for ἐναντίον (enantion) indeed signifies both 'against' and 'before.' For this word is in the Psalm: 'And let us weep before the Lord who made us'; and this word is also in the book of Job, where it is written: 'Thou hast broken forth in fury against the Lord.' Thus, then, that giant is to be understood as a hunter 'against the Lord.' But what is signified here by this name, which is 'hunter,' except a deceiver, oppressor, and destroyer of earth-born creatures? He was therefore raising up with his peoples a tower against God, by which impious pride was signified. And rightly is an evil disposition punished, even when the intended effect does not follow. But what was the very kind of penalty?
Since the dominion of one who commands lies in the tongue, there pride was condemned, so that the one giving orders should not be understood by the man who refused to understand, in order that he might obey God who commands. Thus that conspiracy was dissolved, when each one withdrew from him whom he did not understand, and joined himself to none but the one with whom he could speak; and through languages the nations were divided and dispersed throughout the lands, as it pleased God, who did this in ways hidden and incomprehensible to us. CHAPTER 5. Of the Lord's descent to confound the language of those building the tower. For what is written:
'And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built'—that is, not the sons of God, but that society living according to man, which we call the earthly city. God is not moved from place to place, who is always wholly everywhere; but He is said to 'come down' when He does something on earth which, being wrought marvellously beyond the usual course of nature, in a certain manner manifests His presence. Nor does He learn anything in time by seeing, who can never be ignorant of anything; but He is said to 'see and know' in time that which He causes to be seen and known. That city, then, was not seen in the way in which God caused it to be seen, when He showed how much it displeased Him.
Although it can be understood that God came down to that city because His angels came down, in whom He dwells; so that what is added: 'And the Lord God said: Behold, one race and one lip of all,' and the rest, and then what is further added: 'Come, and let us go down and there confound their language,' may be a recapitulation, showing how that was done which had been said: 'The Lord came down.' For if He had already come down, what is meant by: 'Come, and let us go down and confound' (which is understood to have been said to the angels), unless that He was coming down through the angels, He who was in the descending angels? And it is well that He does not say: 'Come, and going down, confound ye,' but: 'Let us confound there their language,' showing that He thus works through His ministers.
so that they themselves are also fellow-workers of God, as the Apostle says: 'For we are God's fellow-workers.' CHAPTER 6. Of what nature the manner of speech is to be understood to be, by which God speaks to the angels. That also might be understood of the angels which was said when man was made: 'Let us make man'—for He did not say 'Let me make'; but because there follows 'after our image,' and it is not lawful to believe that man was made after the image of angels, or that the image of the angels and of God is the same, the plurality of the Trinity is rightly understood there. Yet because this Trinity is one God, even when He had said 'Let us make,' it says 'And God made man after the image of God'; He did not say 'they made,' or 'after the image of the gods.'
Here too the same Trinity could be understood, as though the Father had said to the Son and the Holy Spirit: 'Come, and let us go down and there confound their language,' if there were anything to prevent the angels from being understood—angels to whom it rather befits to come to God by holy movements, that is, by pious thoughts, by which the immutable Truth is consulted by them, as the eternal law in that supernal court of theirs. For they are not Truth to themselves, but, as partakers of the creating Truth, they are moved toward it, as toward the fountain of life, that what they have not of themselves they may receive from it.
And stable is that movement of theirs by which they come, who do not withdraw. Nor does God speak to the angels in the way that we speak to one another, or to God, or to the angels, or the angels themselves to us, or God to us through them; but in His own ineffable manner; while to us this is indicated in our manner. For God's loftier speech, prior to His own act, is the immutable reason of His very act, which has no clamouring and passing sound, but a power eternally abiding and operating in time. By this He speaks to the holy angels, but to us, set far away, otherwise. Yet when we too grasp something of such speech with our inner ears, we draw near to the angels. I am not, therefore, obliged in this work continually to render an account of the speeches of God.
For either the immutable Truth speaks ineffably through itself to the minds of the rational creature, or it speaks through the mutable creature, whether by spiritual images to our spirit or by corporeal voices to the sense of the body. Now that which is said: 'And now nothing will be wanting to them of all that they have attempted to do,' was not said by way of affirmation, but as if by way of questioning, as is wont to be said by those who threaten, as a certain poet says: 'Will they not take up arms and follow out of the whole city?' Thus, then, it is to be taken, as though He had said: 'Will not all things be wanting to them, of all that they have attempted to do?' But if it is said thus, it does not express one who is threatening.
But for the sake of the somewhat slow we added the particle—that is, 'ne'—so as to say 'nonne' (will not?), since we cannot write the tone of one pronouncing. From those three men, therefore, the sons of Noah, seventy-three, or rather, as reason will declare, seventy-two nations and as many languages began to exist throughout the lands, which by increasing filled even the islands. But the number of nations grew much more than that of languages. For even in Africa we know very many barbarous nations in one language; and who would doubt that men, when the human race had multiplied, could cross over by ship to inhabit the islands? CHAPTER 7.
Whether even the islands most remote from the lands received every kind of beasts from that number which was preserved in the ark from the inundation of the flood. But the question concerns every kind of beast which is not under the care of men, nor, like frogs, is born from the earth, but is propagated only by the union of male and female, such as wolves and the like—how, after the flood, by which all things that were not in the ark were destroyed, they could exist even in the islands, if they were not restored except from those whose kinds the ark preserved in both sexes. They may indeed be believed to have crossed over to the islands by swimming, but to the nearest ones. Yet there are some so far removed from the continental lands that no beast seems able to have swum to them.
But if men captured them and carried them along with themselves, and in that way established their kinds where they dwelt, out of zeal for hunting, it is not incredible that this could have been done; although it is not to be denied that by the command or permission of God they could also have been transported even by the work of angels. But if they sprang from the earth according to their first origin, when God said, 'Let the earth bring forth the living soul,' it appears much more clearly that all the kinds were in the ark, not so much for the sake of restoring the animals as for the sake of figuring the various nations on account of the sacrament of the Church—if on the islands, to which they could not cross, the earth produced many animals. CHAPTER 8. Whether from the offspring of Adam or of the sons of Noah certain monstrous races of men have proceeded.
It is also asked whether it is to be believed that from the sons of Noah, or rather from that one man from whom they too sprang, were propagated certain monstrous races of men, such as the history of the nations relates—as some are said to have one eye in the middle of the forehead; some to have the soles of their feet turned backward behind their legs; some to have the nature of both sexes, the right breast that of a man, the left that of a woman, and by turns coupling with one another both to beget and to bear; others to have no mouths, and to live only by breathing through their nostrils; others to be a cubit in height, whom the Greeks call Pygmies from the cubit; in another place women to conceive at five years of age and not to live beyond the eighth year.
Likewise they report there to be a nation where they have single legs on their feet and do not bend the knee, and are of marvellous swiftness; these they call Sciopodes (Shadow-feet), because in the heat they lie on the ground on their backs and shield themselves with the shadow of their feet; certain ones having no neck and eyes in their shoulders; and other races of men or quasi-men, which were painted in mosaic on the maritime square of Carthage, taken from books as it were of a more curious history. What shall I say of the Cynocephali (Dog-heads), whose dog-like heads and very barking proclaim them beasts rather than men? But it is not necessary to believe in all the races of men which are said to exist.
But whoever is anywhere born a man—that is, a rational mortal animal—however unusual to our senses he may bear a bodily form or colour or motion or sound, or in whatever power, in whatever part, in whatever quality of nature: no faithful person will doubt that he draws his origin from that one first-formed man. Nevertheless it is apparent what nature has obtained in the majority, and what is marvellous by its very rarity. But the same account that is given of monstrous births among us can be given of certain monstrous nations. For God is the Creator of all things, who Himself knows where and when it is or was fitting that anything be created, knowing the beauty of the universe by the likeness or diversity of which parts He weaves it together.
But he who cannot survey the whole is, as it were, offended by the deformity of a part, because he does not know to what it is suited or to what it is to be referred. We know that men are born with more than five fingers on their hands and feet; and this is a slighter divergence than any other; yet far be it that anyone should be so foolish as to think that the Creator erred in the number of human fingers, although he does not know why He did this. So even if a greater diversity arises, He knows what He has done, whose works no one justly blames. At Hippo Diarrhytus there is a man with feet, as it were, crescent-shaped, and on them only two toes each, and his hands likewise. If any nation were such, it would be added to that curious and marvellous history.
Shall we therefore on this account deny that this man was propagated from that one who was first created? Androgyni, whom they also call Hermaphrodites, although they are quite rare, yet it is hard for them to be lacking in any age, in whom both sexes so appear that it is uncertain from which they ought rather to take their name; yet the custom of speech has prevailed for them to be named from the better, that is, from the masculine. For no one ever called them 'Androgynaecae' or 'Hermaphroditae.' Some years ago, certainly within our memory, in the East a double man was born in his upper members, single in the lower. For there were two heads, two chests, four hands, but one belly and two feet, as in a single man;
and he lived so long that the report drew many to see him. But who could recount all the human births far unlike those from whom it is most certain they were born? Just as, therefore, these cannot be denied to draw their origin from that one man, so whatever nations, in diversities of bodies, are reported to have, as it were, deviated from the usual course of nature which the majority and almost all maintain—if they are included in that definition that they are rational and mortal animals—it must be confessed that they draw their stock from that same one first father of all; provided, however, that the things which are reported of the variety of those nations and of so great a diversity among themselves and from us are true.
For if we did not know that apes and cercopitheci (long-tailed monkeys) and sphinxes are not men but beasts, those historians, boasting of their curiosity, might with unpunished vanity lie to us of them as of certain races of men. But if they are men, of whom those marvels are written: what if God on this account willed even to create some nations thus, lest in those monsters which among us must be born of men we should think that His wisdom, by which He fashions human nature, had erred, as it were the art of some less perfect craftsman? It ought not, therefore, to seem absurd to us that, just as in each several nation there are certain monstrous men, so in the whole human race there are certain monstrous nations.
Wherefore, to conclude this question step by step and cautiously: either those things which are written of such kinds among certain nations are altogether nothing; or if they exist, they are not men; or if they are men, they are of Adam. CHAPTER 9. Whether it is to be believed that the lower part of the earth, which is opposite to our habitation, has Antipodes. But as for what they fabulously assert, that there are Antipodes—that is, men on the opposite part of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, who tread with their feet opposite to our feet—this is to be believed on no ground.
Nor do they affirm that they have learned this by any historical knowledge, but they conjecture, as it were by reasoning, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the heavens, and that the world has the same place as both its lowest and its middle; and from this they suppose that the other part of the earth, which is below, cannot lack the habitation of men. Nor do they consider that, even if the world is believed to be of a globed and round figure, or is shown to be so by some reasoning, it does not therefore follow that on that part also the earth is bare of the mass of waters; and then, even if it be bare, it is not at once necessary that it should have men.
Since in no way does this Scripture lie, which gains credit for what it relates of the past by the fact that its predictions are fulfilled; and it is too absurd to say that some men could, by traversing the immensity of the Ocean, sail from this part into that part and arrive, so that there too the human race might be established from that one first man.
Wherefore, among those peoples of men who are gathered to have been divided then into seventy-two nations and as many languages, let us seek, if we can find it, that City of God sojourning on earth, which was carried on down to the flood and the ark, and is shown to have persevered in the sons of Noah through their blessings, chiefly in the greatest, who was called Shem, since indeed Japheth was so blessed that he should dwell in the houses of Shem, his brother. CHAPTER 10. Of the generation of Shem, in whose progeny, tending toward Abraham, the order of the City of God is directed. The series of generations, therefore, is to be held from Shem himself, that it may show the City of God after the flood;
just as the series of generations from him who was called Seth showed it before the flood. For this reason, therefore, the divine Scripture, when it had pointed out the earthly city in Babylon—that is, in confusion—returns by recapitulation to the patriarch Shem, and begins thence the generations down to Abraham, mentioning also the number of years at which each one belonging to this series begot the son, and how long he lived. Here certainly is to be recognized what I had promised before, that it may appear why it was said of the sons of Heber: 'The name of one was Peleg, because in his days the earth was divided.' For what else is to be understood by the earth being divided but the diversity of languages?
Therefore, the other sons of Shem not pertaining to this matter being omitted, those are connected in the order of generations through whom one may come to Abraham; just as before the flood those were connected through whom one might come to Noah, by the generations which were propagated from that son of Adam who was called Seth. Thus, then, this series of generations begins: 'And these are the generations of Shem. Shem was a son of a hundred years when he begot Arphaxad, in the second year after the flood. And Shem lived, after he begot Arphaxad, five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.'
Thus it follows out the rest, saying at what year of his life each begot the son pertaining to this order of generations which extends to Abraham, and how many years he lived afterward, intimating that he begot sons and daughters; so that we may understand whence the peoples could grow, lest, occupied with the few men who are mentioned, we should childishly hesitate as to whence such great expanses of lands and of kingdoms could have been filled from the race of Shem—chiefly on account of the kingdom of the Assyrians, whence that Ninus, the subduer of the Eastern peoples everywhere, reigned with immense prosperity, and propagated to his posterity a most widespread and most firmly founded kingdom, which would be carried on for a long time.
But we, lest we delay longer than is needful, set down to be recorded in this order only this—not how many years each one lived in this series of generations, but in what year of his life he begot the son—so that we may both gather the number of years from the past flood down to Abraham, and, on account of those matters in which necessity compels us to linger, may briefly and cursorily touch upon other things. In the second year, therefore, after the flood, Shem begot Arphaxad; and Arphaxad, when he was a hundred and thirty-five years old, begot Cainan; who, when he was a hundred and thirty, begot Shelah; and Shelah himself was likewise of the same number of years when he begot Heber;
Heber was a hundred and thirty-four years old when he begot Peleg, in whose days the earth was divided; and Peleg himself lived a hundred and thirty, and begot Reu; and Reu a hundred and thirty-two, and begot Serug; and Serug a hundred and thirty, and begot Nahor; and Nahor seventy-nine, and begot Terah; and Terah seventy, and begot Abram, whom afterward God named Abraham, his name being changed. There are, then, from the flood down to Abraham, a thousand and seventy-two years according to the Vulgate edition—that is, of the Seventy translators. But in the Hebrew codices they report that far fewer years are found, of which they render either no account or a most difficult one.
When, therefore, we seek the City of God among those seventy-two nations, we cannot affirm that at that time when they had one lip—that is, one speech—the human race was already alienated from the worship of the true God, so that true piety remained only in these generations which descend from the seed of Shem through Arphaxad and tend toward Abraham; but from that pride of building the tower up to heaven, by which impious arrogance is signified, the city—that is, the society—of the impious appeared. Whether, then, it did not exist before, or lay hidden, or rather both continued—the pious in the two sons of Noah who were blessed, and in their posterity;
but the impious in him who was cursed, and in his progeny, where also that giant arose, a hunter against the Lord—this is not an easy distinction. For perhaps, what is indeed more credible, both in the sons of those two there were already even then, before Babylonia had begun to be established, despisers of God, and in the sons of Ham worshippers of God; yet it is to be believed that neither kind of men was ever lacking in the lands. Indeed, even when it was said: 'All have turned aside, together they have become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, there is not even one,' in either psalm where these words are, this also is read: 'Shall not all who work iniquity know, who devour my people as the eating of bread?' There was, therefore, even then a people of God.
Whence that which is said: 'There is none that doeth good, there is not even one,' was said of the sons of men, not of the sons of God. For it was premised: 'God looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there were any understanding or seeking God'; and then those words are subjoined which show that all the sons of men—that is, those belonging to the city which lives according to man, not according to God—are reprobate. CHAPTER 11. That the language which was afterward called Hebrew from the name of Heber was first in use among men, and in whose family it remained when the diversity of languages came about.
Wherefore, just as, when there was one language of all, the sons of pestilence were not on that account lacking (for before the flood also there was one language, and yet all except the one household of righteous Noah deserved to be destroyed by the flood): so, when on account of more arrogant impiety the nations were punished and divided by the diversity of languages, and the city of the impious received the name of confusion—that is, was called Babylon—the house of Heber was not lacking, in which that which was before the language of all might remain. Whence, as I mentioned above, when the sons of Shem began to be enumerated, who severally begot several nations, Heber was first commended, although he is the great-great-grandson of Shem himself—that is, he is found to have sprung as the fifth from him.
Because, then, in his family this language remained, when the other nations were divided by other languages, this language, which is not without reason believed to have been formerly common to the human race, was for that reason thereafter called Hebrew. For then it was necessary that it be distinguished from the other languages by a proper name, just as the others too were called by their proper names. But when there was one, it was called nothing else than the human language or human speech, by which alone the whole human race spoke. Someone may say: If in the days of Peleg the son of Heber the earth was divided by languages—that is, the men who were then on the earth—it ought rather to have been called by his name, that language which was before common to all.
But we are to understand that Heber himself gave such a name to his son for this reason, that he should be called Phalech, which is interpreted 'division,' because he was born to him at the time when the earth was divided through the languages, that is, at that very time, so that this is what was said: 'In his days was the earth divided.' For unless Heber were still living when the multitude of tongues came to pass, the language could not have taken its name from his name, the language which was able to remain with him. And therefore that first common language is to be believed to have been this very one, since that multiplication and change of tongues came from a punishment; and surely the people of God ought to have been exempt from this punishment.
Nor was this language, which Abraham retained, retained in vain; nor could he transmit it to all his sons, but only to those who, propagated through Jacob and growing together more notably and more eminently into the people of God, were able to possess the covenants of God and the lineage of Christ. Nor did Heber himself pour back the same language into his whole progeny, but only into that branch whose generations are carried down to Abraham. Wherefore, even though it is not plainly stated that there was some pious race of men when Babylon was being founded by the impious, this obscurity did not avail to defraud the inquirer, but rather to exercise his attention.
For when we read that there was first one language of all, and Heber is commended before all the sons of Shem—although he arose fifth from him—and the language is called Hebrew, which the authority of the patriarchs and prophets preserved not only in their discourses but also in the sacred Scriptures:
then surely, when it is asked, in the division of tongues, where that language could have remained which was formerly the common one (for, wherever it without any doubt remained, there was not that punishment which was wrought by the change of tongues), what else presents itself but that it remained in the nation of him from whose name it received its name? And that this was no small token of the righteousness of this nation: that, while other nations were chastised by the change of tongues, such a penalty did not reach this one. But there is still this which gives pause: how could Heber and his son Phalech each constitute separate nations, if one language remained to them both?
And certainly the Hebrew nation is one, propagated from Heber down to Abraham, and thereafter through him, until the great people of Israel came into being. How then did all the sons who are mentioned, of the three sons of Noah, make separate nations, if Heber and Phalech did not make separate ones? Doubtless it is more probable that the giant Nimrod himself also made his own nation, but on account of the excellence of his dominion and of his stature he was named separately and more prominently, so that the number of seventy-two nations and tongues might remain. Phalech, however, was mentioned, not because he made a nation (for his nation is the very same Hebrew nation and the same language), but on account of the notable time, in that in his days the earth was divided.
Nor ought it to disturb us how the giant Nimrod could coincide with that age in which Babylon was founded and the confusion of tongues took place, and from this the division of nations. For not because Heber is sixth from Noah, while that one is fourth, were they therefore unable, by living, to meet at the same time. For this came about when men lived longer where the generations are fewer, and less where they are more; or when they were born later where the generations are fewer, and earlier where they are more. Indeed it is to be understood that, when the earth was divided, not only were the other sons of the sons of Noah—who are mentioned as fathers of nations—already born, but they were also of such an age as to have numerous families worthy of the names of nations.
Hence it is by no means to be thought that they were begotten in the order in which they are read as mentioned. Otherwise, how could the twelve sons of Joktan—who was another son of Heber, the brother of Phalech—already make nations, if Joktan was born after his brother Phalech, just as he is mentioned after him; seeing that at the time when Phalech was born, the earth was divided? Accordingly it is to be understood that the former was indeed named first, but was born long after his brother Joktan; whose twelve sons by Joktan already had families so large that they could be divided into their own languages.