On Noah

We undertake to set out the life, character, and deeds of holy Noah, and also the loftiness of his mind, if we can. For since philosophy itself has said that nothing is more difficult than to grasp the inner self of a man, how much more difficult is it to know the mind of a just man? Indeed, since the Lord God reserved him for renewing the seed of mankind, to be a seedbed of righteousness, it is fitting that we too should describe him for the imitation of all, and should rest in him from all the anxiety of this world, which we endure daily through various disturbances. It is shameful to outlive one's children; it is wearisome, when we hear of so many adversities befalling those dearest to us, to go on enjoying this light. Who is so brave that he can bear patiently either undergoing the various waves and storms of the churches themselves, whether present, or taking them to heart? And therefore we too had to seek this rest, so that while we consider holy Noah with closer attention, we too may be refreshed, just as every kind of creature rested in him from its works and its sorrow.

Hence he is called Noah, which in Latin means 'just' or 'rest.' Indeed his parents also said: 'This one will make us rest from our works and from sorrow and from the earth, which the Lord God cursed.' If you think this should be referred to what actually happened, since the flood took place in his time, it would seem that not rest but destruction was brought upon men, not a remission of evils but a heap of miseries. But if you consider the mind of the just man, you will notice that righteousness alone is the thing which, born for others rather than for itself, seeks not what is useful to itself but what is useful to all. Righteousness makes us rest from the works of iniquity; righteousness calls us back from sorrow, because when we do what is just we fear nothing, in the security of a pure conscience, and we do not suffer heavy pain; for nothing causes greater pain than the guilt of sin. Let us rest also from every care of earthly life, which troubles our body and soul with frequent pains and wears our life away.

Three sons were born to him: Shem, Ham, Japheth. These names signify good and (bad) and (indifferent), so that he seems to have possessed goodness by the gift of nature, and never to have lacked the temptations of evils, and to have abounded in indifferent things, that is, … as in a kind of furniture of the virtues. Why he placed the bad in the middle has an evident reason: the good of nature is present in all, and nature does not cast men into the light like shipwrecked sailors, but also supports them with strength, so that they are not overwhelmed by the temptations of wickedness nor give way as weaklings; and it fortifies and clothes them as with certain coverings of indifferent things, which are safety, good health, beauty, energy, wealth, glory, and nobility of birth, so that, fortified by this dowry, they may guard the goodness of nature and shut that evil in, so that it cannot harm, and strangle it as if enclosed. Do we not see a kind of battle line of the virtues drawn up for combat, with the weaker in the middle and the stronger right and left, as on the wings, through whom the whole line receives its strength?

Hence a certain Greek poet also says: 'and he drove the bad into the middle,' that is, he put the bad in the middle. In the same way nature, like a good general under God's command, knowing that we are born for the battles of this world, has placed the good things it has in the first rank, the things that hinder in the second, and the things that help in the third, so that the enemy, shut in as it were in the middle, may be overwhelmed by doubled forces wherever it turns, lest it wear down each of them in evenly matched battles and find a way to escape from its natural confinement and spread itself more widely.

But since this is the order when they are born, whereas when they beget, Japheth is written in first place and Ham in third, lest anyone think we have said something contrary to what comes later, the reason for that passage too must be explained. The good, which is as it were in a certain nobility of nature, goes first; the bad follows. For contrary thoughts of the mind arise afterward. As long as these are shut up inside, as it were, and do not sprout like plants, they are held in a kind of fold of the good mind so that they do not come forth. For as long as evil is in the will and not in entelechy, that is, in act and effect, the goodness of the mind, like a helmsman or a charioteer, restrains and reins in the wickedness that tries to break out. But when it has boiled up and broken out into a sore, then, so that it cannot creep farther and infect what lies near, a just providence takes over, lest the indifferent, which people commonly call the second good, should give way, being unable any longer to resist the evil now at the boil. And so, lest the evil pour out its harmful poison more widely and infect very many by begetting corruptions, the first good, which is good by nature, changes its order as it changes its place, so as to bring help to a hard-pressed wing and take on that part of the line which is struggling most; for a warrior's courage is needed in the more difficult places, just as a good guard is present more often where the walls are weaker. And so that no part may be without a defender, while that good supports the parts that are giving way, the indifferent then takes the higher place, as though the more perfect good had assigned that part to it; for nothing is more perfect than virtue. Indifferent things do not have the strength of firm virtue, but they increase and spread its grace. Hence he was called Japheth, which in Latin signifies 'breadth.'

Nor did holy Noah alone abound in begetting sons; the whole race poured itself out in generation especially at that time. This does not seem to be said idly. For since the flood was to follow, it must not be thought that the grace of fruitfulness was lacking to that generation which the floods swallowed up, so that the abundance of the human race may be ascribed to divine grace, and the flood that followed to our iniquities, who by our sins turn away the Lord's mercy. So too in later times you will find that the barrenness that was to come upon Egypt was preceded by as many years of fruitfulness. For it is a principle of virtue to begin with kindnesses and to sow grace beforehand. Hence David also says: 'I will sing of mercy and judgment to you, O Lord.' The grace of kindness comes first; the censure of sober discipline follows. It is God's doing, then, that good things are sent first; it is ours that they are changed.

God himself declares this, saying: 'My Spirit shall not remain in men, because they are flesh.' The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of knowledge. He has wisdom, then, and he has discipline too, as Scripture also says of Bezalel, who was commanded by a divine oracle to make the sacred tabernacle, that he was filled with the spirit of understanding and discipline. This Spirit, then, is given to men but does not remain. The reason why he does not remain is stated: because they are flesh; for the nature of the flesh resists discipline, since it obeys pleasure. Indeed of the Lord Jesus alone it is written: 'He on whom you see the Spirit descending from heaven and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' For he remained in him whom no hindrances of fleshly corruption drew back from keeping the order of incorrupt and unmixed discipline, him whose flesh did not see corruption. Through the one Lord Jesus, therefore, salvation is declared to be coming to the nations; he alone could not have been righteous, since the whole generation went astray, unless, being born of a virgin, he had been in no way held by the law of a guilty generation. 'Behold,' he says, 'I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother bore me' — so says one who was thought righteous above the rest. Whom then could I now call righteous, except one free of these bonds, whom the bonds of our common nature do not hold? All have been under sin from Adam; death reigned over all. Let the only righteous one come into the sight of God, of whom it may be said, no longer with a qualification, 'He did not sin with his lips,' but: 'He committed no sin.'

'Now there were giants on the earth in those days.' The author of divine Scripture does not want those giants to be taken, in the manner of the poets, as sons of the earth, but asserts that they were begotten of angels and women, and he calls them by this name because he wishes to express the size of their bodies. Let us consider whether men who give themselves to the care of their flesh but have no care for the soul may not be like the giants, just as those who, according to the poets' fable, sprang from the earth are said to have held the gods above in contempt, relying on the bulk of their bodies. Or are they to be thought any different who, though they consist of soul and body, turn away from the vigor of the mind, than which the soul has nothing more precious, and show themselves imitators of this flesh, as heirs of their mother's dullness? And so they labor in vain, laying claim to heaven with proud prayers while brooding over earthly works; by choosing what is inferior and despising fellowship with what is superior, they become liable, as it were, for voluntary sins and are condemned with greater severity.

Scripture often calls the angels sons of God, because souls are begotten of no man. So God did not disdain to call faithful men his sons. As, then, men of approved life are called sons of God, so we, on the authority of the Scriptures, call those whose works are fleshly sons of the flesh. For John the evangelist says that as many as received the Lord Jesus, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. Therefore you have afterward that the Lord was angry, because although he considered, that is, knew, that man, placed in the region of the earth and bearing flesh, could not be without sin — for the earth is a kind of place of temptations, and the flesh an enticement to corruption — yet, since they had a mind capable of reason and strength of soul poured into the body, they rushed without any reflection into a fall from which they would not call themselves back. For God does not think as men do, so that some new opinion should occur to him, nor is he angry as one subject to change; but these things are read so that the bitterness of our sins may be expressed, which deserved to offend the Godhead, as though guilt had grown so far that even God, who by nature is moved neither by anger nor by hatred nor by any passion, seemed provoked to wrath.

He threatened, moreover, that he would destroy man. 'From man,' he says, 'to beast, and from creeping things to birds, I will destroy.' What harm had the irrational creatures done? But since they had been made for man's sake, when he for whose sake they were made was destroyed, it followed that they too should be destroyed, since there was no one to use them. In a deeper sense this is made clear: man is mind, which is capable of reason; for man is defined as a living, mortal, rational animal. When the ruling part is extinguished, all sense is extinguished with it, because nothing is left for salvation once virtue, the foundation of salvation, has failed. But to the condemnation of the rest and to show the divine kindness, Noah is said to have found grace with God. At the same time it is shown that the offense of others does not overshadow a just man, since he is preserved as the seedbed of the whole race, he who is praised not for nobility of birth but for the merit of righteousness and perfection. For the lineage of an approved man is a pedigree of virtues, because as the race of men is men, so the race of souls is virtues. Indeed families of men are ennobled by the splendor of their birth, but the grace of souls is made glorious by the splendor of virtue.

'The earth was corrupted before God,' he says, 'and was filled with injustice.' The cause of the earth's corruption is plain: men's injustice corrupted the earth. Hence the Lord God also said: 'The time of every man has come before me, because the earth is filled with its iniquities.' The time of all men is indeed in God's sight and in his will. For it is not, as people commonly say, a decree of fate that is being put forward; but I think it was said here in a special sense, because in his gospel the Lord, who was to redeem the human race by the passion of his body and to cleanse it by his blood and the sacrament of baptism, says: 'Father, the hour has come; glorify the Son, so that the Son also may glorify you.' Since then in the flood the remnant of the human race was saved through Noah's ark as a seedbed for future restoration and renewal, he therefore said beforehand here: 'The time of every man has come, because the earth is filled with its iniquities.' This is in figure; but in truth he says: 'A remnant has been saved through the love of grace.' And therefore the apostle cries out, saying:

'Sin abounded, so that grace might abound still more.' 'All flesh,' he says, 'had corrupted its way.' Here he put 'flesh' for earthly man, in whom the enticement of the flesh had corrupted his way. Had he understood what gift he had received from God, he would surely not have allowed the flesh to obstruct the virtues of the soul. And so the flesh was the cause of the corruption of the soul as well; it is a kind of region and dwelling-place of pleasure, from which, as from a spring, burst out the rivers of lusts and evil passions and overflow far and wide. In them the soul's oarage, as it were, is sunk when the helmsman has been thrown overboard, when the mind itself, overcome as by storms and gales, gives way from its post. And he says well that man corrupted the way of his nature. For his way was in paradise, in that path of blessedness, in that flower of virtues, in that incorruptible grace; and this way he defiled with earthly footprints. Others read: 'his way,' that is, God's. This is how he is accustomed to signify the word of the Lord.

But now I think something must be said of Noah's ark itself. Anyone who is willing to consider it closely will find the figure of the human body sketched out in its construction. For what does God mean when he says: 'Make yourself an ark of squared timbers'? We call 'square,' surely, what is well proportioned in all its parts and in harmony with itself. So God is shown to be the author of our body and the maker of our nature, and these words signify that the work itself is perfect. That the members of man are 'square' is plainly reasonable. Consider a man's chest, consider his belly: they are of equal measure in length and breadth, unless the natural measure is exceeded when the belly is stretched by pleasures and banquets. Then who does not notice at a glance that feet and hands, arms, thighs, and legs are each divided into four? And though most of them are not of the same length or breadth, still they keep a certain proportion, so that in them too a fitting measure and ratio come together: the length, he says, greater than the breadth, the breadth than the height. And just as the timber of the ark has three dimensions — since he prescribed that a length of three hundred cubits, a breadth of fifty <cubits>, and a height of thirty cubits be kept — so in our body too there is a greatest, a middle, and a least dimension: the greatest in length, the middle in breadth, the least in height; yet the whole body, woven together out of its several members, appears square. Indeed in common speech we call men 'square' whom we judge to be neither monstrous in height and are strong in the build of their body.

Nor should we pass over in silence what he means by saying: 'You shall make nests in the ark.' I think this was said with regard to nature, because our whole body is woven together like a nest, so that the vital breath penetrates every part of the inner organs and spreads itself from our ruling part through each of the limbs. Our eyes are nests of a sort, into which sight settles. The hollows of our ears are nests, through which hearing pours itself in and drops as into a deep pit. The nostrils are a nest, which draws smell to itself. A fourth nest, larger than the rest, is the opening of the mouth, in which taste is nourished until it grows up and from which the voice flies out; in it the tongue lies hidden, which like an instrument of the voice modulates its sounds with skilled sweetness, and though it is itself irrational, expresses a rational voice. The skull is a nest; that membrane which warms the brain and holds it within itself is a nest. The lungs and the heart are nests. The lung is the nest of our breath, that is, of the breath we draw and by which we are nourished in this life; the heart is the nest of blood and breath. For it has two chambers: one in which it receives the blood as in a kind of fold and passes it into the veins, the other by which, watered from the upper one, it leads it in a continual flow into the arteries. The stronger bones also have nests, for they are hollow inside, and in their cavities is the marrow. In the softer inner organs themselves are the nests of desire or of pain. And if anyone considers other parts, he will find still more nests in this fabric of the human body. Hence I think that the psalmist too spoke not only mystically but also with regard to nature when he said: 'For the sparrow has found itself a house, and the turtledove a nest for itself, where it may lay its young.' For now in this body there is a nest of chastity where there used to be a nest of irrational desire; and where lust once nursed misshapen offspring, there now grows up the inheritance of comely chastity.

'You shall smear it with pitch,' he says. The human body consists of many bones and sinews and other parts. So, joined together outside and inside in a fitting structure, it holds together and is maintained by its own constitution, which the Greeks call hexis, so that the spirit poured into it and shut within, or the spiritual substance that works within, does not wander off, held fast as by double bonds, but is kept in a fitting and harmonious unity and a firm connection. Therefore the ark is ordered to be bound with pitch, for pitch is by nature strongly binding. Hence in Greek it is called asphaltos, from asphaleia, that is, 'safety,' because it joins what is separated and binds it with an indissoluble bond, so that you would think it held together by a natural unity. For this reason the ark is bound with pitch inside and outside, so that this connection may not easily be broken.

Elsewhere, however, that is, in Exodus, that ark which is in the holy place, the image that imitates the intelligible world, is overlaid with gold inside and outside. For as gold is more precious than pitch, so the ark in the holy place is more excellent than this one. Indeed here he simply put 'timbers,' but there timbers indeed, yet he specified incorruptible ones, signifying the merits of the saints. He added there too that its carrying poles were immovable, because the station of the saints is stable and firm, since under the guidance of virtue they have followed the path of an approved life, avoiding the company of corruption. But this ark, being in the flood, was driven this way and that with uncertain motion, because the state of sinners is unstable and their life, liable to corruption in a kind of flood of overflowing passions, wanders in inconstant error.

Nor should we pass over the fact that, after saying: 'And you shall make the ark three hundred cubits in length and fifty cubits in breadth and thirty cubits in height,' he added: 'Gathering it together you shall make the ark, and you shall finish it in a cubit at the top,' so that to the rest of the body, which was squared in a grace and comeliness of fitting measure, he might join the human head like a royal citadel. From it all the senses are transmitted to the other parts of the body, and above all the eyes, placed there by providence like scouts and guardians of our nature, survey from above almost the whole state of our city. And the mind itself, set there according to the opinion of very many, and especially of Solomon, who says: 'The eyes of the wise man are in his head,' gathers to itself a council of the virtues as in an imperial hall, so that, surrounded by that retinue, it is itself better protected and, as from a kind of inner sanctuary, imparts the governance of the whole body to the one who beholds, <and knows how> to give answers, through which we can not only look back upon ourselves and see what is before our feet, but also gaze upon the secrets of heaven itself with the deep gaze of wisdom. There, then, is the sum of our salvation, there its grace; from there comes protection, from there too the beauty acquired by the whole body, which blooms first in the face; for it is fitting that the royal hall should have greater splendor, for as its use is greater, so is its brilliance.

For if you look at the several things in the human form that seem to have been made for some use — eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, nostrils for smelling, the mouth for speaking — they serve their uses in such a way as also to give beauty. How disfigured are the faces of the blind! And what wonder if a man's face is disfigured without eyes, when heaven itself has not its beauty without the sun? We spend gloomy days without the sun; nights without the moon do not please, for these are, as it were, the eyes of the world. Take away the lights of the stars, and there is a kind of disfigurement of blindness in heaven itself. The very hairs that fringe the orb of the eyes and are set out in front like a kind of battle line, lest the pupil be harmed by any dirt or cloud of dust — they also catch anything thrown in that could harm the eye — how unsightly it is if they fall out through inflammation, if the eyelid is contracted, if the eyebrows are shaved, which shine like precious necklaces, as though set with jewels!

So too with the ears: their use is necessary and their appearance comely, and if anyone cuts them off, he disfigures the whole face. In them nature has so worked out its craft that the very windings of their cavities, curved with wonderful foresight, bring great benefit, so that a sound does not suddenly strike the inner parts of the head. Indeed we often see many people dismayed by an unexpected blast and, stunned, terrified by the sound of some voice or uproar. The very wax that forms within these windings binds the hearing as with a kind of glue; at the same time, if the impact of a sound is too violent, it is broken and slowed, so that, being announced in advance, it soothes rather than shaking the inner parts by coming unexpectedly. Also, if little worms try to get into the ear, they are held fast by a kind of birdlime of wax.

Flat noses seem contrary to nature. And if the nostrils have been cut off, how can life go on when the passage for breathing has been removed? How much more the face of a beast than the countenance of a man it is thought to be!

How pleasing a covering the hairs of the head give it, like a body of guards around a royal hall, lest the wind harm the brain or the rain strike it or the sun scorch it! Yet nature so governs them that they please either longer or cut short according to sex, according to age, or often according to the time and season of the year. In the old, white hair is pleasing; in boys it is a portent. In summer we like to be shorn closely, in winter more loosely; long hair is an ornament to women, a disgrace to men. Indeed the apostle expressed this more plainly, saying: 'Does not nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has hair, it is a glory to her?'

What shall I say of the royal gateway itself, through which go forth the courtly words, the informers of our mind and messengers of our soul? What of the very row of teeth, which not only supply strength to the whole body by their work, but are also the modulators of the voice itself?

If any of them falls out, the voice limps. We have spoken at greater length about the head because all the senses had to be placed at the top, from which all the duties would be distributed through the other parts. Next to our head behind is the neck; right and left are the arms, which guard the imperial citadel like a faithful garrison; indeed in us the parts nearer the head are stronger and more excellent. The chest too is like a kind of sanctuary of wisdom, and the stomach, as physicians say, is like a witness and confidant of the head's secrets and a partner in its suffering, to which it passes on all that is healthful or harmful to it. The sides, the buttocks, the thighs, and the legs show by their very appearance the measure of breadth, and so do the steps of the feet, which, though they seem rather narrow, become broader when we walk.

He added well: 'You shall make the door at the side,' signifying that part of the body through which we are accustomed to discharge the excess of our food, so that on the parts of the body we think less honorable he might bestow more abundant honor. Scripture expressed this much more gracefully than Socrates is read to have said it in a book of Plato. For since either Socrates himself or Plato, who was in Egypt, could have read this in the writings of Moses or learned it from those who had read them, he was struck by the fitness of the arrangement and thought a door had been opened to him to praise the design of our maker, commending him for having seen to it that decency was especially served, in that he turned the ducts and exits of our passages away to the back, so that our sight would not be offended in the purging of the belly. But the apostle, with one simple word, surpassed the descriptions of philosophy: 'The members of the body that seem to be weaker are necessary, and those members of the body which we think less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our unseemly parts have more abundant seemliness.' For the sign of our sobriety and temperance is recognized chiefly there; gluttons are either distended with indigestion to the point of danger or very often loosened when their bowels are emptied.

The apostle also applied this well to the members of the church. For what are our unseemly and superfluous parts if not luxury, if not wantonness? If someone ensnared by them in the time of his youth comes to baptism when he has advanced to a riper age, renounces his former ways and puts off his former habits, lays down his sins, is buried together with the Lord Jesus, and the world is crucified to him and he to the world, has not he, having been granted the remission of sins, more abundant seemliness than that catechumen whose life was thought more innocent? And to use the example of the apostle himself: he was a Jew, he was a persecutor; called to the grace of Christ he began to be an apostle. And because more was forgiven him, he began to love more, to labor more abundantly than all the apostles; he was made a vessel of election, sent as teacher of the gentiles. Did he not attain a richer and more honorable

glory than very many of the apostles themselves, he who before was both unseemly and inglorious when he persecuted the church of God? That poor and weak man in the church himself redeemed you by his prayers. And to open greater mysteries: what is so ignoble as the gentile people? It was poor, since it had no oracles of God; weak and lame in both feet, since it had believed neither in the law nor in the gospel; yet when called it believed, and when baptized it received grace. And so, because more was forgiven it, it loves more. The people of the Jews remained, though lame in one foot, and indeed it limps even in the law itself. And so that people, which was held most glorious, lost everything — the wonderful counselor, the prudent architect, and the wise hearer — while this people, which was ignoble, having gained everything by the title of faith and the trophy of the martyrs, glories in the fellowship of the angels. Plato, then, applied what elegance of speech he could, but the apostle, who had the Spirit of God, revealed the mystery. Enough has been said about the door, since those who were behind have been made first.

Now let us ask what the Lord meant by saying: 'You shall make the lower parts of the ark with two chambers and three chambers.' By saying 'lower parts' we observe that he wanted us to understand, fittingly, that the receptacles of food are to be counted in the lower place, that is, those organs which digest the food received. For food is corruptible, and what is corruptible is to be compared not with higher things but with lower. At the same time, since food is carried downward, and only a small portion of it benefits the strength and nourishment of the body, while the rest is led off to be purged by the bowel, because there are intestines through

which the excess of food descends, our maker so arranged them that they are not stretched straight from the stomach to the bottom, but winding and folded back, so that the use of our life might be prolonged. For if a man's intestines, which receive and lead the food down, were stretched straight, it would pass through at once without any delay, and we should have to be hungry continually and feast continually, or else, when the supply of food ceased, collapse on the spot. But as it is, in that folding and winding of the intestines into two and three chambers the food stays, and by descending gradually it supplies strength, pours its juice into the body, maintains satiety, and puts off the desire to eat; there is neither sudden outflow and abrupt evacuation, nor insatiable appetite, nor unappeasable lust for feasting. Otherwise, first there would be need and hunger; then from these would follow an unbroken continuation of eating. What is more unseemly than always to be devoted to the belly, which must be emptied when it is filled and filled when it is emptied? What third thing remains but death mingled among the very food and feasts? For how could they prolong their life for long, eating and hungry at the same time, drinking and thirsty, emptying everything they had taken before they were filled, and at once hungry again? But as it is, while the food descends little by little, natural providence tempers both hunger and indigestion. For first the food is worked up in the stomach, which many call the upper belly; then it is cooked in the liver and digested by its heat. Its juice is distributed to certain parts of the organs, from which the whole body gains strength; the growth of the young and the endurance of the old bear sufficient witness to this. The rest of the food flows down into the belly, which we all call simply the belly, and many the lower belly, from which the dung, which had descended already full of corruption, must be discharged through that door at the side.

Although these things appear so skillfully composed by the arrangement of nature at God's command, yet unless we keep measure in eating and in conduct, a flood is produced, as it were, by overflowing passions, and a kind of ruin of the whole body; for intemperance kindles lust, produces indigestion, and creates corruption. And so either the intestines are distended by an internal hardness and racked with pain, or, through the undigested moisture of the food and the harshness of indigestion, a certain inner lining of the intestines is scraped away. For their covering is said to be double, like a sheet of papyrus: one outer layer, which the experts, or those who have examined it more curiously, call continuous, running straight from top to bottom; the other inner, woven to the sides, as it were, so that, they say, it is not wholly dissolved when it is scraped; for if the inner layer were continuous, a tear in it would be incurable. There, they say, the remains of the food cling because of the delay at the joinings; and if the joinings are loosened, half-eaten food and liquids pass through and flow away.

This is the flood of man. Hence it seems to me that by the figure of this ark God wished to teach us how we may be safe from this particular flood. For corruption is the cause of the flood. Where it has crept in, the waters are opened and all the springs of desires boil up, so that the whole body is drowned in so great and so deep an outpouring of vices. For nothing subjects man to so miserable a slavery as lust and desires of that kind, which press down the wretched conscience with a heavy yoke of crimes, so that it cannot raise itself, since it has lost the freedom of innocence. The greatest remedy in this flood, then, is to put the just man first and choose him as the executor of the heavenly command. Who is the just man in us but the vigor of the mind, which shuts up within this ark every kind of living thing that is upon the earth? You too, then, restrain all your irrational passions, subject all your senses to the mind, and accustom them to the commands of the soul. Do not let your desires fly out of doors or your lust go out among the crowd; and through the rational mind you will be able to free even your irrational and unclean sins from all danger of the flood.

'Everything that is on the earth shall die,' he says. What wrong had the dumb animals done? Why were they subjected to punishment, when they have no sense of sinning? But just as in war, when the commander is killed by the enemy, his army dies with him and all its military strength is shattered, so it did not seem out of keeping with justice that, when man perished — to whom the Lord God gave a kind of royal power over every kind of living thing, to rule all birds, wild animals, and beasts with imperial authority — the cattle too and all irrational animals should die with him. Indeed whenever there is a pestilence from a corrupted region of the air, the dire plague first infects the irrational creatures, and especially dogs, horses, oxen, and those that are seen to live with men; and so the force of the disease involves the human race as well.

This, then, is the first reason, as I think, for justifying this; the second is that no one accuses nature because the other members of our body die when the head alone is removed, though we see many survive after their hands and feet are cut off. But the other members do not have the same prerogative as the head; and therefore, when it is cut off, from which our senses go out into the rest of the body, all the members die with it, and in this neither is the providence of the maker found wanting nor is the frailty of human substance to be blamed. Likewise, then, let no one now find fault: since man is the head and, as it were, the ruling part of the other animals, it should not seem strange that when he dies the other living things die with him.

The third reason is that animals without reason were brought into being not for their own sake but for man's; they were ordered to exist for man's sake, so that the human condition might be the better for their subjection. Indeed the prophet attributed this to the grace of man, saying: 'You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of heaven, and the fish of the sea,' because all these exist for his sake, some for usefulness, some for delight, some for pleasure. It followed, then, that when man, for whose sake they were made, was destroyed from the face of the earth, they too should be destroyed in a like downfall. So much for the simple explanation of the reading.

A higher and deeper interpretation adds this: when the soul is bowed down by a heavy mass of passions and drowned, as it were, in the surge of various desires, all its earthly thoughts and lusts rush headlong, because every sinner becomes the more insolent the graver the crimes he has committed. For wickedness grows with use and practice, and boldness is fed by impunity. And so he withdraws from all regard for what is honorable, and in him all earthly things die through the bitterness of deadly sin, which would destroy the sinner with a true and everlasting death; for no one dies more grievously than he who lives in sin. In him the passions die one by one: sight dies, which reports sin, which fixes itself on a deceitful woman, which is captured by the beauty of another's face, which the eyes of a harlot have bound, which the look of a prostitute has ensnared. Does he not seem to die who has driven the dart of lust into himself, who has rushed of his own accord into the pit of death? Hearing too dies when it relays crimes, when it reports the words of an adulterer's solicitation, when it implants in souls the words of a harlot, who seduces a young man with much flattery of speech and binds him with the snares of her lips. The voice dies by silence if it does not confess to God; it dies by much speaking, for it is written for you: 'In much speaking you will not escape sin'; it dies through anger, when it goes beyond the measure of retribution;

finally, every sense dies if it is a servant of iniquity. And therefore, since all earthly things die in the flood, but the just man alone remains forever, it is said to him: 'I will establish my covenant with you,' because he is the heir of divine grace, the possessor of the heavenly inheritance, the partner in the most blessed honors. Men, when they die, commonly transfer their estate by testament, and the inheritance does not pass while the testator lives; but God, since he is everlasting, transfers to the just the inheritance of the divine substance, and, himself lacking nothing, he gives what is his without any loss from the giving, for those who share his honors are no burden to him. And he enjoys more what we make use of. Indeed the Lord Jesus became poor, though he was rich, so that by his poverty we might be made rich; he sealed both testaments with his blood, to make us co-heirs of his life and heirs of his death, so that we might have both a share in his life and the benefit of his death. He granted much to the just man in saying: 'I will establish my covenant with you,' because the rational and faithful man is himself the covenant of God. For he is God's inheritance, he is God's possession; in him is the power of the divine testament, in him the fruit of judgment, in him the inheritance of the promise; of him David said: 'Behold, the inheritance of the Lord is sons, the reward the fruit of the womb.' But now, keeping the explanation of the deeper mystery, let us go on to the rest.

'Go into the ark,' he says, 'you and all your house, because I have seen you righteous in this generation.' The trustworthiness of the prophet's saying is plainly confirmed in this passage too, that the fool is a fool to himself alone, while the one who takes is wise for himself and for many. And so, by the merit of just Noah, his house too is saved in the flood. So those sailing at sea and armies in war, if the former do not lack a helmsman's skill and the latter a commander's prudence, are safe from danger by another's help. But since a good commander has a good army, we understand that here too the praise of the just man is not passed over, who so formed his house that it shone with the fellowship of virtue, and his kindred deservedly found salvation. Nor does it contradict this that later either his son or his wife gave offense. The just man was asleep when his son went astray. As for the woman, being of the weaker sex and troubled by the weight of the danger, believing that the whole world would perish in a divine fire, why do you wonder if she could not follow her husband, when the just man himself, warned by angels, barely escaped? And what wonder if error steals upon a man or his attention relaxes? Accuse, then, the just man also of having become drunk.

But I think these things should be kept for their proper place. Now let us consider what remains. He said well: 'because I have seen you righteous in this generation.' Many seem righteous to men, few to God; one way to men, another to God: to men according to the appearance of life, to God according to purity of soul and the truth of virtue. Men approve what is outward; God examines what is within. And he added with care: 'in this generation,' so as neither to condemn those before nor exclude those after, and to affirm that the flood was rightly brought about by the destruction of that generation, which had no share in fairness.

So much according to the letter. But a higher sense invites us to think that the vigor of the mind is in the soul, and the soul in the body, what the father of a family is in his house. For what the mind is in the soul, the soul is in the body. If the mind is safe, the house is safe, the soul is safe; if the soul is unharmed, the flesh is unharmed. For a sober mind restrains all the passions, governs the senses, rules speech. And therefore the Lord says well to the just man: 'Go in, you,' that is, go into yourself, into your mind, into the ruling part of your soul. There is safety, there is the helm; outside is the flood, outside is danger. But if you are within, you are safe outside too, because where the mind is its own judge, the thoughts are good, and the actions good. For if no vice overshadows the mind, the thoughts are pure. If chastity is your pursuit and temperance dear to your heart, no flame of lust kindles, no sores of sickness creep out; for sobriety of mind is the medicine of the body.

Now let us consider for what reason he orders that there be brought into the ark of the clean animals seven and seven, male and female, but of the unclean two and two, so that seed may be nourished upon all the earth. And, as I think, he declares that the clean hebdomad enters, because the number seven is clean and holy; for it is mixed with no other number, nor is it begotten of another. Therefore it is called virgin, because it begets nothing from itself; and rightly, as having no share in motherly birth and free from union with a woman, though the hebdomad is called by a feminine noun, it has the grace of a male sanctification; for every male that opens the womb shall be called to the Lord, that is, holy. And in the prophet you have: 'She escaped and bore a male,' that is, a holy one. The number two, however, is not full, because it is divided; and what is not full is reckoned empty. But the number seven is full, because the hebdomad is like the decad, and similar to that first number, for the monad bears the likeness of him who always is, from whom flow and are moved the powers that exist in every kind. So much for natural matters.

To speak now of moral matters: there is no doubt that the irrational part of our soul is divided into the five senses, speech, and the generative faculty, which seem to be feminine by nature, because our senses quickly creep toward material and worldly things; hence it is clear that their substance is of a softer nature. But to a learned and diligent man all things are clean, because the wisdom and virtue of a well-trained man pour into them a manly firmness. By the judgment of a prudent man, then, and the purpose of one who governs, they are transferred from the quality of the weaker sex into a stronger substance. For the judgment of a wise man is firm and fixed, not changeable like that of the unwise and foolish, who wavers in uncertain counsel, or like that of the wicked man, who chooses not what is true and just but what is advantageous or <useful> to himself, cuts himself off from the truth, and separates himself from what is just. For justice is a single good, considered by itself for its own worth alone, while iniquity, as something divided, brings forth now one thing, now another, bent now by hatred, now by gain, and confuses what should be distinguished. For the fool changes like the moon, and, disfigured with many-colored variety of humors, stains his soul with foul contagion into the likeness of a leprous body, often mixing wholesome thoughts with harmful ones.

But perhaps, since you see that both clean and unclean animals are commanded to be brought into the ark, it may rightly trouble you, because I said that unseemly things should not be mixed with honorable discussions. Nor do I deny that there are in our soul certain seeds and, as it were, beginnings of movements that are irrational yet clean, and of those that are not clean. For the nature of man is capable of contraries, so that there is an entrance into it both for wickedness and for virtue; and rightly at the beginning of this book, which is Genesis, you have read of the knowledge of good and evil under the figure of a tree in the midst of paradise. Of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil it was commanded that it must not be tasted, because our mind, in which is knowledge and discipline, takes in the notion of good and evil. And so the maker of nature, just as he preserved living creatures for propagating or even restoring their kind, so that the whole earth might be filled with the seed of living things, so also he did not think that the earthly substance of our body should be left empty of passions of this kind, as of unclean animals; when it is gorged with delicacies and luxury, as by a flood, it is tossed about by these passions. But when each one, by sobriety and continence, has drained the flood of overflowing passions and has restored a kind of dryness to the soul, he begins to give life to his body and to the purity of the soul, whose governor is wisdom.

It is also worth asking what the reason is why, after Noah entered the ark and brought in the animals, the flood came after seven days. For it does not seem idle that neither more nor fewer days were placed in between, but as many as there were at the founding of the world. For the world was made in six days, and on the seventh day God rested from his works. By this sign he showed that he himself was the author both of the world and of the flood. He founded the world because of his goodness; he made the flood because of the desert of our sins. Men were therefore admonished, even by the number of the days in which the world was founded, that they ought to reconcile their founder not only with tears and prayer but also with the amendment of their ways. So the Lord gave a space for repentance, wishing rather to pardon than to punish, so that, holding them in suspense with the terror of the impending flood, he might drive them to ask for pardon, and that, shuddering at the danger of coming death, they might renounce ungodliness and injustice. The second reason is that from this too we may gather the clemency of a Lord merciful beyond measure, because he was willing to remit in a few days, had they repented, the offense of many years accumulated from the founding of the world to the end. For God does not remember sin and rewards virtue, as he himself says in the prophet: 'I am, I am he who blots out iniquities, and I will not remember them. But you, remember, and let us be judged; tell your iniquities, that you may be justified.' For when he has seen that true virtue has been poured back into the soul, he grants it so much honor that he not only bestows pardon for past sins but also imparts grace and justifications. He waited, then, even on the seventh day, the very day on which he rested from his work, so that if pardon were asked, amendment might follow, and he might rest from indignation.

It was also my concern not to pass over the fact that he said the flood was forty days and added forty nights. For we know that we call 'day' the time that the sun marks by lighting the earth, and 'night' the time that the surrounding darkness separates from the brightness of day; and that we often use 'day' in such a way as not to include the night, and often so as to include it. For when we speak of a month of thirty days, we mean the nights too. Hence, since it would have been enough for Moses to say the flood lasted forty days, the question is why he added 'and forty nights.' Some who were before us understood it so: that it showed the destruction of both men and women in the flood, referring the day to the man, who is purer and like the light, and the night to the woman, who is described as created while the man slept; and also because the man comes first, as the author who stirs the woman's power and arouses it to childbearing, he more conspicuous by his public activity, she more obscure, shut in as it were by the walls of the home and closest to the night, born in second place, formed from the man's rib and owing the grace of her creation to the higher one, subject also to the prerogative of the stronger number, and comparable to material things by her function of bearing. But the number of the danger is the same in both, because the sins were also alike; and rightly the spans of time do not differ, because the deserts of their offenses do not differ.

Many also inquire with no small care why the flood lasted forty days. We can say that a material number is assigned to sadder things, that is, to the destruction of creation, but the hebdomad to the founding of the whole world, that is, to happier things. But perhaps it matters that the law too was given in forty days. For so many days Moses kept vigil and stayed on Mount Sinai when he received the precepts of the law. Rightly, then, the precepts for avoiding sins are given in the same number in which the penalty for guilt was paid, so that we may know that in the same time of life in which punishable guilt can be committed, praise can be won through amendment. Hence now forty days are prescribed not for punishment but for life, so that in this number, by fasts and more frequent prayers, we may lighten the punishments of our sins and, intent on the precepts of the law, correct our error with devotion and faith. And so, through the Lord's resurrection, the fortieth day is now counted not as the last but as the first, and life is reckoned from there, where before the number of death was counted to the end of the world and the destruction of the human race.

'And I will blot out,' he says, 'every rising of flesh from the face of the earth.' O beauty of heavenly words, if one examines them with the fitting understanding of a devout mind! God is angered at our sins, but he does not forget his kindness; he threatens punishment, but did not permit annihilation; he moderates vengeance and calls back severity. He says he will blot out flesh not from the earth, but from the face of the earth. He shakes off the flower but keeps the roots; he lets the strength of human substance remain in the depths, so that, though it labors on the surface, it persists unharmed within and, free from injury, is kept for the replacement of those who are not liable to guilt. He put 'I will blot out' well, as of the strokes of letters, which are blotted out without damage to the books and without wearing away the tablets. The ink is blotted out, but the wood remains. Letters are blotted out so that, often, better ones may be written; the ink is removed, the substance is not destroyed. 'I will blot out,' he says, 'the corruption of the flesh, that I may write incorruption. I will blot out the rising of the flesh from the face of the earth, that I may write those rising in the heavens. I will blot out from the book of the earth, that I may write in the book of life.' Let them be blotted out, my Lord, O Lord, let the letters of iron be quickly blotted out, so that the letters of Christ may be written. Let the earthly rising be abolished, so that heavenly grace may overflow. Come, Moses, make ready your lap, receive the law, take up the letters which the divine mercy will no longer blot out. Take up the tablets, which the Lord will establish forever. Would that you yourself may not break them! My own guilt too had taken them from me, had the Lord not given them back. Rightly indeed, Moses, were you angry, that those who would not render obedience should not have the divine privileges; but I think you broke them not for me but for the Jews. You broke them for the Jews; you received them back for me. The first were broken so that the later ones might remain. You broke them in the hearts of the Jews; for what use was it that they should hold tablets whose precepts they could not hold? Behold, they say they hold the second tablets, but they do not hold them. They say they read the divine letters, but they do not read them. Moses says that the tablets were written by the finger of God; they do not read the finger of God, they read the iron. They see the ink, they do not see the Spirit of God; but the church knows nothing of ink, it knows the Spirit. And therefore Paul knew how to write not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. O sacrilegious and foolish people of the Jews! A man writes with the Spirit of God, a man brought up under the law; and they want God to have written with ink, not with the Spirit.

To return, then, to what was said above: God blots out the rising of the flesh as one blots out the writing of letters. By this it is declared that he blotted out, in the manner of letters, the superfluous birth of men because of its ungodliness, but preserved the substance and way of life of the human race, as the permanence of the tablets, so that from it the remaining seed might sprout. With this meaning that saying also seems to agree: 'I will blot out every rising of flesh.' In the common usage of nature, purging seems to be the opposite of rising, because by purging the luxuriance of what rises up is cut back and checked. Yet everything that is purged loses its outward form but preserves and improves its substance. So the Lord, by the purging of the flood, checked the bodily habits and way of life of that generation, which had degenerated from the beauty of nature and the grace of the gift it had received. So much according to the letter. As for the higher sense, the form of the flood is a type of the purging of our soul. And so, when our mind has washed itself from the enticements of this world in which it once delighted, it wipes away by good thoughts the filth of former desire, as though absorbing in purer waters the bitterness of streams that before were muddy.

'And Noah did all things,' he says, 'that the Lord God commanded him.' The just man receives commandments; the slave receives orders. The one who has done whatever he undertook to carry out is counted in the place of a friend; the one who wavers in obedience is consigned to the burden of slavery. Indeed the Lord Jesus too says in the gospel: 'You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer will I call you servants.' He is commanded, then, as a friend, as one who carries out what is commanded with strong love and sober counsel. Nor was the Lord deceived in his judgment. The just man fulfilled everything — not a part, but everything that was commanded him — and therefore he receives the testimony of divine Scripture. And do not think it superfluous that he put 'Lord' and 'God' together — for God is in the Lord and the Lord in God — but it is so that you may understand that the command is common to the Father and the Son. Some before us, however, have interpreted it this way: that by saying 'Lord' and 'God' in this place he expressed a double power, of punishing and of pardoning; and because here he first punishes sinners, he said 'Lord' first, but since afterward he is indulgent so that the seedbed of the just may be propagated, he named 'God' afterward. Indeed when about to make the world he is called God: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth. And God said: Let there be light.'

There is also a consideration not to be passed over lightly, that the flood came in Noah's six hundredth year, <in the seventh month,> on the twenty-seventh of the month. There is no doubt that the seventh month is in springtime, when growing things increase, the field is in labor, and the young of both the earth and the animals pour forth. He brought the flood, then, at a time when the pain would be greater for those who were punished amid their abundance, when the vengeance would be more terrible, as though God were saying: 'Behold, rich nature has brought forth all things by the grace of the bounty of divine providence; the earth, more fruitful, has made everything sprout for the use of men. Crops of wheat are seen, the fields are filled with barley, the foliage of the trees is clothed with blossoms of the fruit to come. The earth does not fail in its service, nor the beasts in their gifts, which bring forth their young at the appointed time, so that man lacks nothing. Man alone fails in his part; he does not know his author, by whom all things are supplied to him; he neglects his founder. Man despises his rewarder, though God did not despise his own work. Let all things perish with man, for whose sake all things were born. Let man be consumed in his riches; let him die with his dowry. The earth had committed no fault before man; it went wrong in none of its fruits. It knows that it has degenerated in man alone, bearing thorns and thistles instead of fruit. The one admirable gift, the ruling part of the mind, has perished. Why then are all those things kept?' This is why the water is not poured in after the fruits have been gathered, lest the earth feel a kindness rather than a flood. Indeed among the Egyptians the Nile floods in springtime, though in a different month, so that the earth may be softened for the casting of seeds and receive the seeds sown in a gentler bosom and a kinder lap. That the flood came in Noah's six hundredth year seems to show that Adam was created on the sixth day. The same number, the one called even, is kept both in the author and in the restorer, because six is the source of sixty and six hundred. The same month is called both the first and the seventh. But we ought rather to observe the first, because after the flood the care of tilling the fields is restored in springtime, and the produce of a calm and fertile soil begins to come forth. By this it is signified that God would never have brought about the destruction of men in the number and season in which he made the beginning, had he not been offended by monstrous sins. At the same time the reckoning of the season and of the number promises pardon, because even when angry he is reminded by such prior grounds of his kindnesses not to destroy utterly the substance of those to whom he himself had given it.

'And all the fountains of the abyss burst forth, and the floodgates of heaven were opened.' Scripture fittingly expressed the force of the flood by saying that heaven and earth were moved together, the elements of which the whole origin of this world consists. So the human race, shut in, is pressed hard by masses of water flowing in from every side. So much according to the letter. As for the higher sense, by the symbol of heaven the human mind is signified, and by the name of earth the body and the senses. Great, then, is the shipwreck when the whirlwind and storm of mind and body and all the senses are mingled together. Let us weigh what is said with care. Often the fraud and guile of the mind exercise their poison, yet the sobriety and continence of the body overshadow the mind's wickedness. Frequently the mind is slippery in the uncertainty of its faith and opinion, yet the flesh is free from delicacies and luxury, so that frugality excuses the mind's error, as there are many heretics who are not unwilling to display continence of body, in order to win credit for their teaching by the testimony of a sober flesh. Though slippery in understanding, they are held to be somewhat more excusable in that they are less base. But when the poisons of the mind and the contagions of bodily obscenity confound all sense and vigor, and the soul, slippery with uncertain motion, foul with the black ink of malice, inflamed with the fury of cruelty, is also driven on to bodily crimes, and avaricious desire too, impatient of moderate means, is hurled by the craving for luxury and the lust for squandering into the crime of seeking another's life, then there is a great flood, with all the passions rushing in together; then folly, injustice, rashness, wickedness, and faithlessness seem to pour themselves out from above, like the floodgates of the mind. Then from the spring of the earthly body burst out lust, drunkenness, luxury, and at last the downfalls of various crimes, which utterly unman both the strength of the body and the vigor of the mind.

'And God shut the ark from outside.' The statement is plain according to the letter. The ark had to be shut and fenced with a safe defense, so that the wandering streams of the flood would not get in. The interpretation of the higher sense is not unfitting either, if we judge that the human body, which this ark described here prefigures, is fenced with skin and defended from cold and heat; for God the craftsman clothed it with natural hides for the protection of all its members and put on it a kind of wrapping, so that it neither freezes with cold nor melts in summer heat.

'So the water overflowed and lifted the ark, and it was borne upon the top of the waters.' Not without reason did the water overflow, when the floodgates of heaven were opened and the fountains of waters and the rivers burst out of the earth. This is said with great emphasis. For where there is a bursting forth, there must be an outpouring that cannot be recalled, nor is the downrush of huge streams easily held back. What is written, then, is plain. But if you think one should look more deeply, our flesh is driven about by various passions and tosses like a strait in a storm; by them it is thrown this way and that, as on the waves of its troubles, now by hunger, now by thirst, now by desire, now by joy, now by pain.

I think we must not pass over this either, since Scripture did not pass over it: how many cubits the water was above the earth; for it said that the water was fifteen cubits above the high mountains. The simple meaning is evident; but the allegory embraces the five senses, which are like high mountains in our body; they overshadow this flesh of passions, they are often overrun by beasts, and their dense and shady parts are disturbed. Hence the Lord too, coming to his church through the faith of the believing nations, came from Lebanon, as the prophet Habakkuk says: 'The Lord will come from Lebanon, from a shady and dense mountain.' The church too comes from Lebanon, as the Song of Songs has it. For so we read: 'Come hither from Lebanon, bride, come hither from Lebanon. You will pass and pass through from the beginning of faith, from the dens of lions and the mountains of leopards' — that is, the gentile peoples, who once suffered the heavy assaults of beastly passions as it were, and now stand out by the height of faith and the sublimity of devotion. Through these mountains, then, Christ came, subduing by the teachings of the gospel the motions of this fierce body, and destroying that loftiness of heart and self-exalting pride by his own obedience and humility; and rightly those whom the floods of grievous passions once overwhelmed began to bear the fruits of meekness. As for the number of the cubits, some before us have reckoned that the five senses have a threefold collection: sight sees the visible, hearing hears the audible, smell smells the odorous, taste tastes the tasteable, and touch touches what is subject to the substance of touching. So the five senses are reckoned threefold, or according to that saying: 'Write for yourself threefold.' I, however, think it more fitting to take them as the senses of the earthly man, of the natural man, and of the spiritual man, which those streams of the flood surmounted.

'All flesh that moved died.' This is clear according to the letter, and he expressed the corruption of the flesh properly and naturally by the sign of stormy agitation. For agitation is not vicious except through the corruption of the affections; the flesh stirs up pleasures and is itself stirred by pleasures, and such agitation produces corruption. The cause of corruption, then, is the agitation of this world, through which each one's soul degenerates. For when vicious passions move the mind, corruption is produced; when the pursuits of the virtues are stirred, there is progress in discipline. 'Every one that was on dry land died'; for those whom the wave of so great a flood had overwhelmed could not but die. So much according to what is written and the sequence of the words. But if you seek the allegory, there is no doubt that, after the example of drier wood, which the fire burns up as soon as it begins to lick it, so the soul, unless it is moistened with the dew of the various virtues, watered by a kind of draught of wisdom and by the spring of righteousness and the stream of chastity, is burned up in the fire of the desires as though its vital root were withered, or falls dashed down by the outpouring of the flesh. Hence the soul ought always to feast on thoughts of good works, so that the mind, made drunk with the juice of prudence, may grow rich, and may not easily yield to the injury of the bodily flood and die unmanned in the dry neglect of carelessness. And therefore the Lord admonishes us not to withdraw from the fountain of wisdom, to drink the cups of virtue, lest anyone wither in the sun of iniquity and be unable to endure the storm of persecution. For it is written: 'If they do this in the green wood, what will happen in the dry?'

'God blotted out,' he says, 'everything that was upon the face of the earth.' The explanation of the text is evident; but the allegory declares to us that pride is exposed, which exalts itself in this earthly and fragile substance and, forgetful of divine things and despising human ones, disfigures the very bearing and gait of the arrogant man. Such are the daughters of Judea whom Isaiah describes, flashing with nods of their eyes and tossing themselves with lofty necks. For such people raise their eyebrows, with puffed-up heart, swelling chest, and neck thrown back; they barely graze the ground with their footsteps but poise themselves with their whole body and hang in empty balance; they go forward with their step while bending their head backward; they look at heaven but disdain the earth, as though fixed by a pain in the neck so that they cannot bend it. These, then, God blotted out from the book of life, saying: 'Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled'; nor does he let them cleave, with their contrivances, to the heavenly things among the merits of the saints.

When all who were outside the ark had been killed, Noah alone was left in the ark with those who were with him. The simpler statement needs no interpretation — the understanding coincides with the letter — but the higher and inner meaning shows that the just man and lover of wisdom, like a fruitful tree when the things that used to gnaw its food, overshadow its foliage, and cramp the growth of its branches have been destroyed, remained alone with his own, as one with no share in irrational passions. His own are the pure reasonings of the mind, which cleave to virtue. And he added well that he remained in the ark, as though it would seem hardly credible, once the bodily passions had been cut off, that he was still living in the body; for though he was now free of earthly contagions, he still kept the substance of the body, though incorrupt, and, as one incorporeal in the body, he was borne above the flood and not swallowed up, bearing a body, as though placed within the ark, yet as one incorporeal steering that very body amid such great motions with passions unconquered.

'The Lord remembered Noah and the wild beasts and the cattle,' as divine Scripture says. Many are troubled why the writer did not say that God also remembered Noah's wife and sons, when he remembered the beasts and cattle. But in saying that he remembered Noah, he included the rest of his household in its author and head. At the same time a certain harmony among the rest of his household seems to be expressed. For when all are dear to one another, there is one house; but when they disagree, they are separated and split into many houses. Where there is love, then, the whole house is signified by the name of the elder on whom the rest depend, just as if one says 'tree,' he certainly includes the branches, and if one names a branch, he embraces in one and the same word the fruit that is on it.

Nor is it idle that he said first that God remembered Noah, then the wild beasts, afterward the cattle — that is, why after man he named not the gentler animals but the fiercer. The reason seems to be that the fiercer creatures might be tamed by being close to both sides. This seems to be declared also in that line of poetry: 'and he drove the bad into the middle.' For from here too the poet took it, that he arranged the disposition of an army about to fight so as to place the weaker in the middle, so that they might be helped from both sides by the stronger and share in the fighting of both sides. In this the sequence of the text is made plain. In a higher sense, it is certain that the just man holds the thoughts of his heart in the middle, not on one side, and that as long as he enjoys this life he must have heavy beasts in his body, as in that ark. For there is no mind, no soul, that does not admit even the wild movements of evil thoughts. And so the soul of the foolish man sharpens bestial movements and stokes the venom of serpents, but the vigor of the wise man tames and restrains them.

'And the Lord brought a spirit upon the earth, and the water ceased.' I do not think this was said so that we should take 'spirit' to mean wind. For a wind could not dry up the flood; otherwise, since the sea is stirred by winds every day, it would surely be emptied. For how would the sea not be drained by the force of the winds, if the flood, spread over the whole world as far as the Pillars of Hercules, as they say, and the great sea surging over the covered peaks of high mountains, had yielded to them? There is no doubt, then, that that flood was checked by the invisible power of the divine Spirit, by a heavenly working, not by a breath. Hence it is written: 'All things look to you to give them food in due season. When you open your hand, all will be filled with goodness; but when you turn away your face, they will be troubled. You will take away their spirit, and they will fail and return to their dust. You will send forth your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.' There is, then, a Spirit to whose working all things are seen to yield, in whom is the power of heaven itself, as it is written: 'By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power.' This Spirit is the creator of all things, as Job too says: 'The divine Spirit, who made me.'

Now let us consider what Scripture means by saying: 'The fountains of the waters and the floodgates of heaven were shut.' I do not think it obscure. The flood diminishes by the same causes by which it grew. The fountains of the waters had burst forth, the floodgates of heaven had been opened, so that the earth was flooded by waters pouring in from every side. Those things from which the origin of the flood had flowed had to be shut, so that it might begin to fail. This is what the letter says; but a subtler interpretation expresses that the flood of the soul had flowed in through the vice of the mind and the luxury of the body, so that wickedness was mixed with passion and passion with wickedness. When the physician, the Word of God, came in to visit the soul, which was laboring under a long sickness through the depravity of its reasonings and the bitterness of its passions, the causes of the sickness first had to be cut off. For the beginning of medicine is to cut away the causes of the illness, so that the things that harm may no longer feed the growth of the sickness. The law too teaches us this. For when leprosy has come to a stop so that it no longer spreads, then it says that the halt and standstill of the leprosy is clean; for whatever moves contrary to nature is unclean. This, then, is the health of the soul, this the soundness of the mind: that the flow of error should cease, that guilt be halted so that it does not creep on. When the incitement to guilt and sin ceases, health is secure, and the unimpaired vigor of the soul is restored.

'And the ark rested,' he says, 'in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh of the month.' Unless you pay close attention, this passage is hard to grasp even according to the letter. First of all, care must be taken that the frequent repetition of 'the seventh month' does not confuse anyone. For it is written thus: that the flood began in the six hundredth year, in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh of the month; that the pouring in of the waters lasted one hundred and fifty days; that the ark rested on the mountain in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh of the month; that afterward the waters began to decrease by the mercy of God, and the decrease of the waters took one hundred and fifty days; that afterward the tops of the mountains appeared; then after forty days holy Noah opened the door of the ark; the raven, sent out, did not return; the dove, sent out, returned empty; sent out again after seven days, it returned with an olive branch; sent out a third time after seven days, it did not return; then Noah observed that all the water had receded. And so the year is shown to be completed in the seventh month on the twenty-seventh of the month. As far as the plain explanation goes, then, the condition of the earth after the flood is restored in the same month and on the same day on which it was spoiled at the beginning of the pouring in of the flood. For in springtime every field is green and the earth brings forth fruit; then the trees begin to bud and the fruits to sprout. So the Lord re-formed and restored the earth's rich quality. In the second month, then, that is, April — for the first month is March, in which the Just One has his birthday, when the equality of night and day is reckoned, that is, on the eighth, as the Romans think, or, as others, on the fifth day before the Kalends of April — in the second month, I say, that is, April, on the twenty-seventh of the month, the flood began. Spring is reckoned the beginning of the year not according to the custom of the calendar but according to the prerogative of nature, so that, since the hope of the year begins then and the fruit begins to show itself, that seems to be the beginning of the year. But the seventh month by number is reckoned as the one called September, because although the year seems to begin from the month of September, as the practice of the present indictions shows — for that is when seed is sown — yet the origin of the year is reckoned from spring, from which a fuller grace begins to show itself; and so the month that by one reckoning is thought the first is by another estimate held to be the seventh. Then, therefore, the ark rested, that is, in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh of the month, upon Mount Ararat. From then the flood began to diminish. Consider also that things are undone by the same numbers by which they begin: the flood began in the second month of the year, on the twenty-seventh of the month; for one hundred and fifty days the flood poured in; for one hundred and fifty other days the flood gave way; for forty days its excessive force surged with rain from heaven and the bursting of the fountains; when forty other days had passed after the tops of the mountains were seen, in the eleventh month on the first day of the month holy Noah sent out the raven. So it is clear that the flood was diminished by the same number by which it was heaped up. Hence Scripture teaches us that order must be kept.

What the door of the ark is, which the just man opened, has been said above with regard to the body. According to a higher interpretation it seems that this should be said: the senses of the body are regarded as like doors. For through them, as through doors, a kind of grasp of sensible things enters our mind. So our mind is seen to look out through these senses, and especially through sight, which is reckoned more excellent than all the senses of the body, because it is akin to light; and by it, looking at the heaven, the earth, the seas, and also the sun, moon, and stars with which the sky is adorned, we understand that God is the maker and ruler of the world, and we believe that these things could not have come to be, nor could they continue, without God as their author and the founder of such great works.

Through this window, then, the just man first sent out the raven. The reason must be sought, though it is not hidden as far as the letter goes: many regard the raven as a messenger of things to come, watch its calls, and examine its flights. But the higher sense signifies that the mind of the just man, when it begins to cleanse itself, first drives away from itself what is dark, unclean, and rash; for all shamelessness and guilt is dark and feeds on the dead like the raven, while virtue is close to the light and shines with the purity and simplicity of the mind. And therefore guilt is, as it were, sent out and driven off and separated from innocence, so that nothing dark remains in the just man's mind. Indeed the raven, once gone out, does not return to the just man, because all guilt flees fairness and is not seen to agree with uprightness and righteousness. Indeed the unjust man believes that he has escaped as though from chains when the just man has separated himself from his company, being at home with a kind of flood and corruption, like the raven, which, finding no dry land anywhere, did not return but stayed away.

We must also consider why he said that the raven did not return until the water dried from the earth, as though it did return afterward. But this is a familiar idiom of divine Scripture, since in the gospel too you have it written of holy Mary that Joseph did not know her until she bore a son, when certainly he did not know her afterward either. Then what manner of speech is this, that he should say 'until the water dried from the earth,' and not 'the earth from the water'? Ordinary usage, indeed, is accustomed to have this too. Yet some before us have thought that by this way of speaking a certain immoderate force of the passions seems to be expressed, because the soul is consumed by turbid and stormy passions, but when they fail and, as it were, dry up, it recovers its strength. The form of guilt, then, does not return into the soul of the just man, leaving it as it were dry and dead, a soul it can no longer harm.

Nor is it meaningless that the dove was sent out afterward; for simplicity undoes malice, and virtue undoes guilt. Malice, then, loves the flood and flees the company of the just mind, and remains, as it were, abandoned and without any resting place, having no fellowship with virtue; but virtue returns, loving the company of the just and more at home with bestowing benefit, so that it may bring what is salutary and warn of what is harmful and to be avoided, just as the dove, sent out, when it saw that the water had not ceased, returned as one full of righteousness, to tell him by whom it had been sent what he still had to beware of, and so that, by waiting, he might later obtain a better fruit. That the dove, finding no rest, returns to him gives a clear indication that through birds of this kind is expressed how great is the difference between malice and virtue, since the raven, sent out earlier, when the flood seemed to be overflowing somewhat more widely, seemed to have found a place to settle. And surely the raven is not of the kind of other birds that are accustomed to live on the waters. Since, then, the raven seems to have found a place to stay, but the dove did not, the evident reason is that in a higher interpretation it signifies that malice is accustomed to mingle itself with the restless passions and desires by which the soul is corrupted, delights in them as in its kin and household, and settles its dwelling there; but virtue, offended at the very first sight, hastened to return to the mind and soul of the just man, because there its safest lodging has been placed, since nowhere else can virtue of this kind, like a dove, find a safe resting place. For simplicity is slow to find a harbor amid the cunning of this world and the waves of worldly desires.

And so, just as virtue, having gone out a little way as though to visit, hastens to return to the best mind and does not go far from the just man, so too the just man, devoted to virtue, when he knows that virtue is approaching, opens wide the bosom of his mind. For what does it mean that Noah, a man devoted to virtue, stretching out his hand took it and brought it in to himself? Though this seems plain according to the letter, you would not easily grasp it unless you knew the habit of the wise man, who uses virtue as a scout and seems to entrust to it a certain prerogative of exploring and conducting affairs. This virtue, then, weighs natures, so that if any of them seems suited to it, it may add progress to it. For the goodness of wisdom is common, liberal, and generous with benefit, so that it associates with itself those it sees compliant. But when it sees that the nature of some kicks against its purpose, it flies back and runs again as to a familiar lodging, and the wise and diligent man hastens to receive it as with a hand of the mind, opening his whole heart, with which he held it even when it was absent; for the wise man can never be without his own virtue.

What further does it mean that he kept the dove for another seven days and sent it out again, unless to make you notice that the good and excellent purpose of the wise man always seeks to join others to itself as well, to amend those who go astray, to correct those who wander? If he sees someone recoil at first, he still does not despair of the progress of changing and correcting him. For just as a good physician, even if it is not yet time for medicine, first sends ahead a lookout in his visit, then does not neglect the watch of a reasonable expectation, and, yielding for a while to the illness, waits for the opportunity of healing, and when it is offered does not neglect his duty: so the wise man too desires to cure contrary passions with words and discussions, as a physician with medicines. And since in all things the remedy of divine favor must be used, he therefore waited seven days, in which the whole world is described as completed and rest was granted to its maker, so that the discipline of human working might be taken from him, the author of all things.

So the dove returned toward evening, having an olive leaf and a branch in its mouth. Not idly did he put both 'evening' and 'returned' and 'having an olive leaf and a twig in its mouth,' so that you would not think virtue shuns future progress, if it can gain any, nor again suppose that it was without light and hidden in a kind of darkness, but know that, shining with the brightness of day, it waited until the setting of the day and so returned to him, with whom it could have no darkness even in the evening. The leaf too that it brought back, though it seems to have brought only a small leaf, signified some hope, even if not a great one, for those who would repent of their error; for a leaf could not exist without a shoot. So it carried a token of a sprouting amendment, if not a great one, still some token; and an olive leaf, the tree on which the olive grows, from which oil is made, by which this material light is fed and the obscurity of darkness put to flight. And what is more akin to virtue than light? The leaf and the twig, then, are a token of amendment, and amendment has repentance as its root, as it were; and this repentance cannot sprout in the turbulent, but in those who have already received the spiritual word. Nor does the olive twig seem to have been carried in its mouth for nothing, because virtue and wisdom have their brightness in speech, and its light shines out at once in its very appearance, especially when it speaks of peace, since those who seek peace are accustomed to carry this twig before them. It brought a twig because simplicity, by its purity and sincerity, pours certain seeds of benefit into our ears, and the teaching of good virtue either calls to perseverance and invites to the reward the one conscious of good discipline, or instills in the sinner a desire to do penance and follow a new way of life.

It also seems worth considering how holy Noah knew that the water had gone down from the earth, as it is written. First of all, according to the letter, because he could tell whether the leaf brought was dry or wet; next, because the dove is not the kind of bird that can dig out fruits hidden under water. But you must consider whether that leaf had sprung up before the flood or during the flood. If before the flood, the just man rejoiced that some fruit had been preserved from the old seed, and from this gathered a token of divine mercy, since the flood had now departed, a mercy that showed fruit which the floods had been unable to harm. If the leaf was born in the time of the flood, the just man surely observed that new seeds of heavenly mercy had sprouted, so that the roots of the trees were alive and, as though their life had been restored, put forth their old offspring and returned to their accustomed bearing, of which the leaves sent ahead gave the sign.

But he gathered this rather by a deep interpretation: that the Lord our God, though offended by the bitter errors of our iniquity, still kept for us some seed, however small, of our ancient lineage and ancestral virtue, so that every mark of his work and creation in the human race might not be wholly cut off. Hence Isaiah also says: 'Unless the Lord of hosts had left us seed, we should have become like Sodom and been like Gomorrah,' expressing by the name of one city a sign of blindness, by the name of the other barrenness. For in their native tongue the Chaldeans named Sodom and Gomorrah with the meaning blindness and barrenness. And rightly the Lord, in cities of this kind, cut off human vices rather than judging men to be punished.

A third time the dove is sent out after seven days, and it does not return. Let us consider this, lest what we said above be found contrary to it. If the dove in word, but virtue in fact, does not return to the just man, is the just man then abandoned and cheated of his gift? By no means. For a man of this kind is never separated from virtue; nor, when he sends forth righteousness from his mouth and brings in a discussion of some virtue, does he strip himself of virtue and despoil himself of the fairness others are to imitate; rather, like the sun, he enlightens others when he sends forth the rays of his light. Fire indeed warms those who come near, while it keeps the heat of its own nature. Does the light of day fail when it enlightens the whole world with its brightness? It keeps its course unhindered and its nature undiminished. So too this virtue in the form of the dove, while the flood was still raging — as a bird on the earth, as virtue among the passions of men — returned to the just man, because it had been unable to find a place to cling to in the hearts of the wicked; and therefore, returning, it clings and rests in that second lodging of its own. But when the floods of the passions have subsided and very many have desired to share in the word they have heard and the teaching they have learned, the discipline of virtue begins to be no longer the estate of one man but a common good, and it is drunk like a cup of wisdom by very many who before, though thirsty, would not drink; just as now the floods rage in the hearts of the Jews, and though the water of heavenly teaching overflows and drink abounds, they do not think it should be drunk. The gospel is read, virtue goes forth from the heavenly word, the priest preaches in the church; and lest, placed alone within the ark, he not be heard, sometimes he goes out from the church too, and where a Jew meets him, he admonishes him and brings forward an example from the heavenly Scriptures: they shut their ears, lest the fountain wash them even against their will and the moisture of the Lord's word sprinkle them. But if any have believed, they run to the fountain, seek teaching, long to have the gospel instilled in them, and are not sated by constant drinking. So they eagerly desire to be filled from the fountain of wisdom which before they were eager to flee. What fountain? Hear him who says: 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.'

He says that in the six hundred and first year of Noah's life, on the first day of the <first> month, the water was diminished from the face of the earth, and he records that in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dried. What does that addition about the diminishing of the water mean, when the reckoning made above seems to have completed the year, a year which begins from the second month and runs on to the second month of the following year? Unless perhaps we wish to take it that the figure of the just man is declared here: so that the first year was the one in which the flood began, that is, the first year after the six hundredth; and again the first year and the first month after the six hundredth year, when the water was diminished from the face of the earth, because the just man was first in virtue both in the generation of sinners, which was destroyed for its offenses, and first in order in the second generation, which began after the flood, since he was the first of the second generation. And deservedly he had come out first. For honor is rightly paid to him who was both the first of the first generation and the beginning of the later one, who deserved both to escape from the one and to be propagated as the seedbed of the other. For when the others had perished, he alone, rich before God by the merit of an excellent life and the prerogative of virtue, did not experience the corruption of malice; through him it came about that the whole body of the human race did not seem to be abolished on earth or left cut off from God's grace.

'And Noah uncovered,' he says, 'the roof of the ark.' Since we have taken the ark, as we interpreted above, as the figure of the body, let us understand what it means to uncover the body, that is, according to the higher sense. Otherwise it is plain how the ark could be opened according to the letter. What, then, is the roof of the human body, which was closed in the flood, unless perhaps we take it to be pleasure, which covered and as it were roofed this body of ours through that error of Adam? And it is thought most like a roof because all sense is in the head, and from there pleasure held the whole body subject. But when the mind of the just man, sober and untouched by the corruption of the flood, inflamed with desire for the knowledge of God, wished to leap out and fly up to higher things, it laid bare everything that was a hindrance, and uncovered and unroofed the appearance of pleasure, which covered the other parts of the body as with a covering, so that it might not only free the body from the service of an ignoble mistress but also grasp the things that were incorporeal; for the things that are not seen are eternal. And therefore the just man, free from corruption and eager for eternity, sought the Lord whom he did not see.

As for his saying the first month, or the second, and that it is a day of springtime, you have it said elsewhere too: 'This month shall be for you the first among the days of the year.' For he who was first in grace after the danger rightly received the prerogative of the first month.

Let it not trouble you that we said above that the leaf found on the branch could have grown after the flood, though plants often sprout under water. Yet to remove every scruple: what great thing is it if, at God's command, on the one day on which the water was diminished, the earth also sprouted at once, since he is the restorer and founder of fruits and had not forgotten the working of his own creation? Indeed you have at the very beginning that he commanded the earth to sprout grass for fodder and fruit-bearing trees with their fruit — and at once the earth put forth grass for fodder having seed according to its kind, and the fruit-bearing tree — and that was one day, on which God commanded or made these things. So God, not forgetful of his kindness but forgetful of our iniquity, restored his work in the same measure of time in which he began it.

'And the Lord God said to Noah: Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons.' So when the water receded and the earth was dried, Noah could have gone out of the ark. But the just man claims nothing for himself; he commits himself wholly to the divine command. And above all, one who had gone in at a heavenly oracle had to wait for a heavenly answer before going out; for righteousness is modest, while iniquity is immodest, claiming what is not due and showing no reverence for its author.

Now let us ask why, when they went into the ark, the order of those entering was this: first he himself went in, and his sons, then his wife and his sons' wives; but when they went out, it was changed. For it is written: 'He went out, and his wife and his sons and his sons' wives.' The letter signifies abstinence from procreation in the going in, and the use of procreation in the going out. For then the father went in first with his sons, and the sons with their parent, and afterward his wife and his sons' wives; that is, the sexes are not mixed in the entrance, they are mixed in the exit. Plainly, then, by the very order of entering the just man utters a kind of voice: that was no time for intercourse or delights, when destruction hung over all. Hence in the gospel the Lord says, rebuking it, that in the days of Noah they ate and drank, married wives and gave their daughters in marriage, and that therefore the flood came upon them because of their intemperance. That was a time of mourning, then, not of gladness; and so the just man did not take pleasure in the company of his wife, nor did his just sons seek conjugal union — for how unseemly, that at the time when the living were dying, those who were to perish should be begotten! — but afterward the use and care of marriage rightly followed, for the propagation of the rest, when the flood had receded. And so it is not men with men but women with men who go out, so that the intermingling of man with man might be seen to be forbidden, but the union of man and woman by the lawful lot of marriage permitted.

The higher sense contains this: <that> where there is danger, certain manly and stronger reasonings should cleave to the mind, and the mind should defend itself with these as with an offspring of sons, so that a kind of manly battle line may meet the storms and the graver passions. But when the danger is over, there is no harm if softer thoughts are joined to stronger ones, not so that the stronger may be made soft by the softer, but so that the softer senses may be strengthened by the manly ones, as it were, since all our counsels are directed toward virtue, righteousness, integrity, and fortitude, and by a kind of use and seeding stronger counsels can create and grow virtue. It is not useful, then, when some confusion of vices occupies the mind, for the mind to sow thoughts and beget them and be in labor. But when the desires have been restrained and the mind has come to rest, then, having received a kind of seed of reasoning, virtues and good works can sprout.

'And Noah built,' he says, 'an altar to God.' Why, above, did the Lord tell him what he should do, and Noah did everything, whereas here he did something he was not told — this may perhaps be asked. But surely the Lord ought not, like a greedy man, to demand a fee for his grace, and the just man understood that true thanksgiving is that which is not ordered but offered. And so he allowed no delay. For the grateful virtue of the soul excludes the passion of hesitation; but one who owes thanks and waits for it to be exacted from him is ungrateful. And that he says he built to God, and did not say to the Lord, but to God, according to the meaning of the name this thanksgiving seems not to be compelled, as though to a Lord, but the obliging and grateful virtue of the just man.

as though, in speaking of God, he set aside what belongs to command and named what belongs to kindness. 'And he took of the clean beasts and of the clean birds,' he says, 'and offered burnt offerings.' The letter makes evident that we ought to offer what is undefiled, in which the devotion of the offerer may shine. But the higher interpretation holds that the clean beasts seem to be the senses of the wise man, and the birds his understanding, which are far subtler and lighter.

Now let us consider more carefully what is meant by his saying that the Lord God, reflecting, said: 'I will not again curse the earth because of the works of men, for the heart of man remains diligently set on evil from youth. I will not, then, again strike all flesh, as I have done, all the days of the earth.' Although he had punished the human race, he knew that the punishment of the law serves to produce fear and the knowledge of his teaching rather than a change of nature, which can be corrected in some but cannot be changed in all. The Lord punished, then, so that we might fear; he spared so that we might be preserved; he punished once as an example to inspire fear, he spared for the future, so that the bitterness of sin might not always prevail; and also because, if someone wishes to punish sins too often, he is thought harsh rather than a just censor. And therefore God says: 'I will not again curse the earth because of the works of men'; that is, since he wished to declare his kindness toward the whole of mankind, and yet ought not to bring a kind of complacency and carelessness into human minds, he punishes a few and preserves the many. Then, when he says 'I will not again,' he shows that he lightens men's hardships rather than making them heavier, knowing that the sins of men cannot be wholly removed — as in the proverb: as if one wished to draw water with a fine net, so is he who tries to remove malice from the hearts of men.

'I will not again,' he says, 'curse the earth because of the sins of men, for the mind of man remains diligently set on evil from youth.' See how God indicates that we sin eagerly, by saying that the mind of man remains diligently set on evil; by this saying he seems to signify that the heart of man is diligently inclined to sins, and that there is in our ruling part a slipperiness toward sinning and, what is worse, no lack of eagerness for it. For he says 'diligently' as though we were anxious lest freedom from guilt should steal upon us. Then he spoke not of one evil but of many evils, and added 'from youth'; for malice grows from that age, although we have read elsewhere that not even an infant of one day is without sin. But even infancy is not without sin because of the weakness of the body, while diligence and eagerness in sinning begin from youth, so that the boy sins as one who is weak, the young man as one who is wicked, who eagerly desires to commit sins and glories in crimes; for with very many innocence is held as cowardice and guilt as praise. So young men are accustomed to boast of luxury, delicacies, and adulterous passions. Guilt, then, grows with age. He declares, therefore, that the whole human race is no longer to be destroyed, when he says: 'I will not again strike all flesh'; but punishment is reserved for a part.

What, too, does he mean by saying: 'Seed and harvest, cold and heat, summer and spring, day and night shall not rest'? According to the letter this signifies that the animals and all wooded things will remain incorrupt so long as the seasons remain in their state, according to the Lord's ordinance. For when the seasons are spoiled, the things that are each born in their seasons are also spoiled. But if there is confusion of the seasons, how can the things that are born continue when confusion has occurred? It is the seasons, then, that either spoil or preserve, according to the quality they have. And therefore the year is made up of contraries, spring, autumn, summer, and winter. Just as the harmony of a song is seen to consist of a blend of low and high notes, so this world too is held together by contraries: air and earth, fire and water. Our bodies too, by cold and heat, moisture and dryness, keep a certain order of nature. For if the natural order and measure are confounded, destruction must follow. So the Lord, removing the confusion of the flood, promises that there will be a fixed order of seasons for the continuance of the world.

The higher sense holds that by seed we understand the beginning, by harvest the end. In both lies a cause of salvation. One without the other is incomplete, for it says: where there is a beginning, an end is sought, and there can be no beginning if the end is taken away, and the end runs back into the beginning. So he declares that the human race, while it is in this world, will always run back into the same course, so that when the year begins it may be finished, and when it is finished it may begin, and the world not be dissolved in the middle of its time. So too the mind, when it seems to begin something, should press on to the end and seek the completion of its work. When it finishes some work, it should not take a holiday as though the work were done, but run back to other works and always practice the increase of virtue, since indeed it sees that the earth is always recalled to its fruits, which spring up variously either in spring and

summer, as in the regions of the East, or in summer and autumn, as in the regions of the West. At one time the seed-beds of the earth bring forth their offspring; at another we gather the fruits of the trees. The fruits, then, are divided into necessary and pleasurable: necessary from the seeds of the earth, but pleasurable from the fruits of the trees. And so our body is fed with natural food as in spring, that is, ἔαρι. Ἔαρ is the Greek name, ver the Latin. Therefore Scripture took its example from the regions of the East, and especially from Egypt, through which the Hebrew passed, or from the regions of Phoenicia. But the soul is nourished by pleasurable things, that is, by the fruits of wisdom; and to it, as cold and heat are contrary to our body, so fear and anger seem to be opposed. But since it is in the body, it must have anger and fear, and it cannot be without this necessity of bodily nature.

And therefore the mind of the wise man dispenses just moderation, so as not to mix anger and fear and produce a kind of confusion and flood in his soul. As for his saying 'day and night,' by day you understand illuminating virtue, by night you recognize dark folly. And so even in fear, as in cold, there can be illuminating virtue. Likewise temperance can restrain anger, so that one is not wholly undone by fear but is rather directed by fear to works of virtue; for example, if a persecutor presses you, that you may fear God more and think eternal punishments more to be avoided than present ones; and that, fearing these, you may be kindled to glory, angry at faithlessness and crime; and again, when inflamed with anger, you may moderate its agitation by the fear of God.

'And the Lord blessed Noah and his sons, saying: Increase and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it. And the fear and dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of heaven and upon all that move upon the earth and upon all the fish of the sea.' This prerogative of power over the other animals seems to have been granted to man in the earlier passages too, in the place where he said that God made man in the image of God; <he says>: 'Male and female he made them and blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it, and have power over the fish of the sea and the birds and the beasts of the earth and the creeping things.' I have pointed this out so that you may understand that a twofold generation of man is expressed: one according to the image of God, the other according to the molding from the clay of the earth. Indeed that creation of man from the clay of the earth seems to have taken place after the world, after God rested from his works. The molding of the earthly statue is begotten, as it were, late. There was no rain upon the earth, nor did man work the earth. Then God formed man from the slime of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. But the man who was established on the sixth day, as in a perfect number by which all the works of God were completed, as by a perfect work, was <made> according to the image of God. To him also is compared this man who was found just in the flood. And therefore God set him over all earthly things, as he set that one made in the image of God, because each was free of earthly vices: the one, because he was so begotten as to owe nothing to earthly contagion; the other, because he had been tested in dangers and examined in the passions and found

not subject to confusion in the midst of confusion. The higher sense holds that the just man increases in the greatness and abundance of virtue and of teaching, and fills the earth as it were a heart, in which there is a receptacle of intelligible things. So he lets nothing be empty of wisdom which folly could invade. He has dominion, then, over all earthly passions, and also over the bodily senses; he also subdues the beasts to himself by a kind of terror and fear, the beasts in which the form of malice and savagery seems to be present. For all malice is savage and wild; it is puffed up with a kind of airy swelling. Nor is it obscure that certain creeping things have the form of deadly passions, by which a kind of poison seems to be poured into the mind. Over all these the just man rules; he is not mingled with them but restrains them, if his mind is not led by pleasure or desire, not broken by sadness and fear, nor drives the slippery and fleeting course of this life in luxury and delights, but the wise man banishes passions of this kind from himself by continence and temperance.

But since he immediately added: 'All creeping things that are alive shall be food for you,' lest it perhaps disturb you that we spoke before of poisonous creeping things, know that some creeping things are poisonous, others harmless. Understand it, then, of harmless creeping things, which, though they do not all creep on belly and breast like snakes, have small feet, so that they seem to creep rather than walk. Take, then, the unclean bodily passions as like the poisonous creeping things, and the seemly ones as like the harmless. For every affection that is apart from the enticement of unseemly pleasure is indeed a passion, but a good passion. Softer desire, anger, and fear — these are harmful passions of the soul; but harmless affections are good passions. By these a certain use and reason for living is supplied to us; their food we use for the grace of life; in their banquets we delight.

What, also, does he mean by saying: 'As the green plants of fodder I have given you all things'? Here even those who understand simply, without weighing the expression closely, do not seem to us to be opposed to us. For there are some who think that plants seem to have been assigned to us as food by God's command, so that we ought to use them rather than meat dishes. I for my part would gladly agree with them, so that the use of plants might take root in the human race for the sake of thrift and temperance, were it not that I see that those who do not accept this willingly could reply to me, first, that not all plants are found suitable for human food, and then that not every kind of man is led by the love of wisdom and continence so as to be able to follow continence. And therefore we cannot divert what is a general precept to a small portion of a few men; for this precept is given to all men.

And therefore let us consider what he said: 'As the green plants of fodder I have given you all things.' He did not say 'I have given you all plants for food.' Let those, then, who eat meat use it as they would plants, not to distend the body or fatten it, as meat dishes are accustomed to do. But just as not all plants are fit for use as food, so not every living creeping thing is suitable for feasting, since we must abstain from all poisonous ones, although luxury has gone so far that it consults pleasure more than danger, and in many creatures it cuts away what is said to be naturally poisonous and claims the rest for food, which, though not fully dangerous, is still close to danger, and some corruption must have spread into the juice of the whole flesh. Many also shoot stags and swift animals of that kind with poisoned arrows and afterward cut away a certain part of the limbs and use the rest of the body for food.

As for the higher sense, that is, why it was rather said: the irrational passions ought to be as subject to the mind of the wise man as plants are to the countryman, and he should use them, these creeping thoughts as it were, as the farmer uses plants, which cannot harm, yet do not have the grace of a stronger food. For a general precept, common to all, does not impose the higher kinds of virtue, which belong only to a few. But even if someone cannot provide himself with the stronger banquets of the virtues, let him have passions of this kind, which do no harm but give delight.

Therefore holy Moses at the beginning informed and instructed us about the breathing in of the soul, so that we should not slip into the various opinions of the philosophers, who cannot agree even with themselves. For many have held various views: Critias and his disciples, saying that the soul is blood — meaning, of course, this soul by which we live, which is the sensing soul, not that soul which is reckoned the rational and intelligible soul of the inner man. Hippocrates, though he did not reject Critias's acumen or refute his argument, still did not accept his view. Aristotle called it endelechy; others held it to be fire. Let us, then, hold to this division: let us distinguish what is rational in the soul, whose substance is the divine Spirit, as Scripture says: 'For he breathed into his face the breath of life'; and let us hold that in it there is also a certain vital nourishment by which this body is animated, and also a part that feels pleasure. The substance of those parts of the soul, the vital and the pleasure-feeling, is called blood by some, although Scripture too has said: 'The soul of all flesh is its blood.' Properly, then, it called blood the soul of the flesh; for in the flesh is pleasure and passion, not mind and reasoning. Yet if you pay close attention, this passage explains that one. For when he called blood the soul in this place, he surely signified that the soul is one thing and the blood another, so that the substance of the soul is the vital spirit, but that this vital spirit does not by itself alone and without blood provide the use of living, but is mixed with the blood. For there are the vessels called arteries, receptacles of the spirit as it were, which hold not only pure air but also blood, though a far smaller portion of blood. For since there are two kinds of vessels, one the veins, which in Greek are called phleps, the other the arteries, the vein has more blood than spirit, while the artery has less blood and much more spirit. The blend varies according to the different nature of each individual.

But the higher sense ought to delight you, which signifies that blood is called the soul because blood is hot and fiery, as virtue is. Whoever, then, has been kindled with zeal for virtue and has taken on the glow of praise excludes all the delicacies of the belly. 'Those thoughts, then, which are fleshly and earthly,' he says, 'you who are set in the ardor of virtue will reject as unfit for spiritual food.' For he was not eating flesh, that is, thinking of anything earthly, who said: 'My food is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven,' breathing into men the pursuit of virtue and pouring in the desire for divine knowledge. So earthly and weak thoughts are reckoned unmanned, as it were, and without the use of blood, as one is called unmanned who has lost much blood; for by the shedding of blood he grows cold. Whoever, then, is diligent in the virtues sends away and rejects bodily foods, except as much as he knows is enough for nature; but whoever is more careless, following the slippery and watery course of this life, falls as though he had lost his footing into the womb and the belly. And so he who is a stranger to heavenly food, and cannot say: 'But our citizenship is in heaven,' desires the things that are earthly. And therefore, to call us to hidden foods, the same apostle says: 'Do not touch, do not handle, do not taste the things that perish in their very use, according to the precepts and doctrines of men; which have indeed a show of wisdom in the observance of religion and humility of heart, not in indulgence of the body, not in any honor for the satisfying and careful tending of the flesh.'

Indeed what follows confirms that this is the sense; for he says: 'For I will require your blood and that of your souls from all the beasts and from the hand of man.' He compared the iniquity of man to the malice of beasts, or rather he heaped it up beyond the savagery of beasts by saying: 'from the hand of man, his brother.' For the beasts have nothing of nature in common with us; they are bound by no brotherly bond. If they harm men, they harm them as strangers; they do not violate the laws of nature, they do not forget the affection of kinship. Therefore a man sins more gravely who lies in wait for his brother, and therefore the Lord promised that he would punish more severely, saying: 'I will require the blood of man from the hand of his brother.' Or is he not a brother whom a kind of womb of rational nature has brought forth, and whom birth from the same mother has joined to us? For one and the same nature is the mother of all men, and therefore we are all brothers, born of one and the same mother and bound by the same law of kinship.

And therefore the Lord both called him a brother and called that one a brother from whom the brother's blood is required; by this he signifies that danger is rather to be feared from those who are joined to us by the bond of brotherhood. For from there come the more frequent plots and dangers to men; and, to take a particular case, between brothers in the particular sense hatreds often grow up in the division of an inheritance. Then, if more has been given to one brother by the parents, the other brothers are the more indignant and try to take away by murder the favor given by the parents. These wars are rather to be suspected, wars not of cities but of individual houses. So the Lord included in the judgment of vengeance those whom he knew would be more likely to lie in wait.

The third reason is that he said 'brother' in this place, not because the murderer is worthy of the name of kinship, but so that he may be the more burdened by the word of kinship, and so the crime be increased and the heavenly vengeance be the more just. So the Lord our God promises vengeance, so that even in this way the one who has forgotten kinship may be broken by fear and know that, even if the murderer escapes men, he cannot escape God's judgment, but is reserved for a greater and eternal punishment.

In a higher sense we understand this: we must beware not only of the plots of strangers but also of our own, that is, of the thoughts at home in us; and then we must guard not only against malice of mind but also against our very words. Therefore it says: 'In much speaking you will not escape sin.' So this seems to be signified: that we must give account to the Lord not only for our work but also for our speech, which is more at home with us. And therefore we must consider the more carefully, lest by word or deed we incur offense; for as with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, so with the mouth a fall is made unto death.

'Whoever sheds the blood of man,' he says, 'for the blood of man his own shall be shed.' The expression is not mistaken; rather there is an emphasis in the words: the one who has shed a man's blood will himself be shed like blood, because it takes away from him the hope of posterity; for just as blood poured on the ground is scattered here and there, so the soul of the wicked is dissolved after the manner of bodily frailty, since it is said of the soul too that its death is corruption, because it is cheated of the gift of heavenly grace and, dashed as it were on the rocks of malice, diminishes the body of its health.

Many are also troubled that he said: 'In the image of God I made man,' and did not say 'in my image,' since he himself is God. But understand that there is both the Father and the Son. And though all things were made through the Son, yet we read that the Father made all things, and made them through the Son, as it is written: 'In wisdom you have made all things.' Whether, then, the Father speaks — he made him in the image of the Word — or the Son speaks — he made him in the image of God the Father. And therefore he shows that the nature of man, that is, of rational man, according to which we were created in the image of God, is familiar and akin to God; and for this reason what he sees committed cruelly and impiously against a living being akin to him is not left unavenged by God.

The added reason for vengeance, then, has this effect: first, that we exclude the opinions of certain philosophers who deny that God cares for men; then, knowing that the prerogative of our vengeance remains with God, that we neither commit against others what must be avenged by divine judgment nor ourselves fear death too vehemently, since we know that the slaying of an innocent man is in no way disregarded by God.

'There shall not be a flood,' he says, 'to corrupt all the earth.' It seems doubtful whether 'there shall not be a flood' is to be understood as 'the flood will not corrupt the earth' — for that is what floods usually do — or rather (there will not be such a flood that all the earth is corrupted), as what follows makes clear when he says that all the earth will not be corrupted; for he shows that there will indeed be floods, but not such that all the earth could be corrupted by them.

But the higher sense holds that there will now be a providence of the Lord, so that the flood of bodily passions may not be so great that every soul perishes. And indeed I do not dare to say that the Lord seems to establish that no one's soul can perish entirely. For what do we say of the parricide? What of the murderer, the adulterer, the transgressor? What parts of the soul do we keep for pardon in him? Hence I rather think that the Lord our God calls us to this: that even if someone has other, lighter passions, he should not entirely despair of divine grace nor wholly distrust that he will conquer; but even if he is given to luxury and cannot avoid the pursuit of luxury, let him still take care to refrain from adultery; let his delight be in feasting, not in sexual sin. And even if someone is greedy, has seized others' goods, driven out orphans, turned widows out of their homes, let him at least afterward return to repentance and restore what he took. Indeed Zacchaeus deserved pardon because he promised not only to restore, but to restore fourfold, to those from whom he had taken anything, and also to give half of his estate to the poor.

Let us also consider more carefully what he means by saying: 'I will set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of an eternal covenant between me and the earth. And when I bring clouds over the earth, my bow shall appear in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant.' For he does not, as many think, mean this bow which men say exists to declare signs of rain, in which various colors are shown, like the rays of the sun now glowing red, now shining with a clearer light, from which future rain is also signified, because a certain instability of fair weather is shown by that many-colored appearance. Some call this bow iris; but far be it from us to say that this is the bow of God. For this bow, which is called iris, is usually seen by day and does not appear at night. Even during the day, if the air is covered with dark clouds, it is not seen even then, unless perhaps when the heavier clouds begin to break up.

Let us see, then, whether, since the bow with which arrows are shot is now bent, now relaxed, Scripture seems to signify a certain stretching and relaxing, by which all things are not broken by too great a stretching, but there is a certain measure and balance of the divine power. There is, then, an invisible power of God which, in the likeness of this bow, governs the stretching and relaxing according to the divine will, mercy, and power, which allows all things neither to be confounded by too great a loosening nor to be burst asunder by too great a breaking in. He says it is placed in the clouds because the help of divine providence is most needed when hosts of clouds are driven together into storms and tempests. And therefore he says: 'I will set my bow in the cloud,' not 'I will set my arrow.' For the bow is the instrument for shooting the arrow; so it is not the bow itself that wounds, but the arrow. And therefore the Lord sets in the clouds the bow rather than the arrow, that is, not what wounds, but what carries a sign of terror yet does not usually have the effect of a wound.

Why, when he counted Noah's three sons above, Shem, Ham, Japheth, did he in this place include the offspring of only the middle son — that is, when he says: 'Now Ham was the father of Canaan; these were the three sons of Noah' — especially since those two were just and this one, the middle, was unjust? So the offspring of the unjust is included before that of the just. We cannot deny what is written; but his offspring was added to heap up his offense, because, though he had a son and was a father, he alone did not acknowledge his father, he who ought most to have acknowledged him. And so he deserved to have a wicked son, because he had been wicked to his father. At the same time it signifies that from that Canaan came the Canaanites, who after many generations were overcome by the just people and gave way to its possession. It is plain, then, that Canaan was the ancestor of the Canaanites, he who was the son of this Ham who proved impious toward his father.

The higher sense is marked by the interpretation of the names. For Ham means 'heat,' Canaan 'their disturbance.' For one who is hot is at once moved and disturbed; and therefore it is declared most plainly that it was not so much a man who was the father of men, but an evil passion that begot a wicked passion, which was foreign to the father's character, that is, to the practice of virtue.

'And Noah began to be a man, a farmer of the earth.' At first sight Noah, the just man, seems to be compared to that Adam who was made from the earth, because of him too it is written that when he was cast out of paradise he began to work the earth, and of this one that when he came out of the ark he became a farmer. And in both cases a kind of figure of the flood had come first, since Noah came after the flood and Adam, according to the molding of the body, after the founding of the world. For in order that the world might be made, the water was gathered into one gathering so that the earth might appear, which before could not be seen because of the confusion of the waters. So just as that first-begotten master seems to have worked the earth, so too Noah, coming out of the ark, became the author of sowing and cultivation. These are thought to be alike; but if you consider the words, which already express the force of a higher sense, it is one thing to be a worker of the earth, another to be a farmer; for the one acts as a hired laborer, the other as the father of a household. Indeed Cain, who killed his brother, was a worker of the earth. And so that you may know that working the earth is more servile than free, the parricide's working is included in the curse. For it is written: 'For you will work the earth, and it will not increase its strength to give to you; groaning and trembling you will be upon the earth.'

Our flesh is the earth, which the wicked man works but the good man cultivates: the one seeks a wage, as it were, from the earth; the other gathers the fruits of good discipline and its grace, so as to make his field more fruitful, able to answer to the Lord's tillage and show the cultivator's care. But what else does the worker seek except only food for his body, devoting himself rather to the use of the belly, and content to get out of it only what can serve him for his living? But the other is fed by the benefit of the fruits. You know what fruits the just man has: 'the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness.' The good farmer, then, has continence and chastity, so that if any trees are quickly bent toward the ground and sprout too profusely, he may cut them back with a kind of pruning hook of his temperance, so that they may cast off what is weak and sprout what is comely.

Why does the just man first plant a vineyard, and not wheat or barley? And where did a vineyard come from after the flood and the corruption of the earth? But of this we have spoken above too: in springtime even the roots of spoiled vines could put forth shoots. Hence I think this must be resolved with greater care: why the just man seeks first what is for pleasure rather than what is necessary. For the necessary fruits are wheat and barley, without which we cannot live; but wine is for pleasure, given for the sake of delight. Because he is just, he therefore claimed for himself rather what was second than what is first. For he offered to God the necessary food of life, which was …

but wine superfluous to men and not necessary. But perhaps you will say that men cannot live without drink, just as without food. Is drink, then, as necessary as food? I do not deny it. Has it surely been established by the Lord as necessary for thirst? I do not object. And therefore, for necessary drink, it was fitting to channel springs and rivers, which were not made by the hand of man but flowed at the command and working of the Lord our God. And lest, since we have spoken of the Lord's working, you twist it toward the fact that Cain's working seems to have had curses, consider that it is not working that receives the name of the curse, but that it is written 'to work the earth.' For he who works the earth is a hired man; but he is not a hired man but the Lord who says: 'My Father is working until now, and I am working.' Hear what such a worker works: 'My food is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven.'

'And he drank of the wine,' he says, 'and was drunk.' He did not say 'he drank wine,' nor that the just man drank up the wine, but 'of the wine,' that is, he tasted a portion of it. It belongs to the drunkard to swallow all the wine, and to the intemperate to empty what he has taken; but the continent man must use a lawful measure. There are, then, two kinds of drunkenness: one that brings staggering to the body, trips its footsteps, and disturbs its senses; the other that warms the mind with the grace of virtue and seems to turn away all weakness. Hence the apostle says: 'Use a little wine because of your frequent weaknesses.' For just as by this moderation in drinking wine serves not weakness but health and relieves every weakness of the body, so too that glorious drunkenness excludes every weakness of the flesh, of which it is written: 'And how glorious is the inebriating cup!' What is this drunkenness? 'Be drunk,' he says, 'not with wine, in which is luxury, but be filled with the Spirit,' as the apostle said. According to the letter, then, there is a caution, and according to the wise man's higher sense there is praise. He is cautious who, even if he is uncovered, is uncovered in his own house, where coverings are not lacking and certain shelters for drunkenness, so that he knows how to hide his faults.

Bodily coverings, then, such as walls and roofs, cover the naked body; but let us see what the coverings of the soul are. We shall find the coverings only if we have examined its uncovering. The uncovering of the wise man is twofold. So our mind is clothed with a twofold covering, if either it has committed a sin unwittingly — for this is the uncovering of a mind as it were drunk, so that it does not know what wrong it does, slipping as though led into vice by a kind of intoxication of ignorance — or again, buried in the sleep of negligence and ignorance, it does not know its error. When we fall into these, or rather when we fall into many sins even knowingly — for there is a certain natural drunkenness of our weakness too, so that we are carried into vice by the rush of pleasure, as many are inflamed by the heat of youth, or set ablaze by luxury and pleasure, or carried off by the desire of avarice — surely in all these a medicine should be sought, so that one may cover a weakness of this kind first with a certain shame and modesty, so that even if he is still placed on the slippery ground of sinning, he may yet give a sign of amendment. For it makes a great difference whether one desires to boast of one's sins or to hide them; in the one there is base shamelessness, in the other a tolerable modesty that shows hope of future correction.

There is another uncovering of the soul, by which it casts off and strips away, as it were, the burden of the body, fleeing from a kind of tomb of the flesh. For 'an open tomb is the throat' of such men, a tomb in which the soul is as it were entombed, weighed down by pleasures and the various passions of the desires. So the soul strips itself of the earthly heap and escapes, as from nets cast around it, whenever it has stripped itself of every snare of the passions and turned away all that unsightly form of earthly stain, so that it may see the light of eternal beauty.

I now ask why he did not simply say: 'Ham saw his father's nakedness,' but: 'Ham, the father of Canaan, saw.' Surely Canaan had not been born. Why, then, did he add the son's name, unless so that the inheritance might be disfigured by the fault of its author, and the author be weighed down by the son's wickedness? So both the father in the son and the son in the father are convicted, sharing a common fellowship of folly, wickedness, and impiety too. Nor could it be that one who had himself proved a wicked son to a good father, degenerate both in nature and in upbringing, should beget a good son.

So much according to the letter. As for the higher sense, all the worst characters delight in others' errors, and not only in errors but also in things that seem evil to them, even if they are not. For Noah did not feel himself naked, since he was clothed with the garment of wisdom. Indeed Adam too, placed in paradise, did not think himself naked until after he had committed the error of transgression. And uncovered of the garment of wisdom and righteousness and stripped by the transgression of the heavenly commands, he saw <himself> naked and thought he must be covered with leaves. So Ham laughs when he sees his father uncovered. For every wicked man, since he himself has strayed from discipline, takes the falls of others not only as a comfort for his own error, because he has found partners in guilt, but also rejoices with a wicked affection, as though he had corrected his own offenses. An evil mind, then, rejoices that something has happened to the wise man contrary to his intention, though a fall of the body ought not to count as a vice, even if it is thought a fall, unless the soul too inclines to guilt. Finally, errors of this kind should be judged pardonable, not pursued with hatred nor held up to ridicule; but the wicked mind, as I have said, when it thinks the wise man has erred, thinks it must insult the one whose character it thinks contrary to its own, because its own sin is refuted, as it were, by the silent testimony of the wise man; and it thinks it should rejoice that his learning did not profit the just man, nor did his righteousness support him, nor did the things that concern the body have a prosperous course. For these things are esteemed the highest goods by the wicked, being placed in riches or honor, which yet bring no fruit to the praise of virtue. Hence they seem to be defenders of folly <who think> the lover of virtue cheated of the gift of prosperity, they who think every good is to be reckoned by temporal things rather than by eternal ones.

Why did Shem and Japheth put a garment on their shoulders, walk backward, and cover their naked father, and not see his nakedness? The letter expresses an evident affection of filial piety: the good sons took care not to see their father stripped of his clothing, lest reverence for their father be diminished even by the very sight, since piety is often offended even by a silent look. Hence it is said that at Rome too there was an old custom that sons, especially when grown, did not enter the bath with their parents.

But the higher sense holds that the foolish man sees only present things, which are before his eyes; he does not look to the future, he does not think of the past; but the wise man both remembers the past and considers the future. Every wise mind, then, walks backward, that is, looks at the past, and is not hindered by any habit of nature; it suffers nothing of its deeds to be empty, nothing naked. What was done otherwise it covers with a kind of garment and grace of present or future work, so as to pass over nothing unseemly and leave nothing unadorned. Hence the apostle too forgot what lay behind and reached for what lay ahead; but he forgot so as to hide the errors of his persecution, to cover his former offenses, and to overshadow them with good works. For blessed are they too whose sins are covered, that is, if they are covered with good deeds and hidden by the disciplines of the virtues that follow.

'And Noah became sober from the wine,' he says. It is plain that men become sober from drunkenness after sleep has intervened; but the mind is sober when it knows both past and future. The mind of the just man, then, was sober even when it was thought drunk; for glorious is the cup that inebriates the just. But the one who laughed at his father was truly drunk. For since he considered neither the past grace of his begetting, nor the present reverence due to his father, nor the future punishment for wronging his father, he was truly drunk, and what he thought he saw he did not see. There was a deep blindness in him who could not see his father. For if he had seen his father, he would surely not have laughed; for a father is not to be laughed at but revered. Much more could the fool not see the mind of the just man. For how did he see, who thought there was the error of drunkenness in him in whom was the perfect breath of wisdom and the other virtues? As it is written: 'For she is a breath of the power of God.' For when is the mind more sober than when it so beholds the nature of all things, and the affairs of times present and to come, that no staggering of temporal drunkenness appears in it?

I also ask why, when earlier he called Ham the middle one among the sons, he now makes him the younger. For it is written thus: 'Noah knew all that his younger son had done to him.' Did Scripture err before in the order of birth? Surely not. What then? Is what is now written contrary? I do not think so. How, then, is it resolved, unless you take 'younger' not by age or time, but as one unformed in understanding and set in a kind of infancy of intellect, who has not drunk in the teaching of a more advanced age nor taken in the counsel of the old? For there is such a thing as gray-haired understanding in men. And therefore it says: 'When you come to the council of the elders, shut your mouth,' as another saying has it elsewhere; for you must learn before you speak. Keep your ears ready, then, so as to gain something from the counsels of the wise. The tongue must be restrained, the hearing made ready.

Blessing his son Shem, Noah said: 'Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.' He said both 'Lord' and 'God,' and specially 'God of his son,' whose name is Shem, because he is the God of the just, that is, the God of minds, not of valleys, of those who have the grace of lofty virtue. Then why, when his son Ham sinned, did he consign not Ham himself but his son to slavery? Perhaps because a father is more affected by the wrongs of his son, especially those of which he himself is guilty and the author, and is more grievously saddened that the condemnation of his own sin is paid by his son, who is punished not so much for his own desert as for his father's; then because, since the son was a pupil of his father's teaching and an imitator of the worst thoughts, both used, as it were, one body and mind and the same malice. Without distinction, then, the son paid the price either of his father's malice or of his own, since there is a common fellowship of wickedness. What he paid for his father's wickedness, then, he doubtless paid also for his own, being guilty of his father's fault; or at least the punishment is prolonged further when it reaches even to the son, and the affliction of the successor

is drawn out over a long time. So much according to the letter. But here not so much persons as characters are meant, in both of which there is one nature. For Ham means heat, Canaan agitation and restlessness. And one who is hot is surely restless and more agitated. In the two, then, there was one passion and one affection.

And so when one is consigned, both are condemned. Why, then, did holy Noah, blessing his son Japheth, say: 'May the Lord enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the houses of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant'? We said above that Japheth signifies, as it were, the indifferent good. Indifferent things have breadth, which lies in health, vigor, beauty, strength, riches, favor, nobility, friends, powers, and the rest. But though these are indifferent goods, they have harmed many who possessed them without wisdom and righteousness. For riches have made many drunk, nobility and power have made them proud, beauty has made them wanton, and by its help they have corrupted the chastity of another's mind. So the things we have spoken of are indifferent according to the disposition of the one who uses them; their use is either governed by the virtues, or, without the governance of the virtues, what could be of benefit begins to do harm.

Now we think it should by no means be passed over that Noah is said to have lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood. For it is certain that in three hundred the cross of Christ is signified, by whose type the just man was set free from the flood. In fifty is the jubilee, the number of remission, in which the Holy Spirit was sent from heaven, pouring grace into human hearts. So the just man completed the course of this life with a perfect number of remission and grace.

Of the descendants of Japheth he says: 'Rhodes and other islands of the nations.' Not without reason is he called breadth, since his offspring went forth even into the other part of nature, that is, the sea. For truly, like breadth, it was not content with what nature had prescribed for men's use, that is, the possession of land, but it also went into the sea and advanced as far as the islands. So much according to the letter.

But according to the higher sense, because the things that are outside, which are called goods — riches, powers, honors — are spread abroad more widely, as it were; and the rich are not content only with what is in their hands and before their eyes, but spread their desires far and wide, while either gain of money is sought from farther places, or honor from more people, or a more widespread power, or desire.

Now I ask why Scripture recorded that Cush, son of that wicked Ham, was the eldest. There are two kinds of earth: one sandy and dusty, or rather, to put it more precisely, dust; the other kind fruitful and fertile, that is, more solid and deep earth. What, then, does the wicked man beget but dust, from which there can be no offspring? And therefore the prophet compared the ungodly to dust, saying: 'Not so the ungodly, not so, but like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth,' because, according to the higher sense too, the soul of the ungodly is unfruitful and cannot produce useful fruits.

Why, too, does Cush beget Nimrod the giant, who was a hunter before God? Hence it is said: 'Like Nimrod the giant, a hunter before God.' What else, then, would dust and sand beget but an earthly man, because the ungodly man puts earthly things before heavenly ones? For the fable presents the giants as having wished to fight against the powers above, and they thought they should climb to heavenly things by an earthly ascent.

In a higher sense it signifies that whoever loves earthly pleasures and follows them, and thinks he can attain the grace of God by them and that the heavenly kingdom is to be granted to such errors, fights against heavenly things with a stubborn disposition. Therefore there is a proverb about one who has sinned: 'Like Nimrod the giant, a hunter before God.' Nimrod by interpretation means 'Ethiopian.' The Ethiopian's color signifies the darkness and squalor of the soul, which is opposed to the light, without share in brightness, wrapped in darkness, more like night than day. The hunter's way of life, too, is in the woods, among wild animals and beasts. Being irrational, then, he mingles with irrational passions, and such a hunter is accustomed to seek out the things of wild and very harsh malice and to possess them and delight in them. Indeed the beginning of this Nimrod's kingdom was Babylon, that is, confusion, because malice and power lie not in simplicity and purity, not in the distinction of virtue, but in the confusion of vices.