On Noah 78–109

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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