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just as above, when it had mentioned the sons of the sons of Noah, it said that they were in their tongues and nations, and yet afterward, as if this too followed in the order of times, it says: And the whole earth was one lip, and one voice to all. How then were they according to their nations and according to their tongues, if there was one to all, unless because the narrative returned by way of recapitulation to that which had already passed by? So then here too, when it had been said: And the days of Thara in Charra were two hundred and five years, and Thara died in Charra, then Scripture, returning to that which it had for this reason omitted—that first, concerning Thara, what had been begun might be completed—says: And the Lord said to Abram, Depart from thy land, and so forth.
After which words of God it is subjoined: And Abram went out, as the Lord spoke to him, and Loth went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he went out from Charra. It came to pass, then, at that time when his father was passing the one hundred and forty-fifth year of his age; for then it was his own seventy-fifth. But this question is also solved in another way, namely that the seventy-five years of Abraham, when he went out from Charra, should be reckoned from the point at which he was delivered from the fire of the Chaldeans, not from that at which he was born, as though he should rather be held to have been born then. But blessed Stephen, when he narrated these things in the Acts of the Apostles:
The God of glory, he says, appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charra, and said to him: Depart from thy land and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, and come into the land which I shall show thee. According to these words of Stephen, God did not speak to Abraham after his father's death—who assuredly died in Charra, where the son himself also dwelt with him—but before he dwelt in that same city, yet when he was already in Mesopotamia. He had therefore already gone out from the Chaldeans. And so, as to what Stephen adds:
Then Abraham went out from the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Charra—this is not what was done after God spoke to him (for he had not gone out from the land of the Chaldeans after those words of God, since he says that God spoke to him when he was in Mesopotamia), but it pertains to that whole span of time which he indicates when he says: 'Then'—that is, from the time when—'he went out from the Chaldeans and dwelt in Charra.' Likewise, as to what follows: And thence, after his father died, He settled him in this land, in which you now dwell and your fathers—he does not say: 'After his father died, he went out from Charra,' but:
'Thence He settled him here, after his father died.' It is therefore to be understood that God spoke to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charra; but that he came into Charra with his father, retaining with himself the precept of God, and went out thence in his own seventy-fifth year, but in his father's one hundred and forty-fifth. His settling, however, in the land of Chanaan—not his setting out from Charra—Stephen says was accomplished after his father's death, because his father was already dead when he bought the land, of which he there began to be the possessor as of his own property. But as to the fact that God, when Abraham was already established in Mesopotamia—that is, already gone out from the land of the Chaldeans—says:
Depart from thy land and from thy kindred and from thy father's house—this is said not that he should cast his body out thence, which he had already done, but that he should tear away his mind. For he had not gone out thence in mind, if he was held by the hope of returning and by longing—which hope and longing had to be cut away, God commanding and helping, and he obeying. Nor is it beyond belief that, when Nachor afterward had followed his father, Abraham then fulfilled the Lord's precept, so as to go out from Charra with Sara his wife and Loth the son of his brother. Now the promises of God made to Abraham are to be considered. For in these the more open oracles of our God—that is, of the true God—began to appear concerning the people of the pious, whom prophetic authority foretold.
The first of these reads thus: And the Lord said to Abram, Depart from thy land and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, and go into the land which I shall show thee; and I will make thee into a great nation, and I will bless thee and magnify thy name, and thou shalt be blessed; and I will bless them that bless thee, and them that curse thee I will curse, and in thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed. It is therefore to be observed that two things were promised to Abraham: one, namely, that his seed should possess the land of Chanaan, which is signified where it is said, Go into the land which I shall show thee, and I will make thee into a great nation;
but the other, far more excellent, not concerning the carnal but the spiritual seed, through which he is the father not of the one Israelite nation only, but of all the nations that follow the footsteps of his faith, which began to be promised in these words: And in thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed. Eusebius reckons this promise to have been made in the seventy-fifth year of Abraham's age, as though Abraham had gone out from Charra as soon as it was made; since Scripture cannot be contradicted, where it is read: Abram was seventy-five years old when he went out from Charra. But if this promise was made in that year, then assuredly Abraham was already tarrying in Charra with his father. For he could not have gone out thence unless he had first dwelt there.
Is Stephen then in any way contradicted when he says: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charra? But it is to be understood that in the same year all these things came to pass: both God's promise, before Abraham dwelt in Charra, and his dwelling in Charra, and his setting out thence; not only because Eusebius in his Chronicle reckons from the year of this promise and shows that after four hundred and thirty years the exodus from Egypt took place, when the Law was given, but also because the apostle Paul records this.
In the same period there were eminent kingdoms of the nations, in which the city of the earth-born—that is, the society of men living according to man—under the dominion of the deserting angels, more conspicuously excelled: three kingdoms, namely, of the Sicyonians, the Egyptians, and the Assyrians. But that of the Assyrians was by far the more powerful and lofty. For that king Ninus, the son of Belus, had subjugated the peoples of all Asia except India. By Asia I now mean, not that part which is one province of this greater Asia, but that which is called Asia entire, which some placed in one of the two divisions, but most in the third part of the whole world, so that the whole should be Asia, Europe, and Africa—which they did not by an equal division.
For this region which is called Asia extends from the south, through the east, up to the north; but Europe from the north up to the west, and thence Africa from the west up to the south. Whence two parts, Europe and Africa, seem to hold half the globe, but Asia alone the other half. But those two parts have been made so because between them both, from the Ocean, there enters whatever of waters flows between the lands; and this makes the Great Sea for us. Wherefore, if you divide the globe into two parts, of East and West, Asia will be in the one, but in the other Europe and Africa. Wherefore, of the three kingdoms which then excelled, that of the Sicyonians was not under the Assyrians, because they are in Europe;
but as for the Egyptians, how were they not subject to those by whom all Asia was held, save the Indians alone, as is reported? In Assyria, then, the dominion of the impious city had grown strong; the head of this was that Babylon, whose name is most fitting for a city of the earth-born—that is, 'confusion.' There Ninus was already reigning, after the death of his father Belus, who had first reigned there sixty-five years. But his son Ninus, who succeeded to the kingdom upon his father's death, reigned fifty-two years, and had been forty-three years in the kingdom when Abraham was born, who was born about the one thousand two hundredth year before Rome was founded—as it were, another Babylon in the west.
Abraham, then, having gone out from Charra in the seventy-fifth year of his own age, and in the one hundred and forty-fifth of his father's, went on into the land of Chanaan with Loth the son of his brother and Sara his wife, and came as far as Sichem, where again he received a divine oracle, concerning which it is thus written: And the Lord appeared to Abraham, and said to him, To thy seed will I give this land. Nothing here is said of that seed in which he was made the father of all nations, but only of that in which he is the father of the one Israelite nation; for by this seed that land was possessed.
[XIX] Then, when he had built an altar there and had called upon the God of Abraham, he set out from that place and dwelt in the wilderness, and from there he was compelled by the necessity of famine to go into Egypt. There he called his wife his sister, and in this he told no lie; for this too was true, since she was near to him by blood, just as Lot also, by the same kinship, being the son of his brother, was called his brother. And so he was silent about her being his wife, but did not deny it, committing to God the guarding of his spouse's chastity, while as a man he took precaution against human treachery; for if he had not guarded against the danger so far as it could be guarded against, he would rather have been tempting God than hoping in God. On this matter we have said enough against the calumniating Manichaean Faustus. And at last there came to pass that which Abraham had presumed concerning the Lord.
For Pharaoh king of Egypt, who had taken her to himself as a wife, being grievously afflicted, restored her to her husband. And far be it from us to believe that she was defiled by another's embrace, since it is far more credible that Pharaoh was not permitted to do this by reason of the great afflictions. [XX] When therefore Abraham had returned from Egypt to the place from which he had come, then Lot his brother's son departed from him into the land of Sodom, with charity unbroken. For they had become rich and had begun to possess many herdsmen for their flocks; and as these were quarrelling among themselves, in this way they avoided the contentious discord of their households. For from this, as human affairs go, some quarrel might have arisen even between the two men themselves. Accordingly these are the words of Abraham to Lot, forestalling this evil:
Let there be no strife between me and you, nor between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we men are brethren. Behold, is not the whole land before you? Depart from me; if you go to the left, I will go to the right; or if you go to the right, I will go to the left. From this perhaps has arisen among men the peaceable custom, that when something earthly is to be divided, the greater divides and the lesser chooses. [XXI] When therefore they had parted and dwelt separately, Abraham and Lot, by reason of the necessity of sustaining their household, not by the foulness of discord, and Abraham was in the land of Canaan, while Lot was in Sodom, the Lord in a third oracle said to Abraham:
Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you now are, to the north and to the south and to the east and to the sea; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your seed forever, and I will make your seed as the sand of the earth. If anyone can number the sand of the earth, then shall your seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in its length and in its breadth, for I will give it to you. Whether in this promise there is also that by which he was made the father of all nations does not clearly appear. For it can seem to belong to this: And I will make your seed as the sand of the earth—which was said by that figure of speech which the Greeks call hyperbole, which is certainly figurative, not literal.
Yet that Scripture is wont to use it, as it uses the other figures, no one who has learned Scripture doubts. Now this figure, that is, this manner of speech, occurs when what is said is far greater than what is signified by the saying. For who does not see how incomparably greater is the number of the sand than can be the number of all men from Adam himself down to the end of the world? How much more, then, than the seed of Abraham—not only that which belongs to the people of Israel, but also that which is and shall be, according to the imitation of faith, throughout the whole world among all nations! This seed, in comparison with the multitude of the ungodly, is assuredly but few;
although even these few make up their own innumerable multitude, which was signified according to hyperbole by the sand of the earth. Truly this multitude which is promised to Abraham is not innumerable to God, but to men; while to God not even the sand of the earth is innumerable. Accordingly, because not only the Israelite nation, but the whole seed of Abraham—wherein there is a promise also, not according to the flesh but according to the spirit, of very many children—is more fittingly compared to the multitude of the sand, the promise made can here be understood to be of both things. But we have said that it does not clearly appear, because even the multitude of that one nation, which was born according to the flesh from Abraham through his grandson Jacob, grew to such an extent that it filled almost every part of the world.
And therefore that too could be compared according to hyperbole with the multitude of the sand, because this alone also is innumerable to man. That land alone, which was called Canaan, was assuredly signified, of which no one doubts. But that which was said—To you will I give it and to your seed forever—can trouble not a few, if they understand 'forever' as 'for eternity.' If, however, they take 'saeculum' (age) in this passage in the sense in which we faithfully hold that the beginning of the age to come takes its rise from the end of the present one, nothing will trouble them; because, although the Israelites have been driven out of Jerusalem, they nevertheless remain in other cities of the land of Canaan, and will remain to the end; and when that whole land is inhabited by Christians, this too is the seed of Abraham.
[XXII] Having received this answer of promise, Abraham removed and dwelt in another place of the same land, beside the oak of Mamre, which was in Hebron. Then, when the enemies who had rushed upon Sodom—when five kings waged war against four, and the Sodomites being conquered, Lot too was taken captive—Abraham delivered him, having led with him into battle three hundred and eighteen of his home-born servants, and gained the victory for the kings of Sodom, and would take away nothing of the spoils, though the king for whom he had conquered offered them. But he was then plainly blessed by Melchizedek, who was priest of God Most High; concerning whom many and great things are written in the epistle which is inscribed to the Hebrews, which very many say is Paul the apostle's, though some deny it.
For there first appeared the sacrifice which is now offered to God by Christians throughout the whole world, and there is fulfilled that which, long after this deed, is said through prophecy to Christ, who was still to come in the flesh: You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek; not, that is, after the order of Aaron, which order was to be taken away when those things dawned which were prefigured by those shadows. [XXIII] Even then the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision.
And when He promised him protection and a very great reward, he, being anxious about his posterity, said that a certain Eliezer, his home-born servant, would be his heir; and immediately an heir was promised to him—not that home-born servant, but one who was to come forth from Abraham himself; and again a seed innumerable, not as the sand of the earth, but as the stars of heaven; where it seems to me rather that a posterity sublime in heavenly felicity is promised. For as regards multitude, what are the stars of heaven to the sand of the earth? unless one should say that this comparison also is similar to that extent, in that the stars too cannot be numbered, since it is not to be believed that all of them can even be seen. For the more keenly anyone gazes, the more he sees.
Whence it is rightly reckoned that even to the sharpest observers some stars are hidden, besides those constellations which are said to rise and set in another part of the world most remote from us. Finally, whoever boast of having comprehended and recorded the total number of the stars, such as Aratus or Eudoxus, or any others there may be, them the authority of this book despises. Here indeed is placed that sentence which the apostle mentions for the commending of God's grace: Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness; lest circumcision should glory, and refuse the uncircumcised nations to be admitted to the faith of Christ. For when this came to pass, that faith was reckoned for righteousness to believing Abraham, he had not yet been circumcised.
[XXIV] In the same vision, when God was speaking to him, He also said this to him: I am God, who brought you out of the region of the Chaldeans, that I might give you this land, that you may be its heir. And when Abraham had asked according to what he should know that he would be its heir, God said to him: Take for Me a heifer three years old, and a she-goat three years old, and a ram three years old, and a turtledove and a dove. And he took all these for Him and divided them in the middle and placed them opposite one another; but the birds he did not divide. And there came down, as it is written, birds upon the bodies which were divided, and Abram sat down with them. Now about the setting of the sun a dread fell upon Abram, and behold, a great and dark fear fell upon him; and it was said to Abram:
Knowing you shall know that your seed will be a sojourner in a land not their own, and they will reduce them to servitude and afflict them four hundred years; but the nation whom they shall serve, I will judge. After this, however, they shall come out with much household stuff. But you shall go to your fathers in peace, nourished in a good old age. And in the fourth generation they shall return hither. For the sins of the Amorites are not yet filled up unto now. And when now the sun was at its setting, there was a flame, and behold, a smoking furnace and torches of fire, which passed through the midst of those divided pieces. On that day the Lord God made a covenant with Abram, saying:
To your seed will I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Rephaim and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Girgashites and the Jebusites. All these things were done and said in the vision divinely, concerning each of which to discourse minutely is a long matter and exceeds the intention of this work. What therefore is enough for us to know, we ought to know. After it was said that Abraham had believed God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness, he did not fail in faith when he said: O Lord God, according to what shall I know that I shall be its heir? (for indeed the inheritance of that land had been promised)—for he did not say, 'Whence shall I know?' as though he did not yet believe; but he said:
According to what shall I know? that some similitude might be applied to that thing which he had believed, by which its manner might be recognized; just as it is not the distrust of the Virgin Mary when she says: How shall this be, since I know not a man? for that it should come to pass, she was certain; the manner in which it should come to pass she inquired, and when she had asked this, she heard—so here too a similitude was given from the animals, the heifer and the she-goat and the ram and the two birds, the turtledove and the dove, that according to these he might know as future that which he no longer doubted would be.
Whether, then, by the heifer was signified the people placed under the yoke of the law, by the she-goat that same people to become sinful, by the ram that same people also to reign (which animals are for this reason called three years old, because, since there are notable articulations of the times from Adam to Noah, and thence to Abraham, and thence to David, who, Saul being rejected, was first established by the Lord's will in the kingdom of the Israelite nation, in this third order, which extends from Abraham to David, that people grew up as bearing, so to speak, its third age)—or whether these signify something else more fitting: yet in no way would I doubt that spiritual persons are prefigured in it by the addition of the turtledove and the dove. And therefore it was said:
But the birds he did not divide, since carnal men are divided among themselves, but spiritual men in no way, whether they withdraw themselves from the busy conversations of men, like the turtledove, or dwell among them, like the dove; yet each bird is simple and harmless, signifying that even in that Israelite people, to whom that land was to be given, there would be undivided sons of the promise and heirs of the kingdom, destined to abide in eternal felicity. But the birds coming down upon the bodies which were divided indicate not anything good, but the spirits of this air, seeking a certain food of their own from the division of carnal men. And that Abraham sat with them signifies that even amid those divisions of carnal men true believers shall persevere to the end.
And that about the setting of the sun a dread fell upon Abraham and a great and dark fear signifies the great disturbance and tribulation of the faithful that is to come about the end of this age, concerning which the Lord says in the Gospel: For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning. But that which was said to Abraham—Knowing you shall know that your seed will be a sojourner in a land not their own, and they will reduce them to servitude and afflict them four hundred years—was most plainly prophesied concerning the people of Israel, who were to serve in Egypt; not that in that same servitude, under the afflicting Egyptians, that people were to spend four hundred years, but that within those very four hundred years this was foretold as to come.
For just as it is written concerning Terah the father of Abraham: And the days of Terah in Haran were two hundred and five years—not because they were all spent there, but because they were completed there: so here too for this reason it was interposed, And they will reduce them to servitude and afflict them four hundred years, because that number was completed in that same affliction, not because the whole was spent there. Four hundred years indeed are named for the fullness of the number, although they are somewhat more, whether they are reckoned from that time when these things were promised to Abraham, or from when Isaac was born, on account of the seed of Abraham, concerning whom these things are foretold.
For they are reckoned, as we have already said above, from the seventy-fifth year of Abraham, when the first promise was made to him, unto the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, four hundred and thirty years; of which the apostle thus makes mention: But this I say, he says: a covenant confirmed by God, the law made four hundred and thirty years after does not annul, so as to make void the promise. Now therefore these four hundred and thirty years could be called four hundred, because they are not much more:
how much more so, since already some out of this number had passed, when those things were shown and said to Abraham in the vision, or when Isaac was born to his hundred-year-old father, twenty-five years after the first promise, when already out of those four hundred and thirty there remained four hundred and five, which God willed to name four hundred. And the rest which follow in the words of God foretelling, no one will doubt to pertain to the Israelite people. But that which is added—And when now the sun was at its setting, there was a flame, and behold, a smoking furnace and torches of fire, which passed through the midst of those divided pieces—signifies that already at the end of the age carnal men are to be judged by fire.
For just as the affliction of the city of God, such as never was before, which is hoped to come under Antichrist, is signified by the dark fear of Abraham about the setting of the sun, that is, when the end of the age is now drawing near: so at the setting of the sun, that is, at the very end now, is signified by that fire the day of judgment separating the carnal, some to be saved through fire and some to be damned in fire. Then the covenant made with Abraham properly manifests and names the land of Canaan, and in it eleven nations from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates. Not, then, from the great river of Egypt, that is, the Nile, but from the small one which divides between Egypt and Palestine, where is the city Rhinocorura.
[XXV] From here now follow the times of the sons of Abraham, the one of Hagar the handmaid, the other of Sarah the free woman, concerning whom we have already spoken in the previous book. As regards the thing done, in no way is a crime to be branded upon Abraham on account of this concubine. For he used her for begetting offspring, not for satisfying lust, nor insulting his wife, but rather obeying her, who believed it to be a solace for her own barrenness if she made the handmaid's womb fruitful by her own will, since by nature she could not, and by that right by which the apostle says: Likewise also the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife—the wife might use it for bearing from another what she could not from herself.
There is here no desire of wantonness, no baseness of wickedness. From the wife, for the sake of offspring, the handmaid is handed over to the husband; by the husband, for the sake of offspring, she is received; by both, not the luxury of guilt, but the fruit of nature is sought. Finally, when the pregnant handmaid grew proud against her barren mistress, and Sarah, with womanly suspicion, imputed this rather to her husband, even there Abraham showed himself to have been not an enslaved lover but a free begetter, and to have kept in Hagar the chastity due to Sarah his wife, and to have fulfilled not his own pleasure but her will; to have received and not sought, to have approached and not clung, to have sown and not loved. For he said: Behold, your handmaid is in your hands, use her as it may please you.