Homilies on Ecclesiastes 4

The topic of confession still holds our discourse. For the one who narrates his own deeds goes through almost everything by which the vanity of the affairs of this life is made known. But now he touches, as it were, on a greater accusation of the things he … from which the passion of arrogance … For what is there so conducive to conceit among the things enumerated — a costly house, a multitude of vines, the beauty of gardens and of waters, the collecting of water in pools and its distribution in parks — as for one who is a human being to think himself master of his own kind? “For I acquired,” he says, “male and female slaves, and home-born slaves were mine.” You see the swelling of boastfulness. Such a saying lifts itself up directly against God. For we have heard from prophecy that all things are slaves of the power that is above all. So the one who makes God’s possession his own possession, and apportions power to his own race, so as to think himself master of men and women — what else does he do but overstep nature through arrogance, regarding himself as something other than those he rules? “I acquired male and female slaves.” You condemn to slavery the human being, whose nature is free and self-determining, and you legislate against God, overturning his law for nature. For the one who was made for this very purpose, to be lord of the earth, and was appointed to rule by the one who formed him — this one you bring under the yoke of slavery, as though you were overstepping and fighting against the divine command. You have forgotten the limits of your authority: that your rule is restricted to the governance of the irrational creatures. For it says, “Let them rule over birds and fish and four-footed beasts.” How is it that you pass by the slavery that is subject to you and lift yourself up against the free nature itself, counting your own kind with the four-footed and even the footless creatures? “You subjected all things to man,” the Word cries through prophecy, and it brings under number the things subject to reason: cattle, and oxen, and sheep. Were human beings born to you from your cattle? Did your cows give birth to human offspring? For the irrational creatures are the only slaves of human beings: “making grass spring up for the cattle, and green plants for the service of human beings.” But you, splitting nature into slavery and lordship, have made it be a slave to itself and lord over itself. “For I acquired male and female slaves.” For what price, tell me? What did you find among existing things worth as much as this nature? For how many coins did you value reason? For how many obols did you sell the image of God? God said, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness.” Who, tell me, is the one who sells, who is the one who buys, the one who is in the likeness of God, who rules all the earth, and has received from God as his inheritance authority over everything on the earth? This belongs to God alone; or rather, not even to God himself, almost. For “his gifts,” it says, “are irrevocable.” God, then, would not enslave our nature, he who called us back to freedom when we had been enslaved to sin of our own choosing. But if God does not enslave the free, who is it that sets his own power above God’s? And how will the ruler of all the earth and of all earthly things be sold? For the property of the one sold must necessarily be handed over with him. For how much, [then, would you value] the things under all the earth? But if these things are beyond price, of what price, tell me, is the one above them worth? Even if you name the whole world, not even so have you found a price equal to his worth. For he who knew human nature precisely did not say even that the whole world is worthy to be valued as an exchange for a human soul. So whenever a human being is for sale, nothing else is brought to the market than the lord of the earth. Then surely the creation that belongs to him will be auctioned along with him. And this is land and sea and islands and everything in them. What, then, will the buyer pay? What will the seller receive, when so great a property follows the transaction? But the small document, and the written contract, and the counting out of obols have deceived you into thinking that you are master of the image of God. O the folly! If the contract were lost, if the letters were destroyed by moths, if a drop of water falling on it from somewhere wiped it out, where are your pledges of slavery? Where are your credentials of mastery? For I see nothing more that you get from the name, compared with the one subject to you, except the name. What has this authority added to your nature? Not time, not advantages. Your birth is from the same things, your life of the same manner; the passions of soul and body prevail equally in you who are lord and in him who is yoked under the lordship: pains and cheerfulness, gladness and distress, griefs and pleasures, angers and fears, diseases and deaths. Is there any difference in these between the slave and the one who is lord? Do they not draw in the same air when they breathe? Do they not see the sun in the same way? Do they not equally preserve their nature by taking in food? Is the arrangement of their inward parts not the same? Are not the two one dust after death? Is not the judgment one? A common kingdom, and a common Gehenna? You who are equal in all things, in what, tell me, have you more, that you, a human being, think yourself master of a human being? “And I acquired,” you say, “male and female slaves,” as though they were a herd of goats or of swine. For having said, “I acquired male and female slaves,” he added the cheerfulness he had from flocks and herds: “And I had a great possession of herds and flocks,” as though both the one and the other were yoked under his authority in the same rank.

Then after these things the confession proceeds as by a road to the greater sins. For he cries out against himself the root of all evils, which is love of money. And he says, word for word: “I gathered for myself also silver and also gold.” For what harm did the gold do, mixed in with the earth and remaining in the places where it was placed from the beginning by the Creator? What more did the Maker owe you concerning the fruits of the earth? Did he not allot you the fruits of trees and the seeds alone for food? Why [do you pass] the limits of [need] …? Or show me that these too were granted you by the Creator, so as to mine and dig up and melt down in fire what lies beneath, and to gather the things you did not scatter. Perhaps someone may reckon this no charge at all, to gather money for oneself in this way from the mines of the earth. But since the passage adds “the treasures of kings and of the countries,” the sense of the gathering no longer tends toward the blameless. For as royal power is permitted to gather an abundance of money from the countries — that is, to impose taxes, to exact tithes, to compel subjects to contribute money — so he says he gathered both gold and silver. However that may be, whether so or otherwise, I would gladly learn what more there will be for one who gathers such materials. Let it be granted by hypothesis that it comes to the lovers of money not by the mina or the drachma or the talent, but that all things together are turned to gold for them: the earth, the sand, the mountains, the plains, the glens; let us suppose all are changed at once into this material. What will life gain toward happiness through these things? If he sees everywhere what he now sees in a little, which of the goods of the soul, which of the things pursued for the body, will come about through such abundance? Will there be any hope through this that one who lives in so much gold will become wise, quick-witted, contemplative, knowledgeable, a friend of God, self-controlled, pure, passionless, unmixed with and unreceptive of everything that drags down to vice? Or if not this, will it be possible for the body, stretching life out to many hundreds of years, to be ageless, free from disease and harm, and all that is pursued in the life in the flesh? But no one is so vain, nor so ignorant of our common nature, as to think that these things would come to human beings if the material of money were poured out to all at will in unstinted abundance. For even now one can see many of those who excel in such abundance living in a pitiable body, who, even if their attendants were present, [would not be] able to live without them. If, then, the abundance of gold that our argument set forth by hypothesis has shown no gain either for body or for soul, much more is what is shown in small amount proved useless for the benefit of those who have it. For what would come to the owner from the material itself, which is active neither for taste nor for smell nor for hearing, and to touch is the same as anything resistant? Let no one bring up to me the [value] attached to gold. For the one who exchanged gold for bread or a garment has traded the useless for the useful, and lives by making bread his food, not gold. But the one who has gathered this material for himself through such transactions — what use did he get from the money? What counsel through it, what teaching of affairs, what foretelling of the future? Who had comfort in it for the pains of the body? He counted it, he stored it away, he sealed it with a seal; asked for it, he denied it; disbelieved, he even swore an oath. This is the blessedness, this the end of the zeal, this the enjoyment, this far the happiness: to have procured material by perjury. “But the form of gold,” he says, “is of fine colour.” Is not fire too of fine colour, … brighter than the rays of the sun? Who prevents you from this enjoyment, so that you must procure the pleasures of the eyes through the fine colour of gold? “But the fire is quenched,” he says, “and the sun sets, and the charm of its brightness does not last.” But what difference, tell me, has gold from lead in the dark? “But from fire or the stars,” he says, “we could not have necklaces and bracelets, and brooches, and girdles, and collars, crowns, and such things; whereas gold makes these and anything else contrived for adornment.” The pleading of the material has led the zeal to the summit of vanity. For I would say this very thing to them: for what purpose does he strive who binds gold on his hair or hangs it from the [lobes] of his ears, or puts it round his neck in luxurious necklaces, or wears it on some other part of the body, … of the body, himself in no way transformed toward the gleam of the gold? For one who looks at the wearer of gold sees the gold just as if it happened to be lying in the shops, but sees the wearer such as he is by nature. Even if the gold is well worked and engraved, even if [set with] green [stones] …, nature has received some [benefit] for perception from the things placed beside it? But if there is some disfigurement about the face, or something natural is lacking, or an eye is [missing], or a cheek is hideously hollowed by a scar, the ugliness remains in what is seen, not in the least darkened by the gleam of the gold; and if he happens to be in pain in his body, it brings no comfort to the sufferer. What, then, brings nothing useful to those who strive for it, neither for beauty nor for the good condition of the body nor for comfort in pains — for whose sake is it striven for? And what is the disposition of those who have melted their heart into this material, when they are conscious of having such a possession and exult in themselves as having something more? If someone asked them whether they would accept having their nature changed into that, and becoming that which they honour with so great a disposition, would they choose the change, so that their nature passed over from human beings to gold, and they were shown to be no longer rational and intelligent and using their senses for life, but pale and heavy and voiceless, soulless and senseless, such as the nature of gold is? I do not think they would choose this, not even those who are most melted into the material by desire. If, then, to people of sound mind it is already a curse to come to be in the properties of soulless matter, what is this irrational madness about the possession of things whose end is vanity, so that those who have gone raving mad for money dare even murders and robbery for it? And not only this, but also the wicked device of interest, which one would not be wrong to name another robbery and bloodshed. For what difference is there between making oneself master of a traveller’s goods by murdering him and acquiring what does not belong to one through the compulsion of interest? O evil name! Interest, “offspring,” becomes the name of robbery. O bitter marriages! O … union, which nature did not know, but the disease of the [greedy] … in soulless things! O cruel conceptions, from which such offspring is born! Among existing things only the living has been distinguished by the difference of male and female. To these the God who formed them said, “Increase and multiply,” so that what is given life might increase to a multitude through generation from one another. But the offspring of gold — from what marriages is it constituted? From what pregnancy is it brought to term? But I know the birth-pangs of such offspring, having learned them from the Prophet: “See, he travailed with injustice, he conceived trouble, and he gave birth to lawlessness.” This is that offspring, which greed travails with, lawlessness bears, and hatred of humankind delivers as midwife. For the one who always hides his means, and confirms by oath that he does not have them, when he sees someone choked by necessity, then appears pregnant in his purse; then, through love of gain, he travails with the wicked offspring, … the hope of the loan, like one who quenches the flame with oil. For he did not heal the loss with the loan, but increased it; and as fields bear thorns of their own accord in droughts, so in the misfortunes of those in distress the interest of the greedy grows wild. Then he holds out his hand with the money, like the fishing line [hiding] the hook … to the present plenty, and if he had anything hidden in store, he vomits it out together with the pull of the hook. Such are the benefactions of interest. And if someone takes away another’s provisions by force, or steals them secretly, he is called violent and a robber, and the like; but the one who makes injustice attested by witnesses and bitterness [legal], and strengthens lawlessness with contracts, is called a lover of humankind and a benefactor and a saviour and all the good names. And gain from theft is called a theft; but the one who strips the debtor through such necessity calls his bitterness by the pet name of kindness. For so they name the losses of the wretched.

“I gathered for myself also silver and also gold.” But the wise man who instructs our life counted these too in the list of things confessed for this reason: so that human beings, learning from one who condemned it by experience that this is one of the things condemned as out of place, may guard against the attack of evil before experiencing it; just as one can pass through places infested by robbers and wild beasts unharmed because those who have faced danger in them have gone before. And well does the divine Apostle, well does he define the passion of love of money, declaring it the root of all evils. For just as, if a corrupt and putrid humour flows into some part and inflammation arises in the place, the fluid that has settled there must necessarily break out into an abscess and corruption, its quality escaping to the surface, so with those into whom the disease of love of money has flowed, the passion breaks out for the most part into licentiousness. Therefore he adds to the abundance of gold and silver the unseemliness that follows in sequence from the disease that took hold first. “For I made for myself,” he says, “male and female singers, [the delights of the sons of men,] for the banquets male and female cupbearers.” The mention of the names was enough to post up publicly the passion that the disease concerning money had paved the way for. O this monstrous love of art! How it brings upon the soul the flood of pleasures all at once, flooding souls through hearing and sight as with double torrents, so that evil may be both seen and heard! … Then sight vies with hearing, and hearing with sight. From there the female voice, through the loose harmony of the songs, brings the passion in with it into the heart; from here sight, like some engine of war, through the eyes … overthrows the soul. And the general of this battle line is wine, like some wicked archer shooting the human being with double arrows, directing the points at hearing and at sight; for to hearing the arrow is the song, to sight what appears. For “cupbearers” is not a bare name; the title surely comes from the work. When, then, neat wine is poured out unsparingly for the drinkers, and youth trained to beauty serves in such ministry — either boys made effeminate by their adornment, or the female sex itself moving about the banquet and confounding unseemly reasoning with the loving-cups — in what is it likely that such pursuits will end? For the one who makes each of these things his aim, and passes by need through elaborateness, how he adorns the [singers] …, their dress — it is better to keep silent about such things and not go deeply into them in our discourse by describing them, so that the memory may not, through the very accusation, scratch open the wounds of the more passionate. For these things the gold, and for these the silver, so that it may prepare such things!

Or perhaps for this reason the passion of pleasure is named a serpent by Scripture, whose nature is such that if its head slips into a joint of the wall, it draws all the trailing coil behind it in after. I mean something like this: nature makes a dwelling necessary for human beings; but through this need pleasure, slipping into a joint of the soul, turned need aside into an immoderate extravagance of adornment and transformed its zeal; then to certain vineyards, and pools and parks and the … After these it rises to its peak in arrogance and coils itself in conceit, yoking under itself rule over those of its own kind. After this it drags the coil of love of money, which licentiousness necessarily follows, the last and tail part of the beastliness of pleasure. But just as one cannot pull a serpent out by the tail end of its spine, since its scales by nature resist in the opposite direction those who pull, so one cannot begin from the last parts to expel the creeping thing of pleasure from the soul, unless one shuts out the first entry of evil. Therefore the guide to virtue commands us to watch its head, naming the beginning of vice its head; if this is not admitted, the rest is ineffective. For one who has set himself against pleasure in general as an enemy would not be carried away by the partial attacks of passion; but one who has admitted the beginning of the passion has admitted the whole beast into himself together with it. For this reason the one who publishes such passions, having gone through them all, takes up the account in summary. For having said at the beginning, “I made my work great,” he now adds, after the detailed exposition of what happened, “I was made great,” showing that his knowledge of the opposites did not come about through small things, but that his experience advanced to the very greatest magnitude, so that in no memory of those before him was there anything equal. For he says, “I was made great,” and added, “beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem”; and he has now revealed the aim for whose sake, having been trained beforehand in all wisdom, he went down to the experience of such things. For he says, “And my wisdom stood by me.” He signifies by these words: “Through wisdom [I found out] every device for enjoyment, and my mind is at the very summit of what is found in these things.” Sight cooperated with desire, and free choice, through the pleasure of the eyes, [with] the things devised for enjoyment … but participation in pleasures became for me a portion of possession; which seems to me to signify nothing else than: “I encompassed in myself every device for enjoyment, taking gladness from what happened as from some possession.” “For I did not keep back my heart from any gladness, and my heart was glad in all my toil, and this became my portion from all my toil” — calling his possession a portion. Since, then, he went through the luxury in detail, running from beginning to end, and went through in speech everything by which pleasures are roused in those who enjoy them — the beauties of buildings, the vineyards, the gardens, the pools, the parks, rule over those of his own kind, the abundance of money, the preparation for delights at banquets, all, as he names them, the luxuries in which his wisdom was busied, searching out such things and bringing them to invention, which he says he enjoyed through every sense, the eyes finding what made for pleasure and the soul having everything unhindered as it desired — then he interprets the first saying, which he made in the prologue of his discourse, declaring that all things are vain. For he says, looking at these things, that he declares concerning human life that all is vanity which sense sees and which human beings [contrive] for gladness. “For I looked upon all my works which my hands had done, and on all my toil at which I toiled to do, and see, all is vanity and a choice of spirit, and there is no advantage under the sun.” For all the power and activity of the senses has the life under the sun as its limit; but to pass beyond and come to perceive the goods that lie above, sense-perceiving nature cannot. Having examined, then, all these and such things, he instructs our life not to be disposed with admiration toward anything here — wealth, ambition, rule over subjects, delights and luxuries, banquets, and anything else that is thought valuable — but to see that the one end of all such things is vanity, of which no advantage is found afterward. For just as those who write on water do produce the writing with their hand, tracing the shapes of the letters in the liquid, but nothing of the marks remains in shape — the zeal of writing exists only in the writing, for the surface of the water always follows the hand — so all the zeal and activity for enjoyment appears in what is being done. For when the activity ceases, the enjoyment too is wiped out, and nothing is stored up for afterward, nor is any trace of gladness or remnant left to those who took pleasure once the activity of pleasure has passed. This is what the passage signifies when it says that there is no advantage under the sun for those who toil at such things, whose end is vanity. May we too come to be outside these things, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of [ages. Amen].