Homilies on the Hexaemeron 7.1–8.1

"And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to their kind, and birds flying along the firmament of heaven according to their kind." After the creation of the lights, the waters too are now filled with living things, so that this region also might be adorned. The earth had received its adornment from its own growths; heaven had received the flowers of the stars and had been adorned with the pair of the great lights, as with twin eyes. It remained for the waters too to be given their proper adornment. The command came, and at once rivers were active and lakes fruitful, each of them with the kinds proper and natural to it. The sea was in labor with every kind of swimming thing; and not even what water there was in mud and marshes was left idle or without a share in completing creation: frogs and gnats and mosquitoes were clearly born from them. For what is still seen even now is proof of what is past. So all water hastened to serve the Creator's command; and the great and unspeakable power of God at once made active and moving the life of creatures whose very kinds no one could count, as the fitness to bring forth life came into the waters together with the command. "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls." Now for the first time an animate living being, sharing in sensation, is created. For plants and trees, even if they are said to live because they share in the power of nourishment and growth, are nevertheless not animals, nor animate. For this reason: "Let the waters bring forth creeping things." Every swimming thing, whether it swims on the surface of the water or cuts through the water in its depth, is of the nature of creeping things, since it drags itself along the body of the water. And even if some water creatures have feet and walk (most of these are amphibious, such as seals, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, frogs, and crabs), swimming is still their primary trait. That is why: "Let the waters bring forth creeping things." In these few words what kind is left out? What is not included in the command of creation? Not the live-bearing, like seals and dolphins and torpedo rays and those like them, the so-called cartilaginous fishes? Not the egg-laying, which are nearly all the kinds of fish? Not the scaly, not the plated, not those that have fins and those that have none? The voice of the command is small, or rather not even a voice, but only the inclination and impulse of the will; but the meaning in the command is as manifold as are the differences and common features of the fishes, to go through all of which with precision is like counting the waves of the sea or trying to measure out the water of the sea in cups. "Let the waters bring forth creeping things." Among these are the creatures of the open sea, of the shore, of the deep, of the rocks; those that go in shoals and those that are solitary; the sea monsters, the huge, and the tiniest of fishes. For by the same power and the same command both the great and the small receive their being. "Let the waters bring forth." He has shown you the natural kinship of swimming things with water; that is why fish, separated from the water for a little while, die. For they have no breathing by which to draw in this air of ours; what air is to land animals, water is to the swimming kind. And the cause is clear: in us there is the lung, a porous organ full of passages, which receives the air through the expansion of the chest and fans and cools the heat within us; but in them the opening and closing of the gills, which take in the water and let it out, fulfills the function of breathing. The fishes have their own lot, their own nature, a separate way of life, a life of their own kind. That is why none of the swimming things will be tamed, nor will it endure the touch of a human hand at all.

"Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to their kind." He commands the firstfruits of each kind to be put forth now, as seeds of nature, so to speak; their multitude is kept in store for the succession that follows, when they are to grow and multiply. Of another kind are the creatures called shell-skinned, such as mussels, scallops, sea snails, whelks, and the countless varieties of oysters. Another kind besides these are those called soft-shelled: crayfish, crabs, and the like. Yet another kind besides these are the so-called soft creatures, whose flesh is tender and loose: octopuses, cuttlefish, and the like. And among these again there are countless differences. For sea serpents, morays, and the eels found in muddy rivers and lakes come closer in the likeness of their nature to venomous reptiles than to fishes. The egg-laying kind is one, the live-bearing another. Sharks and dogfish are live-bearing, and in general the so-called cartilaginous fishes. Most of the sea monsters are live-bearing too, dolphins and seals, which are said, when their young are still small and are frightened by some cause, to take them back into their belly and shelter them. "Let the waters bring forth according to their kind." The kind of the sea monsters is one, and that of the small fishes another. Among the fishes again there are countless differences divided by kind: they have names of their own, different food, shape, size, and qualities of flesh, all separated from one another by the greatest differences and set in various species. What tunny-watchers can enumerate for us the differences of the kinds? Yet they say these men even report the number of fish in great shoals. And which of those who have grown old on beaches and shores can make known to us precisely the account of them all? Those who fish the Indian sea know some, those who hunt the Egyptian gulf others, islanders others, and Moors others. But all alike, small and great, that first command and that unspeakable power brought forth. Many are the variations in their ways of life, many the differences in how each kind succeeds itself. Most fishes do not brood like birds, nor build nests, nor rear their young with toil; the water receives the egg that has fallen out and brings it to life. And for each kind the succession is unchanged and unmixed with another nature; there are no crossings like those of the mules on land, or of certain birds, which counterfeit the kinds. No fish is armed with teeth by halves, as the ox and the sheep are among us; for none of them chews the cud, except that some report it of the parrot fish alone. All are thickly set with very sharp points of teeth, so that the food may not slip away in long chewing; for if it were not quickly cut up and sent on to the belly, it would be carried off by the water while it was being ground down.

Fishes have food assigned to them, different for different kinds. Some feed on mud, others on seaweed, others are content with the plants that grow in the water. But most fishes eat one another, and among them the smaller is food for the larger. And if it happens that the one that overpowered a smaller fish becomes another's prey, both are taken into the one belly of the last. What else, then, do we men do in oppressing those weaker than ourselves? How does he differ from that last fish, who with a gluttonous love of wealth hides the weak away in the insatiable bosom of his greed? That man held the poor man's goods; you took him and made him part of your own abundance. You have shown yourself more unjust than the unjust and more grasping than the grasping. Take care lest the same end as the fishes' await you: a hook somewhere, or a fish trap, or a net. For certainly we too, having gone through many injustices, will not escape the final punishment. Having observed much craft and treachery even in a weak creature, I want you to flee from imitating evildoers. The crab desires the flesh of the oyster, but the prey is hard for it to catch because of the covering of the shell; for nature has secured the tenderness of the flesh with an unbreakable enclosure. That is why it is called "shell-skinned." And since two hollows, exactly fitted to each other, enclose the oyster, the crab's claws are necessarily useless. What then does it do? When it sees the oyster in sheltered places warming itself with pleasure and opening its folds to the ray of the sun, then it secretly slips in a pebble and prevents the closing; and it is found to make up for its lack of strength by cunning. This is the wickedness of creatures that share in neither reason nor speech. But I want you, while you emulate the resourcefulness and ingenuity of crabs, to keep from harming your neighbors. Such is the one who comes upon his brother with deceit, takes advantage of his neighbors' misfortunes, and revels in other people's calamities. Flee from imitating those condemned. Be content with your own. Poverty with true self-sufficiency is preferable, for the sober-minded, to every enjoyment. I would not pass over the deceit and thievery of the octopus, which, whatever rock it clings to at any time, takes on that rock's color; so that many fishes, swimming unawares, fall upon the octopus as though upon the rock, and become ready prey for the villain. Such in character are those who fawn on whatever powers rule at the time and adapt themselves to the needs of each occasion, never standing fast in the same purpose but easily becoming one thing and then another, honoring self-control with the self-controlled and licentious among the licentious, changing their opinions to please each person. It is not easy to avoid them or to guard against the harm they do, because their wickedness, deeply prepared, is hidden under the pretense of friendship. Such characters the Lord calls ravening wolves who appear in sheep's clothing. Flee the many-sided and manifold in character; pursue truth, sincerity, simplicity. The serpent is many-colored; that is why it was condemned to creep. The righteous man is without guile, like Jacob. That is why "the Lord makes those of one way of life dwell in a house." "So is this sea, great and wide: there are creeping things without number, small living things with great." And yet there is a wise and orderly arrangement among them. For we can not only accuse the fishes; there are also things in them worth imitating. How is it that the kinds of fishes, each having apportioned to itself a suitable region, do not encroach on one another, but stay within their own bounds? No surveyor among them distributed their dwellings; they are not enclosed by walls or divided by boundary markers; yet what is useful has been assigned to each of its own accord. This gulf feeds certain kinds of fishes and that one others, and those that abound here are scarce elsewhere. No mountain rising with sharp peaks separates them, no river cuts off their passage; but there is a law of nature that allots to each kind its way of life equally and justly, according to its need.

But we are not like this. How so? We move the everlasting boundaries that our fathers set. We cut off land, we join house to house and field to field, so as to take something away from our neighbor. The sea monsters know the way of life assigned to them by nature: they have taken the sea outside the inhabited places, the sea without islands, where no mainland lies opposite on the far side; that is why it is unsailed, since neither curiosity nor any need persuades sailors to venture on it. The sea monsters have taken it, creatures like the greatest mountains in size, as those who have seen them say, and they stay within their own bounds, harming neither the islands nor the coastal cities. So each kind dwells in the parts of the sea assigned to it as in cities, or villages, or ancient homelands. But some fishes are migratory, setting out abroad as if from a common council chamber, and all depart at one signal. For when the appointed time of breeding comes, they leave their various gulfs, roused by the common law of nature, and hasten to the northern sea. And at the time of their ascent you might see the fishes united like a stream, flowing through the Propontis into the Euxine. Who moves them? What king's command? What edicts posted in the marketplace announce the appointed day? Who are their guides? You see the divine ordering filling all things and reaching through the smallest. A fish does not contradict the law of God, and we men cannot bear the teachings of salvation! Do not despise the fishes because they are altogether voiceless and irrational; but fear lest you be even more irrational than they by resisting the ordering of the Creator. Hear the fishes all but uttering a voice through what they do: "For the preservation of our kind we set out on this long journey." They have no reason of their own, but they have the law of nature firmly established in them and showing them what must be done. "Let us go," they say, "to the northern sea. For that water is sweeter than the rest of the sea, because the sun, lingering over it only a short time, does not draw out all its drinkable part with its ray." Even sea creatures delight in sweet waters; which is why they often swim up into rivers and are carried far from the sea. For this reason the Pontus is preferred by them to the other gulfs, as suited for giving birth and rearing their young. And when what they were eager for has been sufficiently accomplished, they all return home again in a body. And what is their reason? Let us hear it from the silent ones. "The northern sea," they say, "is shallow and lies open to the force of the winds, having few shores and shelters. That is why the winds easily stir it up from the bottom, so that even the sand of the deep is mixed with the waves. Besides, it is cold in winter, being filled by many great rivers." That is why, having enjoyed it in moderation in the summer, in winter they hasten back to the warmth of the deep and to sunny places, and, fleeing the stormy north, they take harbor in gulfs that are less buffeted.

I have seen these things myself, and I wondered at the wisdom of God in all things. If irrational creatures are inventive and protective of their own safety, and the fish knows what it should choose and what it should avoid, what shall we say, who are honored with reason, instructed by the law, encouraged by promises, made wise by the Spirit, and yet manage our own affairs more irrationally than the fishes? For they know how to take some forethought for the future, while we, through hopelessness about the future, spend our life in beastly pleasure. A fish crosses so many seas to find some benefit; what will you say, you who live with idleness? And idleness is the beginning of wrongdoing. Let no one plead ignorance. A natural reason has been sown in us that shows us our affinity for the good and our aversion from what is harmful. I do not leave the examples of the sea, since these are set before us for examination. I have heard from one of those who live by the sea that the sea urchin, a tiny and altogether contemptible creature, often becomes a teacher of calm and storm to those who sail. When it foresees a disturbance from the winds, it gets under a stout pebble and rides securely on it as on an anchor, held down by the weight so as not to be easily swept away by the waves. When sailors see this sign, they know that a violent movement of the winds is to be expected. No astrologer, no Chaldean, inferring the disturbances of the air from the risings of the stars, taught the urchin this; but the Lord of sea and winds placed even in this small creature a clear trace of his great wisdom. Nothing is left without providence, nothing neglected by God. The sleepless eye watches over all. He is present to all, providing each with its safety. If God has not left the urchin outside his oversight, does he not oversee your affairs? Husbands, love your wives, even if you came together into the fellowship of marriage as strangers to one another. Let the bond of nature, the yoke laid on by the blessing, be the uniting of those who were apart. The viper, the most dangerous of reptiles, comes to mate with the sea lamprey, and, signaling its presence by a hiss, calls her out of the depths to the marriage embrace. And she obeys, and is united to the venomous one. What does my discourse mean? That even if your husband is rough and savage in character, the wife must bear with her yoke-fellow and on no pretext consent to tear the union apart. He strikes? But he is your husband. He is a drunkard? But he is united to you by nature. He is harsh and hard to please? But he is already your own member, and the most honored of your members.

Let the husband too hear the exhortation fitting for him. The viper vomits out its venom out of respect for the marriage; will you not put off the harshness and inhumanity of your soul out of respect for the union? Or perhaps the example of the viper will be useful to us in another way as well: the coupling of the viper and the lamprey is a kind of adultery against nature. Let those who plot against other people's marriages learn, then, what kind of reptile they resemble. I have one aim: that the church be built up from every side. Let the passions of the licentious be restrained, being instructed by examples from land and sea. Here the weakness of my body and the lateness of the hour compel me to stop my discourse. And yet how much more I could add, worthy of wonder, for those who love to listen, about the things seen in the sea; about the sea itself, how its water congeals into salt; how coral, that precious stone, is a green plant in the sea, but when it is brought out into the air it hardens into the firmness of stone; whence nature put the costly pearl into the cheapest of creatures, the oyster (for the things the treasuries of kings covet are cast about on beaches and shores and rough rocks, lying in the shells of oysters); whence the pinnas produce the golden wool, which no dyer of flowers has imitated until now; whence the murex shells grant kings their purple robes, which surpass even the flowers of the meadows in their fair color. "Let the waters bring forth." And what of the things that are necessary did not come into being? What of luxuries was not granted to our life? Some things for the service of men, others for contemplating the wonder of creation. Others are fearful, schooling our sloth. "God made the great sea monsters." They are not called great because they are bigger than the shrimp and the sprat, but because in the bulk of their body they equal the greatest mountains; they often give the impression of islands when they swim up to the very surface of the water. Yet these, though so great, do not frequent shores or beaches, but inhabit the so-called Atlantic Ocean. Such are the creatures made to fill us with fear and amazement. And if you hear that the tiniest little fish, the remora, so easily stops the greatest of ships, borne by a fair wind with sails spread, that it keeps the ship motionless for a long time, as though rooted in the open sea, do you not receive even from this small creature the same proof of the Creator's power? For not only swordfish, sawfish, dogfish, whales, and hammerheads are fearful; the sting of the sea stingray, even when it is dead, and the sea hare are no less fearful, bringing swift and inexorable destruction. So the Creator wants you to be watchful in all things, so that in your hope in God you may escape the harms that come from them. But let us run up from the depths and take refuge on land. For somehow the wonders of creation, overtaking us one after another like waves, have submerged our discourse with their continuous and successive onrushes. And yet I would be surprised if our mind, meeting still greater marvels on land, did not again run away to the sea like Jonah. It seems to me that my discourse, falling among countless wonders, has forgotten due measure, and has suffered the same as those who sail on the open sea, who, judging their motion by nothing fixed, often do not know how far they have run. This seems to have happened to us too: as our discourse ran through creation, we did not notice how much had been said. But even if this august theater loves to listen, and the account of the Master's wonders is sweet to the ears of servants, let us bring our discourse to anchor here and wait for the day to render what remains. Let us all rise and give thanks for what has been said, and ask for the completion of what remains. And at your taking of food, may the table talk be of the things our discourse went through for you in the morning and in the evening; and, overtaken by sleep while thinking of these things, may you … the gladness of the day …

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth a living soul according to its kind, four-footed creatures and creeping things and wild beasts according to their kind. And it was so." The command came, advancing on its way, and the earth too received its own adornment. There: "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls"; here: "Let the earth bring forth a living soul." Is the earth, then, ensouled? And have the vain-minded Manichees room for their view, who put a soul in the earth? It was not because he said "Let it bring forth" that it brought forth what was stored up in it; but he who gave the command also bestowed on it the power to bring forth. For neither, when the earth heard, "Let it put forth the plant of grass and the fruit-bearing tree," did it bring forth grass it had kept hidden within itself, nor send up to the surface the palm, the oak, or the cypress hidden somewhere down in its flanks; the divine word is the nature of the things that come into being. "Let the earth put forth": let it not bring out what it has, but acquire what it does not have, God bestowing the power of the activity. So now too: "Let the earth bring forth a soul," not one stored up in it, but the one given to it. Then too, the argument will turn against them: for if the earth brought forth the soul, it left itself bereft of soul. But the abomination of these people is plain at once. Why, then, were the waters commanded to bring forth creeping things of living souls, and the earth a living soul? We reason that the nature of the swimming creatures seems to share in life in an imperfect way, because they live in the thickness of water. For their hearing is dull, and they see dimly, looking through water; and they have no memory, no imagination, no recognition of the familiar. So the word indicates, as it were, that in water creatures the life of the flesh leads the movements of the soul; but in land animals, since their life is more complete, the soul has been entrusted with the whole rule. For in most four-footed creatures the senses are sharper, the perception of present things keen, and the memory of past things exact. That is why, it seems, in the case of the water creatures, bodies were created ensouled (for creeping things of living souls were brought forth from the waters), while in the case of the land animals a soul that governs bodies was commanded to come into being, since those that live on the earth have received a greater share of the vital power. For land animals too are irrational; yet each by its natural voice signals many of the affections of its soul. Joy and grief, recognition of the familiar, lack of food, separation from its companions, and countless feelings it makes known by its cry. But water creatures are not only voiceless, but also untamable, unteachable, and unmanageable for any sharing of life with men. "The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger"; but a fish would not recognize the one who feeds it. The donkey knows the familiar voice; it knows a road it has often walked, and sometimes even becomes a guide to a man who has lost his way. No other land animal is said to have hearing as sharp as this creature's. And the camel's resentfulness, its heavy wrath and lasting anger: which of the sea creatures could imitate it? A camel once struck stores up its wrath for a long time and, when it finds an opportunity, pays back the injury. Listen, you who are slow to forgive, who practise resentment as a virtue: see what you resemble when you keep your grievance against your neighbor like a spark hidden in ashes, until, finding fuel, you kindle your anger like a flame.