After he heard from the voice of God that these lands were granted to himself and to his future offspring, he raised up devoted altars and, a new worshiper recalling the ancient honors, increased them. Thence he sought Bethlehem, the place chosen and consecrated to the lodgings of the blessed man, which surpassed all lands by lofty merits, since one day—now to be commemorated in second place, after the heavenly abode, more worthy than this—it was seen to receive the Pledge of God, sent forth to the world by the law of salvation, prepared while the world marveled so greatly, and to send Man back to the stars. Here too father Abram raises solemn altars and sets in new fields the dwellings he must leave. For, again compelled by famine to change his seat, he moves his camp and drives his whole household and servants and flocks with him, and, paying just exchange for his goods, enters into Egypt.
But his wife is protected under the name of a beautiful sister, lest furious lust should goad the barbarian hearts to murder of the holy guest. Then soon Pharaoh, drawn by the image of her radiant beauty, burns with desire and prepares the marriage-chamber and pacts by fixed law; but fear, plunged in utter dread, rushes upon him and suddenly shakes his wicked heart with tumult, and black horror terrifies their minds and binds their limbs, so that the king of the sacrilegious nation might perceive that God had condemned such sorrowful desires—God who indeed poured such counsel into His servants, that the barbarian enemy might then more safely know Abram to be the husband of Sarah, when he had learned by experience how not without punishment he might assail with profane sword him whom he was not permitted even to widow.
Therefore of his own accord he restores her, violated by no stain, to her husband, reports the fault, and sends her back safe under a numerous guard, heaped with much produce, into Shechem and her own Bethlehem: and rejoicing they work the fields they have recovered and graze the rich pastures far and wide with mingled flocks. But there were frequent quarrels among the herdsmen; for the land, divided by no boundary, lay open to each one. Therefore Abram, the elder, most full of what was to come yet most observant of fair right, that he might settle the disputes and remove the greedy strifes, divides the lands granted to them. The younger chose the part where the country, with sweet waters poured all around, weds the fields, and the Jordan glides between shading banks and adorns the smooth glades.
By these he is captivated, and shunning his uncle's household and just severity, Lot migrates into the fields joined to Sodom, when God, strengthening Abram's sad heart with this hope, said: «Be not vexed that, left behind by your brother's offspring, you have borne the holy father's losses. You alone shall be to Me an innumerable multitude, you who shall hold the kingdoms of a people: the lands which at first sunrise you behold, which, turned toward the north, you look upon, and which, lying beneath the warm south, you regard, and which, surrounded by the shore of the spreading sea, are enclosed. These I will grant to you and to your offspring and to the peoples of your descendants for an everlasting, ever-living age. But that you may now enjoy the lands far and wide, arise, and first survey on foot, as a guest-traveler, the regions that lie open.» Thus He spoke:
He gladly obeys, and leaving his dwelling, migrates and comes to Hebron, and beneath the foliage of the dark holm-oak of Mamre he pitches his orderly tents, and the shrewd leader, eager to add help to his new camp, here too builds solemn altars to the Lord, that he may worship. Meanwhile, with a great tumult disturbing all around, the greedy enemy is at hand, whom the land, filled with varied wealth, allures: the hoof, striking the plains, rebounds, and the plunderer wanders with loosened reins. Lot together with his king bursts forth through the open gates, and the neighboring band of kings bearing allied arms: with them they draw horsemen and footmen, the column is stretched out, the battle-lines clash, and alike they lay low and fall. For these there is help enough in that, as they prepared to wage war, they foresaw in their minds that they would fall by sudden slaughter:
these the sole image of the better cause sustained. But the youth of Sodom, softened by base luxury, when again the renewed shout flared up into wrath, turn their backs in fear: part seek the city walls in rapid flight, part the mountains and woods, part, hemmed in by the bands, stretch out their cowardly hands to grievous chains. As soon as his uncle Abram learned that Lot was captured, not with weeping—for what would vain weeping avail?—but pious by reason, he chooses from his whole flock three hundred and eighteen servants, whom he equips with arms, and gradually follows where the enemy, weighed down by heavy plunder, betrayed himself by moving slowly, and takes care to come upon them in the first night of rest, when sweet sleep now soaks their drooping hearts and binds their weary limbs.
Thus, when the raging frenzy of a fasting lion has penetrated, with swift bound, the enclosures of cattle in the glade, it kills all with tooth and foot, and wrath defers its hunger eager to devour, and a wondrous endurance of bitter grief shuts up the groan of the oppressed in their dread of fear: such then was the form of the leader. Slaying with silent wounds the people and the kings buried in sleep and wine, they lay them low. No tumult confounds the camp, no one perceives a step, except him whom now mind and voice have fled, no one the sound of slaughter, except him whom death rouses; he hears. All is wet with blood; the earth, loosened by dry clear weather, congeals into gore, and the slippery footprints stagger over the field, marked with the blood that delays their steps. Yet not all their age is at once cut down by swords:
the spoils are preserved—so great is the moderation of the just victor—those who now without deceit could be taken: the rest base flight scattered, and pressing dread followed even into the fields of Chobar. But the victor, in no way moved by the praise of so great a triumph, mild amid such joys, among the horses and herds of cattle and the people recovered or captured and the treasures which, with greedy weight, burden the conquered and the conquerors, and pondering in his heart the misfortunes of men, returns almost as one bought with the merchandise of the conquered, and restores everywhere to the plundered peoples and to the king the booty and the rewards of war, teaching that he had not fought for himself: yet he offers a tenth of the spoil shaken out to the enemy—which is the true sacrifice—to Melchizedek, to whom then there was a pious care of the most high Father,
having testified that God had conquered, and he deserved, forewarned even then, to receive the mystical first-fruits of the future sacrifice. And when the course had been received unto greater rewards, by the voice of so great a priest praying all good things, the Lord too endows His servant with this gift of address: «Since no allurements have subdued you, eager for plunder, the price of faith and the reward of your labors is full with Me for you, and I will protect you and all that is yours, to be preserved for your heir, whom, born rather of your own womb by late seed, you, a pious begetter, shall love—whom now in your mind you desire, in whose stead this Damascus pleases you, taken from the flock of servants, while the sweet foster-child's infancy, goading, kindles a father's feelings and deceives the hastening love for sons.
Look up at the vaulted heaven, how it gleams with so dense a light, sparkling in the painted night, with how great stars the heaped-up stars are pressed, and, set against, refuse to be numbered: hold this as the pattern of your seed and your future stock; thence take the form and the merit.» Thus He spoke: but he believed, and the assent of bare faith alone stood in the place of virtue, and, adorned with the merits of labor, being reckoned, granted him the full crown of justice. And therefore here the virtue of holy Abram, so noble, makes manifest that it is good to believe in the divine Christ, who, the living Word of the Father, again thus spoke to Abram: «I am the omnipotent Lord, who brought both you and yours from the Chaldean nation and at last, taking you out of your fathers' vices, settled you in a better land, that a people begotten through you may inhabit the blessed fields
and propagate the line far and wide, with the nations driven out who, once made sacrilegious by the foul error of their fathers, established profane rites. But because you delay, and doubting, thus sin by believing, take for Me a heifer already grim of brow in its third year, with which let a she-goat, equal in years, chosen from a gentle flock, and a ram of like age, be sacrificed to Our honor: and when a dove, joined with a chaste turtle-dove, has closed the sacred rite and the order of offering has completed the whole, let the victim of birds feel no further the knife. But let the cattle's middles be cleft, the openings cut, and let only the three bodies pass into two parts, which, thus drawn apart, you shall distinguish with clean sands, so that on either side rival limbs may match limbs, a fourfold double order.
Then what you are bidden to hope shall come of its own accord before your sight, and you shall prove it with your eyes.» He spoke: but he, gladly accustomed to serve the admonitions of God, hastily makes speed to perform the commands. But when he had laid out the series on the ground in the order he was bidden, suddenly a black mass rushes in, the prey inviting the ill-omened birds. Lest by profane contact they should violate the sacred things, anxious on every side Abram guards and looks around. But when, astonished at so great a work, he could not, even with the sun setting, overcome the great mass of the duty he had undertaken, behold, black terror, a horrid trembling and a deep sleep enter, bringing the announced commands and forming the ages to come.
It seemed to him, I believe, that he beheld the enclosed Nile, and the peoples and late descendants of the Hebrew nation, and that he came to know the throngs that number themselves to the utmost: thence the fierce stirrings and the camps of his own people led forth, the sea crossed with dry foot, the ranks sunk in the deep, the foot-soldiers made into a host that followed shipwreck with no fleet: thereafter that all the kingdoms of blessed Palestine lay open to the returning people. To these visions, granting them to the astonished man, a kindly interpreter was not lacking:
«Foreknow your descendants and the offspring of your people: a multitude which, after you, brought forth in foreign lands, shall feel the servile yoke of a Nile-dwelling tyrant; when it has filled out four hundred years in harsh servitude, I will rescue it and avenge it on its unjust masters and restore it to the lands which the Nile and the Euphrates encircle with gentle stream—but when the sins of the guilty Amorite nation and of the people holding these kingdoms shall have filled up the full measure of their crimes, and they shall have been worthy to be expelled from the seats of their fathers. But you, however, before that, happy, departing by the long-lived path of life, praised, shall migrate to your holy fathers with your sons, with peace and Our gift.» Thus He spoke: and on high, when now night was leading dense shadows over the lands, He gave a sign from the mountain;
for a furnace flashed forth with bright fire, swiftly twisted its mane downward, and seeking the divided things and borne into the prepared middle, the flame, skimming with headlong course, consecrated them. Not otherwise do bodies vibrating through the thick air fly aslant through the void, and gleaming torches surge with nocturnal splendor, and a lying star draws a reddening mane, and the clouds, shaken by the winds, shake out the downward fire that lashes the earth. Meanwhile Abram, sure of the kingdom and the offspring to come, desires to hasten to become a father, but his chaste wife refuses the duty, which barren old age, now that the sign has ceased, proves to be empty:
but believing that a dear pledge of her husband and a new hope, sprung from whatever concubine, would be her own, she substitutes into the marriage-chamber her servant of younger years—Hagar was the name, the Nilotic land her origin—and, assailing her husband with prayers, urged him to entrust his progeny to a base womb. O servile wickedness! As soon as Hagar felt the burden of her womb living within her, swollen with proud disdain she despised her mistress—the mistress to whom she owed a mother's love—and, frenzied, despised the very cause of her own swelling. Rightly therefore did Abram, the most just man, consign her to the scourges of his wife, by whose deeds rather, ashamed, she hides herself far off in the desert and the secret lairs of wild beasts, indignant:
nor does she flee because of what she has suffered, but again, feigning excessive fears of her mistress, she despises her in the only way she can, and prefers to endure the perils of a secret road, had not an angel sent from Olympus met her and restored the servant to her former rights, and bid her, refreshed by the gentle mistress and by great exhortation, to hope for better things once returned, and taught her the name of her son and his character and his hands and the numberless flocks of a people from the stock of his descendants. With how much greater vow she returns, now certain of the future, and by her childbearing she herself first made the lord a parent, when now, in the prosperous spaces of a life run through, he was closing his eighty-sixth year. And when in the begun order he was adding twelve summers more than one, again the kindly Father, deigning him with the wonted address, approaches, and bid the trembling man pass his days happily:
and at the same time He unfolds again the promises, which were the reward of virtue—then Abram, with body bent low, suppliantly prostrate adores the Lord—and after many things, which being run through He loosened the vows of His faithful servant, He bid him be distinguished from all peoples by a silent sign, so that, the superfluous flesh being cut away of his own accord, it might be readily and plainly clear that the Lord had commanded a new progeny and a future offspring to be preserved with bodily defects cut off. The very thing, though silent, speaks: God thus admonished to cut away the shameful parts, and that boys, fresh from the mother and of raw life, while the mind is ignorant of grief, stripped of the foreskin, should be consecrated on the eighth day; that whoever should dare to corrupt so holy a covenant, ceasing to serve the law that was asked, should become disinherited of the kingdom and of the life to come.
And at the same time, that he might believe by a true proof that innumerable nations were to be created from his own stock, that these very things might resound, changing their names He said: «Let a letter renew you, let a full syllable reform you, that your wife be called not Sara but Sarra, and you not Abram but, more illustrious by an augmented name, Abraham, that you may henceforth be named among the peoples to come. And this is therefore common to you with your true wife, this promise, since, as the ages roll on, she shall be the mother of a race and shall make you a father when the year has measured back the sun. Although you may think the promises of My virtue laughable—what should your old age prescribe?—what shall be the glory of divine right, so that I may be thought to have brought it about that it could be done.
But yet I will pardon your doubts, and upon the future boy I will impose a name that may reprove this fault: Isaac—who alone, with all the stock of his own, shall be the sure heir of Us, the covenant of the pact being kept. Nor yet shall Ishmael, whom alone you embrace, be without a portion of the sacred gift; for, supported by Our bounty, he shall beget many thousands of men, nations to be ruled with a strong lineage, by twelve leaders alike.» He spoke: but he, eager to hasten the pact received, now striking a hundred years, now with his son grown to manhood, first removes himself, his pledge, and all his clients and servants from the age by the sign that was commanded, and makes them to be a new people and a fountain of the pious, by one and the same way—so great is his devotion—receiving and fulfilling the law of God.
What would such present and swift faith not deserve? Now this is not fear, but sincere love, and the full proof of a servant, that he so submits to any command with a calm mind that it pleases him to have obeyed God. Indeed before, accustomed only to be heard, after such a service of merit the minister is now allowed to be seen; nor, when just indignation goads Him as an avenger, does He, by His mild divinity, reject mortal sights. For when He was preparing to condemn the crimes of the lands and to abolish the guilty with flames, He, having confessed either the truth or such as He knew Himself able to seem, and His divinity and the number of His foster-child, although attended by heavenly servants, came and presented Himself to view. For as he sat near his dwelling, three suddenly stood by, gleaming with august light.
Abraham, goaded by the image of so great a vision, runs forward and, prostrate on the ground, adores the one Lord, though he marvels at the three; and, eager to please, that it may be permitted him with pious mind to serve, he prays that, as the hours tend toward the midday heat, the servants would not disdain to be refreshed with table and food. To such a degree did he wander, doubting amid his sight and vigorous senses, because the form represented a man, whom his mind knew to be God.
Yet the Omnipotent assented with His mouth and did not spurn the service of His pious foster-child, and seen to consecrate food and tables, that the devoted minister might believe the things granted to himself, the pure and bright image of a priest occurred—again a true man, to be taken on at some time by God in countenance and whole body, and gave the promised proofs of the future Christ, and, unfolding wondrous things, brought them forth, and, present, forbade His servant to doubt. Thence, moving His steps, the guest, exulting as a companion clings to the side of those going, and shakes his heart, struck with sweet dread, and a venerable awe draws on the astonished man.
For he sees that God has darted His silent countenances and stern looks against Sodom and Gomorrah, and at the same time sent forth His servants, ministers of peace and of wrath, and when he had learned what He was preparing with so great a mass, God disclosing the secret and teaching the cause of His coming, so that he who learned what rewards of life await the elect might also beware of things to be feared, of his own accord he dared to ask the Lord whether He would destroy the city of the erring people on account of all the crimes of the guilty, if perchance it had borne fifty upright citizens. «I will not destroy it,» He said.
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Thereupon the gentle questioning, gradually leading down the number and provoking pardon suppliantly, with a diminishing recurrence reducing the totals to those very ones down to ten, deserved to carry off the answer of the Father; and, lest His mild clemency should betray the whole purpose of the Lord, He left His servant in the middle of the discourse, as he was stretching further, and withdrew Himself into His own kingdom. Meanwhile the messengers find Lot by chance sitting before the gates of the city of Sodom, the sun now drawing near the lands. He, when he saw the angelic men radiating with wondrous splendor, thinking heaven to be present—he to whom God Himself was giving his mind—prostrate adores them and invites them home, and by his prayers prevails that they turn aside the night under his roof, and at the same time persuades them to dine together, and ministers harmless food and frugal cups.
Behold, at the setting of the light and the return of night, a foul band of the common rabble—if it is right to have said it, a manly band—leaps forth, and young men and boys and old men vie to sharpen their frenzies: they cry out with Lot's clear name to surrender those received. It shames—alas, and truly it is better by how much to keep silent about wickedness than to betray it in words, even while it is condemned—the fact that even then, by a sinister custom, this was the law of the unspeakable city. Lot, desiring to soften the raging men, offers his daughters, for whom the maidenhood that they were born to abode, whom the people would have for their uses: by their sex meaning to make the wrong less. But profane hearts count cheap whatever is permitted, and rejoice to be forbidden, that there may be what they desire. Therefore they strive to afflict the very author of faith, the teacher of morals and of justice.
When now there was a force greater than what human effort could repel by virtue, then both guests bared their angelic powers from the feigned body, and drew back the snatched Lot and blinded the raging men. The sentence of right judgment kept the manner of justice: that which anticipated punishment closed the eyes of those to be condemned. Then to Lot, trembling, having scarcely recovered his mind by the condition of his own minister—he himself now perceiving in his soul, not dissembled, what he himself also feared—they confess who they are, why they come, what their commands are, what they wish to grant. Let Lot, indeed bidden to escape, announce to his sons-in-law, if worthy to be believed, the destruction and gather his mixed household, whose name is among very many, and his sons-in-law: but their base origin did not deserve to feel the fear of God.
Yet, lest anyone should think these men hard of faith, since Lot too dissembled to leave his seat: after both guests see him lingering as the light drew near and dragging out sluggish delays without end, they seize him with his wife and his maiden daughters by their hands and lead them far outside the walls, and bid them hasten and escape into the high mountains, a law being given thus, that no one, cautious, should look back beyond what he passes—but ill-cautiously. But Lot, fearing lest the swift wrath of punishment should outstrip his slowness, himself with tears sought Zoar and prevailed by asking, which compelled the Lord to save many likewise, and the special gift of salvation granted to him He imparts to many and made it a merit out of a gift.
And now, by God mingling them with native power, the clouds—snatched together and crowding over the sky—had thickened into mists not of the usual kind, but such as Etna whirls forth, such as Inarime belches out, such as Aponus exhales with its hot waves, such as the earth, shaken near Vesuvius, vomits up, such as the fierce mouth of the Lycian Chimaera pants from the vast hollow of its triple furnace, and wherever the swift, kindling breath of treacherous sulphur, poured through a narrow channel, flows out into the light, steaming where the earth is broken open. Not that He could not turn rains too into fire—He to whom it was granted to found the whole world out of nothing—but the good Judge, in His greater readiness, prefers to condemn with pity those whom He punishes, as an example of a world and morals fallen to ruin.
So all the fuel of the flames rushed together from every region in a surging mass, packed close by their own blast, and gathered into one; and as a vaulted shell of sulphurous metal, curved over, covers a solid body and the guilty lands and cities, the swift breath, drawing its strength through a narrow channel, struck it and forced it to crackle with so great a crash, and—the thunder echoing back with frequent lightning-flash—to dismay men's souls; even as Lot's pitiable wife, trembling and turning her eyes (which was forbidden) to look back at what was happening, and so for her broken law swiftly undergoing punishment, was turned into a pillar of salt: thus, stripped of light, the unhappy woman lost her soul together with her whole body, so that, though her form remained, no corpse was left. Then more swiftly Lot, dread driving out grief, dazed by the horrible disaster, enters Zoar.
And after it had enveloped the heavenly lights with its flames, and the loosened sulphur hurled down with itself the entangled fires, and the kindlings, dispensed by a dry stream, drip upon their own beds, a headlong cloud falls like lightning through the dense air and wraps the cities and rages over all the fields, and with mingled hissing it thunders, and the fiery storm overcomes their laments; and after it found fuel in the oppressed lands and settled upon the very sands, the fire raises an immense pyre with conjoined tinder, and the flames return from the lands into the stars, until the crags and the rebounding earth pass into ashes and the deep-sunken sands are dissolved, and in the lowered fields, the turf consumed, hollow valleys open up plowlands, and the moisture, poured out through opened veins, joining its forces—the very moisture that had bound the lands fast—begets a sea of its own.
What then are we to think this is—that a lake was suddenly filled by a wondrous power, where before there was a pyre? Did the good Judge wish to abolish the condemned by every element, or rather does His mild clemency mark a silent end to the punishment, in that He checked the flames with waters, and perhaps the opposing material foreshadows by hot springs the rest of the judgment to come—and the holy river Jordan flooding forth, which first was counted worthy to wash away the sins of men?