Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.9–9.19

Others do not do this, but still think that the fruitfulness of the flesh was given by God for the succession of mortals, and they too think that those first human beings could not have lain together unless, because of the sin they had committed, they were going to die and so sought successors by begetting; and they do not notice that, if successors could rightly be sought for those who would die, companions could much more rightly have been sought for those who would live. For once the earth was filled with the human race, offspring would rightly be sought only to succeed those dying; but for the earth to be filled through two human beings, how could they fulfil the duty of society except by begetting? Or is anyone so blind in mind as not to see how great an adornment the human race is to the earth, even when only a few live rightly and praiseworthily, and how much the order of the commonwealth avails, holding even sinners in check in the bond of a certain earthly peace? For men are not so depraved that even such do not surpass beasts and birds; yet who would not delight to consider this lowest part of the world adorned, according to its place, with all their kinds? And who would be so senseless as to think that it could have been adorned less if it were filled with the just who do not die? For it is because the heavenly city of angels is most numerous that they would not rightly be joined in marriage unless they died. For the Lord, foreknowing that this number would be completed even in the resurrection of the saints, who are to be joined to the angels, says, “In the resurrection they will neither marry nor take wives; for they will not begin to die, but will be equal to the angels of God.” But here, since the earth was to be filled with human beings, and it was fitting that it be filled from one, for the sake of a closer bond of kinship and to commend most strongly the bond of unity, for what other purpose was the female sex sought as a helper corresponding to him than that woman's nature, like the fruitfulness of the earth, might help him as he sowed the human race?

Although it may be believed more honorably and better that the body of those human beings, then established as animal bodies in paradise, not yet condemned by the law of death, was such that they did not have the appetite for carnal pleasure which these bodies now have, which are now derived from the stock of death. For something did happen in them when they ate from the forbidden tree, since God had not said, “If you eat, you shall die by death,” but “On the day you eat of it, you shall die by death,” so that that day would bring about in them the very thing the apostle groans over when he says, “I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and making me captive in the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” For it would not be enough for him to say, “Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” but he says, “from the body of this death.” Just as he also says, “The body indeed is dead because of sin”; nor does he say there “mortal” but “dead,” although of course also mortal, because it will die. Those bodies are not to be believed to have been like this, but, though animal and not yet spiritual, still not dead, that is, not such that they had to die: which happened on the day they touched the tree against the prohibition. Just as in our own bodies a certain health according to their measure is spoken of, and if this is so disturbed that a lethal disease is already consuming the inner organs, and physicians, seeing it, declare that death is near, the body is certainly called mortal even then, but in a different sense than when it was healthy, though without doubt going to die at some time: so those human beings bore animal bodies, but not going to die if they had not sinned, and going to receive an angelic form and heavenly quality; but as soon as they transgressed the command, death itself was conceived in their members like some lethal illness, and changed that quality by which they ruled the body in such a way that they did not say, “I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind,” because, although the body was not yet spiritual but animal, it was not yet of this death, of which and with which we are born. For what else have we begun, I do not say by being born, but by being conceived at all, but a kind of illness by which we must necessarily die? For one who has become dropsical or consumptive or elephantiac is not so necessarily going to die of that disease as one who has begun to have this body, in which all men are by nature children of wrath; because nothing but the punishment of sin brought this about. Since this is so, why should we not believe that those human beings before sin could have commanded their genital members for procreating children as they commanded the others, which the soul moves in any work without any trouble and, so to speak, itch of pleasure? For if the almighty Creator, ineffably to be praised, who is great even in his least works, has granted to bees that they produce the generation of their young as they produce the form of wax and the liquid of honey, why should it seem incredible that he made such bodies for the first human beings that, if they had not sinned and at once conceived a kind of disease by which they would die, they would command the members from which offspring arises by the same signal as the feet when walking, so that there would be neither sowing with heat nor bearing with pain? But as it is, by transgressing the command, they deserved to have in their members, in which death was conceived, the motion of that law which fights against the law of the mind, a motion which marriage orders and continence restrains and reins in, so that, just as punishment came from sin, so merit may come from punishment.

So whoever doubts that the woman was made for the man from the man, in that sex and in that form and distinction of members by which women are known, the woman who bore Cain and Abel and all their brothers, from whom all human beings would be born, among whom she also bore Seth, through whom the line came to Abraham and to the people of Israel, a nation now very well known to all nations, and through the sons of Noah to all nations: whoever doubts this makes everything we believe totter, and is to be driven far from the minds of the faithful. When, then, it is asked for what help that sex was made for the man, to me, considering everything carefully as far as I can, nothing occurs but the reason of offspring, so that the earth would be filled through their stock; and offspring not procreated in the way human beings are now procreated, when the law of sin is in the members fighting against the law of the mind, even if by God's grace it is overcome by virtue; for it must be believed that this could not have been except in the body of this death, which body is dead because of sin. And what is more just than this punishment, that the body, its own servant, does not serve the soul at every signal, as the soul itself refused to serve its Lord; whether God creates both from the parents, body from body and soul from soul, or makes souls in some other way, certainly not for an impossible task nor for a small reward; so that when the soul, subject to God by piety, has itself conquered by grace this law of sin which is in the members of the body of this death, which the first man received as punishment, it may receive a heavenly reward with greater glory, showing how great is the praise of obedience, which by virtue could overcome the punishment of another's disobedience?

But since, as I think, we have inquired enough for what help the woman was made for the man, let us now see why it happened that all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the sky were brought to Adam for him to give them names, and so a need, as it were, arose for creating a woman for him from his side, since among those animals no helper like him had been found. For it seems to me that this was done for the sake of some prophetic signification, but done nevertheless, so that, the event being confirmed as having happened, the interpretation of the figure is left free. For what is the meaning of this very fact, that Adam gave names to the birds and land animals, but not also to the fishes and all swimming creatures? For if human languages are consulted, all these things are called as men have named them by speaking. Not only these things in the waters and on the land, but also the earth itself and water and sky, and the things seen in the sky and those not seen but believed, are called by different names according to the diversity of the languages of nations. We have indeed learned that there was one language at first, before the pride of that tower built after the flood divided human society into different sounds of signs; but whatever that language was, what does it matter to inquire? Certainly Adam spoke it then, and in that language, if it still survives, are those articulate words with which the first man gave names to the land animals and birds. Is it at all credible, then, that in the same language the names of fishes were established not by man but by God, for man to learn afterwards by God's teaching? Even if this had been done, the reason why it was done would without doubt echo some mystical signification. But it is to be believed that names were given to the kinds of fishes as they came gradually to be known; but when the cattle and beasts and birds were brought to man, so that he might give them names when they were gathered to him and distinguished by kinds, to which too he could have given names gradually, and much sooner than to the fishes, if this had not been done, what reason was there but the purpose of signifying something which would serve to foretell things to come? To this the order of this narrative is especially attentive. Then, did God not know that he had created nothing of the kind among the natures of animals that could be a helper like man? Or was it necessary that man himself should know this too, and hold his wife the more dear because in all flesh created under heaven and living from this air as he did, he found nothing like her? It would be strange if he could not know this except by having all of them brought to him and inspected. For if he believed God, God could tell him this in the way he gave the command, and in the way he questioned and judged him when he sinned; but if he did not believe, he certainly could not know this either, whether he whom he did not believe had brought all things to him, or perhaps had hidden in some parts of the earth more remote from him some creatures like him which he had not shown him. So I think it is not to be doubted that this was done for the sake of some prophetic signification, but done nevertheless. Nor have we undertaken in this work to examine prophetic riddles, but to commend the trustworthiness of things done according to the proper sense of history; so that what may seem impossible to the vain and unbelieving, or to contradict the very authority of holy Scripture as though by contrary testimony, I may show, according to my strength and as far as God helps, by discussion, to be neither impossible nor contrary; and what appears indeed possible and has no appearance of contradiction, yet may seem to some superfluous or even foolish, I may show by argument to have been done, not according to the natural or usual order of events, so that, the most trustworthy authority of the holy Scriptures being set before our hearts, it may be believed to be mystical because it cannot be foolish, although we have either already presented its exposition or inquiry elsewhere or put it off to another time.

What, then, is meant also by the fact that the woman was made for the man from his side? Granted that we may believe it had to be done so in order to commend the force of their very union: did the same reason or necessity also require that it be done while he slept, and finally that a bone be taken out and flesh supplied in its place? Could not flesh itself have been taken out, so that from it the woman, being the weaker sex, might be more fittingly formed? Or could God, adding so many things, build a rib into a woman, and not flesh or soft tissue, he who made man himself from dust? Or if a rib had to be taken out, why was another rib not put back in its place? Why too was it not said “formed” or “made,” as in all the works above, but “the Lord God built,” it says, “that rib,” not as a human body but as a house? There is, then, no doubt that, since these things were done and cannot be foolish, they were done to signify something, God in his foreknowledge mercifully proclaiming in his very works, from the very beginning of the human race, the fruit of the age to come; so that at a fixed time, revealed to his servants and written down, whether through the succession of men or through his Spirit or the ministry of angels, they would bear witness both to future things to be promised and to fulfilled things to be recognized; which will appear more and more in what follows.

Let us see, then, as we undertook in this work, how these things can be taken, not according to the prefiguring of things to come, but according to the proper, not allegorical, meaning of things done. “And God formed besides from the earth,” it says, “all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the sky”: on which we have already said what seemed right and as much as seemed right. “And he brought them all to Adam, to see what he would call them.” As to how God brought them to Adam, so that we may not think carnally, what we treated in the previous book about the twofold work of divine providence should help us. For it is not to be believed that this was done as hunters or fowlers track and drive into nets whatever animals they catch, or that some voice of command came from a cloud with words which rational souls are accustomed to hear, understand, and obey. For beasts and birds have not received the ability to do this; yet in their own way they obey God, not by the rational choice of will, but as he moves all things at fitting times, not himself moved in time, through the ministries of angels, which grasp in his Word what is to be done at what time, and, he not being moved in time, they themselves are moved in time so as to carry out his commands in the things subject to them. For every living soul, not only rational as in men, but also irrational, as in cattle and birds and fishes, is moved by things seen. But the rational soul, by the choice of will, either consents or does not consent to what is seen; the irrational has not this judgment, yet according to its kind and nature, touched by something seen, it is driven along. Nor is it in the power of any soul what sights come to it, whether into the senses of the body or into the spirit itself within, by which the appetite of any living being is moved. And so, when these sights are supplied from above through the obedience of angels, God's command reaches not only men, nor only birds and cattle, but also the things hidden under the waters, as the whale that swallowed Jonah, and not only these larger creatures but even the little worm; for we read that it too was commanded by God to gnaw the root of the gourd under whose shade the prophet had rested. For if God granted to man, establishing him so, that even bearing the flesh of sin he can not only subject cattle and beasts of burden to his uses, and not only domestic birds, but can also capture and tame any birds that fly freely, even fierce wild beasts, and wonderfully command them by the power of reason, not of body, as he catches their appetites and pains and, gradually enticing, pressing, and loosening, controls them, strips them of their wild habit and, as it were, clothes them with human manners: how much more can angels do this, who, at the command of God, beholding it in his unchangeable truth itself, which they look upon eternally, moving themselves through time and the bodies subject to them through time and place with wonderful swiftness, are able to produce in every living soul both the sights by which it is moved and the appetite of bodily need, so that it is brought, without knowing it, where it must come!

Now let us see how the forming of the woman itself, which is also called, mystically, a building, was done. For the nature of the woman was created, though from the man's, which already existed, not by any motion of natures already existing. Angels, however, can create no nature at all; for the one and only creator of any nature, great or least, is God, that is, the Trinity itself, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. It is a different question, then, how Adam was put to sleep and his rib taken out of the frame of his body without any sense of pain. For this might perhaps be said to have been possible through angels; but to form or build the rib so that it would be a woman, none but God could do, from whom all nature has its being, so much so that I would not believe even that filling up of flesh in the man's body, which took the place of the rib, to have been made by angels, any more than man himself from the dust of the earth: not that there is no work of angels in something being created, but they are not therefore creators, just as we do not call farmers the creators of crops and trees. For neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth. To this growth belongs also the fact that in the human body, when the bone was taken out, the place was filled up with flesh, namely by that work of God by which he establishes natures so that they exist, by which he also created the angels themselves. The farmer's work, then, is to lead the water when he irrigates; but it is not his work that the water flows down slopes, but his who has arranged all things in measure and number and weight. Likewise it is the farmer's work that a cutting is torn from a tree and committed to the earth; but it is not his work that it drinks in sap and puts forth a shoot, fixing one part in the soil to establish its root and sending another up into the air to nourish its strength and spread its branches, but his who gives the growth. A physician too applies food to a sick body and medicine to a wounded one: first, not from things he created, but from things he found created by the Creator's work; next, he could prepare and serve food or drink, shape a plaster and apply it smeared with medicine. Can he also, from the things he applies, work and create strength or flesh? Nature does that by an inner motion most hidden from us. Yet if God withdraws from it the inmost working by which he establishes and makes it, it will at once be extinguished, as it were, and nothing will remain. Therefore, since God governs his whole creation by a kind of twofold work of providence, of which we spoke in the previous book, both in natural and in voluntary motions, no angel can create a nature, any more than he can create himself. But the angelic will, obediently subject to God and carrying out his command, can, by natural motions, supply things subject to it as material, so to speak, so that something may be created in time according to those principal reasons uncreated in the Word of God, or according to those reasons created causally in the first works of the six days, in the manner of farming or healing. What kind of service, then, the angels rendered to God in that forming of the woman, who would dare to affirm? Yet I would say most certainly that that filling up of flesh in the place of the rib, and the body and soul of the woman herself, and the shaping of her members, all her inner organs, all her senses, and whatever there was by which she was a creature, a human being, and a woman, was made only by that work of God which God works not through angels but through himself; and he did not work and then let go, but works so continuously that neither the nature of any other things nor of the angels themselves would subsist if he did not work.

But since, as far as we have been able to experience the nature of things according to human capacity, we do not know of animated and sensing flesh being born except either from these material elements, as it were, that is, water and earth, or from shrubs or the fruits of trees or even from the flesh of animals, as countless kinds of worms or creeping things, or certainly from the intercourse of parents, and we know of no flesh born from the flesh of any living being which was so like it as to be distinguished only by sex, we seek in the things of this creation a likeness to the way the woman was made from the man's side, and cannot find it, for no other reason than that we know how men work on this earth, but we certainly do not know how angels in a way farm in this world. For surely, if the course of nature produced the kinds of plants without human industry, we would know nothing else than that trees and plants are born from the earth and from their seeds falling likewise from them into the earth; would we ever have learned what grafting can do, so that a tree of one kind bears on its own root the fruits of another, which grow into a unity now its own? These things we learned through the work of farmers, though they were in no way creators of trees, but offered to God, who creates the course of nature, a certain duty and service of their own. For nothing at all would come into being through their work if the inmost reason of nature did not contain it in God's work. What wonder, then, if we have not known of a woman made from a man's bone, when we do not know how angels serve God as creator? We could not have known a tree made from a cutting of a tree in another's trunk either, if we likewise did not know how farmers serve God as creator. Yet in no way do we doubt that God alone is the creator both of human beings and of trees, and we faithfully believe that the woman was made from the man without any intercourse intervening, even if perhaps the man's rib was supplied through angels in the Creator's work: just as we faithfully believe also that a man was made from a woman without any intercourse intervening, when the seed of Abraham was ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator. Both are incredible to unbelievers; but why should what was done concerning Christ seem credible to the faithful in the proper sense of a thing done, and what is written about Eve credible only as a figurative signification? Or could a man be made from a woman without intercourse with anyone, and a woman not from a man? And did the virgin's womb have that from which a man might be made, and the man's side not have that from which a woman might be made, when here the Lord was born of his handmaid, and there a handmaid was formed from a servant? The Lord could also have created his flesh from a rib or from some member of the virgin; but he who could have shown in his own body that he had done again what had been done, showed more usefully in his mother's body that nothing that is chaste is shameful.

But if it is asked how matters stand with that causal founding in which God first made man to his image and likeness (for there it was also said, “Male and female he made them”): whether that reason which God created together with the first works of the world, and with which he grew them together, already contained this, that according to it the woman had necessarily to be made from the man's side, or contained only this, that it could be done so, while that it should necessarily be done so was not founded there but hidden in God: if this is asked, I will say what seems to me without rashness in affirming; and when I have said it, perhaps those who consider these things wisely, whom the Christian faith has already instructed, will judge that it is not to be doubted, even if they now learn these things for the first time. This whole most customary course of nature has certain natural laws of its own, according to which the spirit of life, which is a creature, has certain appetites of its own, in a way determined, which even an evil will cannot exceed, and the elements of this bodily world have their defined force and quality, what each can or cannot do, what can or cannot be made from what. From these, as from the first beginnings of things, all things that are generated take, each in its own time, their rise and progress and the ends and departures of each kind. Hence it is that a bean is not born from a grain of wheat, nor wheat from a bean, nor man from beast, nor beast from man. But above this natural motion and course of things, the Creator's power has in itself the ability to make from all these something other than what their seminal reasons, so to speak, contain; yet not that which he did not place in them, so that it could be made from them even by him. For he is almighty not by rash power but by the strength of wisdom; and he does with each thing in its own time what he earlier made in it to be possible. There is, then, one mode of things, by which this plant sprouts in this way and that in that, this age bears children and that does not, man can speak and a beast cannot. The reasons of these and such modes are not only in God, but have also been placed by him in created things and grown together with them. But that a piece of wood cut from the earth, dry, polished, without any root, without earth and water, should suddenly flower and bear fruit; that a woman barren in youth should give birth in old age; that a donkey should speak, and anything of that kind: he indeed gave to the natures he created that these things too could be made from them (for he would not make from them even himself what he had fixed beforehand could not be made from them, since he is not more powerful than himself); but he gave it in another way, so that they would not have these things in their natural motion, but in that by which they were so created that their nature would be further subject to a more powerful will.

God, then, has hidden in himself the causes of certain deeds, which he did not insert in founded things, and he fulfils them not by that work of providence by which he establishes natures so that they exist, but by that by which he governs as he wills those natures which he founded as he willed. There too is grace, through which sinners are saved. For as regards a nature depraved by its own wicked will, it has no return through itself, but through the grace of God, by which it is helped and restored. Nor are men to be despaired of on account of that sentence in which it is written, “All who walk in it will not return.” For it was said according to the weight of their wickedness, so that he who returns may not attribute it to himself, but to the grace of God, “not from works, lest he be lifted up.” For this reason the apostle called the mystery of this grace hidden, not in the world, in which the causal reasons of all things that will arise naturally are hidden, as Levi was hidden in the loins of Abraham when he too was tithed, but in God, who created all things. Therefore all things which were done to signify this grace, not by the natural motion of things but wonderfully, had their causes also hidden in God; and if one of them was that the woman was made in this way from the man's side, and that while he slept, she who was made strong through him, strengthened as it were by his bone, and he made weak for her sake, because in place of the rib not a rib but flesh was supplied, then the first founding of things, when it was said on the sixth day, “Male and female he made them,” did not contain that the woman should certainly be made thus, but only this, that she could also be made thus, so that God would not do anything by a changeable will contrary to the causes which he established by his will. But what was to be done, so that nothing else would be, was hidden in God, who created all things. But since he said it was hidden in such a way that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places through the church, it is probably believed that, just as that seed to whom the promise was made was ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator, so all the things that were done wonderfully in the nature of things, beyond the usual course of nature, to foretell or announce the coming of that seed, were done through the ministry of angels; yet so that nowhere is anyone the creator or restorer of creatures but God alone, who, whoever plants and waters, gives the growth.

And therefore that ecstasy too which God sent upon Adam, so that, put to sleep, he slept, is rightly understood to have been sent for this purpose, that his mind also might, through ecstasy, become a partaker, as it were, of the angelic court, and, entering into the sanctuary of God, understand the last things. Finally, waking up as if full of prophecy, when he saw his wife brought to him, he at once poured forth what the apostle commends as a great sacrament: “This now is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken from her husband. And for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh.” Though Scripture itself testifies that these were the words of the first man, the Lord nevertheless declared in the gospel that God said them; for he says, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female? And he said: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh”; so that from this we might understand that, through the ecstasy which had come upon Adam, he could say this by divine inspiration as a prophet. But now this end of the book pleases me, so that what follows may renew the readers' attention from another beginning.