Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.15–11.30

Rightly has Scripture defined pride as the beginning of all sin, saying, “The beginning of all sin is pride.” To this testimony that saying of the apostle is also fittingly applied: “The root of all evils is avarice,” if we understand avarice in a general sense, by which anyone seeks something more than is fitting because of his own excellence and a certain love of what is his own. To this the Latin language has wisely given a name when it called it “private,” a word that plainly is derived from loss rather than from increase; for every privation diminishes. So the very place from which pride wants to stand out is the place where it is thrust into straits and want, when by a ruinous love of itself it is reduced from what is common to what is its own. But there is a particular avarice, more usually called the love of money. By its name the apostle, signifying the genus by the species, meant universal avarice to be understood when he said, “The root of all evils is avarice.” For it was by this that the devil too fell, who certainly did not love money but his own power. Hence perverse love of self deprives the swollen spirit of holy fellowship and confines it in misery, though it longs to be sated through iniquity. Hence in another place, when he had said, “For men will be lovers of themselves,” he at once added, “lovers of money,” descending from that general avarice, of which pride is the head, to this particular one, which is proper to human beings. For people would not be lovers of money either unless they thought themselves the more excellent the richer they are. Opposed to this disease is love, which “does not seek its own,” that is, does not rejoice in private excellence; rightly, then, it is also “not puffed up.” These two loves—of which one is holy, the other unclean; one social, the other private; one taking thought for the common good for the sake of the heavenly fellowship, the other reducing even the common good to its own power for the sake of arrogant domination; one subject to God, the other a rival of God; one tranquil, the other turbulent; one peaceable, the other seditious; one preferring the truth to the praises of those who err, the other greedy for praise by any means; one friendly, the other envious; one wishing for its neighbour what it wishes for itself, the other wishing to subject its neighbour to itself; one ruling its neighbour for the neighbour's benefit, the other for its own—these two loves appeared first in the angels, the one in the good, the other in the evil, and they have distinguished the two cities founded in the human race under the wonderful and ineffable providence of God, who administers and orders all that he creates: the one city of the just, the other of the wicked. With a certain temporal intermingling of these two the age runs its course, until they are separated at the last judgment, and the one, joined to the good angels, attains eternal life in its king, while the other, joined to the evil angels, is sent with its king into eternal fire. About these two cities we shall perhaps discourse more fully in another place, if the Lord wills.

When, then, pride cast the devil down, so that he perverted his good nature by a depraved will, Scripture does not say; but plain reason declares that it happened before, and that it was from this that he envied man. For it is evident to all who consider these things that pride does not spring from envy, but rather envy from pride. And it can be thought, not without reason, that the devil fell through pride from the beginning of time, and that there was no previous time in which he lived at peace and happy with the holy angels, but that from the very first moment of his creation he apostatized from his Creator; so that we understand both parts of what the Lord said—“He was a murderer from the beginning, and he did not stand in the truth”—as being “from the beginning”: not only that he was a murderer, but also that he did not stand in the truth. He was a murderer, indeed, from that beginning from which man could be killed; and man could not be killed before there existed someone to be killed. So the devil was a murderer from the beginning, because he killed the first man, before whom there was no human being. But he did not stand in the truth, and this too from the beginning, from the time when he himself was created, he who would have stood had he willed to stand.

For how can he be believed to have led a happy life among the happy angels, who did not foreknow his future sin and punishment, that is, his desertion and the eternal fire? If he did not foreknow them, it is rightly asked why he did not. For the holy angels are not uncertain of their eternal life and happiness; for how would they be happy if uncertain? Or shall we say that God was unwilling to reveal to the devil, while he was still a good angel, either what he would do or what he would suffer, but revealed to the others that they would remain for ever in his truth? If so, then he was no longer equally happy, indeed not even fully happy, since those who are fully happy are certain of their happiness, so that no fear disturbs it. But by what evil desert was he so distinguished from the others that God would not reveal to him even the future things that concerned himself? Was God an avenger before the devil was a sinner? Far from it. For God does not condemn the innocent. Or was he perhaps of another kind of angels, to whom God did not give foreknowledge of the future even concerning themselves? How they could be happy, when their very happiness is uncertain to them, I do not see. For some have also held this view: that the devil was not in that sublime nature of the angels that is above the heavens, but among those who were made somewhat lower, in the world, and assigned to their offices. Such beings, perhaps, might be delighted even by something unlawful; yet, if they did not will to sin, they would restrain that delight by free choice, as a man does, especially that first man, who did not yet have the penalty of sin in his members; since even that penalty is overcome by holy men subject to God, through godliness, by his grace.

Moreover, this question about the happy life—whether anyone should be said to have it already who is uncertain whether it will remain with him or whether misery will at some time succeed it—can arise also about the first man himself. For if he was aware of his future sin and of divine punishment, how could he be happy? So he was in paradise and not happy. But in fact he did not foreknow his future sin. So through this ignorance either he was uncertain of that happiness, and then how was he truly happy? Or he was certain by false hope, not by knowledge, and then how was he not foolish? Yet in the case of a man still established in an animal body, to whom, if he lived obediently, the fellowship of the angels was still to be given and the change of the body from animal to spiritual, we can understand a happy life in a certain manner, even though he did not foreknow his future sin. For neither did those foreknow theirs to whom the apostle says, “You who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you too be tempted”; and yet we say, neither absurdly nor wrongly, that they were already happy by the very fact that they were spiritual, not in body but in the righteousness of faith, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.” How much more, then, and in a fuller way, was the man in paradise happy before sin, though uncertain of his future fall, who so rejoiced in hope because of the reward of the change to come that there was no tribulation for patience to fight in enduring! For although he was not certain of what was uncertain by vain presumption, like a fool, yet in hope, not without faith, before he laid hold of that life where he would be most certain of his eternal life, he could exult, as it is written, “with trembling”; and by this exultation he could be happy in paradise far more abundantly than the saints on this earth, in a manner lower than in that eternal life of the saints and of the angels above the heavens, yet not in none.

But to say of certain angels that they can be happy in their own kind while uncertain of their future iniquity and damnation, or of their perpetual salvation, with no hope beneath them that they too would some day become certain of this by some change for the better, is a scarcely tolerable presumption; unless perhaps it is also said that these angels were created assigned to ministries in the world under other, more sublime and happier angels, so that for rightly fulfilling their charges they might receive that happy and more sublime life of which they could be most certain, and rejoicing in the hope of it they could, not unfittingly, be called already happy. If the devil fell from their number with the companions of his iniquity, this is like the way in which people also fall from the righteousness of faith, transgressing through a similar pride, either deceiving themselves or consenting to that deceiver. But let those who can assert these two kinds of good angels: one of those above the heavens, among whom he who by falling became the devil never was, and another of those in the world, among whom he was. For my part, I confess, nothing occurs to me for the present from which I could assert this according to the Scriptures. But pressed by that question in which it is asked whether he foreknew his fall before he fell, so as not to say that angels are, or ever were, uncertain of their happiness, I said that it can be thought, not without reason, that the devil fell from the very beginning of creation, that is, from the very beginning either of time or of his own making, and never stood in the truth.

Hence some think that he was not turned aside into this malice by the free choice of his will, but was created in it altogether, though by the Lord God, the supreme and true creator of all natures; and they bring forward a testimony from the book of Job, since there it is written, when he was being spoken of, “This is the beginning of the Lord's fashioning, which he made to be mocked by his angels.” With this opinion agrees what is written in the psalm: “This dragon, which you fashioned to mock it,” except that here it says “which you fashioned,” and not, as there, “This is the beginning of the Lord's fashioning”; as though at the beginning he had so fashioned him that he was evil, envious, a seducer, altogether a devil, not depraved by will but created so.

How could this opinion not be contrary to what is written: “God made all things, and behold, they were very good”? Here the devil would be found not depraved by his own will but made very evil by the Lord God himself. They try to show—and it is not foolishly or ignorantly asserted—that not only in the first creation but even now, though so many wills have been depraved, all things that were created, that is, the whole creation altogether, are on the whole very good: not that the evil in it are good, but that they do not by their malice bring it about that the beauty and order of the universe, under the rule, power, and wisdom of God who administers it, is in any part defiled or disturbed, since to each of their wills, even the evil ones, are assigned fixed and fitting limits of power and weights of desert, so that even with them fittingly and justly ordered the universe is beautiful. Nevertheless, since it occurs to anyone, and is true and plain, that it is contrary to justice itself that God should condemn in anyone, with no preceding desert, the very thing he himself created in him; and since the certain and evident condemnation of the devil and his angels is read from the Gospel, where the Lord foretold that he would say to those on the left, “Depart into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels”; we must believe that it is by no means the nature God created in him, but his own evil will, that is to be punished with the penalty of eternal fire.

Nor is it his nature that is signified by the words, “This is the beginning of the Lord's fashioning, which he made to be mocked by his angels,” but either the airy body that he suitably fitted to such a will; or the very ordering in which he made him useful to the good even against his will; or the fact that, foreknowing that he would be evil by his own will, he nevertheless made him, not withholding his goodness in granting life and substance even to a will that would be harmful, foreseeing at the same time how many goods he himself would bring about from him by his wonderful goodness and power. He is called “the beginning of the Lord's fashioning, which he made to be mocked by his angels,” not because God created him first or created him evil at the beginning, but because, knowing that he would become evil by his own will so as to harm the good, he created him in order that through him he himself might benefit the good. For this is the meaning of “to be mocked by his angels”: he is mocked in this way when his temptations, by which he tries to deprave the saints, benefit them, so that the malice in which he chose to be is, against his will, useful to the servants of God, who foresaw this when he fashioned him. He is called the beginning of what is to be mocked because evil men also, the devil's vessels and, as it were, the body of that head—whom God, foreseeing that they would be evil, nevertheless created for the benefit of the saints—are mocked in the same way, when, even while they wish to harm, the saints are given through comparison with them caution, godly humility under God, understanding of grace, exercise in bearing with the wicked, and proof in loving their enemies. But he is the beginning of the fashioning that is mocked in this way, because he precedes these men both in antiquity of time and in primacy of malice. God does this to him through the holy angels, by that work of providence by which he administers created natures, subjecting the evil angels to the good angels, so that the wickedness of the evil can do not as much as it strives to but as much as it is permitted; and not only of evil angels, but of men too, until this righteousness by which one lives from faith, which is now patiently exercised among men, is turned into judgment, so that they too may judge not only the twelve tribes of Israel but also angels.

When, then, it is thought that the devil never stood in the truth and never led a happy life with the angels, but fell from the very beginning of his making, this is not to be taken as meaning that he was not depraved by his own will but was created evil by the good God; otherwise he would not be said to have fallen from the beginning; for he did not fall if he was made such. Rather, as soon as he was made, he turned himself away from the light of truth, swollen with pride and corrupted by delight in his own power. Hence he did not taste the sweetness of the happy, angelic life; it is not that he received it and disdained it, but by being unwilling to receive it he forsook and lost it. Accordingly he could not foreknow his fall either, since wisdom is the fruit of godliness. But he, ungodly from the first and consequently blind in mind, fell not from what he had received but from what he would have received if he had been willing to be subject to God. Because he was not willing, he both fell from what he was to receive and did not escape the power of him under whom he refused to be; and it came about in him by the weight of his deserts that he can neither delight in the light of righteousness nor be freed from its sentence.

As for what is said against him through the prophet Isaiah: “How has Lucifer, who rose in the morning, fallen from heaven? He who sent to all the nations has been crushed to the earth. But you said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of heaven I will set my throne, I will sit on a lofty mountain above the lofty mountains which are to the north, I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High. But now you will go down to the underworld,” and the rest, which are understood as said against the devil under the figure of the king of Babylon: most of it fits his body, which he gathers even from the human race, and above all those who cleave to him through pride by apostatizing from the commandments of God. For just as he who was the devil is called a man, as in the Gospel, “An enemy, a man, has done this,” so he who was a man is called the devil, as again in the Gospel: “Did I not choose you twelve? And one of you is a devil.” And just as the body of Christ, which is the church, is called Christ—as in the words, “You are the seed of Abraham,” when shortly before he had said, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say ‘and to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘and to your seed,’ which is Christ”; and again, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so also is Christ”—in the same way the body of the devil, whose head is the devil, that is, the very multitude of the ungodly, and above all of those who fall from Christ or from the church as from heaven, is called the devil, and many things are said figuratively about that body which fit not so much the head as the body and its members. So Lucifer, who rose in the morning and fell, can be understood as the race of apostates either from Christ or from the church; which turns to darkness when it has lost the light it bore, just as those who turn to God pass from darkness to light, that is, those who were darkness become light.

Likewise, what is said through the prophet Ezekiel under the figure of the prince of Tyre is understood as said against the devil: “You are the seal of likeness and a crown of beauty; you were in the delights of the paradise of God; you were adorned with every precious stone,” and the rest, which fit not so much the prince himself, the spirit of wickedness, as his body. For the church is called paradise, as we read in the Song of Songs: “A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, a well of living water, a paradise with the fruit of apples.” From it have fallen, either by open and bodily separation, all heretics, or by hidden and spiritual separation, though they seem to be in it bodily, all who have returned to their vomit after walking a little while in the way of righteousness following the remission of all their sins; in whom the last state has become worse than the first, and for whom it would have been better not to know the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. This most wicked generation the Lord describes when he says that an unclean spirit goes out of a man and returns with seven others and enters the house it had found cleaned, so that the last state of that man is worse than the first. To such a kind of people, which has already become the body of the devil, these words can fit: “From the day on which you were created with the cherub”—that is, with the seat of God, which is interpreted “multiplied knowledge”—“and I set you on the holy mountain of God”—that is, in the church, whence comes, “And he heard me from his holy mountain”—“you were in the midst of fiery stones”—that is, of the saints fervent in spirit, living stones—“you walked without fault in your days, from the day on which you were created, until your offences were found in you.” These things can be treated more carefully, so as perhaps to show not only that this sense can be in these words, but that no other at all can be.

But since this is a long matter and calls for another treatise devoted to that question alone, for now let this summary suffice. Either the devil fell by ungodly pride from the very beginning of his making, from the happiness he would have received had he willed to; or there are other angels of a lower ministry in this world, among whom he had lived in a certain happiness of theirs that does not foreknow, and from whose fellowship he fell, as an archangel with the angels subject to him, through proud ungodliness—if this can in any way be asserted, and it would be surprising if it can; or else we must seek a reason how all the holy angels, if the devil once lived among them equally happy with his angels, did not yet themselves have sure foreknowledge of their perpetual happiness but received it after his fall; or by what desert the devil with his companions was distinguished from the other angels before his sin, so that he was ignorant of his future fall while they were certain of their abiding. Meanwhile, let us by no means doubt that the sinning angels have been thrust down, as into a prison, into the gloom of this air around the earth, and are kept, according to the apostolic faith, to be punished at the judgment; and that in that heavenly happiness of the holy angels eternal life is not uncertain, nor will it be uncertain for us, according to God's mercy and grace and his most faithful promise, when we have been joined to them after the resurrection and the change of these bodies. For we live for this hope, and are refreshed by the grace of this promise. And whatever can be said also about the devil—why God created him when he foreknew he would be such, and why the Almighty does not turn his will to good—may be understood or believed according to what we discussed when we were asking similar questions about evil men, or, if something better can be found, let it be found.

So by him whose power over all that he created is supreme, acting through the holy angels by whom the devil is mocked when even his ill will is turned to the good of the church of God, the devil was not permitted to tempt the woman except through the serpent, nor the man except through the woman. In the serpent, he himself spoke, using it as an instrument and moving its nature in the way in which he could move it and it could be moved, to produce the sounds of words and bodily signs through which the woman would understand the will of the persuader. But in the woman herself, since she was a rational creature who could use her own movement to form words, it was not he who spoke but his working and persuasion, although by a hidden prompting he assisted inwardly what he had done outwardly through the serpent. Indeed, if he had acted by hidden prompting alone, as he did in Judas so that he would betray Christ, he could have accomplished it in a soul clothed with proud love of its own power. But, as I have already said, the devil has the will to tempt, but it is not in his power either that he does it or how he does it. Because he was permitted, then, he tempted; and as he was permitted, so he tempted. But for what kind of people what he was doing would be a benefit, he neither knew nor wished; and by this very fact he was mocked by the angels.

So the serpent did not understand the sounds of the words that came from it to the woman. For we must not believe that its soul was changed into a rational nature, since not even human beings, whose nature is rational, know what they are saying when a demon speaks in them in that affliction for which an exorcist is required. How much less would the serpent understand the sounds of words that the devil produced through it and out of it in that way, when it would not understand a man speaking if it heard him while free from diabolical affliction! For even in the fact that serpents are thought to hear and understand the words of the Marsi, so that at their incantations they often leap out of their hiding places, there too a diabolical power is at work; so that providence may everywhere be recognized, which subjects one thing to another in the order of nature, and what it permits even to evil wills by its most wise power; so that it is more customary for serpents to be moved by the spells of men than any other kind of animal. For this too is no small testimony that human nature was first seduced by the speech of a serpent. For demons rejoice that this power is given them, to move serpents at the incantation of men, so as to deceive whom they can in any way. And this is permitted them so as to keep alive the memory of the first deed, by which they have a certain familiarity with this kind of animal. Further, that first deed itself was permitted so that through the nature of the serpent there might be signified to the human race, for whose instruction these deeds had to be written down, the likeness of every diabolical temptation; this will appear when the divine sentence begins to be pronounced against the serpent.

Accordingly, the serpent was called the most prudent of all the beasts, that is, the most cunning, because of the cunning of the devil, which practised deceit in it and by means of it; just as a tongue is called prudent or cunning which a prudent or cunning person moves to persuade someone prudently and cunningly. For this power or faculty does not belong to the bodily member called the tongue, but certainly to the mind that uses it. So too the pen of the scribes has been called lying; for being a liar belongs only to one who lives and perceives. But the pen is called lying because through it a liar works lyingly; just as if this serpent too were called lying, because the devil used it lyingly, like a pen. I have thought it necessary to stress this so that no one, supposing that animals without reason have human understanding or are suddenly changed into a rational animal, should be led astray into that ridiculous and harmful opinion of the transmigration of souls, whether of human beings into beasts or of beasts into human beings. So, then, the serpent spoke to the human being as the ass on which Balaam sat spoke to a human being, except that that was a diabolical work and this an angelic one. For good and evil angels have some similar works, as did Moses and Pharaoh's magicians. But even in these the good angels are more powerful, and the evil angels can do nothing even of such works except what God has permitted through the good angels, so that it may be rendered to each according to his heart or according to the grace of God, both justly and kindly, through the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God.

So the serpent said to the woman, “Why is it that God said, You shall not eat from every tree of paradise?” And the woman said to the serpent, “Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we shall eat; but of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of paradise God said, You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.” The serpent asked first, and the woman answered this, so that the transgression might be inexcusable and it could in no way be said that the woman had forgotten what God had commanded; although forgetting the commandment, especially a single one and so necessary, would have amounted to the very great guilt of damnable negligence. Still, the transgression is more evident when the commandment is kept in memory and God is despised as though standing by and present in it. Hence, when the psalm said, “And to those who keep his commandments in memory,” it was necessary to add, “to do them.” For many keep them in memory only to despise them, by the greater sin of transgression, where there is no excuse of forgetfulness. So the serpent said to the woman, “You shall not die the death. For God knew that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” When would the woman have believed from these words that they had been forbidden by God from a good and useful thing, unless there was already in her mind that love of her own power and a certain proud presumption about herself, which had to be exposed and humbled through that temptation? Finally, not content with the serpent's words, she considered the tree and saw that it was good for food and beautiful to look upon; and not believing that she could die from it, she thought, I suppose, that God had said, “If you eat, you shall die the death,” for the sake of some figurative meaning. And so she took of its fruit and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, perhaps also with a persuasive word, which Scripture passes over in silence and leaves to be understood. Or perhaps the man no longer needed to be persuaded, when he saw that she had not died from that food?