City of God 15.16–15.21

Chapter 16. On the law of marriages, in which the first unions differed from later marriages.

Since, then, after the first union of the man made from dust and his wife made from the man's side, the human race needed the joining of males and females in order to multiply by begetting, and there were no human beings except those born of those two, men took their sisters as wives. This was certainly the more ancient practice under the compulsion of necessity, and afterwards became the more worthy of condemnation when religion forbade it. For a most right account was taken of love, so that human beings, for whom concord was useful and honorable, might be bound by the ties of different relationships, and that one person should not have many relationships in one other, but that each should be distributed to different persons, and so, to bind social life more closely, very many relationships should take in very many people. For father and father-in-law are the names of two relationships. So that each may have one person as father and another as father-in-law, love extends more widely. But the one Adam was compelled to be both to his sons and his daughters, when brothers and sisters were joined in marriage. So too Eve his wife was both mother-in-law and mother to her children of both sexes; whereas if there had been two women, one the mother and the other the mother-in-law, social affection would have bound itself more abundantly. Finally, a sister herself, by becoming also a wife, held two relationships in one person; if these were distributed to separate persons, so that one was a sister and another a wife, social kinship would be increased in the number of persons. But there was then no means for this to happen, when there were no human beings except brothers and sisters born of the first two. So it ought to have been done when it could be done: that when there was a plentiful supply, wives should be taken from among those who were no longer sisters; and not only was there then no necessity for the former practice, but it would even be wicked if it were done. For if the grandchildren of the first human beings, who could by then take their cousins as wives, were joined in marriage to their sisters, there would now be not two but three relationships in one person, which, for the sake of binding love by more numerous kinship, ought to have been spread out one to each person. For one man would be to his own children, that is, to the brother and sister who were married, father and father-in-law and uncle; and so his wife would be to the same common children mother, aunt, and mother-in-law; and their children would be to one another not only brothers and spouses but also cousins, being the children of brother and sister. But all these relationships, which connected three people to one person, would connect nine, if each were in a separate person: so that one person would have one woman as sister, another as wife, another as cousin, one man as father, another as uncle, another as father-in-law, one woman as mother, another as aunt, another as mother-in-law; and so the social bond, not confined to a few, would spread more widely and numerously by many kinships.

We see that as the human race has grown and multiplied, this is observed even among the ungodly worshippers of many false gods, so that, even if marriages of brothers and sisters are permitted by perverse laws, a better custom nevertheless prefers to shudder at that license; and although it was entirely lawful to take sisters in marriage in the first times of the human race, custom so turns away from it as if it could never have been lawful. For custom has very great power either to attract or to offend human feeling; and since in this matter it restrains the excess of desire, it is rightly judged wicked to disregard and corrupt it. For if it is wrong, through greed for possessions, to overstep the boundary of fields, how much more wrong is it, through lust for intercourse, to overturn the boundary of morals! We have found by experience, even in our own times, in marriages of cousins, because of the degree of kinship next to that of brother and sister, how rarely custom allowed what the laws allowed; for neither did the divine law forbid it, nor had human law yet forbidden it. Yet an act that was lawful was shuddered at because of its nearness to the unlawful, and what was done with a cousin seemed almost to be done with a sister; for cousins too are called brothers and sisters among themselves because of so close a blood relationship, and are almost full siblings. It was, however, a matter of religious care to the ancient fathers that kinship itself, gradually separating itself through the lines of offspring, should not go too far off and cease to be kinship, and so to bind it again by the tie of marriage while it was not yet far removed, and in a way to call it back as it fled. Hence, even when the world was already full of people, they liked to take wives, not indeed sisters born of their father or mother or both parents, but still from their own family. Yet who would doubt that in our time even the marriage of cousins is more honorably forbidden? not only for the reason we have discussed, to multiply relationships by marriage, so that one person should not have two relationships when two persons could have them and the number of kinsfolk be increased; but also because there is, I do not know how, something natural and praiseworthy in human modesty, that from one to whom it owes, by reason of kinship, the honor of reverence, it restrains the lust, though it is generative, at which we see even conjugal chastity blush.

The union of male and female, then, as far as the mortal race is concerned, is a kind of seedbed of the city; but the earthly city needs only generation, the heavenly also regeneration, to escape the harm of generation. Whether there was before the flood any bodily and visible sign of regeneration, as circumcision was later commanded to Abraham, or if there was, what it was like, the sacred history is silent. That even those most ancient men sacrificed to God, however, it does not pass over in silence; this was plain in the first two brothers, and Noah is read to have offered victims to God after the flood, when he had come out of the ark. On this we have already said in the preceding books that the demons, claiming divinity for themselves and wishing to be believed gods, demand sacrifice for themselves and delight in such honors for no other reason than that they know true sacrifice is owed to the true God.

Chapter 17. On the two fathers and heads begotten of one parent.

Since, then, Adam was the father of both kinds, that is, both of the line that belongs to the earthly city and of the line that belongs to the heavenly, when Abel was killed and a wonderful mystery was commended in his slaying, there came to be two fathers of the two kinds, Cain and Seth; and in their sons, as many as needed to be recorded, the signs of these two cities began to shine more clearly in the mortal race. For Cain begot Enoch, in whose name he founded a city: an earthly one, that is, not on pilgrimage in this world but resting in its temporal peace and happiness. Cain means “possession”; hence it was said when he was born, whether by his father or his mother: “I have gained a man through God.” Enoch means “dedication”; for the earthly city is dedicated here, where it is founded, since here it has the end it aims at and seeks. Seth, again, means “resurrection”, and Enosh his son means “man”, but not in the way Adam does. For that name too means “man”, but it is said to be common, in that language, Hebrew, to male and female. For so it is written of him: “Male and female he made them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam.” Hence there is no doubt that the woman was called Eve as her own name, but that Adam, which means “man”, was the name of both. But Enosh means “man” in such a way, as experts in that language assert, that a woman cannot be called by it; as a son of the resurrection, where they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. For there will be no generation there, when regeneration has brought us there.

For this reason I think it worth noting, not idly, that in the generations descended from the one called Seth, although they are said to have begotten sons and daughters, no woman born there is expressly named; but in those descended from Cain, at the very end to which they extend, the last one born named is a woman. For so we read: “Methushael begot Lamech; and Lamech took for himself two wives, the name of one Adah and the name of the second Zillah; and Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents of herdsmen. And his brother's name was Jubal; he was the one who introduced the psaltery and the lyre. Zillah too bore Tubal; and he was a hammerer, a smith of bronze and iron. And the sister of Tubal was Naamah.” The generations from Cain extend thus far, eight in all from Adam counting Adam himself, that is, seven down to Lamech, who was the husband of two wives, and the eighth generation is in his children, among whom a woman too is mentioned. Here it is elegantly signified that the earthly city will have, right to its end, carnal generations, which come from the union of males and females. Hence also the wives themselves of the man who is here named as the last father are designated by their own names, which is found nowhere before the flood except for Eve. Just as Cain, which means “possession”, the founder of the earthly city, and his son in whose name it was founded, Enoch, which means “dedication”, indicate that this city has both an earthly beginning and an earthly end, where nothing more is hoped for than can be seen in this age; so, since Seth, which means “resurrection”, is the father of the generations recorded separately, we must look at what this sacred history says of his son.

Chapter 18. What was signified in Abel, Seth, and Enosh that is seen to relate to Christ and his body, that is, the Church.

“And to Seth,” it says, “a son was born, and he called his name Enosh; he hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God.” The testimony of truth plainly cries out. Man, the son of the resurrection, lives in hope; the city of God, which is begotten of faith in the resurrection of Christ, lives in hope as long as it is on pilgrimage here. For in those two men, Abel, which means “grief”, and his brother Seth, which means “resurrection”, the death of Christ and his life from the dead are figured. From this faith the city of God is begotten here, that is, the man who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God. “For we are saved by hope,” says the apostle. “But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” For who would think this empty of the depth of a mystery? Did not Abel hope to call upon the name of the Lord God, whose sacrifice Scripture records to have been so acceptable to God? Did not Seth himself hope to call upon the name of the Lord God, of whom it was said, “For God has raised up for me another seed in place of Abel”? Why, then, is something attributed especially to this man which is understood to be common to all the godly, unless because in the one who is recorded as the first born of the father of the generations set apart for the better part, that is, the city above, there had to be prefigured the man, that is, the society of men, which lives not according to man in the reality of earthly happiness, but according to God in the hope of eternal happiness? And it is not said, “He hoped in the Lord God”, or “He called upon the name of the Lord God”, but “He hoped,” it says, “to call upon the name of the Lord God.” What does this mean, “He hoped to call upon”, unless it is a prophecy that a people would arise which, according to the election of grace, would call upon the name of the Lord God? This is what was said through another prophet and what the apostle understands of this people belonging to the grace of God: “And it shall be that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” For by this very saying, “And he called his name Enosh”, which means “man”, and then the addition, “He hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God”, it is sufficiently shown that man ought not to place his hope in himself: for “cursed is everyone”, as we read elsewhere, “who places his hope in man”; and so not in himself either, if he is to be a citizen of the other city, which is not dedicated in this time, in the manner of Cain's son, that is, in the passing course of this mortal age, but in the immortality of eternal happiness.

Chapter 19. On what is signified by the translation of Enoch.

For this line too, of which Seth is the father, has the name “dedication” in the generation that is seventh from Adam, counting Adam. For the seventh born from him is Enoch, which means “dedication.” But he is the one who was translated because he pleased God, and in a remarkable number in the order of generations, the number by which the sabbath was consecrated, namely the seventh from Adam. From the father himself of these generations, which are distinguished from the progeny of Cain, that is, from Seth, he is the sixth, the day on which man was made and God completed all his works. But the translation of this Enoch is a prefiguring of the postponement of our dedication. That dedication has already taken place in Christ our head, who so rose again that he dies no more, and he himself too was translated; but there remains another dedication, of the whole house of which Christ himself is the foundation, and it is postponed to the end, when there will be the resurrection of all, who will die no more. Whether it is called the house of God or the temple of God or the city of God, it is the same thing, and not foreign to the usage of the Latin tongue. For Virgil too calls the most imperial city “the house of Assaracus”, meaning the Romans, who trace their origin through the Trojans to Assaracus; and he calls the same people “the house of Aeneas”, because Rome was founded by the Trojans who had come to Italy under his leadership. For that poet imitated the sacred writings, in which the Hebrew people, already vast, is called “the house of Jacob.”

Chapter 20. On the fact that the succession of Cain ends in the eighth generation from Adam, while among the descendants of the same father Adam, Noah is found to be tenth.

Someone will say: If the writer of this history, in recording the generations from Adam through his son Seth, intended to reach through them Noah, under whom the flood took place, and from whom again the order of births would be woven on so as to reach Abraham, with whom Matthew the evangelist begins the generations by which he reaches Christ, the eternal king of the city of God, what did he intend in the generations from Cain, and where did he wish to bring them? The answer is: to the flood, in which that whole race of the earthly city was consumed, but restored from the sons of Noah. For this earthly city, the society of men living according to man, cannot be lacking until the end of this age, of which the Lord says: “The sons of this age beget and are begotten.” But regeneration brings the city of God, on pilgrimage in this age, to the other age, whose sons neither beget nor are begotten. Here, then, to be begotten and to beget is common to both cities; although the city of God has even here many thousands of citizens who abstain from the work of begetting; but the other city too has such people, by a kind of imitation, though of those who go astray. For to it belong even those who, straying from the faith of this city, have founded various heresies; for they live according to man, not according to God. And the gymnosophists of the Indians, who are said to philosophize naked in the solitudes of India, restrain themselves from eating food and from begetting. For this is not a good unless it is done according to faith in the highest good, which is God. Yet no one is found to have done this before the flood; since even Enoch himself, seventh from Adam, who is reported to have been translated and not to have died, begot sons and daughters before he was translated, among whom was Methuselah, through whom the order of the generations to be recorded runs on.

Why, then, is so small a number of successions recorded in the generations from Cain, if they had to be carried down to the flood, and there was no long age before puberty which remained free of offspring for a hundred years or more? For if the author of this book did not have in view anyone to whom he must necessarily bring the series of generations, as in those that come from the seed of Seth he intended to reach Noah, from whom again the necessary order would follow, what need was there to pass over the firstborn sons so as to reach Lamech, in whose sons that sequence ends, in the eighth generation from Adam, that is, the seventh from Cain, as though something were to be connected on from there by which one would reach either the people of Israel, in which the earthly Jerusalem too provided a prophetic figure of the heavenly city, or Christ according to the flesh, “who is God over all, blessed for ever”, the builder and ruler of the Jerusalem above, when the whole progeny of Cain was destroyed by the flood? From this it may seem that in that line of generations the firstborn were recorded. Why, then, are there so few? For there could not have been so few up to the flood, if the fathers did not refrain from the duty of begetting until a puberty at a hundred, unless puberty was then late in proportion to that longevity. For suppose they were all thirty years old when they began to beget sons: eight times thirty (since there are eight generations, including Adam and those whom Lamech begot) is two hundred and forty years. Did they, then, not beget during the whole time after that until the flood? For what reason, then, did the writer not wish to record the generations that followed? For from Adam to the flood are reckoned, according to our manuscripts, two thousand two hundred and sixty-two years, but according to the Hebrew one thousand six hundred and fifty-six. Even if we believe the smaller number to be the truer, and take two hundred and forty from one thousand six hundred and fifty-six years, is it credible that through the one thousand four hundred years and more that remain until the flood the progeny of Cain could have been without generations?

But let whoever is troubled by this remember that when I asked how it is to be believed that those ancient men could have refrained from begetting sons for so many years, this question was solved in two ways: either by late puberty, in proportion to so long a life, or by the fact that the sons recorded in the generations were not the firstborn, but those through whom one could reach the person the author of the book had in view, as Noah in the generations of Seth. So in the generations of Cain, if no one presents himself who ought to be aimed at, to whom one had to come by passing over the firstborn through those who are recorded, it will remain to understand a late puberty, so that they became mature and fit for begetting some time after a hundred years, and the order of generations ran through the firstborn and reached the flood with a number of years of such great size. It is possible, however, that for some more secret reason, which escapes me, this city which we call earthly is commended by the sequence of generations reaching Lamech and his sons, and that the writer of the book then ceased to record the rest that could have existed until the flood. There could also be this reason why the order of generations was not carried through the firstborn, so that there is no need to believe in so late a puberty in those men: namely, that the same city which Cain founded in the name of his son Enoch may have reigned far and wide and had kings, not several at once, but one in each period, whom whoever reigned begot to succeed him. The first of these kings could have been Cain himself; the second his son Enoch, in whose name the city was founded where the reign was; the third Irad, whom Enoch begot; the fourth Mehujael, whom Irad begot; the fifth Methushael, whom Mehujael begot; the sixth Lamech, whom Methushael begot, who is seventh from Adam through Cain. And it did not follow that the firstborn of the kings succeeded their reigning fathers, but those whom merit for ruling, because of a virtue useful to the earthly city, or some lot singled out, or rather the son whom the father had loved above the others succeeded by a kind of hereditary right to reign. The flood could have come while Lamech was still living and reigning, so as to find him to destroy along with all other human beings except those who were in the ark. Nor is it surprising if, with a varying number of years intervening through so long an age from Adam to the flood, the two lines did not have an equal number of generations, but seven through Cain and ten through Seth; for Lamech, as I have said, is seventh from Adam, Noah tenth; and so not one son of Lamech, as in the others above, but several are recorded, because it was uncertain which would have succeeded him at his death, if time for reigning had remained between him and the flood.

But however it may be with the order of generations running down from Cain, whether through firstborn or through kings, it seems to me that I must in no way pass over in silence that when Lamech was found to be seventh from Adam, so many of his children were added that the number eleven was completed, by which sin is signified. For three sons and one daughter are added. The wives can signify something else, not what now seems to need commending; for we are now speaking of the generations, and it is not said from whom those wives were born. Since, then, the law is proclaimed by the number ten, whence comes that memorable Decalogue, the number eleven, because it goes beyond ten, certainly signifies transgression of the law and so sin. Hence it is that for the tabernacle of the testimony, which was like a walking temple on the journey of God's people, eleven curtains of goats' hair were commanded to be made. For in haircloth there is a remembrance of sins, because of the goats that will be on the left hand; which is why, confessing, we prostrate ourselves in haircloth, as if saying what is written in the psalm: “And my sin is ever before me.” The progeny from Adam through the wicked Cain, then, ends in the number eleven, by which sin is signified; and that number itself is closed by a woman, the sex from which the beginning of sin was made, through which we all die. And it was committed so that the pleasure of the flesh, resisting the spirit, followed. For the daughter of Lamech herself, Naamah, means “pleasure.” But through Seth, from Adam to Noah, the lawful number ten is suggested. To this Noah three sons are added; of whom one fell and two were blessed by their father, so that when the reprobate is removed and the approved sons are added to the number, the number twelve too is indicated, which is notable in the number both of the patriarchs and of the apostles, because of the parts of the number seven multiplied one by the other. For three times four or four times three make it. This being so, I see that I must consider and relate how these two lines, which by distinct generations suggest two cities, one of the earth-born, the other of the reborn, were afterwards so mingled and confused that the whole human race, except eight persons, deserved to perish in the flood.

Chapter 21. Why, after Enoch the son of Cain is mentioned, the account of his whole line is continued up to the flood, but after Enosh the son of Seth is mentioned, the narrative returns to the beginning of the creation of man.

First, we must observe how, when the generations from Cain were being listed, and the one in whose name the city was founded, that is, Enoch, had been mentioned before his other descendants, the rest were woven on to that end of which I have spoken, until that race and its whole progeny was destroyed by the flood; but when one son of Seth, Enosh, had been mentioned, and before the rest up to the flood are added, a kind of break is inserted and it is said: “This is the book of the generation of men, on the day when God made Adam; in the image of God he made him. Male and female he made them, and blessed them, and named their name Adam, on the day when he made them.” This seems to me to have been inserted so that the reckoning of times might begin again from Adam himself, a reckoning which the writer did not wish to make in the earthly city, as if God so reminded him that he should not count it. But why is there a return to this recapitulation after the son of Seth has been mentioned, the man who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God, unless because these two cities had to be set forth in this way: one from a murderer to a murderer (for Lamech too confesses to his two wives that he has committed murder), the other through him who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God? For this is the whole and highest business, in this mortality, of the city of God on pilgrimage in this world, and it had to be commended through one man, whom the resurrection of the slain one begot. For that one man is the unity of the whole city above, not yet complete, but to be completed, this prophetic prefiguration having gone before. Let the son of Cain, then, that is, the son of possession (and of what possession but earthly?), have a name in the earthly city, since it was founded in his name. For he is one of those of whom it is sung in the psalm: “They will call their names upon their lands”; wherefore what is written in another psalm follows them: “Lord, in your city you will bring their image to nothing.” But let the son of Seth, that is, the son of the resurrection, hope to call upon the name of the Lord God; for he prefigures that society of men which says: “But I, like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God, have hoped in the mercy of God”; and let him not seek the empty glories of a famous name on earth; for “blessed is the man whose hope is the name of the Lord, and who has not looked to vanities and lying follies.”

The two cities, then, being set forth, the one in the reality of this age, the other in the hope of God, as though they had gone out by the common door of mortality opened in Adam, to run forward and run out to their separate, proper, and due ends, the reckoning of times begins; in which other generations too are added, a recapitulation having been made from Adam, out of whose condemned origin, as out of one lump handed over to deserved condemnation, God makes some vessels for dishonor, vessels of wrath, and others for honor, vessels of mercy, rendering to the one what is owed in punishment, giving to the other what is not owed in grace; so that from the very comparison with the vessels of wrath the city above, which is on pilgrimage on earth, may learn not to trust in the freedom of its own choice, but to hope to call upon the name of the Lord God. For the will in a nature which was made good by the good God, but changeable by the unchangeable, because made from nothing, can both turn away from the good to do evil, which happens by free choice, and turn away from evil to do good, which does not happen without divine help.