Forthwith, enraged, as he conceives a hot anger, he shatters the tablets. While he rises up to the full blow, he casts the calf onto the hearths, dissolves it, and thence flings it into the sea, and, taking up the waters from thence, bids the stunned people to drink. And then he upbraids his brother, deeply offended, that he had listened to those seeking vain things and had violated God with a just wrath. He, begging for peace, confesses the people's crime, making himself free of the culpable daring. But the prince, preparing to punish the crimes of the mad mob, bids the Levites run through all the camps and bare the iron and strike the bodies meeting them everywhere, although of kindred people.
They, eager, run through the byways known to them and rush upon the bands set before them, and swiftly, as avengers of the Lord, cut down round about three thousand of the men — such that you might reckon together at one effort almost twenty thousand. These things done, the prophet comes forth now milder to his own, and entreats the eternal King on behalf of the people's crime, having spoken thus: 'The throng of your people has sinned, O unconquered King; the breasts of men seek more than mortal things, by worshipping the images of dumb cattle. To these they gave both vows and believed the deity to be gold. And now, O Lord, if you deem me worthy of prayer, which I shall make and pour out to you, dismiss the guilt which you alone can loose. But if a greater punishment awaits them and the sentence of death holds them all,'
'O Holy One, blot out my name from the heavenly page which the venerable hand wrote, to which the world is subject.' To him praying the favorable answers of God soothe: 'Whoever, a sinner, wounds me with a forbidden crime, coming against me, no page of the holy book retains him, and the guilty name shall be blotted out thence. But you, hasten and unfold from here your seized course, and assign the promised places to the people you have undertaken. And lest anxious care touch you as you go, a messenger shall always go ahead of you the traveler. But their own deeds weigh down those whom crimes darken, men of upright neck and swelling with self-conceit; wherefore I do not walk with you as a companion in step.' These words the people received with mournful guilt, and groaned with weeping at such great reproaches.
Taking polluted garments with blackened thread, the good prophet, clothed thus, bids them put off their sad mourning, and earnestly prays that they may see, lest perchance the anger of God be greater, if perhaps he be wounded by an equal crime. These things done, he brings forth the tents arranged for himself and sets them in a camp set apart, and fittingly gave it a name from the witness whose sentence is true. Him entering the threshold that draws near to God all the men strove eagerly to see, and they themselves in turn rejoiced to draw near in step or to stand opposite: when suddenly — horrible to behold — a shining cloud glides down from heaven and floods the summits of the highest temple; and while the pious prophet walks in, while then he returns again, Joshua always hid himself in the houses of the Lord, nowhere going forth.
But the prophet rehearses with the Lord the things accustomed to him, and demands those things which before were not granted to a mortal man: that he might behold close at hand the venerable face of the blessed Lord, and that God might always accompany the leader as he goes, however much an ethereal messenger should hedge him about. It is granted, and God with sublime words begins what must first be done before the grace of so great a gift should feed eyes wont to look upon earthly things. 'Come now, hastening, ascend the threatening crag and fix your step, and while my honor, thus returning, runs down from on high, beneath the vault of the rock, shadowed by my right hand, remain, while with swift course, passing by, I bring back the shade of the divine palm. Then only can you behold the hindmost parts of God as he goes —'
'it is not lawful for anyone of the number of breathing things, whom the earthly air cherishes, to behold the face.' These things, as they had been commanded, are done; soon, with tablets hewn from rock he shapes anew like ones for the divine ordinances, and, uncompanioned, approaches the citadel accustomed to him by his usual courses, and does not allow all men to draw near the mountain, and removes from there the wool-bearing flocks, because such things are contiguous to harm: holy things in no way cohere with corrupt ones. Forthwith, using the longed-for discourses of the Lord, he learns the things to come for his own, and brings himself forward unbidden: 'O Lord, whom your lavish clemency makes great in heaven and on earth among your people, you, gentle in the ethereal hall and alone powerful, the same most just, indulging alike the peoples whom the world everywhere joyfully holds, confessing the Lord with their whole mind:'
'you lift all from deceit, you can pardon whatever is unjust, since you alone are free of crime; the same wont to condemn deadly guilt unto the offspring, the sons of fathers and the sons of sons: abide with us, O God, with surpassing power. For this fierce people is proud with a stiff neck; if you forgive the committed expiations of anyone's crime, we shall live through the ages as yours.' Soon the holy Lord of heaven from his hall declares what he had commanded before; that, when the people had rested after the wounding wars, regarding their leisure, it should know only such alliances to be granted from his people, lest perchance a wife taken from outside should ensnare the unwary minds of men with deceitful guile and teach profane rites.
And now this prophet had worn away forty suns with swift light, and had taken no food, bringing back to the huge camp a fasting breast. His face gleaming with the lamp of conspicuous flame, the gazes feared the man, and his brother dreaded him, recalling his mortal sight from the gleaming light. But the prophet, unaware that the honor of a sudden power had shone for him as a hallowed thing, for the fear of the people knows that the stroke of the immense light must be veiled, lest the Judean cohort should turn its ears away along with its sight. But when he bore himself to the peaceful words of the Lord, he lifted the muddy linen from the clear veil. Forthwith, with the people striving to present metals, and fleeces dyed with Sidonian mire, with surpassing arts he completes the consecrated dwelling.
which the Lord, sublime, filled with a sent cloud to such a degree that the prophet could not climb the sanctifying doorposts, although the veil spread itself over the whole threshold and the guard was not opposed at the doors. When this had moved itself apart with the moving airs, the camps were moved; night again, wont to return, gleamed with the excessive light of the red flame. While the winged peak boils away and presents the deity. After he had set the lofty temple in distant byways, and what gifts the twin turtledove might bring, or the dove, joined and paired with an equal dove — but, a wonder, the devouring fire, sent from the lofty star, snatched up swiftly the entrails of the slaughtered cattle. Meanwhile young men, vigorous now in their strong years, while with foolish heart they believe it lawful for them,
Nadab and Abihu, the well-known pledges of the prophet Aaron, kindle fire with sacrilegious rites. Death not much delayed: for lightning flashed from the upper pole and amid the offerings slew the men, not sincere, their father greatly grieving. And then the cold limbs are entombed in a sepulchre. Yet soon the father refrained from mourning the buried ones, and all the brethren, the prophet forbidding the weeping which had been permitted to the people: for the fiery blaze, flying from the heavenly seat, had shaken all the men with implanted terror, and they openly saw that God is not to be despised, who would not be absent. Amid these things the priest learns by the Lord's voice that wine and honeyed strong drink were denied to his sons, lest, when they venerate the Lord at the set altars,
the breath sent from a wine-soaked breast should offend. A common rule distinguishes the food of the people: and what is either permitted or not lawful to take, it declares — a custom which our banquets too keep under the heavenly law: that the vulture not be among the foods, nor the raven nor magpie, nor the buzzard, nor the keen hawk, nor the kite with hooked beak, and what it is difficult to declare in measured verse: lest things too little clean, settling gathered in the breast, make the harmless fibers sordid to the touch. A woman, who is emptied in her vitals by a lawful birth, if she bears a boy, is unclean on the seventh light with her whole body; but when the eighth axis has turned, on which it is the custom to cut the private parts, she shall take off the little skin of the membrum, and then she shall sit thirty-three days now in childbed.
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ne. quaesanctificisadolenturcultibus, audaxpolluatautuisuautfoedoaltariatactu. quodsiconceptalaxantmembrapuellae, obseruansgeminumtempusnilfraudishabebit, quodeindeexpletoconfestimdonauouebitturturesautgeminos. similesauttergacolumbas. autgregedemollicandentisuellerisagnum, utsaniemprecibusualeatcohiberesacerdos.
Let her not, while she is purified, bold, pollute the things that are burned in the sanctifying worship, either by sight or by foul touch of the altars. But if a girl's conceived limbs loose their burden, observing the double time she shall have no fraud, which then being completed she shall at once vow her gifts — turtledoves, or two like-backed doves, or a lamb from the soft flock of gleaming fleece, that by prayers the priest may be able to restrain the discharge.
The likenesses and signs of diseases too are taught, at least those which leprosy breeds, which over the whole body floods the vitals with sallow pallor and with deadly corruption, and fills the whitening skin with grim spots, so that, because it sometimes seethes through the wrath of the Lord, by this physician it may take flight and leave the body of the man praying for his guilt and bringing a gift — what poverty can, poverty that, exulting, is wont often to overcome the rich; since the Lord drinks in the vow of the simple. Yet no great expense of healing must be furnished: for to offer two young birds and twin lambs, that one may join an ewe to a bullock, the whole ordinance prescribes, with fine flour which the rivulet of olive has sprinkled. These the rich man can offer: but for the small, small gifts remain.
For he shall either slay a calf at the altar — one that thrives, an animal in the second year, twice six months grown — together with something of the holy meal mixed with oil, or else a pair of turtledoves, or perhaps two doves alike. Moreover, since pleasure often mocks men's slumber through the idle night, if by chance seed flows from the member, the body becomes foul as it lies and remains unclean, until at last the evening, conspicuous in the sky, ushers in the night with its glad light. Nor do they defile their bodies only with this foul blemish, but whatever the one whom dreams have darkened touches in his doing: for this reason it is right to wash the limbs in running water, that purity may swiftly return when the guilt has ceased. Likewise it is right to break earthen vessels stained by a man's contact, but to cleanse with water what is made of metal and to wash away filth from glass in a running stream.
By this law too are lawful unions atoned. When the troublesome stain of the limbs has been put off, the priest shall straightway grant his aid, when, the sun returned, the seventh dawn has shone forth amid the crimson stars, if both man and woman, guilty of sin and bound by a vow, come to the altar supported by a pair of turtledoves and an equal number of doves — the woman who now becomes menstruous when the month has run its course. She is befouled by the moist discharge drawn forth from the womb, and whatever she touches she defiles, until the seventh day passes with the returning morning-star; but if the harmful flow presses more abundantly and the fixed order of time departs, the appearance of the evil shall be indistinct and the end of the guilt the same, if she offer a gift to the holy altar from those birds which are known to have pleased the Lord. Meanwhile, when Aaron's sons had been struck dead beneath their crime, the mighty Lord declares these things on high.
that — since the canopies have been let down with the curtains drawn before, and the altar with its holy things is at the same time veiled together with the ark — at fixed seasons the priest shall present himself and take his place, bearing the holy vows, since the holy Lord stands there in the same place, to be seen in a whitening cloud. Yet so that he slay a calf for his own crime, and presently sacrifice like goats on behalf of the congregation, beneath the offering of the lot, by which one goat may wander away astray, bearing the offences of the sinners and hiding them within itself; while the other is to be slain as a peaceful sacrifice to the Lord at the altar, destined to bring the best advantages of the starry gift. A beast or bird that has met its end with no blood shed is fit for no diner's table: therefore, since in the blood of many is the life.
And likewise, if perhaps an animal slain with the blade pours forth the golden stream from its severed throat, it ought to be covered with earth, lest, unburied, it become a snare. Hence the Lord instructs what are the fellowships of guilt, and which unions help kindred hearts in equal harmony of bond; and this ordinance here sets forth, arranged in fixed measures: first of all, the mother is not suited to the bed in which the wife lies, and let the careful mind of her son know no use of her save filial affection; nor she who has sometimes clung to a father's embraces, in this same way a sister, born of the same mother, or a granddaughter regarded by you, or by your son or daughter: let no aunt nor mother's sister be more closely joined to you in foul affection, nor let baneful lust stray toward a daughter-in-law, or one whom a brother has married; let a daughter know no use of him whom her mother had.
Nor let her lie upon the same couch. Joined to one man, and to confound the names by mingling them. It is a thing discordant with right, if she who is wedded should become a stepmother fertile with melodious grandchildren, like her who is joined to a stepson, or to confine two sisters in one embrace. Nor her whom a near kinsman has taken to himself from the people joined to you; let not a son be given to serve a powerful man, lest the name of the Lord be violated in a forbidden act. Let no male be mingled in obscene love, nor defile your sex; nor let any beast know unnatural couplings with a married woman or man: for which crimes the manifold nations have wounded the powerful Lord, and the earth displays its wrath against all these and rejects the filth with which it has been infected. But when the reaper now shears the wheaten ears, or when the vintager cuts the yellowing grapes.
let no one gather the whole, so that a part may be left for the needy — even that part which was the last; let no one speak of a defect. Nor let him wish to serve thefts, nor to ruin a brother, nor to impose oaths of swearing upon the unjust. Let it not please you to injure anyone or to hold what is plundered, nor to withhold the price of work from the wage of the hired man, nor to delay it for one night; nor would you wish to say to the deaf 'O deaf one,' nor reproach anyone with a bodily injury. Let a judge's verdict never be more inclined to the left side or the right, since to those who, with the scale set down, are able to discern the right with a teachable mind, the person of the poor and of the eminent man ought to seem one and the same. Presently rein in your swollen heart, lest perhaps you become hated while you despise all, or hate your brother.
if you are driven by silent anger, but rather rebuke him, and disclose it in his presence to the offender, that he may first avoid what was committed and reform his mind. And when the right of doing harm has been entrusted to you, lay aside your impulses willingly and soften all your wrath, which long lay festering and rife within your silent breast; lest you yourself be the lord and avenger of your own grief. And as you will desire pleasant and advantageous things for your own affairs, so demand them for your brother — let your mind not be discordant. Keep this, O men, and stand firm in the holy law. Let the beasts that support and are harnessed to your wagons be of like body; nor yoke a bull with a horse, guiding the reins; nor scatter spelt among the green vines as you sow; nor let any garment of yours be woven in a different fashion, of party-coloured or two-formed thread. If anyone loves a maidservant for a separate wage...
while the right has not yet been granted that manumission bestows upon slaves and that liberty given confers, he is free of mortal crime. If a girl, not joined to a man, has yet united her will as one, if she yields readily to intercourse with no struggle, God is appeased through vows, if from the soft flock a votive ram be sacrificed to the Lord at the altar. As often as grafted shoots are set upon a woodland stock, by no means pluck the fruit after three Decembers, but consecrate it to the most high God; for the fifth year shall grant you the right of eating with lawful foods. Refuse to serve auguries, and flee from hearing auspices set forth as if true; and from reddening with curling hair the straight lock, or from cutting the beard, or marking the skin with iron, or implanting tattoos on the bodily limbs — never gentle to the limbs.
Let not your daughter, with you as her seller, be given over to smooth-tongued adulterers or to a shameful bed; and shun healers who use incantations — they invite a fitting destruction. If a young man does not rise before an old one, and if a boy before any bearded man — since one greater in age demands the homage that is given to fatherly years. Let the measure with your peck never be deficient: nor keep a balance in which there is the fraud of half an ounce. The just God seeks out just dealing in every act. And refuse those who demand responses from ventriloquists. Let no one strive to shave off his beard on account of the dead, or to bare his head, or befoul his serene brow, or desire anything by which he might be more deformed. A woman whom a night-wandering adulterer has possessed is unworthy of the marriage of the man who afterward takes her.
And she who, by the judgment that grounds divorce, has been dismissed — let her not know another's marriage bed; and let the priest, pure in all things, supply gleaming oil, with which the citadel of his consecrated head was anointed before. To him let a spouse from his own kindred and proven to him alone cling, and let him avoid a widow and one harmful through luxury, lest his offspring be spotted, from a forbidden mother. And if anyone bears any blemish whatever in his body, he shall not be worthy to take up the holy offices. Pure bodies please, not smeared with foul stains, such as feminine luxury possesses, when vows are consecrated, which each one has vowed to the altar according to his own means. Moreover, it is by no means right to join the veils together; for they are stained with spots. The Ruler on high is pure.
If the daughter of a sanctified prophet has been given over under the authority of a foreign husband, let her by no means touch and eat of the first offerings; but if, her husband being dead, she has begun to dwell in her father's house, let her take food and bread in turn, as one secure, which her father takes. But if anyone unwitting has set his hand to the holy things, let him bear a fifth more to the altar for his fault. Let a lamp hang before the shrine from the high panelled ceiling, that by night it may furnish the oil flaming with light, lest the fled day mingle pale shadows in the house of the Lord and hide the holy altars. Among these things two young men are stirred with hot gall: this one was a Hebrew, the other begotten in Egypt; and while, raging, they hurl curses at one another, the idle Jew did not fear to darken the immense name of the Lord with his complaint, while he was led by anger.
For which crime he was dragged from the rampart of the camp and set in the middle of the field, and, at the command of the sublime Lord's word, he fell beneath the blow of stones. God runs through the holy ordinances and discloses all things. As often as one in need of another wishes to take coins, with a pledge deposited — if he has assigned his farmland to the man whose aid he seeks — let him repay promptly the credit lent to himself, when his hand has been enriched, and let that man receive back what had been made over before; if in his lasting lifetime he has remained in need, he becomes free in that year in which rest and sweet relief are granted to all. But if perchance someone sells a house in the middle of the city, let him here restore to himself within a year the money committed, lest after the appointed time has elapsed he lose the property.
Yet money is thus to be given into the right hands of those who ask, that usury may not afterward exact entangled profit. Whoever, being poor, cannot sustain the slender use of life and endure hard days, and thinks it better to subject himself to a master, his liberty now laid aside, let that man not bear the yoke as though born of a slave woman, but as one taken on for the task of a fixed wage, until, the time run out, he returns free, in which leisure has been granted to all things at once. And if he departs as though sold off by his master's command, let his nearest kinsman redeem him, or, if that one was not present, let whoever is a fellow-tribesman, when bidden, carry out the dealing of his brother's affair and hold apart the servile yoke from the man. For if he has been sold off for a lawful price, he shall serve until the longed-for time comes in the year in which all resume their rights, set free together.
Or, if the sum of years was small, let him fulfil it by the toil of his own hands, the labour which his deed supplied. Thus let him depart wherever he will, and lead back with him, free, his children carefree together with his wife. Tranquil peace awaits the man who lays up such commands with a sincere heart — peace which no wars can overturn with tumult; but the leisure sent through long years shall fill the granaries with manifold produce. Moreover, if a fierce enemy has drawn his weapons, he shall depart driven back with a tiny battle-line, however immense the ranks he leads into combat. But him who shuns the sublime commands of God, the terror of death shall drive, as though the enemy brandished the sword, and in headlong flight he shall hide himself, trembling, within the city.
Thereupon utmost famine, with pallid diseases, shall beset him, and though sated he shall think his mouth fasting, and shall ever be afraid as dread returns. And if it pleases him to go through the wide-open gates wherever his senses have led him, the desert, mournful, shall confound him as he goes through fields deserted on every side; and the ravening wolves and the wild beasts terrible by tooth or claw throughout the countryside he shall fear with deeper dread; and although a homegrown crop is begotten from the rich turf of the earth, it shall not put forth tender ears upon its stalks. Then the father shall reach for his children's limbs as for sweet morsels with his bite, and the mother shall send down to her belly in hunger what she once, fertile, bore.
Then the victor, now exulting, shall lay chains upon the captives, and the flickering flames shall lift their ruddy locks through the vast roofs, the cities turned to ash — cities which the walls, bearing foul shapes, had once encircled with strong defence. The titles shall fail, the emblems of various praises; and what before had been beautiful, destroyed, shall perish — so that God, ever to be revered in the heights, may be loved, whom idols cannot reach with their lying worship.
What estimation of the drachma then remains in the matter of vows — whether a woman or a man be donated to the altar — the rubric of God has prescribed: whether older in age, or a boy or virgin in years not yet of puberty, whether a house or estate, or whatever is vowed with the mind, whether the secure mind rejoices to trust in God most high, or whether it is driven by anxious perils, lest, entangled in them, error should ensnare itself — a part stated remains, a part is entrusted to the prophet, so that the verdict may assess even the tenth of the produce. If it pleased one to keep the beast or field or house, it lay under the right of the donor: presently let him pay to the altar the advantages which the agreed-upon prices set on the coin.
Meanwhile the year had turned with its accustomed returns, the months unrolled, running along its own tracks, after the chosen youth of God had left the shores of the Nile and at last had migrated from the Pharian sand; when God, shining from his star-bearing seat, spoke and commanded that the prophet bear sure mandates to the tribunes of the tribes, and thereafter review all the people, the boys being set aside and those whom riper age renders exempt from the care of fearful war, so that he might learn the sum from twice ten years up. They, eager, recount each man through all their squadrons by running number, and at a glance read off the inspected names, which stand founded in the twice-six tribes.
These at once completed six hundred thousand and three thousand together, if you take care to add likewise five hundred and fifty; when next the man-by-man reckoning of the chiefs taught thoroughly twice a thousand of nobles. But the Levites — those whom alone the care of the Lord's holy things attends — he forbade to join to the sum of the people. Hence Gershon's seven thousand were allotted to God, with five hundred likewise set down; the Gad division separately makes twice four with six hundred closely added; and the third, Merari, named in their ancestral tongue, displayed twice three thousand and two hundred. Since a different guardianship of the holy things and of God's temple awaits these totals, thus they set their camps apart: the first chose the seaward side; another stretches itself toward the south; the third looks to the chill breezes of the north.
But where the first flame of the coming day reddens, the conspicuous prophet pitches his greatest tents. Hence he prepares to distinguish the boys begotten in the first birth and to consecrate them to the Lord — they who complete twice eleven thousand, if at the same time you add over two hundred seven times and ten — for whom it was permitted to take up a drachma for the prophets and to assign them to the holy things of the temple, when, as it were, the divine altar should set the bought ones outside. Straightway they choose those applied to the offices of the sacred things from the hand of Gershon, and of Gad, and of Merari named, twice four thousand with five hundred joined, fifty set over them, whom he commanded to carry apart the ornaments of the Lord's house or to bring them forth. Thus, the camps now pitched there, they took their leisure;
of whom it was pleasing that those be excluded beyond the thresholds of the gate whose limbs the dire wasting of diseases had corrupted, lest, set among the strong, they should bring contagions, while the hidden distinctions wander in their hot veins. Straightway he who in a silent heart is jealous of his wife, and has no witness to betray it, if a late adulterer has polluted the couches of the once-chaste marriage-bed, let him go hastily to the prophet and present before him her whom he believes to have sinned against him. And let him bring forth to the holy altar the white flour which barley makes, which he shall neither smear with incense nor moisten with rich oil. Here the foreseeing prophet shall take water from the spring in earthen lips, which he shall tinge with a little dust, dust which he takes, bending forward, from the middle vault of the temple.
Presently the elder shall compel her to bare her head and to hold in both palms the offerings of the rite that calls to mind; and the elder shall compel her to drink the waters that bear curses within them. And she, if free of crime, remains unharmed with a sound mind and serene countenance; but if crimes are concealed beneath the silent inward parts, the woman shall swell with the sudden tension of the disease, and the obscene thigh shall melt away with rotting flesh; and besides she sharpens the curses of the jesting people, while with easy laughter she reproaches the expiations she has committed. Among these things, if anyone prepares with his mind to lead a life by a chaste rite, and longs with vigilant sense to fulfil the obligation of a vow, lest bodily luxury be able to thrive in him beneath a fixed limit:
let him willingly deny himself the wine that is born for him, and reject all the cups which the care of drinkers is wont to turn into wine with warm waters, or with honey, or with apples, when they renew clear draughts from pure springs. Let him shudder at grapes here, nor bite any raisin which drips with the dew of wine, or dries in the sun into a dried cluster set within the wrinkled rim of a crack; moreover let him avoid the liquor of biting vinegar, tasting sober cups from running streamlets; and let him bear a matted beard for the whole time, whoever shall be enrolled by the vow; and let the unshorn crown of his head preserve the flowing hair; let him not know how to scour graves and the tombs of his fathers and the funeral-mound of a sister, that the holy honour may persist.
If perhaps someone laid out within the same roof relaxes his limbs in death's arrival, it shall compel him to grow defiled as though sordid. Therefore let him pray for pardon for his biting cares, and shave the hair fed upon his squalid crown; and when the bright day has shone forth with its sevenfold rising, let him offer turtledoves or doves white with like plumage, that the fault may be lightened by the prophet's words and by prayer; yet let there be a loss of that time in which he had previously abstained, and let him again take up the beginnings that run once more in the desired vows, so that he may be able by his merits to attain the sought-after goal. When all these things are done, after, having succeeded, he holds his sure rewards, let him offer lambs like white fleece, two-toothed yearlings of the completed year's courses;
that one may fall for the rewards of the merit he has sought and lighten his sin; and another, a ram, may lie down for the saving acts of the now-shining body. Let him also sprinkle snowy loaves with oil, and whatever the solemn rites of the old covenant demand, that he may be able again to take up the cups grown unfamiliar. Therefore come, and as often as you desire to consecrate the praying people with entreaty, ask this of Christ with these words: 'While the right hand rests bent over the heads of men, may the bright Almighty bless you from the heavenly hall, and may God become your guardian through the ages, and may God lift his shining face above all your heads, and be merciful unto eternity;