Homilies on Exodus 8.6–9.4

Let us now see what follows as well: how the sins of the fathers are said to be repaid upon the children to the third and fourth generation. For with this saying the heretics are accustomed to taunt us, saying that it is not the word of a good God, who says that one is punished for the sins of another. But according to their own reasoning, who say that the God of the law who gives these commands is, though not good, yet just, not even they can show how, by their own understanding, it would agree with his justice that one should be punished when another sins. It remains, then, that we pray the Lord to show us how these commands befit a just and good God. We have often said that the divine Scriptures speak not all things to the outer man but very many to the inner. Our inner man, then, is said to have God as father, if he lives according to God and does the things of God; or the devil, if he is in sins and carries out his wishes, as the Saviour clearly shows in the Gospels when he says: “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and did not stand in the truth.” So just as the seed of God is said to remain in us when, keeping the word of God, we do not sin, as John says, “Whoever is of God does not sin, because the seed of God remains in him,” so too when we are persuaded by the devil to sin, we receive his seed. But when we also carry out what he has persuaded, then he has already begotten us. For we are born his sons through sin. But since, when we sin, it scarcely ever happens that we sin without a helper, but we always seek either ministers or helpers of sin (for example, if someone plots adultery, he cannot commit it alone, but an adulteress must also become a partner and associate in the sin; and besides, even if not more, there must be some man or woman in service to share in the sin), all these, begotten as it were one from another in the order of persuasion, derive the progeny of a harmful birth from their father the devil. And to come to what is written: the Lord of majesty, Jesus Christ our Saviour, was crucified. The author of this outrage and father of the crime is without doubt the devil. For so it is written: “When the devil had entered into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray him.” So the devil is the father of the sin. In this crime he begets Judas as his first son; but Judas could not accomplish this alone. What, then, is written? “Judas went,” it says, “to the scribes and Pharisees and to the chief priests, saying to them: What will you give me, and I will hand him over to you?” So from Judas a third and fourth generation of sin is born. And you will be able to discover this order in each and every sin. Now, then, let us see, according to this progeny we have described, how God repays the sins of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation, and does not repay them upon the fathers themselves. For God said nothing about the fathers. The devil, then, who has now exceeded the measure of sinning (as the prophet says, just as a garment clotted with blood will not be clean, so he too will not be clean), in this age is neither reproved for sin nor scourged: for everything has been reserved for him in the future. Hence he too, knowing that this time of punishment was appointed for him, said to the Saviour: “Why have you come before the time to torment us?” So while this world stands, the devil, who is the father of sinners, does not receive the requital of his sins. But they are repaid upon the children, that is, upon those whom he has begotten through sin. For human beings placed in the flesh are reproved by the Lord, beaten, scourged. For the Lord does not will the death of the sinner, but that he should turn and live. And therefore the kind and merciful Lord repays the sins of the fathers upon the children, so that, since the fathers, that is, the devil and his angels and the other princes of this world and rulers of this darkness (for they too become fathers of sin, like the devil), since, I say, these fathers are unworthy to be reproved in the present age, but in the future will receive what they deserve, their children, that is, those whom they have persuaded to sin, and who have been drawn by them into partnership and association in sin, may receive here what they have done, so that they may go on more purified to the age to come and no longer become partners of the devil in punishment. Because the Lord is merciful and “wills all men to be saved,” he therefore says: “I will visit their crimes with a rod of iron, and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not take away from them.” So the Lord visits and seeks out the souls which that most wicked father has begotten by the persuasion of sin, and says to each of them: “Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house.” So he visits you after sin and admonishes you, and visits you with the scourge and the rod for the sin which your father the devil suggested to you, so as to repay it into your bosom, that is, while you live in the body. And thus it is fulfilled that the sins of the fathers are repaid into the bosom of the children to the third and fourth generation. For God is jealous, and he does not want the soul which he has betrothed to himself in faith to remain in the defilement of sin; he wants it to be purged quickly, he wants it to cast off swiftly all its impurities, if it is perhaps subject to them. But if it remains in sins and says, “We will not listen to the voice of the Lord, but we will do our own wills, and we will burn incense to the queen of heaven,” as is reproached through the prophet, then they are reserved for that sentence of Wisdom which says, “Because I called and you did not obey, but mocked my words, I too will laugh at your destruction”; or for the one laid down for them in the Gospel, where the Lord says, “Depart from me into the eternal fire which God prepared for the devil and his angels.” I wish that while I am in this age the Lord would visit my sins and requite me here, so that there Abraham may say of me too what he said of poor Lazarus to the rich man: “Remember, son, that you received good things in your life, and Lazarus likewise evil things. But now he rests here, while you are tormented.” Therefore, when we are reproved, when we are chastised by the Lord, we must not be ungrateful, but let us understand that we are reproved in the present age so that in the future we may obtain rest, as the Apostle too says: “But when we are chastised by the Lord, we are reproved, so that we may not be condemned with this world.” For this reason, finally, blessed Job too willingly accepted all his punishments and said: “If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, shall we not also endure evil things? The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done; blessed be the name of the Lord.” “But he also repays mercy to thousands of those who love him.” For those who love do not need reproof, for they do not sin, as the Lord too says: “Whoever loves me keeps my commandments.” And therefore “perfect love casts out fear.” For this reason, then, mercy alone is set out for those who love. For “blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them,” in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

1. If anyone rightly understands the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt, or the crossing of the Red Sea, and also this whole journey made through the desert and each of the encampments; if he has become so capable of these things that he also receives the law of God written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; if anyone, I say, comes to these things so perfectly through the order of progress that, fulfilling each one in the spirit, he has also attained the increases of virtues indicated in them, he will then be able to come also to the vision and understanding of the tabernacle. The divine Scriptures mention this tabernacle in many places and seem to indicate certain things of which human hearing can scarcely be capable; but the apostle Paul especially discloses to us certain signs of a loftier knowledge about the understanding of the tabernacle, though somehow, perhaps looking at the frailty of his hearers, he in a way closes the very things he opens. For writing to the Hebrews he says: “For a first tabernacle was made, in which were the lampstand and the table and the setting forth of the loaves, which was called the Holy of Holies. But after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called holy, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant, and in it the two tablets and the manna and Aaron's rod that had budded.” But to these he added: “Of which we cannot now speak in detail.” As for his saying, “of which we cannot now speak,” some refer it to the time when he was writing the Epistle to the Hebrews. But others think that, because of the greatness of the mysteries, he denies that any time of the present life is fit for explaining these things. Yet the Apostle does not leave us altogether sad, but, as is his custom, opens a few things out of many, so that it may be closed to the negligent but found by those who knock and opened to those who seek. So he comes back again to the tabernacle and says: “For Jesus did not enter into holies made with hands, copies of the true ones, but into heaven itself, to appear now before the face of God,” “through the veil, that is, through his flesh.” He, then, who interpreted the veil of the inner tabernacle as the flesh of Christ, and the holies as heaven itself or the heavens, and says that the Lord Christ is the high priest and that he entered once for all into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption: from these few words, if anyone knows how to understand Paul's meaning, he can perceive how great an ocean of understanding he has opened to us. But those who are very fond of the letter of the law of Moses but flee its spirit hold the apostle Paul suspect for putting forward interpretations of this kind.

Let us see, then, whether some of the ancient saints too did not hold an opinion of the tabernacle far different from what these people now think. For hear how magnificently David, the most eminent of the prophets, thinks of the tabernacle: “While it is said to me day by day, Where is your God? I remembered these things and poured out my soul within me, for I shall go into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God.” And again in the fourteenth psalm he says: “Lord, who shall dwell in your tabernacle? Or who shall rest on your holy mountain? He who walks without blemish and works righteousness,” and so on. What, then, is this place of the wonderful tabernacle, from which one comes even to the house of God, in remembering which his soul was poured out within him and he was, as it were, dissolved by an unbearable longing? Must we really believe that it was for this tabernacle, which consisted of skins and curtains and coverings of goats' hair and other materials of our own use, that the prophet in his longing poured out his soul and turned to it with all his mind? Or at any rate how will it be true to say of this tabernacle that no one dwells in it except one innocent in hands and pure in heart, who has not received his soul in vain, when the history of the Kingdoms relates that most wicked priests, sons of pestilence, dwelt in the tabernacle of God, and that the ark of the covenant itself was captured by the Philistines and held among impious and profane men? From all this it is clear that the prophet thinks in a far different sense of this tabernacle in which, he says, no one dwells except one innocent in hands and pure in heart, who has not received his soul in vain, and has done no evil to his neighbour, and has not taken up a reproach against his neighbour. Such, then, must be the dweller in this tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man. But let us come also to the Gospels, to see whether we find anything said in them about tabernacles, so that what we seek may be beyond doubt by the Lord's own pronouncement. We find, then, the Saviour Jesus Christ himself mentioning not one tabernacle but many, and not temporal but eternal, when he says: “Make friends for yourselves of the unrighteous mammon, so that when you fail they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.” You have heard the Lord declaring that the tabernacles are eternal; hear now the Apostle too saying: “Longing to be further clothed with our tabernacle which is from heaven.” Is a way not yet opened to you by all these, by which, leaving the earth behind, following the prophetic and apostolic sense and (what is greatest of all) following the word of Christ, you may ascend with all your mind and all your understanding into heaven, and seek there the magnificence of the eternal tabernacle, whose figure is sketched by Moses on earth? Indeed, so too the Lord says to him: “See,” he says, “make all things according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain.” But the human mind, and ours especially, who know that we are least, or even nothing, in divine wisdom, may perhaps advance so far as to perceive that these things inserted in the divine books are said not of earthly but of heavenly things, and are forms not of present but of future goods, not of bodily but of spiritual things; but how the narrative of these things can be fitted to heavenly and eternal things is neither within our measure to say nor, I think, within your capacity to hear. Still, if the Lord deigns to enlighten us through your prayers, we will try to open a few things that pertain to the building up of the Church.

So the whole people is commanded, each contributing according to his means, to make the tabernacle, so that in a way all together may be one tabernacle. Yet the contribution itself is made not under compulsion but willingly. For the Lord told Moses that each one, as it seemed good to his heart, should offer gold, silver, precious stones, bronze, and besides, fine linen, scarlet, blue, and purple, rams' skins dyed red and blue skins, and also incorruptible wood, and goats' hair too, for the construction of the tabernacle. Women skilled in the art of weaving are also sought, and craftsmen who know how to work gold or silver or bronze and also to set stones, and to shape gold and wood. Then the measurements of the courts are handed down. These courts are stretched with curtains, set up on pillars, steadied with bars, and held taut and firm with cords. Besides, some parts are marked off by veils and are called the holy place, and others again divided off by a second veil are called the Holy of Holies. Inside is placed the ark of the covenant, above which cherubim are set with outstretched wings touching each other, and there a kind of plate of gold is placed like a base, which is called the mercy seat; and also the golden altar of incense. Then, besides, in the outer place a golden lampstand is set on the south side, so that it faces north. On the north side a table is placed, and the setting forth of the loaves upon it. And the altar of burnt offerings is also placed beside the inner veil. But why do I go over these things one by one? We are scarcely equal even to recounting them; the very form of the material things can scarcely be brought before our eyes; and how will anyone be able to unfold the mysteries hidden in them? Yet the reason why the tabernacle had to be made is found stated earlier, where the Lord says to Moses: “You shall make me a sanctuary, and from there I will be seen by you.” So God wants us to make him a sanctification. For he promises that if we make him a sanctification he can be seen by us. Hence the Apostle too says to the Hebrews: “Pursue peace and sanctification, without which no one will see God.” This, then, is the sanctification which the Lord commands to be made, which the Apostle too wants to be in virgins, that they may be holy in body and spirit; knowing without doubt that whoever has made a sanctification for the Lord through purity of heart and body will himself see God. Let us too, then, make a sanctification for the Lord, both all of us together one, and each of us individually one. All of us together perhaps make the Church a sanctification, which is holy, having no spot or wrinkle, in this way: if it has as pillars its teachers and ministers, of whom the Apostle says, “Peter, James, and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship.” In this tabernacle, then, the pillars are joined by bars set between them, as in the Church the teachers are united by right hands given to one another. But let these pillars be silvered, and their bases silvered. And let two bases be assigned to each pillar: one which is called the capital and is set on top; the other which is properly called the base and is placed under the pillar as a foundation. The pillars are silvered, then, because they preach the word of God and receive through the Spirit the words of the Lord, which are “pure words, silver tried by fire.” And they have the prophets as the bases of their preaching. For they set the Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and, using their testimonies, they confirm faith in Christ. But the capital of the pillars is, I think, he of whom the Apostle says that “the head of the man is Christ.” The bars of the pillars, we have already said, are the right hands of apostolic fellowship given to one another. Let the curtains, which are sewn with loops, hung on rings, and tied with cords, and are stretched like hangings twenty-eight cubits in length and four cubits in breadth, be taken as the rest of the people of believers, who hold fast and hang upon the cords of faith. For “a threefold cord is not broken,” which is faith in the Trinity, upon which the whole Church hangs and by which it is sustained. The measure of one court, extending twenty-eight cubits in length and four in breadth, I think signifies the law inserted into the Gospels. For the number seven usually signifies the law, because of the many mysteries of the number seven; joined to four, four times seven makes twenty-eight. And there are ten of these courts, so that they hold the complete number of perfection and signify the Decalogue of the law. Then, from the scarlet and blue, the fine linen and purple, many and diverse works are produced. From these the curtains, from these the outer and inner veil, from these the whole priestly and high-priestly vesture is made, with gold and gems added. But not to linger too long over the forms of the individual virtues, we can say briefly that these signify the things with which the Church is adorned. Its faith can be compared to gold, the word of its preaching to silver; … to precious stones; bronze to patience; incorruptible wood to knowledge, which came through the wood, or to the incorruption of chastity, which never grows old; fine linen to virginity; scarlet to the glory of confession; purple to the splendour of love; blue to the hope of the kingdom of heaven. Let these, meanwhile, be the materials from which the whole tabernacle is built, the priests are clothed, and the high priest adorned. What their garments are, or of what kind, the prophet declares in another place, saying: “Let your priests be clothed with righteousness.” All these, then, are garments of righteousness. And again the apostle Paul says: “Put on a heart of mercy.” They are therefore garments of mercy. And the Apostle points to other, nobler garments too when he says: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its desires.” These, then, are the garments with which the Church is adorned.

But each of us too can set up a tabernacle for God even within himself. For if, as some before us have also said, this tabernacle holds the figure of the whole world, and each individual can also hold an image of the world, why can each one not also fill out the form of the tabernacle within himself? He must, then, fit to himself these pillars of the virtues, silver pillars, that is, rational patience. For there can be in a person something that seems to be patience but is not rational. For one who does not feel an injury, and therefore does not repay it, seems patient, but this patience is not rational. Such a one has pillars, but they are not silver. But one who suffers for the word of God and bears it bravely is adorned and fortified with silver pillars. He can also stretch out courts within himself, when he has enlarged his heart according to the word of the Apostle saying to the Corinthians, “You too be enlarged.” He can also fortify himself with bars, when he has bound himself by the unanimity of love. He can stand on silver bases, when he is placed upon the stability of the word of God, the prophetic and apostolic word. He can have a gilded capital on his pillar, if faith in Christ is his golden head. For “the head of every man is Christ.” And he can stretch out ten courts within himself, when he is enlarged not in one word of the law only, nor in two or three, but can enlarge the breadth of spiritual understanding in the whole Decalogue of the law; or when he brings forth the fruit of the Spirit, joy, peace, patience, kindness, modesty, faith, continence, with love added, which is the mother of all. Let this soul, which has not given sleep to its eyes, nor slumber to its eyelids, nor rest to its temples, until it finds a place for the Lord, a tabernacle for the God of Jacob, have within itself, I say, an altar fixed, on which it may offer to God the offerings of prayers and the victims of mercy; on which, with the knife of continence, it may sacrifice pride like a bull, slay anger like a ram, and offer luxury and every lust like he-goats and kids. But let it know how to set apart from these for the priests too the right arm, the breast, and the jaws: that is, good works and works of the right hand, for let it reserve nothing on the left; the breast too, whole, which is an upright mind consecrated to God; and the jaws, for speaking the word of God. Let it know that in the holy places a lampstand of light must also be set for it, so that he may have lamps always burning and loins girded, and may himself be like a servant who waits for his master to return from the wedding. For of these lamps the Lord too said: “The lamp of your body is your eye.” But let him set this lampstand of lamps in the south, so that it faces north. For with the light lit, that is, with a watchful heart, one must always look toward the north and watch the one who is from the north. As the prophet too says that he sees a boiling caldron or pot, and its face from the face of the north. For from the north all the evils of the earth are kindled. Watchful, then, anxious, and burning, let him always look upon the wiles of the devil, and always watch whence temptation may come, whence the foe may rush in, whence the enemy may creep up. For the apostle Peter too says: “For your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour.” Let the table of setting forth, having twelve loaves, also be placed on the north side, facing south. Let these loaves be for him the apostolic word, both in number and in power, which he uses unceasingly (for he is commanded to set them before the Lord daily); and let him look back toward the south, whence the Lord comes: for “the Lord will come from Teman,” as it is written, which is from the south. Let him have in the inner recesses of his breast also the altar of incense, so that he himself may say, “For we are the good odour of Christ.” Let him also have the ark of the covenant, in which are the tablets of the law, so that he may meditate on the law of God day and night, and his memory may become an ark and library of the books of God, since the prophet too calls blessed those who keep his commandments in memory to do them. Let there be laid up within him the jar of manna, the subtle and sweet understanding of the word of God. Let there be within him also the rod of Aaron, priestly doctrine and the flowering severity of discipline; and above all glory, let him have the high-priestly adornment. For that part of him which is the most precious of all can exercise the high priesthood within him: what some call the ruling part of the heart, others the rational sense or the intellectual substance, or however that portion of ours can be called through which we can be capable of God. Let this part in us, then, be adorned like a high priest with garments and precious ornaments and a linen robe reaching to the feet. This is the kind of garment that reaches to the feet, covering the whole body. By this it is signified that first of all he must be wholly clothed with chastity. Let him then receive also the jewelled shoulder piece, on which is placed the splendour of works, so that men seeing his works may glorify the Father who is in heaven. Let him also receive the oracle, which can be called the “rational,” placed on the breast and marked out with four rows of stones. And let the golden plate, which is called the petalum, shine on his forehead; on both of these, truth and manifestation are said to be placed. In the things said to be placed on the breast I perceive the gospel word, which in a fourfold order sets forth to us the truth of faith and the manifestation of the Trinity, referring everything to the head, that is, to the nature of the one God. In these, then, is all truth and every manifestation of truth. So if you wish to exercise the high priesthood rightly for God, let the gospel word and faith in the Trinity always be kept in your breast. With this the apostolic word too agrees, both in power and in number, provided that the name of God is always kept on the head and all things are referred to the one God. Let the high priest also have his coverings on his inner parts; let him have his private parts covered, so that he may be holy in body and spirit, and pure in thoughts and works. Let him also have bells around the hem of his garment, so that “when he goes into the holy place,” it says, “he may give a sound” and not enter in silence. And these bells, which must always sound, are placed at the extremity of the garment for this reason, I believe: so that you may never be silent about the last times and the end of the world, but always sound about them, discuss them, and speak of them, according to him who said, “Remember your last things, and you will not sin.” In this way, then, let our inner man be adorned as high priest for God, so that he may enter not only into the holy place but also into the Holy of Holies, and may approach the mercy seat where the cherubim are, and God may appear to him from there. The holy places can be … holy conduct can possess them in the present age. But the Holy of Holies, into which one enters only once, I think is the passage to heaven, where the mercy seat is, and the cherubim, where God will be able to appear to the pure in heart; or else because the Lord says, “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Let these things, then, which could occur to our minds in passing for the present, and as much as we could measure out to the ears of our hearers, be said about the tabernacle, so that each of us may strive to make a tabernacle for God within himself. For not in vain is it related of the fathers that they dwelt in tents. I understand it thus, that Abraham dwelt in tents, and Isaac and Jacob. For these, who had adorned themselves with such great and excellent splendours of virtues, built within themselves a tabernacle for God. For the royal mark of purple shone in them, which is why the sons of Heth said to Abraham: “You are a king from God among us.” Scarlet shone too: for this reason he led his only son to be slain for God, and for this reason the angel held his right hand. Blue shone, when, always gazing at heaven, … that which is commanded in the law, that the people should go out on a fixed day of the year and dwell in tabernacles, having branches of palms and boughs of willow and poplar and branches of a leafy tree. The palm is the sign of victory in that war which flesh and spirit wage with each other. The poplar and willow, both in their power and in their name, are shoots of chastity. If you keep these whole, you can also have the branches of the shady and leafy tree, which is eternal and blessed life, when the Lord has placed you in a green place, beside the water of refreshment, through Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.