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For He indeed, stripping those far destined to perish in the prison of night of the desire for light, filled them with strength; He, that they might be able to endure so sluggish a rest, poured in the placid love of slothful torpor. For now what could the almighty's right hand not do, who, when it seemed good, makes those suddenly plunged beneath the waves of the icy whirlpool to burn; and those carried beneath the very flames to be cold; and who, having now taught that men can perish in a short time as the waves submerged them, will show that they can be reborn by flames and by waves. End of the second book. The third book of the Commentaries on Genesis by Claudius Marius Victor, orator of Marseilles. Bearing such things in mind and discerning the ages to come, Noah resolved to enter upon no part of his office before he should repay God with sacred praise, and render thanks,
and recount, as one escaped from peril, how Noah had escaped. Soon sacred altars rise of snow-white stone: and the newly-renewed world acknowledged these first altars; for before, the whole world was a temple by the vaulted track of heaven. Then, with things at once prepared for the sacred rites, a victim came headlong from the sevenfold flocks: whether of the kind of birds, which the soft air sustains, or of those which the earth brings forth: every seventh animal, devoted, is laid upon the holy altars of sacrifice. Then soon a fire, sent down from the ethereal Olympus, tastes the fragrant offerings at the sacred altars; and the holocausts blaze for God with ambrosial vapor. And although that Lord and God of the whole world needs nothing of our gift, yet He delights to be venerated by the offices and gift of His own: who at last thus addresses Noah, with the waters now taken away:
'And although the punishment was small, by way of penalty, for so great a crime—to have condemned so many guilty of sins by avenging rains and a poured-out heaven, and to have purged with a wider-spread deep the guilty seat of the lands: yet, offended, I will not strike the mortal race with such a lash any further: although I see human minds about to rush again, through varied wickedness, through former crimes, and profane peoples: yet meanwhile my avenging right hand shall not cease to render punishments to the unjust, and rewards to the just. To you, therefore, whom a most just life approves to us, increase secure, and fill the fertile fields with offspring, and stretch new flocks over the long lands: the elements shall keep their turns, and on all days, with the seeds scattered, the due harvest shall be rendered. The work of the world shall run on, matched, with discordant hours:'
Winter shall contend with summer; and the year, balancing the seasons of spring and autumn, shall be unrolled in flight and renewed. And you (to whom I have entrusted dominion over the whole world) shall make all things tremble; the substance of the vast world shall be in awe of you. Behold, I give you power over absolutely all things; and among all the kinds of things that move of their own accord, I bestow their flesh and limbs upon your use. Yet I will that the blood of living things be forbidden you: if anyone eats of it, no less shall the sharp sentence of judgment punish him than if he had drained the flowing gore from human slaughter, which I shall ever require as avenger, and so demand, that not man alone shall pay me ample penalty as in reckoning, but even the beasts as well; let human blood be equally sacred to all.
But that hereafter no one may dread a flood, let him be safeguarded by such a covenant. When the light vapor turns itself into clouds, and heaps up dark waters in the hollow clouds, I will pour forth my rays, and at the highest vault the image of the sun shall fashion for me a beautiful curved bow, framing the joined points of the sky; which by its light may display varied colors and disperse the rains into the air. As a token of this future sign, posterity may safely take it beforehand, so that by such a covenant it may believe thereafter that no flood is to be feared. Attentive to such commands, Noah with his spouse, after rendering thanks and repaying praises to the Lord, eagerly turned the rejoicing fields—the father and his sons together—from the mud and sweet moisture, the soil being more enduring, soon working it with hoes, and wedded the lands with seed.
Then indeed the most dense green grass, spread wide over the fields where it had ripened into golden ears, on account of the sun's heat with its milk congealed into grain, yielded a manifold harvest with heaped-up increase. And the new vineyard, now with branch heavy-laden, luxuriated in rich fruit, and the twisted tree brought forth nectar—cups being born from the hard wood. By chance Noah, joyful, was celebrating honors to God, indulging in sacred feasts, and pouring out wine, the first from the new vine; of which, drunk at last too freely, thereupon heavy with deep sleep and with limbs loosened, since he lay with his garment not well arranged, and prostrate on the ground gave his sons a sight of his genitals to behold—the limbs that were to be seen: O Ham, most vile, the source of your own being moved you alone to laughter.
Believing it now not enough for you alone to have sinned, you strive to stain your brother with the sprinkling of your fault: but a far better judgment and a better spirit taught those whom your parent's exposed manhood had confronted to cover it with a robe. For Sem and likewise Iaphet, turning aside their hands, covered their father's shame—offspring most worthy of such a father; and therefore the father, loosened by sleep and wine, gave that they should by right be lords of the lesser brother. Soon, waking and aware of the good deeds of his sons and of Ham's demerit, he repaid him with such a recompense. "You, Ham," he said, "shall be accursed, and shall become forever the servant of your brothers in the ages to come. But Sem indeed shall be blessed; and the younger brother..."
...shall make the younger a partaker with himself in the common dwelling of good things, whose possession shall run far and wide. Having spoken these things, the elder, when he was nearly running through nine hundred and fifty years, rested in peace. Meanwhile, while the posterity of the Lord flourished in the holy law and was now increased by many descendants, and committed itself to the one Lord of heaven and earth: then all things obeyed the holy commands of men—the heavy earth, the liquid sea, the life-giving air. There was no need of art for them, for they learned all things from the heavenly Master. But after the world went forth into crimes (and far and wide buried itself in deepest vices), the doomed race lost this notable gift; and many were not ashamed to fashion gods, forgetful of God: so great is the forgetting of the supreme Father.
Then the grievous inventor of death, not suffering the matter capable of fraud to lie idle, subjected all things to his malignant will, whereby he might bring doom upon the world, and persuade them either that God now exists not, or that He scorns to care for these lower duties of this world. Therefore the subtle one persuaded that all the affairs of men and the outcomes of things—which it had been fitting to assign to the supreme Lord—should be assigned to the wandering stars; and to observe the entrails of birds and the movements of flying creatures, and with vast zeal he brought in the wickedness of the magic art. And he persuaded men to create many gods, and to adore mute idols, or rather himself lurking in the very idols—he far more worthy to be burned. And...
Into nefarious crimes Nimrod first descended, the very summit of impiety, born of the seed of Ham the slave, a giant in bulk and in dread; he, governing the kingdoms of Babylon and capturing the hearts of the Persians, an unjust hunter, led men away from the true sacred rites of the Lord to fire-worship. And not only did he, the head of crimes, the most hostile enemy of the world, with this cunning art mock the cares of overly desirous men, but he rushed into their very minds, and descended deeply into all their senses: soon also into their affections. For when the only offspring of the father had drawn with himself the hope of the race in bitter death, the unhappy Nimrod, prolonging tears night and day, and dragging with dull lament his complaints...
While he rages and through every place seeks the son who was snatched away, he consoles his mournful grief with a fashioned image: and the unhappy one believed that the form of his son, fashioned from Parian marble, lived with an enclosed sense, and that it heard his laments; thereupon he set up dedicated and raised altars and added divine honors, and bade it stand in the place of God. Then at once all the nations embraced this wickedness, and following the crime, held their dear parents in place of their gods. Afterward they also placed kings in like honor and called them gods; under whose name lying Greece, while it labors to insinuate false things among true, added obscure shadows to its empty reasonings, making excuses for tombs and the names attached to graves.
Until madness crept through all kinds of forms, and even to the least things and shameful members the empty name of God was given, while the world mocked. Ready to give fuel to such slippery paths of error, the inventor of death stirred up ambiguous oracles: making use, for his snares, either of fire, or of a hot spring, or of the earth breathing forth talkative winds from its caverns: and inventing for himself the false name of vain Apollo. With such snares that savage one ensnared the nations removed from the Lord, leading them whithersoever he wished: so great a thing it is to depart from the holy worship of the Lord. But truly, let us return whence we set out, to that line of the ancestors:
which, increased through a few years, grew up so greatly that soon, the East being left behind, thence they were driven to seek new dwellings elsewhere. They came into an open plain (which the ancients called Shinar): and when it was necessary to depart even from these lands, the young multitude being scattered into various parts, they began upon these complaints with most sorrowful words. "Alas, how uncertain is the state of life, in the course begun, that bears men along! And how it leads them, ignorant, through varied chances—or how prosperity deceives! How the sum of a wished-for vow tends toward its opposite! Now (if it is lawful to say it) it grieves us that the numerous progeny, hoped for by the prayers of our fathers, has grown into a throng; that now, a band heaped up for scattering through the world by exile, doomed to perish far from ancestral borders..."
"...we, then, shall we thus at last, worn out by long poverty, give our dishonored limbs to be buried here and there in unknown tombs? Shall we wretched ones not even be enclosed in ancestral graves? And shall no fame of us survive after death? Therefore come, O young men, while the throng supplies you with the strength that remains to you—a fame that may know no end—send forth a noble countenance to the eternal ages: let us found a city, beneath whose walls let us raise up a tower, until it touches the stars that paint the sky, and the vaults of lofty Olympus. So that future posterity may think that we, the world here being left behind, have migrated into heaven." Thus the moved youth despise the cliffs and whatever flows down from the cut mountain: and they bind together with fire bricks shaped from the bowels of the tamed earth, and for the matter of the future work...
...they prefer that it should owe its existence to their own labor. With bitumen laid between, thus on both sides it binds it, so that the surrounding walls might imitate solid cliffs. Soon the hastened tower rises, soon with its summit it leaps over the clouds, and enjoys the nearer serenity of heaven. Then the Father almighty with heavenly voice gathers the angelic senate: and astonished at the insanely proud deeds of the mad throng, He thus begins to the partakers of His kingdom: "Behold, you see whither now the rash earthly phalanx proceeds, and to what great undertakings, imprudent, it stretches itself. It believes that things built by mortal hand can reach the lofty heavens, and lead up to the ether what is ours. Yet no one clothed in an earthly body may ascend to heaven, except him who shall have descended from high heaven. But because they are one race, and likewise one..."
"...one manner of speech, in completing the tower they will persist: nor before will they desist than mutual consent shall have finished the begun work: so great is the insanity of the human mind. Therefore come, (that they may know what is forbidden, that the power they presume is denied) let us now descend, and let us, with the babbling voices of varied speech, confound their hearts swollen with proud agreement: so that what they have sinned by the crime of a concordant mind, a better discord of confused tongues may condemn." He spoke, and as they were intent on the work and lifting up the mass, with minds astonished, oblivion first enters the subjects, and the corruption of an unknown tongue steals upon them.
As the zeal for the work ceases, the masters rebuke their hesitating companions, but no one sends back a word that is understood; if anyone tries, he hisses emptily, or pants with the murmur of broken speech. Thus the frustrated hand abandons the vain labor undertaken with depraved mind: now no one follows his neighbor, no one his father: each one adds to himself the one he understands, and gathers him to himself, and takes care to join an ally. And while the kinship of this race, divided, perishes, language makes a nation: they are scattered in equal companies, and they seek lands drawn apart under a varied star. Not otherwise do the birds of the field, through the soft level plains—whom carefree day has persuaded to wander in mingled flocks and seek food—when, night being near, each seeks the leafy shelter: with the flock removed, the common crowd...
...each follows its own kind, and with swift flight mingles with what is like it, where color or voice has led: so then the one people severs itself into parts: and each kind becomes a race, and far away in remote lands they settle, and fill the world with nations. Yet this (though its own punishment harms the guilty) is not void of a sacred gift: for although this just vengeance was such, those whom no reverence of heaven touched—which is the proper seat of the parent of the world and of all things—so that even speaking unaccustomed words they did not recognize themselves: yet this is much, that by this covenant of taken-away song, lest the persuasion of a few had brought guilt upon any, it might again, by the assent of all, touch all and make a common crime: lest battles, and harsh death to be summoned for the peoples by raging fury, should be civil war for them...
...thus it profited them, and the first division of language was turned to good. Nor was the custom of speaking Hebrew wholly removed: for then the sound of the Hebrew tongue remained, the ancient speech, among those who were not the unjust part, free from the fault—of the sons whom Sem begot, whom the guardianship of the righteous held, and the reverence of the supreme Lord. But after madness, stirred up through the whole world (to say nothing of the intolerable crime of the magical monster), drove the mortal race into trunks and stones and even forms hollowed by art from hard metal, and shapes empty of light, and broke minds intent on heavenly things and bound them to the inert earth, and rolled over them at the same time...
...the contagion of foul defilement rolled over them all at once. Not otherwise than the clouds stirred up from the burning lands of the Ethiopians, while they run with the diseases' corrupted path through the sky—whoever groaned as one was struck dead by the thunderbolt, himself at once fell; whoever beheld the falling one, fell; and the dire plague everywhere laid low heaped-up corpses, and left the fields as ghosts. So then, embracing them with the headlong mass of frenzy, lest he should leave anything uninfected in the whole world, he seized and sought again those whom error had already let go. Until from the seed of the Chaldean race, of Terah, a righteous man, fearing God, with the stock of his own, seeking another city and new customs and a dwelling, remained at last as a new settler in Assyrian Carrhae. He, when he had lived forty-one lustres (years), redeemed this unhappy life with a happy death.
To him, equaling his father in merits and holy virtues—or far surpassing him—succeeded his son Abram. A man worthy of heaven, for from the first light of life, worshiping the true God with his mind, he had turned away from gentile rites; and when, after the death of his parent, it was clear without deceit that he could now follow the commands of God, the Lord deigned to approach His servant for these merits. "Since in the whole world we have found you alone whom a sincere faith aids, and reverence of us: leave far behind the dwellings of your fathers, and the harmful land, and the polluted house: all your kindred is profane and to be fled by you: into the fields of a better land, with me as guide, you shall come: lest you be part of an unjust nation, you who can be the head of a holy one: then I will dedicate sacred things which shall remain blessed to you, and a name..."
"...magnificent through all peoples I will render, and all good things I will restore. And he shall be blessed to you who shall bless you: but he who heaps curses and reproaches upon you, that one shall straightway be accursed. A blessing shall be scattered through you upon all tribes, and into the age to come." He spoke, and put it into his mind that he should obey the commands, and believe the pious promises, with no delay suddenly: he yields at once to the Lord's word. But straightway Abram, with flocks of varied kind, and his father's servants, with his faithful spouse, with the dear pledge of his beloved brother (whose name was Lot), having departed, took an unknown journey by a straight path: the softest fields offer joyful ways, and the air, smiling and favoring with gentle south winds, is disturbed by no commotions.
Until, arriving in the lands of Canaan and the most fertile realms of Shechem, he learned that these were to fall to his offspring and to himself as the lot of a future dominion. Wherefore, a suppliant to God, he built devoted altars, and as a new worshiper increases the honors he recalls of old. Thence he sought Bethel, a seat chosen as hallowed by the hospitality of blessed God: and it surpassed all lands in proud merits, to be numbered someday in the second place after heaven: for that seat was seen worthier of God, which, by the law of salvation, the world marveling so greatly, should receive the pledge sent forth, prepared for the world, and send man back to the stars. Here too father Abram built solemn altars to his ancestors, and set dwellings to be left behind in new fields. For, compelled again by famine to change his seat, he moves his camp, with his whole household and servants and flocks.
He drives them with him, and, repaying just commerce in his affairs, enters into Egypt: and he prefers to call Sarai his sister rather than his wife, lest a furious lust should goad the barbarous hearts to the slaughter of the holy guest. Whence soon Pharaoh too, struck by the appearance of her radiant form, burns within, and prepares marriage-chambers and a fixed covenant by law: he being about to draw out this marriage for long years, had not the other—the Author of marriage—disposed otherwise: to whom, when these things pleased him less, behold, a fear mingled with sunken dread assails the king, and shakes his wicked heart with sudden tumult: black horror terrifies his spirit and entwines his limbs.
So that the king of the sacrilegious nation might perceive that God had condemned such sorrowful intentions—God who indeed poured such counsel upon his servants, that the barbarous enemy should acknowledge Abram, the husband of Sarai, to be a man secure, since he had learned by experience that he sought him not with impunity by the profane sword, nor was it permitted to widow him. Of his own accord therefore he restores her to her husband, violated by no spot of stain, and sends her away, heaped with vast bounty, into Shechem, and to his own Bethel: whither having then been received, with flocks and household, the father, with his spouse safe, works the fields, and far and wide they crop the rich pastures with mingled flocks: until frequent quarrels among the herdsmen of the uncle and the nephew (born of him).
While the lands, too narrow, did not suffice for the herds of the two to be taken: therefore Abram, most full of justice and most observant of equity, in order to settle the strifes and remove greedy quarrels, as the elder by birth, divides the granted fields: the younger chose where, with sweet waters poured forth on all sides, the Jordan weds the fields with its streams, and glides between shading banks, and makes pleasant the smooth glades. Therefore, that he might flee the quarrels of the herdsmen, turning aside from Abram, Lot migrates into the fields joined to Sodom. When God firms the heart of sorrowful Abram with this hope: "Be not moved," He says, "because, his brother's offspring being left behind, you now seem to yourself alone: you alone shall be to me an innumerable multitude, and likewise the author of a friendly people. Look up, intent, to the parts of the fourfold world: look now toward the south, and toward the seven oxen (the north), where the sun rises, where it sinks at deep evening, these to you..."
"...and to your offspring, and to your peoples, I will grant, to be inhabited by them through eternal years. Of which lands may you also enjoy far and wide: arise, and survey first as a guest by your step whatever lies open." Thus He spoke. He gladly obeys and, leaving his seat, migrates and comes to Hebron, and beneath the black holm-oak, at the oak-grove of Mamre, the father pitches his tents: here too he builds and tends solemn altars to the Lord. Meanwhile, with great tumult disturbing all around, an enemy is at hand, greedy, whom the land, filled with varied dowry, solicits; the hoof, striking the plains, resounds, and with reins let loose the plunderer wanders against Sodom, the richest pasture of the nation: but Lot bursts forth with the king through the open gates, and a neighboring band of kings bearing allied arms, with them horsemen and footmen they drag along...
The battle line is extended; the ranks clash equally, and they lay low and fall. But the youth of Sodom, softened by base luxury, when the renewed shout flared up again into wrath, turn their backs in fear: part seek the city walls in swift course, part the mountains and woods; part, hedged in by the troops, stretch out their cowardly palms to grievous chains. But when his uncle Abram heard that Lot was captured—not with weeping, for what would vain weeping avail?—but with valor he prepares to succor his captured brother. Therefore he chooses three hundred and twice-nine servants drawn from his whole flock, whom he, leading, pursues gradually, where the burden of plunder betrayed that the slow enemy was straining to drag along his heavy prey.
Their bodies, in the silent night (while now languid from the hard struggle, drink soaks them, and sweet sleep binds their weary limbs), he attacks—they expecting no such thing to come upon them: as when the mad fury of a fasting lion has penetrated the enclosures in the leaping of cattle, and with tooth and foot kills them, and wrath overcomes its eager hunger to devour, until at last it has emptied the folds of sheep as the limit of bitter pain. Not otherwise does Abram slaughter the peoples and kings buried in sleep and wine and snoring; yet so that no tumult confounds the camp. No one perceives a step, except him whose mind and voice fail. No one hears the sound of slaughter, except him whom he rouses to death. All things are wet with blood: the earth, loosened by the dry clear sky, congeals with gore...
...and as the gore delays the step, the slippery footsteps stumble on the standing-pooled field. Nor do all souls fall by open swords; some are kept as plunder: so great is the moderation of the just victor: a base flight scattered the rest, and pressing dread followed them as far as the fields of Damascus. But the victor, moved by no praise of so great a triumph, among the horses and herds of cattle and the recovered people, whether captured, and the treasures (which by their greedy weight move both vanquished and victors), desired absolutely none of these things—magnanimous; but indeed, amid such great joys, mild and reckoning in his heart the varied chances of men, he reserves absolutely all the plunder and the rewards of war—the peoples plundered everywhere—for the king.
Teaching that he had not fought for himself, he yet offers a tithe to the foes—the tithe of the plunder which had been shaken off, which is the true sacrifice—to Melchizedek, both wine and bread: he returning from the slaughter. Melchizedek, that king of Salem, who by such a gift sent forth beforehand the mystical libations of the supreme Christ: from whose hands the Church, taking the body, the life-giving bread, is made to drink of the heavenly blood. But truly, as Abram returns weary from the hostile carnage, the Almighty consoles him with such words: "Since no enticements have subdued you, desirous of plunder, the reward of faith and the wages of labors is full to you with me: and I will protect you and all that is yours, to be kept for your heir, whom—begotten late from your seed—you, a far more devout author, will love yet more."
"There is nothing for you to fear, that your heir should be that Damascus: you yourself shall behold one born of your seed: whose infancy shall kindle a father's affections. Look up to the vaulted heaven—with how dense a light does it gleam in the painted night! With how great stars are the heaped stars pressed, which refuse the number set against them! Hold this as a pattern of your seed, and the form of your future manifold stock." Having thus spoken, He ceases: but he believed, and the assent of bare faith alone was reckoned to him as the full crown of justice and merit. And by this very thing we are taught with so great a reward of Abram, how great a merit it is to believe the divine Word: and on the contrary, how great a demerit not to believe: for as he believed, again by this divine voice he deserves to be consoled, while the Almighty begins with these words:
"I am that God and Lord, who brought you and yours from the Chaldean nation, and at last, receiving you from your father's vices, placed you in a better land: that a people, begotten of you—my people—might inhabit the blessed fields, and propagate its line far and wide, the nations being expelled which once made themselves sacrilegious by the foul error of their parents, by profane rites: because, too hesitant, you delay to believe, take for me a threefold heifer, now with a three-year-old brow, with which let an equal she-goat, chosen from the gentle flock, and a ram of equal age, be sacrificed for my honor: also a chaste turtledove joined with a human dove. But let the bird-sacrifice not feel the iron: only take care to cut asunder the beasts between."
"Mark off these, thus divided, with clean sands, so that on each side the rival members may come together with the members." He spoke; but he, accustomed gladly to keep the admonitions of God, hastens swiftly to fulfill the commands: but when he had spread on the earth the row arranged in the order he had been bidden, suddenly a black band of importunate birds, pursuing the prey, rushes upon it: which, lest they should violate the sacred things with profane contact, Abram, anxious on every side, guards against and looks all around. But that so great a burden of the received duty might not overcome him, astonished by so great a work, even at sunset: behold, black terror, dread trembling, and a deep sleep tread, bearing the tidings as commands, and forming the ages to come. I believe he seemed to himself to behold the enclosure—the Nile—filled with the people of the Hebrew nation, and to recognize his late descendants and throngs immense beyond number...
...and beyond number to recognize the throngs: thence the fierce movements, and the camps of his people led forth, the sea to be crossed, but the armies sunk in the deep gulf, the bands of the shipwreck followed by no fleet: and the Hebrews snatched from the sea, and then all the realms of blessed Palestine lying open to the returning people. To him, astonished by such visions, the kindly Interpreter was not lacking: "Foreknow your descendants, and the offspring of yours," He says, "in foreign fields through four ages, that they shall feel the cruel rule of that Nile-dwelling tyrant: but when they shall have fulfilled so many foreign years, I will snatch them from servitude, and avenge the unjust nation. And I will restore to the lands which the Nile and Euphrates encircle with gentle gulf: but when the sins of the guilty Amorite nation and of the people now holding these realms shall have filled up the sum of crimes, and they shall be worthy..."
"...be expelled from their fathers' seats: yet you, however, before that, happily departing along the long-lived path of life, lamented by your sons, with peace and our gift, shall migrate to the holy fathers." Thus He spoke; and when now night was drawing dense shadows over the lands from the deep, He gave a sign from the mountain; at once a smoking oven appears there, and a fiery lamp is seen: then a flame, borne with headlong course over the sacred feasts and the prepared midst, sprinkled them, lightly tasting. Meanwhile Abram, certain of the kingdom and of his future offspring, desires to approach the father's duty: but his chaste wife refuses the office, because her barren, worn-out old age had now made her womb empty: yet, believing the sweet pledge and hope of her husband to be his, poured from a concubine, by whatever means...
...poured forth from a concubine, believing it to be her own, she substitutes into his bed a maidservant (whose younger age and name was Hagar, a Nile land her origin), and assailing her husband with prayers, urged him to entrust the seed to a servile womb. But as soon as the soul, conceived, felt Hagar's belly's burden to live, swollen with proud pride she despised her mistress: and the mistress to whom she owed a mother's love and the cause of her own swelling, she scorned, furious. Rightly therefore did the most just man Abram condemn her to the scourges of his spouse: by whose deeds the more pricked with shame, into the deserts far off and the secret lairs of beasts she hides, indignant, where she ceases not to be cast out, nor to scorn: but again, deprived of obedience because she owed it, she despises her in whatever way she can, and prefers to endure the perils of the deserted road...