Greeks;
and 'three-chambered,' on the other hand, because all nations were restored from the three sons of Noah after the flood — but should say something else that is not alien to the rule of faith. For since he willed the ark to have dwellings not only in the lower parts, but also in the higher (and these he called two-chambered) and in the higher of the higher (and these he named three-chambered), so that from the bottom upwards a third habitation should rise: there can here be understood also those three things which the apostle commends — faith, hope, charity;
there can also, much more fittingly, be understood those three fruitfulnesses of the Gospel — thirtyfold, sixtyfold, hundredfold — so that in the lowest there dwells conjugal chastity, above it widowed chastity, and higher than this virginal chastity; and whatever better thing can be understood and said according to the faith of this city. This too I would say concerning the other things which are here to be expounded: that, even though they are discussed in more than one manner, they must nevertheless be brought back to the one concord of the catholic faith.
[XXVII] Yet no one ought to think either that these things were written in vain, or that here only the truth of the events done is to be sought without any allegorical significations, or on the contrary that these were not deeds done at all, but are only figures of words, or that, whatever it may be, it in no way pertains to the prophecy of the Church.
For who, unless perverse of mind, would contend that books were written in vain which were preserved through thousands of years with such great religious care and with the observance of so orderly a succession — or that only the deeds done are to be regarded there, where certainly, to pass over other matters, if the multitude of animals compelled the ark to be made of such great size, what compelled that unclean animals be brought in by twos and clean ones by sevens, when both could have been preserved in equal number? Or was God, who commanded them to be preserved for the sake of restoring the race, unable to restore them in that same manner in which he had established them?