Heptateuch (the first seven books of the Bible in verse)

In the beginning the Lord set heaven and earth in place; for the earth was formless and hidden by the flood, and the immeasurable God was moving over the vast waters, while chaos and black darkness dimmed all things; when he commanded these to be parted, he speaks from heaven’s pole: “Let there be light!” and all things shone brightly in the world. When the Lord had completed the works of the first day, he founded the sky, white with rising clouds. The immeasurable sea receives its wandering shores, sweeping in many rivers with powerful currents. The third light uncovered the tawny face of the lands. Soon the dry ground, its name given, is called earth. Flowering shoots spring up in the windy fields, and fruit-bearing branches at once bend their arms. On the fourth day he begets the moon with the sun’s lamp and fixes the stars, radiant with trembling light. These elements he gave as emblems to the world beneath, to teach the seasons that must change through their various risings. On the fifth day the flowing streams receive fish, and the various birds hang their wings in the air. On the sixth the Father makes the cold serpents glide in coils and spreads herds of four-footed beasts through all the fields, and he commanded all things everywhere to increase with manifold offspring and to roam and feed over the immeasurable lands.

When divine power had established these things by command, seeing that a ruler would be lacking to the world’s affairs, it says: “Let us make man to the exact pattern of our likeness, to reign in the whole world.” And though he could have formed him by a word alone, he deigned nevertheless to shape him with his own holy right hand and breathes into the brute breast from the divine breast. When he saw him formed in an image like his own, he judges that alone he would turn over gnawing cares. At once he floods his eyes with watering sleep, so that from a rib plucked out a woman might be gently formed and a mingled substance might make the twin frames firm; and a name is given her that means life, Eve. Therefore children leave their parents, as is the custom, and cleave to their wives, settling their homes. On the seventh light God rested at the end of his works, establishing it as sacred for the joys of the age to come. Then, when the throngs of living things had been brought in order, to all, one by one, Adam gives a name that endures, skilled with the wisdom granted him. God deigns to address him, and Eve joined with him: “Increase by manifold birth for times to come, that the sky and the full lands may be filled with your offspring, and as my heirs pluck the various fruits that the groves and the fields yield from the rich turf.”

When he had spoken these things, paradise is furnished as a glad court and looks upon the light of the first sun. Among these a tree is begotten with deadly fruit, producing a taste of life and death joined together. In the midst of the dwellings a river flows with a pure stream, which waters the splendid gardens with its liquid waves and cuts four-forked channels from its welling spring. The Pishon, very rich, flows with gold-bearing waves and wears down conspicuous gems in its roaring flood — the green prase is the name of one, of the other the glowing carbuncle — and with clear shallows laps the land of Havilah. After it the Gihon, gliding by, enriches the Ethiopians; the third is the Tigris, joined to the pleasant Euphrates, furrowing Assyria apart with its swift stream. Here Adam is set as keeper with his faithful wife, and as worker he is instructed by such a voice of the Thunderer: “Do not be afraid, both of you, to pluck the permitted fruits that the unshorn grove has produced on its leafy branch, but take care that you do not gather the guilty fruit that flourishes with a twofold juice for separate ends.” Meanwhile deep night still held them blind, and no garment yet covered the limbs just formed. Among these dwellings and gardens of mellow berries the foaming serpent, surpassing the animals in cunning, was creeping silently in cold coils;

rolling livid lies with biting mind, he tempts the soft heart in the woman’s breast: “Tell me, why do you fear the happy shoots of the fruit tree? Has God not hallowed all the fruits that are born? Yet if you are eager to pluck honeyed food, the golden world will smile on you from the star-bearing heaven.” She refuses and fears to touch the forbidden branches; yet her heart is overcome by its weak sense. As soon as she bit the mellow fruit with snowy tooth, the clear sky shone out, stained by no cloud. Then the taste, putting allurement into her honeyed throat, drove her to bring the gift to her husband, unused to it. As soon as he took it, night was wiped away, and their eyes shone forth clear, as the world grew radiant. So when each looked upon the naked body, they shade with fig leaves what they see is shameful. When the sun’s light was already setting, they recognize the Lord’s sound and in fear make for out-of-the-way places. Then the Lord of heaven addresses the sorrowful Adam: “Tell me, where are you now?” He answered thus, as a suppliant: “O Lord, I tremble in a fearful heart at your address, great one, and naked I am worn out with chilling fear.” Then the Lord: “Who gave you the guilty fruit?” “The woman handed it over, saying that at once the eyes, flooded with shining day, and the clear sky had shone upon her, and the sun and the stars of heaven.”

At once the wrath of God terrifies the troubled Eve, as the Most High asks who was the author of the forbidden deed. She then reveals: “I received the serpent’s persuasive speech, through deceiving guile and coaxing request. For, weaving his words with viper’s poisons, he told me these fruits were sweet above all.” At once the Almighty condemns the deeds of the serpent, commanding the monster to live hated by all, soon to crawl forward on its outstretched breast, then to eat the ground with its bite, in a war to last for all times between human minds and itself as it glides, so that with head cast down it would creep flat behind the legs of men and at their heels, while gliding it presses close. The woman, wretchedly deceived by fraud-bearing persuasions, is commanded to give birth amid harsh danger and to bear subjection to her husband with devotion. “But you, to whom the counsel of your wife seemed true, who, defeated, yielded to the cruel serpent, shall bewail your wretched toil through long ages. For in place of the crop of wheat there will spring up the thistle and the thorn bush with many sharp spines, so that with wearied body and sorrowful breast your anxious food may cost you very many sighs, until, in the setting time of death when it comes, you are given back to the lying earth from which you bear your body.”

This done, the Lord gives the frightened pair weariness of life and drives them out far from the sacred gardens and sets them facing away and shuts them out by a fire between, in which the Cherub rolls forth with swift heat, while the hot point seethes and whirls its flames. For them the Lord, lest their limbs grow stiff with sluggish cold, sewed skins stripped from the flesh of cattle, covering their naked limbs with warm garments. So when faithful Adam perceived that he was now a husband in wedlock, he gives his wife the name of a beloved mother: two offspring of his seed the father forthwith names with different beginnings: this one has the name Cain; joined with him, Abel kept the harmless sheep with much care, but the other turned the earth with the curved plough. When they were bringing their gifts to the Thunderer continually, they gave unlike fruits as their minds prompted. For the first offered what had sprung from the fertile clods, but the other devotes himself with a gentle lamb, carrying in his hand the pure entrails and snowy fat, and at once the pious offerings please the Lord as he looks on. For this reason Cain glowed with cold anger. God, deigning to address him, begins thus: “Tell me, if you live rightly and discern what is harmful, could you not live pure of the guilt you have contracted?

Cease to destroy your brother with a biting mind; he will bow his neck to you, subject as to a lord.” Yet not broken by these words, he leads his brother to the fields, and when he saw him caught in the lonely grass, gnashing his teeth, he crushes the innocent throat with both his hands. The Lord, having watched the deed from high heaven, asks where on earth Abel is living. He denies that he was set to be his brother’s keeper. God says to him: “Does not the voice of his blood sound, sent to me, and rise up to the lofty sky? Know therefore what will abide for you for so great a crime: for the earth that just now was wet with your brother’s blood is cursed for you and will refuse the seeds entrusted to it and will bring forth no fruit, its plants consumed, so that, sluggish, your limbs shaking with much trembling, you may always draw sighs as if joined to death.” Terrified, he groans and asks death from the divine power, but it was not granted by the angry Thunderer; for, having deserved evil, he is made known by a branded sign, so that no one may lay the guilty man low with the sword, lest sevenfold perils prepare a greater death. Then he goes out from the face of the Lord as one lost, turning from his home, onto the turf of the land of Nod, and from the sons whom his faithful wife bore he founded a lofty city in the name of the firstborn.

Enoch begets Irad; he then Mehujael, with whom as father Methuselah in time came forth into the air and drew out the times of a long life. But Lamech, who struck down dread Cain with the sword, suffers much heavier things than the guilty man he slew; for ten times seven penalties restrain his crime. Groaning at the deed, he reproaches himself before his wives, of whom the first was Adah and the other Zillah. The first bears Jabal, who as a shepherd in the grassy fields fed the flocks in the glad pasture. Jubal follows him, who invented the musical plectrum and strings harmonious with varied murmur. Soon Zillah bears Tubal, whose custom it was to pour streams of bronze and to shape iron subdued on the anvil in diverse ways at the hissing furnace; after him follows Naamah, born of the same father. Meanwhile Adam, not feeble in his vigorous years, begets Seth after the death of gentle Abel. He then begets Enosh, to whom the Lord granted a pure heart; when Enosh called on him, he consented to be entreated and accepted the gifts of a peaceful mind. So when Adam had completed nine hundred and thirty years, put to sleep by death, he rested. And then, long-lived, Enosh lived nine hundred and five years, and Kenan, equalling him, was longer only by five extended years.

Younger than him again by fifteen years the old man Mahalalel lies down; then Jared, by thirty and three, lived more confined in his long age. Enoch, whose care it was to serve the Mighty One and to join his mind to God, much younger than these — when three hundred years were unrolled, if you take care to add five and six times ten — covered in sudden darkness is hidden and, removed by the Lord’s great mercy, lives a happy life in a peaceful time. But Methuselah stretches out nine hundred circling years and seven times ten, to which it is right to join one. Lamech, sprung from this father, when Noah was born, spoke thus, as in the manner of prophets he foresees the future and sends his mind into the age to come: “This one will give us secure dealings of life and remove the hard burden and bring back peace, which was driven out by evil deeds and our guilt and by sad right hands, by whose toil the furrowed earth refuses fruit, since the Lord spoke the curse.” He lived seven hundred and seven years, with seventy added on, as the sum requires. Of his begetting Noah, noble for upright deeds, is born, to give seed to an innocent age. And he begets three sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, who were used to beat softened iron in rhythm and readily to forge the sparkling masses.

The prophet had now lived six hundred years when the Lord, weary of the crimes of the dire world and of the manifold guilt of men under long light, in mercy restricts the troubles of a drawn-out life and set a limit of twice sixty years, which no one under the law laid down could surpass. Meanwhile earthly pleasure entices the holy ones and holds them captive as they come down from the heavenly citadel; while they behold women’s faces smiling with beautiful bodies and cling too closely to pleasing embraces, they begot for themselves giants of grim bulk, by whose crimes the patience of the Lord is at last forced to take offence; while he conceives a long wrath and grieves that man was created by the forming of his starry right hand, moved in his holy breast he speaks: “It is my right to blot out the sins of the guilty world with the waves of the sea and wrap the whole earth and plunge the human race in vast floods, and with them the herds of every kind that crop the glad grass through the fields while they roam the high hills; let one death crush serpents and birds and beasts, that my wrath may grow mild when deceits are blotted out.” Noah therefore receives the mighty commands of God, ordered to build an ark with double chambers, to hold the nests of birds, to remain for future seed.

and, lest the timbers spring apart with splitting cracks, he smeared the ark with very rich ointment of pitch. It was three hundred full cubits long, opening fifty wide across its belly. But where the gables rise with lofty roof, it is raised high toward heaven by thirty cubits, with squared planks, to yield to no floods, bearing at the middle a door with an easy hinge. When God looked down from the stars on these things completed, he addresses thus the prophet who is to be sent onto the waters: “Climb up quickly, and your sons and daughters, into the boat to float on the swelling waves, because I have seen that your heart is just, and your will, long known to me, has deserved greater things than the present; and gather and shut in with you the gentle herds of every kind by sevens in pairs; of the unclean flock you shall let two be with you, and bring in food for all these and your own accustomed food, lest, when through the vast floods tillage has ceased, you too suffer troublesome hunger, borne over the grey-green salt waters with no provisions laid up beforehand; for when the bright light of the sun comes forth in the sky for the seventh time, I am preparing to pour out all the rainclouds from heaven’s pole and roll out all the springs with a greater onrush, by which the ocean may surge larger with waves, receiving foaming rivers more abundantly and smearing all things with mud in its poured-out course.

For through forty days joined with nights I will fill the dripping clouds with ceaseless rain, that whatever lives may be drowned in the swelling waves.” When this was said, the Lord’s commands are carried out by the willing and eager old man, who, renowned for his long life, passing through six hundred years, entrusted himself to the waves and received with him his sons and daughters together, trusting, though he was hidden in a slender cavern. Meanwhile the clouds let loose all their rains, and the deep sent its watering springs into the seas. And now for forty days all things are flooded. Birds do not hold up their bodies on light wings, nor does the beast escape the waters on a high-topped hill; all things are buried in the sea; there is one death for all. Meanwhile, hanging over the swelling sea, the floating ark protected the shut-in prophet as it drifted and, like a parent, kept seed for the ages to come, secure amid its own shipwreck. Soon the thinning air began to bind the rains in the pitch-black clouds. And now the sea decreases as the water ebbs, and when the boat was floating on a modest flood, the old man sends out the raven, black of breast, which, while carried by the swift wind on light wings, did not return, leaving the hopes of the just prophet in suspense.

After it he sends a white dove over the waters, which, worn out with flight over the watery plain, finding ground nowhere, returned to the kindly prophet. And when the seventh light of the returning sun shone, he sends off the bird with clapping wing, which, having found a grove, brought back its beak filled with branches of the rich olive, when evening was already rising among the stars and running ahead of night with trembling fire. Then again, when seven days had duly passed, the bird is sent over the sea, and, gliding away on swift course, never returned to the house of its companions. So the prophet had now passed six hundred and one circling years. In the first month that followed, on the first day of the month, when the freed earth seemed far off to open up the mountains and roll out mist — the mountains over which the sea had flooded fifteen cubits deep — then, when the second month had run its course but three days remained, the earth was free of the whole flood and gladly showed its own green. So when the ark settled on the bared mountains that have the name Ararat in the ancient tongue, the old man unbars the doors, giving back new seed to the earth, and gladly built a festive sanctuary to the Thunderer, and, mindful of his vow, as he burns the altars with flames, the offering was worthy, since it produces gentle odours that breathe in the Lord’s presence with glad breezes.

Then, lest the earth perish by a like disaster, the Lord removes the flood for times to come, commanding the hurrying months and the seasons of the moving year to roll their accustomed courses without rest, but only the saffron bow to be bent in the clouds when the bright stars drip with rain from a clear sky. The Lord’s blessing attends the gentle prophet, namely that over all that earth and sea produce the faithful man should rule, since they are subject to the ruler; he is warned to keep from his tables the flesh of cattle that have not given up their life with the blood let out, because in many creatures this soul is placed. “But if a man is killed by iron or a wild beast’s tooth, I will inquire,” he said, “of those who do such things; in like manner they shall give their necks to shed their blood.” Then the Lord divides the offspring of the prophet he favoured and orders them to take the fertile lands severally, to fill the empty world with dense offspring. The prophet receives this reward by the Lord’s gift, to be the discoverer of the vine and to taste the white wine. When he was quickly filled with cups and heavy with sleep, Ham mocked him — from him the Canaanite youth is born, and he named the people from his lofty name — showing his father with his limbs bared to his brothers. They with equal piety cover and veil him as he lies:

joining their backs with care while they turn their eyes away, they carried the sleeping old man and do not see the limbs shameful to speak of, bending their necks with tender modesty. When the prophet, his mind now clear, came to know that work of piety, he condemns the offender for all time, making him last among his brothers and subject to harsh rule, and, terrified, a suppliant of the strong. Then the old man, having lived, passes nine hundred years and fifty, as the record of the law has provided. His descendants, hastening to raise walls, founded outstanding cities of vast height. And while, pressing on with the work, they build walls in rivalry, they mark them with names, Tarsus and Citium and Rhodes, standing out with their gates, which the sea washes with its wave. Hence Canaan has his name, hence Sidon rises, thence the Jebusite, the Amorite joined to the Hittite; the Girgashite thrives, the Hivite, the Arkite, the Sinite, the Zemarite, the Arvadite and Orus, and whoever inhabits the walls of Gaza, to which Gomorrah and Sodom are yoked, and Admah and Zeboiim, with which Lasha is joined. They also make Mesha and, like it, Sephar, and the high-ridged hill that lifts its cloudy citadels where the flame of whitening day first bursts forth.

from their stock Nimrod is born, used to fierce hunting and towering with huge limbs, and rejoicing to raise himself against the holy God, fierce in the manner of the heroes, whose lofty neck and immense head raise them into the high air. He founds Babylon and Erech, Accad and Calneh amid the glades of Shinar; then he builds Asshur and set Nineveh, outstanding for its buildings, and Rehoboth, and then Calah; Resen divides their glades and rises on the boundary between. And while they eagerly vie and give names to walls, they come into a plain called by the name of Shinar, and, striving to raise hollow towers to the stars, they make no lime by which the inserted stones are bound, but bricks of clay are baked in a hot furnace, so that the walls might shine with immense buildings before a new migration made the nations separate. Bitumen served for lime, which is drawn out with soft fleece and binds the stones with its clinging body. For among all one tongue, sharing its speech, spoke with like utterance and common words. At length the Lord came down and saw the walls, commanding varied voices to burst forth suddenly and diverse sounds, with which the nations each speak.

At once the world is filled as its settlers are placed, and the divided place was soon called Confusion. After these follows Abram, who greatly believed the Lord, whom his father, called Terah by an ancient name, begot. Lot too is joined, a brother of kindred blood. When they had grown strong in the years of youth, they took wives for themselves: Lot rejoices in a covenant with Milcah, and Sarai enriches Abram as his wife, though she led her life to old age without a child. Terah anxiously took them away from the Chaldean flock, since the fields of Canaan with their leafy hills pleased him. But God, who knew the mind of chosen Abram, commands him to take up his seat in another region: “Come now, make haste and remove yourself from your father’s lands, and leave your kindred’s houses and your accustomed thresholds; for I will now make you the chief of an immense nation. Besides this I will add that whoever wounds you with malicious words, cursed from the mouth of the Lord, shall bear every grief; but whoever with kind speech recounts your benefits, let him be greater in glad fortune.” Their seats are changed; the camp is pitched at Shechem, which the Lord pledged to the prophet for a long age. There, making haste, he raises sacred altars; climbing a mountain that throws back the broken waves and, swelling, looks out on the ruddy light of the sun, …

here too an altar is founded with stones set in place, and God is prayed to; then through lonely fields the prophet goes, where the land lies without settlers; and while it is parched in its ever-thirsting veins, the barren land brought on famine, to which care clings. From this fear the fertile fields of the Nile are sought. And because Sarai was radiant with conspicuous beauty, she is told to say that she is a bride bound by no tie but his sister, lest by chance, with monstrous daring, the unbridled crowd should conceive a guilty jealousy against her husband and she should have him as a grim rival’s competitor. The crowd of Canopus marvelled at her as she came and in every way survey Sarai with desirous eyes. And when she was praised through the nobles and handed to the king, the prophet is received with sweet wishes and words. Yet the King of heaven did not will that she be given to him; for with many and great terrors at once he drives the king to distraction, who, charged with the guilty daring, rebukes the chief: why had he said that his wife was rather his sister and mocked him with false cunning? Then he orders him gladly to lead his bride away with him, and whatever of the herd he had brought from his native shores. For God had dedicated to his servant, whose words always agreed with his, huge wealth and all the greatest things.

Lot too receives whatever he had brought there, and returning they settle at last in their native lands. And there, while they wander with flocks running among one another, the herdsmen of the cattle strike each other in quarrels, because the small pastures cramped the breeding flocks of the two. But the father, desiring to settle the untamed quarrels, offered that his brother should take whatever fields he wished. He gladly obeys, asking for the banks of the Jordan, a river that long ago, swelling with waves like the Nile, enriched the fertile plains with its overflowing stream. The old man receives the Canaanite acres by lot as he comes, and settles his herds through the green fields. But he was not permitted to establish lasting seats; for the father was ordered to survey with his gaze the land that the fiery sun, returning, beholds on both sides or the twin Bears look down upon to its farthest bounds, promised to the race to be created by so great a father. Whoever longs to grasp its number in speech will sooner tell the throngs of stars or of the sand that the sea at times lays bare on its uncertain shore. He goes also to the oak of ancient name, Mamre, and dedicates a lofty altar to the everlasting God. No delay: after concord had made the brothers separate, to establish their realms in their chosen fields,

four kings rise up from a numerous people and, warlike, lay Sodom waste with many soldiers, and four battle lines, each led by its prince, hurl iron through the clouds as far as the Salt valley. The five tyrants take flight, leaving the war, and in headlong flight hide on the leafy mountains what could survive death; the others by their true names are called Arioch, Tidal, Chedorlaomer, and Amraphel too, greedy for years of glory. Amid the many things that happen in the crisis of war, Lot too is captured with all his kin and household. When a messenger told this with grief-bringing mouth, the prophet rises, and from his large flock of servants three hundred retainers, adding nine times two more, he himself as leader calls to war and takes up the sword again. At midnight he falls on them as they now fear nothing, routs the victors and kills many enemies. Moreover he receives his brother, rescued from such great peril, and draws the spoil with him in a broad column. He is welcomed with glad praise by the nobles of Sodom and by the priest of God, renowned for holy deeds — it was Melchizedek, prince and ruler of Salem — and he blessed him, presenting bread and wine, and received from Abram as a gift a tenth of the fruits. The other asks that as victor he deign to return the captives, himself to take the rest as his due under the law of war.

But victorious valour, content with its own restraint, accepts as its whole reward the brother it longed for. Soon God, enlightening the prophet’s sleeping heart, commands him to empty his breast of all fear, since he is safe under the cover of an unconquered right hand. He, eager at the freedom granted him, speaks: “What do your gifts offer me for so great a word? For long old age, my companion, shakes my weary frame, nor is it given me, my service done, to leave a son after my death. And because I have no offspring from a noble marriage bed, a base-born heir will be ours, whom a slave woman bore.” The Lord strengthens the prophet as he speaks thus: “Do not fear; trust me; a slave will not be your heir. For if anyone can know the stars that lack number or run through all the sands of the sea, he alone will be able to number by reckoning the offspring that is to be given you, as far as the whole world stretches; and from your seed one will be born who will see your days, a son who is also the Son of the eternal King; for I am the Lord, founder of the heavens, and I brought you back safe by my help from the Chaldean nation.” The old man believed this, and with the sincere keenness of his heart judges that nothing will be lacking to the Lord’s words, and, relying on him, asks, as he prays with peaceful words, for signs of God to bear in mind and follow in his heart, in return for so great a gift, by which he might beget a son with a sluggish body, his limbs now cold and his time run out.

Warned, he makes ready a heifer now three years old, joining a lively bullock of grim brow, then a ram and a he-goat and a shaggy she-goat, a pair of doves joined with a like turtledove. Soon he splits the bodies of the cattle into two parts, leaving the birds whole in all their flesh; he arranges everything and fits it to the sacred altars, and places himself nearby, alert in mind and ear. But see, at the first hour of dark night the bright breast of the holy prophet is terrified, and blackening darkness rushes in, confounding the light. Astonished at this, he takes comfort from the Lord, as he foreknows the new seed of the nation to come, to be placed through various misfortunes under a hard king of Egypt, whose name will be that of the bitter Pharaoh. “For four hundred years it will serve, subject to masters, to be called back again to fruitful lands; and, the turn reversed, the nation that once trembled as a slave will wield the sceptre, restraining nations with strong valour. But you, when the end of your measured age has come, having lived your life, will be committed to the tomb in your fathers’ seats. For the people, torn away from a seat hostile to it, will come here, to be given the homes of their ancient forefathers.

For where the inhabitant now rejoices in the lands of the Nile, and where the swift Euphrates swims past the regions of the Syrians, they will hold the Kenite and the Kenizzite peoples, the Kadmonites, the Hittites with the joined nation of the Perizzites, and the Rephaim, to whom the band of the Jebusites clings, and the Canaanites will be driven from the seat they love; and the Amorite too, thrust out with his friend the Girgashite, half-dead, will give up the fields he possessed to those who come.” When the holy words of God had declared these things to the prophet, under the setting sun he gives a clear sign by a thunderbolt. For as if flame were seething in a surging furnace, it seemed to lick up the flesh of the slaughtered cattle. Meanwhile Sarai, worn out through long barren years, had lost even the hope of being a parent, and because she would not bring forth a child from her ice-cold womb, she began to coax her husband toward a second bed and compels him, reluctant, to know the joys and partnership of the slave woman, so that he might at least be a father by a lowly pledge. At once the Egyptian Hagar is led into the bridal chamber and from her fertile womb bears Ishmael, a bastard. When she despised her mistress with slavish cunning, afflicted and wounded by harsh blows, she fled. And while she hid out of the way by a nearby spring, a messenger came down from the heavenly height of the sky and sends her, counselled, back to her masters’ house, and also endows her, rejoicing, with a great gift.

And because she had seen the holy one shining with conspicuous light, she named the spring by a like name. And now the prophet Abram had completed ninety and nine years, when he now recognizes himself as about to be a parent through the great gift of a son, one with whom the covenants of the most high God agree, to be the father and leader of innumerable nations, receiving peaceful seats through great ages. Moreover he comes forth greater than his accustomed name: a vowel brings added honour to the hard name, and she who had been Sara is ordered to be called Sarra. Moreover Ishmael, enriched at his father’s prayer, as prince begets and rules twice six peoples. After these deeds the old man, when the eighth sun was at hand, takes away with iron the foreskins of the males brought before him, adding likewise all who were of the people apart. Then, when the time of the promised gift is at hand, he dissolves into trembling laughter with wrinkling face, as he silently turns over the mighty promises in himself: “Will you believe that God can found what never existed and bring forth strength through broken limbs?” Now the sun, more blazing, was climbing the middle of the sky, and the great old man was catching the cool in the shade, when suddenly he sees three young men standing there together. Attentive to them all, he courts one above the rest and begs

that he not leave his servant behind as he passes swiftly by, but peaceably deign to accept the shelter of his oak, and let him wash his two feet with cool water, and deign to take the loaves set on a friendly table. He consents, and Abraham swiftly carries out the venerable commands. Sarah too, making haste, lets herself be seen and gladly brings out three measures of fine flour, which she had given to the heat of the embers to bake. Then a calf, curving its horns on a swelling brow, is chosen, its back darkened by no spot, and dishes of curdled milk are just set out. And while he feeds God, set before him under a threefold image, he tastes sweet joys from the hallowed words: “What is Sarah doing now?” (for she was then hidden in the house) and the true Light continues the words begun: “Rejoice, mindful prophet: in a full year no less she will be a mother”; at this the woman, far off, laughed with glee and despairs of childbirth in her aged body. Meanwhile it is asked what was the cause of the laughter. She denies that she was shaken by easy laughter, since she fears and turns her fault over in her silent breast. The young men rise, comely with equal brightness, and view Sodom lying below in full light. Then the Lord, not suffering anything to be hidden from the prophet, declares what cause leads him to the heavy-laden cities:

“Roused by the immoderate outcry of Sodom and of Gomorrah joined with it, I have come and take care to see the truth,” so that, because the guilty crowd and the horrible outcry are so laden, the two towns together might burn with heaven’s lightning. Here the trembling prophet asked in a servant’s words what number of holy men would save the guilty walls. Beginning his sum at fifty, he learns, down to ten men, that under their strong protection a people overwhelmed by vices would escape ruin. At once two come to Sodom, the Son and the Nourisher, when the evening star was already bursting forth with moist fire. There Lot was sitting before the doors, as was his custom. And when he had looked on the men, glorious with like bodies, bowing low he led those he revered to his own threshold, though they wished rather to stay in the middle of the street. He feeds them with white unleavened bread of fine flour, and then they lay their limbs to sleep on a couch. See, the whole crowd of Gomorrah runs forward raging, surrounding Lot’s halls with savage uproar, and, demanding the men, it quarrels with swollen mouth. He, mindful of peace, tries to soften the raging men and even eagerly offers his daughters to the madmen, so that perverse pleasure might rather burn with a lawful lust, separating shameful acts from the same sex. But the words move nothing. The doors are broken with iron.

And while they crowd together and tear away the strong bars, their eyes, walled in, groaned in pitch-black darkness. This done, ordered to take his dear ones far away, he invites his sons-in-law, who refuse with sluggish mind. Yet, as far as his coaxing mind could obtain by constant asking, he led out his daughters, following with their mother. And while he goes forward and climbs the summit of the hill opposite and ponders with himself what will follow next, the woman, looking back at the citadels set behind, stiffened and took a form of salt for a body. He, secure, enters the roofs of lofty Zoar. Soon a crash from the horrid-sounding sky hurls thunderbolts, and sulphurous flames rush down with a stinking whirlwind, licking alike the walls and the lofty roofs. When all had been swept into ash by swift ruin, Abraham saw from afar the flames rising with ruddy peak, pondering with mindful heart that no falsehood is ever joined to the words of the Lord. And Lot too, settled in a safe hall, offered comfort with tender love to his daughters, who without husbands could not bring forth offspring. They, when they saw the means of offspring taken away and the honour of motherhood left to their father alone, prepare feasts and bring out wine for their father, so that, unknowing, he might have the forbidden intercourse with his daughters.

Without delay a burden grows in the women’s wombs, and the bodies of both swell with an equal kindling. The first bears a boy, Moab in their father’s speech; the other names Ammon with a different beginning. This one is the father of the Ammonites, that one the begetter of the Moabites. Meanwhile Abraham departs from the seats he had set and crosses to the lands of Gerar with his wife his partner. Here Abimelech, desiring union with Sarah by the prince’s will (for the eminent prophet had said she was his sister, lest his wife’s beauty should prepare a snare for him, innocent as he was, as he guards against a rival’s anger), yet could not, driven back by strong terrors, which assail the mind whenever lust is perverse: for God tormented the tyrant by sending an avenger, who broke his dreams with a terrifying vision; the king, trembling, his mind scarcely recovered, pursues the prophet, asking why Sarah was called his sister, as though no bonds of a husband bound the bride, when she was joined to the prophet. He explains the reasons and clears himself of crime, having lied in nothing; for Sarah was born of his father’s seed, a line drawing a shared blood. When these things were settled, the ruler gives a thousand talents and servants; to these he joins soft flock and herds, and acres too, spread through the broad fields, if only gifts might soften the guilt he had incurred.

For the king’s house, paying for the offence committed, with a host of diseases advancing through all alike, had long since shaken offspring from the women’s wombs. But when the peaceable prophet prayed for the king, prostrate before God, fertility at once gladly returned to all and filled the rich wombs. He himself too, by prayers unheard of at the end of his days, becomes a father, and, recalling the solace of glad laughter, names him Isaac, and carries out the commands of the high divine will, on the eighth day cutting the covering from the member; and, seeing him now take firm steps, among kinsmen joined from allied stock he feasts, and the father rejoices over rich tables; for grace is greater when prayers had been despaired of. And now, while the boy plays with the boy, his fellow nursling, it drove the mother to swell with fiery gall, so that she would drive out the hated slave woman with her child; and, though unwilling, the old man, observing the great commands of the Lord, thrust out both together. But after the woman was removed from her master’s house, she wanders through pathless, secret places in a far retreat. And now she had used up all the bread and all the wine, sighing with weary breast over her fainting son; she came to a well to which Oath had then given its name, and filled the pathless places with sorrowful lament:

when God, moved beyond the sky by the tears of the afflicted woman, strengthens her in her fear and promises to her son great realms prepared for him, over whose ruin she was then groaning. At once, drinking from the gushing springs of a watering pool, she rises and rejoices together with her rejoicing son. God’s pious commands go forward; already the little boy began to bend the bow and to shoot winged arrows. Meanwhile the prophet, lest the leader Abimelech should perhaps prepare something in secret, binds covenants of peace, so that, because quarrels had been stirred up over wells, leisure restored might make their life secure. An oath is sworn, and the concord of the welcome peace remains. Then the old man, while he furrows the earth with the curved plough, filled his great hall with glad harvests, and, praying in supplication to God on high with vows, settled peacefully in the fields of the Philistines. There he is tested by the words of the heavenly power: his only son is to lie slain by the sword at the altar. Without delay he climbs the summits of a swelling hill, leading a horn-footed beast, his servants and his son going with him. And now on the third day, when the sun, shining whiter in the middle of the sky, draws in all the shadows, the old man sends away the servants and takes his son, so that, carrying faggots, food for the flames, on his neck, he might climb with him the heights of the hill opposite.

And now, the flames rising, at the very altar he is set, bound, his hands twisted behind his back. And while the father hastens to cleave his son with the knife, watchful, he sees far off a white lamb, which would better fulfil the rite with its poured-out blood. After these things Sarah departs from her aged body. And when the sons of Heth offered a place for a tomb, the prophet declined, ready to set a price. The rich man gave four hundred sesterces to Ephron, as he gladly commits his partner to the double tomb. The age of the ancients had named the place Mamre. At once he orders one of his servants, whom his life and faithfulness had made distinguished, to speak in solemn words and to swear, putting his friendly right hand beneath and joining it to the thigh, that no woman of the Canaanite race would be joined to his son, since she must rather be taken from the stock of their parents; and if she should perhaps resist, he who easily softens anger would be sent from heaven. The servant eagerly loads gifts on the swelling camels and makes for Assyria, now seeing the houses of Nahor. And while silently he turns over his master’s commands, he sees the outstanding Rebecca coming from the spring, who without delay offers the man cool water and invites him home. She says whose daughter she is; the young man is joined to them in hospitality and soon brings out gifts.

When all had been explained, she goes to be married to her husband. And now Isaac sees close at hand those who have made the journey; Rebecca, seeing him, slid down from the high back and hides her bowed head with a thin veil. They are joined in silence and rejoice in the Lord as author. But after the old man had passed a hundred years and seventy, having bestowed gifts on all, he departed, given a seat in the double tomb. Meanwhile the son, having obtained his father’s house, lives by the well whose name was Vision. And now he had spent forty years there; with the wife we have named he had enriched his father’s hall: but she, though she shone with an outstanding star of beauty, was long barren and knew not the joys of a mother. But when he begged the Lord with holy mouth that his wife might conceive and bear a righteous heir, he is heard; Rebecca swells, pregnant with twins. She, long wondering at the weight of her growing womb, as a suppliant consults the answers of the heavenly Thunderer and learns that two peoples in her breast are rising to the light of life with unlike merits. For he who holds the first beginnings of the light is made subject and driven to serve the commands of the younger. So when the children were born by an easy birth,

the elder comes forth into the air with a ruddy body, covered all over his body with blackish bristles. His father called him Esau by a pleasing name. Afterward, holding his brother’s heel in his clasped hands, Jacob is born, very rich in an outstanding mind. The elder roamed the empty fields in hunting, while the horn filled the rocks with harsh-sounding tremor. But the other, keeping the ways of a gentle heart, rejoiced to live unharmed in his father’s house. The father caressed the elder with tender love, but the mother cherished the other with all her heart. When he had cooked an Egyptian lentil in water, he drove his brother, eager to take the food prepared, to hand over to him the honours of the firstborn. Meanwhile hunger, evil counsellor and first of evils, compelled the prophet to leave his native lands. He makes for the Philistine country and soon passes on to Gerar, which Abimelech then held under his rule. As he went he saw the Lord in bright light, warning him with words not to go to the realms of Canopus but to keep to the soil, the field that the Lord had given: “For though you may seem to dwell among strangers, yet, abiding as a father in the immeasurable world, you will rejoice that nations grow from your manifold seed, which will take up the greatest covenants of my word.”

At once, living in Gerar with his wife his partner, he declares she is rather his sister, as his father had done, lest the Philistine crowd, moved by light desire, should take up arms and carry off the prophet’s wife. But the king, while he looks into hidden places through an open window, sees the prophet playing with his snowy wife, and, seeing the marriage, he restrains all under law, that none should try to carry off the prophet’s partner. And now he who had long before fled famine from his native shores, while he scatters barley entrusted to the softened earth, gathered fruit a hundredfold from the glad turf. Meanwhile he grows rich in peaceful work amid manifold cattle and fertile land. Straightway unhappy envy, twisting their hearts, fouls the watering wells and fills them with earth, so that he would withdraw far away and leave the fields he possessed. Avoiding therefore the dangers of swelling strife, he departed and stayed long in the valley of Gerar, and when with anxious work he was sinking wells, he found cool waters from a gushing source. And, met by the trickery of the herdsmen, he leaves their anger behind and marks the hated place with the name of Strife. Thence he moves on, and again earth dug from the deep hollow brought cool streams into the light. And because he had been thrust out by biting quarrel,

he addresses the envious hearts with deserved words, and after golden peace had broken the harsh quarrels, he took care to give it the name of the land of Abundance. And while, shrewd, he moves to new pastures at a quick pace, he came to the hills whose name is Oath. There he sees the Lord in clear light, at the time when the stars unroll their middle courses, and is admonished to thrust sad emotions from his breast, since unconquered God protects him through wars, through enemies. Roused, after sleep he gathers his cold limbs and, revering the Lord, soon prays at an altar he built. Meanwhile kings come, Abimelech and Ahuzzath, with Phicol accompanying them and bearing the sword, so that, since the king wished to join himself to the peaceable prophet, he might bind covenants of concord with right hands clasped. He is received peacefully and, filled at the same table, carries back the desired peace, the danger set aside. Hence discord arises between the brothers; for their father, long since advanced in long age, bearing with peaceful mind the day lost with the sun and his eyes buried, and remembering that death was at hand, urges the elder son, whom his affection alone saw, to take his quiver and swift arrows and bring him game meat in the usual way, so that he might at once receive the gifts of his father’s tongue.

Rebecca, seeing this, lets dear Jacob know, urging him to bring two kids quickly and to take care to slaughter them for his father in place of his roving brother. And lest his smooth body perhaps betray the trick, he is covered with skins to make him seem hairy, and, veiling his chest and limbs with his brother’s robe, he offered food as though gained in hunting. Yet he did not wholly hide the heart that gave warning: for the old man, as his right hand feels over the whole young man, recognizes Esau by the bristles, but Jacob by the voice. And after hunger was quelled and the table removed, he bids him come nearer and stand close by. When he came beneath the right hand with head bowed, he received the bright words of his holy-speaking father, while he tastes sweet kisses with pressed lips. For after the longed-for dealings of a long life the elder brother is ordered to serve the youngest. Meanwhile Esau, driven through long wanderings, was bringing the captured meat to his father, already full. And though he had greatly pleased by his service and deed, yet he could not take the gifts that had been intercepted. Hence anger and tears and a plan sought to do harm, which Rebecca, seeing it in the brother’s heart, reveals, and warns Jacob to visit his kindred in Haran and to seek Laban, his mother’s brother, until a long time should soften the anger conceived.

And the prophet’s judgment is joined to the mother’s counsel, while, teaching peaceful things, he equips his son together with her: “Do not seek a marriage, young man, from the Canaanite race, but be mindful and cleave to the words of your dear father. There is a place among the Assyrians surrounded by a twin river. There is your mother’s father, our friend Bethuel, and his kinsman Laban, who holds rich estates throughout Haran and cherishes daughters in the years of youth. From that stock, I advise you, seek a wife who draws noble descent from our blood.” And the young man, glad to serve his father’s counsel, goes out, leaving his homeland, and, wearied with much toil, lowers his eyes in sweet sleep. And while he spreads the rocks as an ice-cold bed, he places a very hard stone under his weary head. And while his limbs are refreshed with untroubled sleep, he sees, unafraid, with the whole light of his mind, a ladder fixed beyond the clouds in the pure sky, down whose steps a lofty throng was rushing, while another was climbing from the earth to the citadels above. And while their bodies rolled down in headlong descent, the Almighty watched them rushing down, his brow bent toward them, adding these words above: “I am the great King of Olympus, long since your Lord and your father’s Lord:

drive away sad fears; the land on which you have laid your limbs will be a sure seat for you and for all your sons under your leadership. Now go on, mindful, and do not abandon the task begun. Under my leadership you will return again to the cities you left.” Great fear breaks his sleep and shakes all his bones, flooding his limbs with moist sweat. And besides this he says: “Here is the great house of the Thunderer and the gate that unbars heaven on its twin hinge.” Soon he anoints the stone that had been placed under his head, and, calling it the House of the Lord, with the stone as a marker, he promises that he will give a tenth of his fruits. And now, hastening the journey begun where the path led, he came to a well that alone, through the vast wilderness, had always cherished the soft flock with its watering waves. Here herdsmen with three flocks, in the hot sun, were drawing the thin waters and relieving the heat; greeting them, the prophet asks about each thing and learns that all whom he sought in his mind are safe. Meanwhile Rachel, walking with snowy form, was driving her father’s sheep to the familiar drinking place. The young man, as soon as he saw her coming from the kindred house, chastely joins her in an embrace to his kinsman’s breast, rolling away the stone that had covered the mouth of the well, and at the same time reveals himself as her kinsman by blood.

Laban, seeing him from afar with a glad mind, flies to him and settles the young man in his own hall. Nor does he allow the prophet, his kinsman, to serve for nothing, and in return for the man’s labour betroths his daughter to the lover. So when he had drawn out his wage over seven years, he asks that his betrothed be joined to him in the covenant of marriage. Without delay Leah is given by a false gift, with heavy eyes, but born of the first birth. But Jacob, grieving at the fraud contrived against him, reproaches his in-laws, cheated of the maiden agreed. Again, for the price of the other, by a separate wage, Jacob endures the duties of a long life, receiving Rachel, whom he had earned, the fraud now set aside. But God, the greatest ruler of the heavenly hall, made up for her lack of beauty by many offspring. For Leah bears Reuben, then next Simeon; the third, Levi, born with noble heart, possessed the holy altars of our Lord. Judah follows him, soon made the founder of a tribe. The other births, which Bilhah brought forth from her womb, one may know; now it is right to name the famous sons. After these Issachar is born as the fifth offspring. The sixth child comes next, receiving the name of Zebulun, and a maiden, Dinah, is born, fit for her brothers. At last God grants late gifts to Rachel:

she brings tender Joseph forth into the air of heaven. So when offspring had been born of both wives, he asks his in-laws for leave to depart and for what he had sought; when they wished to pay him a wage for his deserts, they set aside their purpose at their son-in-law’s request. He, desiring nothing of another’s, declared that he would grow rich by the Lord’s gifts alone, and went away, content only with having received both wives, striving to prepare for himself lasting memorials. He strips rods from the broken bodies of their mother trees: the first was of myrtle, then a second was taken from the storax, the third torn from the nut tree, so that the wool, gradually smeared with the sap of the rods, would take on parted colours. For, hastening to plunge the bleating flock in the pools, he marked it, dyed with various distinctions of colour, because of envy, since his father-in-law had said that the variegated stock should be his wage, which he had withheld for many years. When he, nourished with unbought riches, excelled, he stirred the envy of those grieving with sinister jealousy. And while the dread father-in-law shears the fleeces, the man was free to carry off all his goods and the household gods baked in the hot furnace, which the Syrian in his native Haran believed to be divinities. These, however, cautious Rachel kept hidden in wrappings, lest her father, finding the offence, punish the crime.

Having left, he crossed the river and climbed the hill that the natives call Gilead in their native tongue. And now on the third day it reached the father-in-law’s ears that his son-in-law and his daughters had departed together. At once he asks help from his brothers’ band, and, finding him, long sought, on the sixth day, he is forbidden by holy terror of the Lord to harm him, and gently asks for his own things that he believes divinities, and grieves that, sought in every place, they are not found. After sure peace returned and complaints were laid aside, a high heap is built of stones piled up, so that the place might remain a witness with its raised bulwark and the boundary set might settle the dispute over fields. See, in the middle of the way the prophet sees a lofty camp, which God the ruler leads with star-bearing governance, and he gave it a name, testifying: “God fills this.” Meanwhile he ordered chosen young men to run ahead, laden with gifts, which he bids his brother use, that he might grant a peaceable return; and to his request for peace the brother willingly assents; surrounded by companions and a large band he goes out to meet his brother, not at all troubled, and though the crowd of four hundred men caused alarm, their appearance did more harm than the weapons of their attendant arms. So, having divided the flocks, he placed these first, which his brother might deign to take as given to him, and at the same time, bowing low, he prayed to the Lord:

“O God, hope and substance of an immeasurable kingdom, who alone are always the God of my father and grandfather, whose commands make me return from exile, you who bestowed great benefits on your enriched servant commanded me to cross the river with a pliant staff and to cross your Jordan with humble step. And now you see me living in divided camps, to avoid various misfortunes with a twofold defence. Rescue me from these evils, unconquered one, and graciously strike the darts from my brother’s hand as soon as may be, their iron broken, lest in his haste he strike my breast with his harsh weapon.” So when he had settled his companions and sought sleep, he toils under night to overcome God, wrestling with him; for, the thigh being pressed, that part of his body went numb. And when he who had struck the prophet in strong contest long wished to loose the hold of their limbs, the Lord, once released, let him go after granting his gifts. His name changed, he ceases to be Jacob and is called by the mouth of all “Seeing the Lord”; he dared even to learn the Lord’s name, but could not, because it is the right of the Thunderer alone to know it. He himself calls the place by the name of the Lord who was seen, whose lofty face it had befallen him to behold. And when the Lord withdrew, the night now driven away, he goes out supporting his steps with a long staff.

Hence Judea, mindful, avoids eating the sinew that supports the thigh, bound with stiff strength. And now, seeing his brother surrounded by a band, bending low with bowed neck he greets him as lord; meeting, they join breast to breast with much weeping … and now, more and more, Esau asks in varied speech who these are coming with an escort, what crowd follows. Jacob explains from what father his wives were born and by what wage the various flocks were acquired. At once the wives, kneeling with bent knee, brought the tender children to their kinsman’s kisses. But the elder, while he graciously declines the gifts offered, gently caresses the children of the prophet, now at peace with him, and gladly, with his brother accompanying, leads the way, so that by turns of talk they might gradually recount their deeds. But because the ewes with young crept along with slow column, the prophet stayed behind to manage the flocks and servants and set up small huts with leafy roofs, which it pleased him to call by a fixed name, Booths. He came to Shechem, which is in the Canaanite region, having bought with a price the estates of the neighbouring land, and, making haste, prays to God at altars he built. There the Hivite shamelessly defiled Dinah, whom he loved, and took the tender maiden’s virginity, and, wishing to be joined to her, had his foreskin removed, bringing great gifts to the prophet for the bride he had seized.

Then on the third light, when wounds burn most, Hamor is slain together with all the young men. Jacob grieved at these deeds done by his sons’ sword, saying the covenant with the allied people had been broken. At once the Almighty warned the prophet to depart and to place his faithful house in the seat of Bethel. He hastens and obeys God and asks his sons to break the shrines of the gods formed of rigid metal and to put on garments under a snowy covering. He himself hid the gods, now nothing, in the hollow of the terebinth, and sees the mighty Lord bring forth his accustomed words to him, that he will be the prophet of the high divinity in the rich lands that the Lord had vowed to Abraham. He himself gave the place a name and consecrated the stone, which, revering, he drenched all over with liquid oil, and he set up his house under the roofs of the tower of Eder. Meanwhile, worn out with heavy pain, the mother, dying in childbirth, brought Benjamin forth from her womb. For besides the sons born of lawful mothers, the prophet had begotten children by substitute mothers, and gladly acknowledged from Bilhah, his wife’s partner, conspicuous Dan, whom Naphtali follows close. But soon Zilpah bears others, Gad and Asher. He obtains this too, which he knew he did not deserve, that he should see his father’s face with so great an offspring;

so that he who had been born of an already aged mother might rejoice, renowned, in twice six grandsons. So when at last the chief’s life had lasted twice ninety years and been drawn out through a long age, he is released and goes forth shining from his weary body, to see the holy seats that wisdom grants, in which, reclining through the ages on a starry couch, he invites the snow-white righteous to secure joys. And now the brothers resolve to divide the measured lands; for since they could not, within the narrow bounds of the land, keep their herdsmen, growing with many flocks, the elder receives Mount Seir beyond the Canaanite fields and, very rich, took glad pastures. Jacob, following, does not leave the Canaanite realms, so that his pious mind might always rejoice in his father’s rite. There Joseph takes up conspicuous deeds, shining among his brothers by as great a difference as the moon shines among the small stars of the sky. When he was now reaching seven and ten years, he kept his father’s breeding flocks in the grassy pasture, going about among them all, the youngest in birth, whom Jacob begot from noble marriage beds or from a slave concubine of the field. And because he flourished conspicuously in the band of brothers, he moved his brothers’ minds with the chill of envy.

His father, loving him above the whole stock of his sons, caressed the tender boy among his brothers’ strong bodies, and, so that he might be more conspicuous among them all, a flowing garment of varied dye clothed him. When he had served the Lord from his tender years, he chanced, his eyes lulled in peaceful sleep, to see himself among his brothers binding sheaves, while they reaped the grain in the middle of the fields, and his own sheaf rising lofty on an upright point, while his brothers’ sheaves, bowing low beside it, rushed toward it. After the young man revealed this in calm speech, he stirred their fearful hearts with a trembling tumult; speaking with a terrifying murmur of a king and lord, they betrayed that only the crime itself was still lacking to their secret plan. And, to break their gloomy hearts with a double wrath, he tells his learned father the dreams he had seen, with all present whom the line of blood binds. For he seemed to see the rosy sun and with it the moon, joined with trembling light, and with these ten stars and one rising together and bending their necks low to him as to a lord. After the father had heard this with a reproving mouth, he declared that soon he would be bowed to by his anxious brothers. At once the young men go out and seek, with their father’s flocks, the valleys by the river through the flowery grass;

Sent to them, he goes and wanders among silent thickets, taught by a young man who showed him the retreats to which the band of brothers had moved their pasture. When they could recognize him from afar by his varied garment, they contrive an ill-omened plan with discordant tongues. The decision stands among all to destroy the hated brother and to tell that he was killed by the bite of beasts, while, in haste, they mutter among themselves with windy murmur: “Let us see whether dreams can drive off death.” One, gentler, rejects this with calm words and warns the gnashing men to sheathe their hard iron, saying it was better to sink him in a stagnant pool. At once he is stripped and, naked, cast into the cold pit. Meanwhile one used to trade Sabaean wares was driving camels to carry heavy loads, hastening to bring the harvests of the Arabs to Canopus. So when the hope for the younger brother was crushed, Judah says it is better to sell Joseph for coins. The father is deceived and, seeing the garment dyed in blood, judges that he was killed with no deceit. He tears his garment with hooked hands and wraps himself in a black mantle of haircloth. Stricken with grief, the father seeks the lost one, whom a eunuch of Pharaoh had long since received and kept, one used to load the tyrant’s gilded tables with dishes and to rejoice in the din of the great kitchen.

Meanwhile Tamar gives birth, while the glad joys of guilt please, and her womb is filled with twin offspring. Of these, the boy who first earned the light of life thrust forth and put out his hand, which the skilful woman ties with a scarlet cord; soon it is drawn back into the womb and, the order changed, the other is at once born, taking the first place, who had been second by lot. Because this one had once been separated by a boundary, he has the name Zerah; the other they called Perez. The faithful guardianship of the Lord kept Joseph in that land, not suffering him to live subject to a harsh law. For the master named before gives everything to his servant, and not in empty hope; for the gentle Lord from on high increased more largely all that the young man kept. Yet he did not escape a cruel love in Potiphar’s house; for because his eyes shone in his conspicuous face, his mistress, sorely wounded, begs the slave to lie with her. But the boy shuns these foul things and refuses to press the consecrated bed with immoderate guilt. But the woman, lost in vain in forbidden flames, explores gentle approaches and watches for her time. By chance, when she found the house empty and him alone, she presses on and, seizing him by the hand, urges him to lie with her. So much the more eagerly he takes the garment from his body and slips away between his mistress’s two arms.

The woman cries out and takes strength from the crime, shouting that the young man, trusting in his beauty, had violated the sweet honour of her chastity, while, wanton in his youth, he burns and tries to climb into his master’s bed. Moreover she addresses her husband with a sad voice and wants to subject the innocent defendant to the penalty she pleases; he, thinking it true, shuts him in a hostile prison, in which punishment already confined the king’s servants. The keeper of the prison soon soothes him with a kind heart and, seeing him innocent, entrusts the prison to him. There by chance two, whom the grim tyrant, moved by black gall, had shut away from the lofty court, imprisoned, feared punishment in their trembling hearts, and while anxious cares were stealing their sight, they saw dreams announcing things to come. When Joseph with clear eye saw them sad, he asks the causes and makes them confess what was hidden. At once the one who served the tyrant his customary wine tells what he had seen in the drowsy night: “I saw a vine leafy with green shoot, creeping and hanging from its own twined lash, and three branches standing among the vine leaves, and the yellow grape hung in a nectar-sweet cluster. Then the king’s cup, from which he pours mild drinks, foamed with tender new wine that my right hand pressed,

which the lord took and held in his ready palm.” Then the young man reveals all the hidden things clearly: the three branches are three days, after which he will win back the favour he lost and regain it, to mix for the pleased king the cups he saw. “Only do this in return for such service,” he says, “that, when confidence to speak is granted you, you remove my punishment, due to no crime. I am said to be of the Hebrew race; for, sold through my brothers’ crime, though nobly born, I went into slavery.” After this the chief of the bakers begins: “I seemed to carry three baskets on my head, filled with kingly dishes and sumptuous fare, which countless birds carried off, seized in their talons.” At these words, true indeed but harsh to speak, he testifies that he will soon be slain by the cruel sword and his head, torn off, fixed on a high stake, for birds at once to tear with grim beaks. All that the young man had said is fulfilled, and soon the one is restored to his place, the other cut down, his body maimed. Meanwhile, as time slipped through two years, the stars were again turning their courses toward the east, when the ruler of the Nile saw these dreams: for he seemed, while he watched the pleasant river, to see seven heifers with sleek bodies cropping the young grass of the green bank;

that others, foul with leanness, came after them, and while, sluggish, they scarcely held together (a marvel!) on their bones, they were swallowing the excellent heifers with wide mouths. Dreams not unlike are joined, with like meanings; see, he sees seven ears from fertile seed, and others thin and empty of grain (dreadful to tell!) devouring the crops. Sad, he by no means keeps this vision in his mind, but in alarm ordered all who are skilled to come, asking what meaning lies in these hidden things. And when the Memphian seer, consulted, was silent, he who, long since released from prison, served the wine says that when the young Joseph explained it he had returned to the place he lost and his companion was killed. Men are sent in haste to take the prophet, cleared of every crime, swiftly out of the foul vault, and, shearing the unkempt cheeks and the hair grown long in prison, to make him flourish again in his former beauty. So the upright man, consulted, gives such answers and teaches that the cows are messengers of years, and explains the light ears as seven circling years. For so are the things to come signified in distinct forms: that for seven years the earth will be fertile enough, and that dire famine will prevail an equal time, in which the land, wholly dry in its thirsting veins, consumes the pale grass in the dusty furrow.

For dreams that are joined in double visions God the Thunderer commands to stand sure, joined together. “Rather, while the time is at hand, while there is room for remedy, choose one who, foreknowing these things, with judges appointed, may govern all Egypt from on high and demand back a fifth of every harvest, so that the plenty first given to the fertile lands may sustain the barren years when the crops are consumed.” The prophet’s counsel is received with the nobles’ applause. The king himself too, his heart at last calmed, raises to lofty honour the one who recounted heavenly truths and orders him to be borne as governor through all the cities. Then he crowns the prophet’s finger with a shining ring, soon wraps him in linen cloaks with a saffron robe; a pliant chain is put around his neck, and the new ruler stands higher in a chariot, and a loud herald proclaims the judge before him. Moreover a wife is chosen, whose name was Asenath, whom the priest Potiphera begot of noble lineage, and by her he at once becomes father of two children. The elder is called Manasseh, the younger Ephraim. Hence the prophet, noble on his high platform, collects whatever the lean time could scarcely take, keeping full granaries, so that when need required he might bring out the hidden grain to all who asked.

Afterwards, when dire famine, spread over the whole world, was forcing the frightened to eat whatever could be eaten, the people cry out and demand food from the king. He orders them to obey the warnings of the chief Joseph, who gives grain to all from his stores. Meanwhile Jacob, who had already wept for his son’s death, sends twice five young men from his numerous offspring to buy grain for themselves from afar at a price; but he does not let Benjamin, the youngest of all, go, lest, weak as he was, he should not bear the hard toil. And when they had come to the walls of the Egyptian land, they bowed to the ground and greet their brother, marvelling at him seated high on a lofty seat; yet they do not recognize him, seen after a long time. When the prophet looked on them with mindful heart, he rebukes them and terrifies them, fearful as they are, with many words, saying that they had come to spy out what supply of crops there was and what men held the rich lands under their rule. They plead that they know no tricks and confess that once twice six brothers under one father had a conspicuous house; of all these one, the last by birth, shares their father’s labours, but another was long since gone to a famous death. They were fleeing dire famine, hating the Canaanite land that condemns the seed to thin yield, and asking for goods for sale and grain at a price.

The prophet speaks, swearing by the ruler’s name, that the young men must be shut in harsh custody until they bring the brother whom their gentle father kept. They are bound for three days, stripped, under the care of guards, and then, released, they left one to be held. And, their hearts breaking with hidden pain, they recall how justly these dangers rise against them, because, having tried to sell their innocent brother by a forbidden bargain, they pay the penalty late before a judge. One of them makes it worse with words, recounting the true story, and that the crime was done in haste against his will. The prophet is moved by this and, hearing his brothers’ reproaches, turning aside with silent eyes, he weeps tearfully. Meanwhile Simeon is taken from the middle of the circle of brothers, a faithful hostage for all who were going. Then the young men take the grain they asked for, and the mules are pressed with the heavy weight they received. And now in the middle of the road, as he undoes the cords of his sack, one lets his brothers see the coins he has found; all do the same; then, the price found, marvelling, they praise the chief, vying with one another. And now, as they enter the threshold of their native home, the father greets their return and asks for the one. Learning everything, he takes the coins and gifts, complaining heavily that another son is now gone.

Then, when the food was used up and the grain they had brought forced them again to buy provisions, no one had a mind to turn his steps back to Memphis unless their father bade the youngest brother go with them. When, groaning much, he refused to send him anywhere, Reuben asks for his brother with faithful mouth, confidently pledging his two children to his father. Judah follows, declaring that they could not return, and bearing witness to the words of stern Joseph. When the aged father, now gentler, had taken this in, he gives up the young man, bathing his face with a great flood of tears. They go off and carry with them lightly scented frankincense, joining incense and gum with terebinth, carrying honey amid fragrant vapours, and double the price, lest there be a lingering error, because the coins had been hidden in the closed sacks. When Joseph saw them in his conspicuous hall, he orders them to celebrate a glad feast with him. Yet they came in faith, and with trembling guilt they suppose that they have been summoned by a contrived fraud, because they had not been able to return the sesterces counted out before and given to the prophet, which had been put in their bundles; yet, guiltless of theft, they were bringing everything back, nor had they been used, before this, to live in fear over money.

As they say this, the steward checks them with his words and tells them he knows he has been cheated of no coins: but if any gain has brought the men benefit, let no one call it his, nor the prophet’s, nor the king’s. Simeon meets them all and presents himself. And while he gives the men water and the mules fodder, the prophet enters, thronged by many soldiers, at whose sight the brothers bring out their dutiful gifts. When he had gone through them all with calm speech, he asks whether their father was well and firm in strength. After they said he was unharmed and living well, they affirm that the prophet clings to God for his gift and always holds to what is right. And as if Benjamin were not known to him, Joseph questions the young men, and at once, holy as he is, prays God for every blessing for the boy, to God’s praise. He cannot hold back his groans or stop his tears, but, deeply moved, he seeks a chamber and, anxious, looks for relief for his excessive grief. After he reclined, the servants set out the food. He eats and draws their hearts with easy speech, and, rejoicing to set out divided portions to each man, he offers them, and assigns a larger one to one brother alone.

And when, satisfied, their desire for food was quelled, and as before they had loaded the mules with weight, the money given is hidden in what is now the usual way by Joseph’s order, and the gleaming cup is hidden among your things, Benjamin, more precious for its craftsmanship. And now, set out on their road, they are not many miles away when suddenly a royal troop surrounds them unawares and holds them seized, demanding the shining cup; they threaten that the one whom the crime binds will be a slave. They agree, and all together open their loads, and uncover the cup sought and leave their brother behind, and go to Joseph, and, telling what has happened, at once unroll the charges of their dear father. Moved by their pleas, the prophet orders all others to depart and begins to declare himself by name. They stiffened, rooted with fear, and, in silent guilt condemning themselves, hold back their voices in dread. Soon he coaxes the guilty men and, calling them nearer, requires them to carry words that will please their father, what is, what has been, what is soon to come, urging the old man to migrate, and with his flocks gathered he offers the hills of the Arabs to those who come, so that, since the land would be dry for five years more, he might feed all his kin.

The king learns of these words of the man with a glad heart, asks him to take in the crowd of his dear ones, and orders the grain to be handed over free. Wagons are given to the men, grain, cups, bread, and the mules sweat carrying great loads. Five robes are given to Benjamin and five for his father, and three hundred coins struck with the stamp of the die. But the other young men, with a lesser reward, receive the covering of a snowy garment. When the father learned this, the gifts given, he breathes again, hastening to leave his native land, and makes for Egypt, which borders on the fields of the Arabs, leading out by a father’s rule young men, five and seventy, as the record of Genesis has set down. And while the crowds hurry with hasty effort, Judah runs ahead and flies before the band of brothers and tells Joseph that his father is not far off. He eagerly mounts his chariot and goes out to meet him, receiving the longed-for company when he saw his father. And he quickly returns to the hall of the king, saying that shepherds are hastening, so that the crowd of his dear ones might live apart in lands of fertile grass. The Memphian ruler himself presses the prophet and orders him to settle his brothers in rich fields.

After this the long-lived old man, at Pharaoh’s request, speaks slowly of how many years he has been granted, what his house is, and what the cause of his coming to Egypt. And he praises the excellent leader highly, while meanwhile Joseph sends gifts in return worthy of his own, and gives the leader a great talent to bear, with which the hall was enriched when the crops were sold. And when the buying peoples lacked money, the Memphian crowd, eagerly bringing out their flocks, buys crops in their need, Joseph setting the price. Stripped of these too, they hand over themselves and their estates, receiving seed by which harvests might then grow green. Only the priests’ possessions are not taken away; it pleased the leader to give them grain free, not to sell it. Hence the payment of a fifth of the crops is imposed on the people, which remains, and the rule is kept by fixed right. Meanwhile Jacob, weighing the time of his completed life, makes his son swear, turning over things to come, that he would lay his limbs in the tombs of his ancestors. He assents to the request and, with his right hand placed under the thigh, promising, touches the top of the pliant staff. And the old man soothes with words his grandsons, placed on either side, while he gently gives them kisses. … the right hand is laid in blessing on the younger, while the elder by birth, Ephraim, is touched by the left.

by the old man’s foreknowing mind the elder is compelled to serve the younger, and the first hope yields its place to the second. Though Joseph wished to move the crossed hands apart, he could not call back the pious words. And after the prophet had ratified the blessings for the boys, he gives Shechem, and the sword, and the darts, to his son, so that, more glorious than all, he may climb to lofty honour. Then he calls his sons and distributes rewards to all, words to endure long, and to his sons’ offspring assigns things not granted before, for a long age, and founds twice six tribes from their names. All this done, already blind in both eyes, the prophet departed, his earthly body alone … and gave seventy days to mourning, while the crowd venerates the tomb of the dead. Moreover his sons mourned for seven days with abundant tears, Joseph restoring peace to his brothers as though innocent, as he passes over the old anger. He himself too, after he had passed a hundred and ten years, measuring the time of approaching death, tells his brothers what order of events would come, by which they might retrace their steps and leave the swelling Nile, provided they carry back his ashes and bones laid to rest … So at last, after the bright times of a long life, he departed, went to God, and left his body.

Meanwhile, while the times drive their varied courses and a new generation rises from the seed, the sons die and the offspring of those who followed, and the land of Memphis brings forth new and different kings. Neither the memory of Joseph nor the merits of the prophets avail, once dearly loved; but by the gift of the holy Lord who protects his people, numerous bodies are born and their ranks thicken in an immense cloud. When the king of Egypt saw that these were to be feared, he gathers his companions with such words, stirred by anger: “See, a youth once captive and content with the food that a sparing hand held out; see, it now raises cohorts in a long legion and swells not with arms alone, superior in warlike courage, and bears threatening looks even while subject. What if it now takes up weapons or allies itself with our enemies? Under what weight of war will Egypt fall laid waste, and what great ruins will the lofty cities make, their walls torn down? Rather let them be broken by a hard lot of labour and raise immense citadels on built foundations, lest the hope of lost freedom return to them when idle.”

When this was said, he sets skilful men over them, to build new walls and towers and threatening gates and strive to join them to heaven. Driven by these misfortunes, they build several towns with sweating labour, Rameses, then Pithom, and On, famous for the name of the Sun. But a marvel: the more they were under the sad burden of labour, the stronger the whole youth shone forth, as though it were on holiday. The grim king of Egypt is terrified more and more and devotes to destruction those who did not yet fear his commands, ordering the midwives, when the mothers bear their offspring, to extinguish and destroy the males, with † punishment for the midwives if, though sworn, they left the despised order undone; of whom Puah was one, with her companion. They, the terror of God set in their timid hearts, scorned the leader’s threats and, ordered to appear, say that the Hebrew women, supported by no help, are accustomed to bring forth their ripe offspring quickly. For this they deserved by the Lord’s word his favour, rejoicing to settle in their accustomed homes, while they revere the Lord, praising him with all their heart. The chief’s order is changed, and the people are told to drown in the stream of the Nile the boys who are born. The crowd obeys the leader, drowning the newborn in the river.

Amid these troubles a Levite, having taken a wife, begets a son shining with a beautiful body and conspicuous cheeks, and he shrinks from destroying one who would be a great man with such beauty; lest he be killed, he keeps him hidden until three months had passed. But fearing punishment, lest the deceit be discovered, he sadly sends him out exposed where the roaring streams can carry him downstream, though they lack an oarsman. His sister keeps watch on him from afar with sharp sight, as far as following eyes can keep him in view, so that she might tell the parent the fate of the exposed child. But the king’s daughter, walking gladly, accompanied by her attendants, was bathing in the calm river and washing her body. She sees a small skiff on the swelling waters and orders her maids to bring her the desired prize. They eagerly, as befits the glad age of youth, bring back what was placed in the boat and, setting it before her, make the girl rejoice with a mother’s feeling. She, wishing to keep for herself such sweet joys of beauty and the outstanding honour of a noble brow, orders that a woman of the Hebrew people be summoned openly to be his nurse, and the care of the boy’s hunger is given to her. The sister calls, now with no deceit, the anxious mother, to whom the leader’s daughter might give back her own child, the name of nurse put upon the mother.

The boy grew and quickly reached the years that flourish with the first flower and, given to the court, is held as a true child of Pharaoh’s daughter, and receives the name Moses, because he had been taken from the plaintive waves, floating in a small boat. But he, prompted by his nature and following his heart, prepares to visit his kindred people around the towns, who, in sorrow, were being worn down under the present harsh yoke. By chance in the middle of the road he sees a man of the Egyptian people punishing with loud voice a groaning man, a certain Hebrew; and, hating the unjust lot, he looks all around and, seeing no one present who could later bring out as a witness what he found there, he strikes him with his heel and buries him, laid low, under heaped sand. Then he sees men of the Jewish race threatening one another and, while he eagerly offers himself and helps the weaker side and restores peace, he receives words sent from an angry breast: “Why do you swell with lofty neck, as though you wielded the sceptre of a high prince, and written laws resounded under your presidency? Or perhaps you are preparing to destroy me with sudden death, as you killed the Egyptian youth in yesterday’s light?” When this had been said, talkative rumour carries it to the leader’s ears, and the king in anger puts the young prophet to flight.

He, fleeing the land, came to a deep well in the land of Midian, where the priest Jethro lived, who had begotten seven daughters and filled his house with a dense stock. They kept with care the soft sheep entrusted to them and were drawing what they could from the hollow spring; but by chance shepherds drove off their weak hands and fearful sex; Moses defends them, who did not dare to stand against them or oppose them with ready hands, brings the flocks to the watering streams, cares for them when they have drunk, and sends them home. The girls, returning earlier than usual to their father’s great wonder, and answering at once when he asked, bring the young man, summoned, to their father’s threshold. He, weighing the tall limbs with a cool eye, rejoices to join a great soul with beauty in marriage to his daughter and foresees grandsons of outstanding stock. For Zipporah, diligent, in a quick birth bears Gershom and then brings forth his brother Eliezer. Gershom signifies one born in a foreign land, Eliezer one rescued from the anger of the harsh leader. Meanwhile the leader falls by death, and the captive youth, pressed by many evils, moved the Lord with many laments to look on, to bring his kindness and protect the people,

as he, mindful forever, turned over his gifts within himself, promised long since in sleep to the good, which in time past Abraham had heard would come to his own, and Jacob, too, when he saw the ladder rising to holy things. And now the oppressed race sees God pour forth gentle protection from heaven, while it asks peace from on high. And while Moses alone drives his father-in-law’s woolly sheep through the countryside, he came to the summit of a sacred hill which the Hebrew tongue calls Horeb. On it he sees, in a conspicuous lamp of flames, a bending bramble shining and not burned by the fire. Stirred by the novelty of the thing, he is eager to find out by what kindling such bright fires arise. And while, fearful, he silently draws so near, he is forbidden by the famous voice of the starry Thunderer to come forward quickly, but is made to halt his step and at once remove the coverings from both his feet; and he obeys, because of the holy ground of the summit. Soon fear enters his senses and his sight is darkened by the excess of light, because it is not right for anyone to see the Lord, and he turns away his face and mouth together. Then a voice sent forth sounds, in which the famous King declares that he is the God of the patriarchs, whom we have long since said to be the leaders of believers and of life. Then he adds these words:

“Now the prayers of my people are known to me and seen with all my light, who build cities of vast masses and, driven by the hard sweat of their labours, raise up the wealth of Egypt and realms not their own, while they tremble with servile mind and are tormented with frequent pain, long subject to the will of the guilty. And so I have come here, descending from high Olympus, to protect my own and take them from the seat of Canopus, the giver of great wealth and of a fertile land, which now the bold Canaanite holds, rich with manifold fruits, and the Amorite joined to the Hittite, the band of the Perizzites, and the Girgashites following, and which the Hivite youth also tills. Here from sweet springs, from a rich stream, honey flows with white milk. Being about to give these gifts to the chosen, I set you as leader; I command you to go into the king’s sight and recount what is commanded. And lest, trembling at the undertaking, you should weaken in the act, I will always be with you; and when freedom has returned, you shall worship me on this hill with rejoicing mind and eyes.” When the Lord had thundered these words, little confidence holds the prophet at first. Soon he asks for the eternal name the Lord bears, so that Judea may know the sign of the prince set over them. The Saviour adds these words:

“I am who I am: so you shall say; and he who lives above the stars and is God from the stock of your fathers; God immeasurable, everywhere and through all nations, the sower through the ages of the living who do not lack light. This name is mine; tell this to those gathered; let them pass the words on through peaceful ears. And entering together into the hall of King Pharaoh, say that the Lord of the Israelites has commanded from above that for three days the Jewish host go through the desert fields and sacrifice fitting gifts to the holy God and observe the rite of their forefathers. For the proud tyrant will be willing to release my people after slaughter and plague, sent often from the depths of heaven, varied with many perils. Moreover, when leave has been given you to take the commanded journey, then let each woman ask her neighbour or acquaintance for the rich wealth that soft Egypt now holds, and take what she asks, so that the legion, to be led through the formless fields of the desert, may leave Egypt emptied of noble spoils.” After this the prophet asks for signs that might strengthen wavering minds, if they should not believe that God could have been seen with eyes speaking such bright things; he is told quickly to let down his pliant rod and loose it from his hand; when the earth received it, a foaming serpent gathers itself into a coil with its trail, striking terror into the chief; told to seize it by the tail, he brings it back and restores it to its old shape.

Then, hiding his hand in his bosom, he brought it out snow-white, and covered it again and drew it out, and it was turned back to its own appearance. Then he is told that, if these were small things, he should pour out water taken from the river and change its whiteness into red blood. Yet the prophet resists and says that his speech is thin and his voice, bound in knots, scarcely comes out, because it veils the secrets of the heart; in short, that there is nothing in him worthy for the minds of men to follow and rely on. He is rebuked: no one speaks with polished understanding unless the Lord grants it, nor do the dumb break long silences unless the Lord loosens the bonds of the tongue, he who opens hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind, and clears with pure light the vision of those who see. “Go,” he says, “and speak with full speech in confidence, noble in eloquence and with meaning well rounded into words.” But while he keeps asking God and begs that another be substituted and put in his place, he moved to anger God, outstanding in mercy, who, roused, begins: “See, your brother is eloquent, with a polished mouth, and known to me, born a Levite of that tribe, whom they call by the sure name of Aaron.” At once the prophet goes and tells his father-in-law that he will return and wishes to visit his brothers, sprung from the Jewish race. Here the other yields and, with due affection kept, bids him go gladly.

He eagerly, taking his sons and wife with him, set out on the commanded journey; and, weary with travelling, while he restores his strength, lying down in the cool shade, see, an angel of the Lord comes and threatens death. But Zipporah searches with her fingers for a sharp flint and at once, diligently, cuts the foreskin of her tender son; and when she had thrown herself prone before the feet of the holy one, “Let this blood from the little one’s wound be stanched,” she cries. At her words the holy one departed to the stars. And now the prophet was treading the sands of the barren desert, when suddenly, by command of the Lord, Aaron met his honoured brother at the sacred mountain, and, joined together, they rejoice and plant kisses; and it delights them to reveal to each other in flowing talk what must be done or what has been done. At once both join to the Lord’s word a sincere and firm faith, and, going together, they tell the elders they have summoned what is the command of God; and when the signs were done in order, the people believed that the longed-for remedy had come back, and, bending the knee, prostrate, worships the Lord. They go to the king, who sees nothing with his blind heart and does not believe God, whom he said was not known to him, keeping the people under a harsh law and cruel command, while the burden of labour grows and the work is doubled and an immense weight is added to the raw bricks, which the sun’s lamp bakes.

Moreover he takes away the straw usually mixed as a binding into the cracking earth and wet clay, so that the people, weary with evils, would rather lose heart and suffer exile. While, worn with grief, it is driven with harsh blows, it poured out reproaches on the priests themselves, crying that it was more sharply afflicted since, by their immoderate speeches, they had procured wretched slavery in place of freedom. When the gentle prophet had brought these words to the eternal Lord, he receives these words in return: “See, I have ordered you to be a god to King Pharaoh, and your brother to serve the prophet with zeal and obey you. You will tell your brother what you have learned; he will declare it to the king, that he take care to send out the people.” And now the pious prophet was spending twice forty years of peaceful life in mortal flesh. While they eagerly desire to soften the king with holy speeches and renew the signs, the slippery serpent made from the thrown rod achieves nothing, nor do the rivers changed into red blood compel anything, nor the moving water fouled with sad stench, the fish dead, because the profane mind of men, girded with sinister chant, was skilled in like deeds.

Moreover they make frogs creep forth likewise wherever there was land and water, and they are produced by the magicians’ chant in like ways; these, all croaking with rattling voice, the prophet took care to drive away, only not allowing the rivers to lack their usual ones. This was granted the king, if he wished to escape the plague, through the old man’s prayers, so that it might then be clear that no other god reigns: tomorrow’s light is given back to the sky, and on that day all of them die and, heaped together, dissolve in bitter stench. Gnats are quickly born over all the bodies of beasts and men together, and the land is filled. This too the Chaldean band, having tried it, confesses to be the hand of the Lord, and gives up its vain effort. These things done, the cynomyia comes flowing, which is called the dog-fly, and at the prophet’s nod filled every place, spreading out, and unknown only to the soil of Goshen, which was then the land suited to the Jewish race; wherever it was driven, it brought inexhaustible pains. Then indeed Pharaoh, defeated, bids them go and, migrating, take their steps wherever they wish and serve God with vows; and at the same time he begs that the present and excessive evil depart from the fields of Egypt and that God at last be present with more mercy.

Without delay, when the dead of the sudden destruction are sent away and perish all together, the horny fibre that had been in the king returns; soon a plague is sent at once on beasts of burden and flocks, and deaths follow, Judea losing nothing. Then empty ash, drawn from the bosom of a furnace, is tossed toward the stars and raises dry pustules over the limbs of men and hollow blisters, and, leaving no one exempt, they bring torments through the fields on flocks of every kind. But a renewed face of evil pressed in vain on the sluggish king, so that the praise of God, who works so many wonders, might be higher: see, amid the fires that lightnings hurl and the rumblings of the lofty sky that crash at the Lord’s command, threatening hail runs down from the stars and whirls its freezing darts everywhere, flying thick as from a rock, and men without the cover of roofs it strikes with crushing blows and kills, and all the cattle; and, breaking the bark, it cripples the woods and kills them as the inner bark dries, unseen before and unknown to ancient ages. The wheat crops, since their stalks had not yet grown, and the spelt it only laid flat on the ground; for the rest it buried, which, sown in the soil, the harrow had not yet brought up.

This too loses its strength at the prophet’s request, clear day returning, because, his heart broken, the weakened leader had prayed, confessing his crimes himself and declaring God just on high. See, again his heart is stiffened with insane mind, to bring worse things upon himself to the ruin of the living leader, nor does he believe his companions about the fall of perishing Egypt. But yet he grants a limited right of going, to men stripped of the things that the use of life provides. The prophet does not allow it and demands all their property and the herds of four-footed beasts; but just speech is not for unwilling ears. For this he is driven out, his brother thrust out with him. Then the south wind arrives with much blast and darkens the day, and through the shade of night gathers green-backed locusts beyond measure, which eat whatever moist and full of sap they found through the leafy roofs, and the glad grass in the turf. These then, at the king’s request in his fear, are killed and, gathered together, drowned in the Red Sea. When the grim king spat these things out as trifles, night, gliding down, holds all, and vast storms shut in and confine the men, and likewise for three days they stayed hidden, and no one saw his neighbour or could rise from his helpless bed, while the radiant band enjoyed the open world, touched by no evils. Moreover, as they ran about, the dogs were silent and harmless and, holding back their bark, fearlessly lick their legs, wagging their tails, dogs that at times, their fear laid aside, are savage even against their masters.

Yet the king’s resolve does not yield to these losses; roaring, he rebukes the prophet and threatens him with death, because he wanted to sweep away the cattle and all their property. And now God had darkened the night with a pitch-black mantle, planning a hidden blow amid thick deaths, when suddenly all die whom kindly births had brought forth first, with little difference in their death, from the king’s own throne, and then all of whatever stock, men and cattle and beasts. At once immense grief raises horrid-sounding cries; all the houses groan, the cities resound with lamentation. Then indeed all press to drive out the people that bears the name of Jew, as though by its deserts it were the cause of the evils, and property and all furnishings are handed over, and no loss is reckoned in this; and countless flocks of cattle accompany them as they go. So they depart, God leading them, who went before, and carry on their burdened shoulders the goods of life. And now the world had used up four hundred years and forty more, if one reckons the sum of the time elapsed since Jacob, in his care to obtain grain, came to the Egyptian cities to remain; these fulfilled, God, pitying at last from on high, worthy of praise, took the people from the untamed enemy.

The first day is reckoned by the gift of the Passover, and the joys of the night consecrated to God are celebrated, and seven blessed days, as the year returns, bring slow leisure, and every care is set aside; no one turns the soil, and, free from the curved plough, labour sleeps and slaves rejoice in equal freedom, and the whole business of life is to join hearts to God, to recline on spread couches and to bring in the food that the happy earth produces in its rich fields. And a white lamb is taken, when the months are complete that make the year twice six, unblemished and softer than all the flock; this all together the law compels to eat and to set on the holy table with its bones unbroken, and with its blood to dye the doorposts for cleansing and so to gain a safe life. A common law binds all, and those bought with money and those used to hire out their hands lay aside their foreskins and take the festive food from the lamb’s flesh. Nor may anything remain; if a small company has not eaten it all, it is right to bring in a neighbour from the field. The loaves lack leaven, and soft flour, mixed with spring water, is formed into thin rounds, which they call azyma in their native tongue. These rites are performed by all as the years return.

After four and ten days had run their course in the new month, which men discern with reason as teacher, they bind their flowing garments with anxious care, intent, as if the trumpets sounded and war were waged, and their armed hands carry strong staffs. Moreover they take a sprig of pale hyssop, dip it with devoted hand in the sacred blood, and gladly sprinkle the doors, shaking it out, so that the noble liquid may harden on the dear posts and forbid entry to the evil one who assails holy things. And now the generations had come down to the fifth, when, making for the desert, the people dear to God came to the Red Sea, carrying the bones of Joseph taken from his tomb, who had once said with truthful mouth that the Lord’s serene gaze and kindly right hand would come from heaven and bring freedom. Then they come to Succoth and leave Etham, Christ showing them unknown ways through the trackless waste, who, when at new morning he opened the light from the stars, flying before them, ploughed the sky with a snowy cloud, and, covering the shining radiance of the sun through the darkened sky at night, shone with a comet’s bright hair. Then they make for Pi-hahiroth, to which the land of Migdol is joined, bordering on Baal-zephon opposite.

Here the Lord deprives the king’s mind of fear, sharpening his swollen senses and fierce mind, so that he says the people whom he himself had sent away were rather fleeing, and moves his forces headlong to war, believing that with easy effort he could catch men whom error drives and trackless ways delay. So eagerly he calls his phalanxes to war as to a small matter, driving iron-clad chariots, which with flying axle a threefold crew drives, while one rises to hurl the swift spear, now low, now lofty into the windy air, apt for terror and deceit, because, beaten with frequent lash, the horn-footed horses lay low the ranks that stand against them and add the blow of their burning wheels, which the roused hoof turns with varied bounds. And now, hastening his march, he had brought his four-horse chariots to the curved shores of the Red Sea for chilling war, when the Jewish band, at once turning its eyes, looks back at the immense ranks and, over all the plains, iron-clad men gleaming, and, hemmed in by an equal weight of twofold fear, as it sees the sea and the enemy opposed, it uses harsh words against the prophet and says: “What great confidence was it, leader, in unaccustomed strength, to destroy your kindred people, to make them follow you, and to set the Red ocean before them as captives? Why, in vain, take from hated Egypt those who bore burdens, sad indeed, but safe?

Was it not better to suffer Pharaoh’s sad hardships and deadly laws? Was not that slavery better than freedom, which, exposed to deceit, prefers what it endured before and counts it sweet whenever worse things, never seen, follow? We said this long ago, when you called us to vows to be paid to the immeasurable God: it is safer there for those used to it to live and bear the slavery of a troublesome yoke than now to lie down in death amid barren plains and a land left behind, while in trembling plight we are terrified by sea and enemy.” But the prophet, overcome by no fear of anything, and rather seeing what is to come, speaks these words: “Loose your biting cares and put on serene minds, O companions, and turn your eyes straight ahead to see how great a salvation is brought you from the lofty stars, given by God on high. Those whom you see pressing on in a dense column you will not be permitted to see after this day, for the time of death presses on them. For God the warrior fights with his lofty right hand and rules those subject to him, while you keep your mouths silent.” When he had said this, deeds followed the words.

For the angel who flew before the camp of the men moves and places himself behind, and then the tawny column stands at their back and with a boundary between divides the ramparts and the sites of the two camps; and God pours dark night from his shining seat, and unexpected peace soothes those raging for war and removes all movement. O too happy, to whom God sent defences from the lofty stars, for whom the shining sky fights, and the nights come sworn together to battle! Then the commands of God bade the chief bring out his rod with outstretched hand and look down on the Red Sea. When this was duly done, the south wind comes, which, using all its blasts, drank up the seething waves through the silent night and dried the sea, so that a path opened in the middle might lay out an unharmed course on the parted sea, when the retreating sea had bared the thirsty sands. So when the hurrying sea had withdrawn, the wave, curved into the face of a mountain, stood round them and received them in its wide bosom and sent them through the deep. Pharaoh, believing the way open to him, while he presses close, enters and treads the sea; but suddenly the wagons groan and slow down, and the horses, prone to the ground with all their breast, push the weights with their knees in vain, which could not be moved at all, their axles bound fast.

At once, bloodless and bound by an immense fetter, striving to attempt hasty flight and to turn back again, they goad their yoked teams with vain terror. Upon them, wretched, another, greater and far more fearful thing is heaped and strikes their sluggish senses. For the sea, accustomed to dash its restless waves, joined its parted waters and mingled the swelling waves and sank all Egypt to the bottom. But the Jewish band, seeing floating bodies of men from the enemy’s side, and chariots swimming, and weapons and whatever is hurled slantwise at an enemy, looked up and feared God, and with faithful mind believed the Lord’s command and revered the prophet, while it sings sweet songs in the words of Moses: “Let us sing to the Lord our God, to whom belongs glory mighty in honour; he adorns himself with magnificent deeds, while the swift chariots of the Egyptians, with their horsemen joined and the heavy crowd, he kills in the streams of the Red Sea. Strong helper of my salvation, he took the people from the midst of the deep, guardian and father and true salvation! This is he, this my Lord and nourisher! Him I will hallow with conspicuous praise,

who is the God of my father. Him I will confess with lofty voices, who bore war and overwhelmed the strong, worthy of the name by which God is called. Like stones and heavy lead he hid in vast waves the cohorts which the king of the Nile, gathering them to arms, threatening, hailed as sharers of the spoil, while he bares swords for our throats and whirls and brandishes drawn iron, saying: ‘I will seize them as they flee, I will divide the spoil and overwhelm the conquered, and with the glory of a noble war I will hold the palm sought by merit.’ While he recounts this and trusts himself, he prepared destruction for all his own. None is like you, Creator, greatest in deeds, and prince of princes; you have given great help to your own, which the nations of the Philistines fear, the Edomites too and the Moabites; at their ruin the Canaanites tremble, until this people, redeemed by you, climbs the conspicuous mountain holy to God, heir with everlasting trophies.”

These words, repeated in like measures by an applauding circle, the mothers sang, the prophet’s sister leading, beating timbrels with their fingers as they sang together. At once, after they saw the forces of unjust Pharaoh overthrown, they press on fearless through the wilderness formerly called Shur, and through the dry heat wore out parched days; for three days the sun’s lamp scorched them with more fiery rays. Wearied, they come to Marah and see water flowing with a sad taste, which, tasting with weary breast, they spit far away, because the very heavy water tortured their parched throats with a bitter sensation. Because of this fault they give the spring its name, and with dense murmuring demand of the prophet flowing streams that could soften the hot vapours. He asks God, for by what power would the water come forth unless the Lord sent it from his starry hall? And at once he takes a wood by which he sweetens the sad drink, and floods the streams with honey not mixed in. There God gave just laws, with the scale balanced, testing the chief, as he speaks thus: “If you mindfully take all my words into a sincere heart to do what is fitting for life, bearing in your heart the commands of God, you will suffer nothing sad all your life long, nor will the loss of goods or cruel disease weigh you down; you will be far from every calamity that laid waste wild Egypt.

since I am the Lord, who heal hearts and can make you sound.” After this they came to Elim, watered with springs, twelve, which flowed by chance amid leafy palms, which with lofty tops waved seventy crowns through the clouds. And after they had spent their leisure with the camp set at Sin, then, travelling on the fifteenth day of the second month, they hasten through shadowy places; they groaned with extreme hunger, while with loud voices they rebuke and harass the leader: “What was the great cause of these evils? Or what can it be? What can be sadder than dire hunger, than burning breath in parched throats, and death at hand, which, delayed, weighs more heavily than death that comes at once? Would that one lot had given us death when we were in Egypt, when the supply of food was abundant for all and no one muttered apart that he lacked nourishment! Now we live here, where life is heavy, even if there are no griefs. Can anyone, then, endure the hated day among barren sands, and bear, parched, the hot sun that no shade tempers?

Rather, if your senses warn you of our dangers, aged leader, we ask you, give back to your own people the Nile and Egypt, and then permit the men who ask it to take up all their labours again, because our judgment is that nothing can be sadder than food cut off, and it is pleasant to serve when well fed.” After such words the prophet speaks, with Aaron as partner in his speech: “Why does it please you to hurl such words in untamed tumult and harass the chiefs? Why ask for food, which he alone can provide who made the stars? Yet at the setting lamp of the sun you shall see that there is a God, by whose gift bread is sent you from heaven; who, though you were long entangled in dark Mareotis, now sends you gladly to the fields. So come, and at the first light of the returning sun taste unaccustomed food, the heavenly manna. For the people’s quarrels, which do not fit our deeds, were rather sent against the Lord, who is used to feeding whatever he nourishes and leads the ages on with long pasture.” When he had said this, the Lord shone out from the cloud above in a brighter day and promised heavenly food to all, which a harvest that knows no deceit brings forth, and whose seeds no blight destroys.

Then, when evening shone from the saffron sky, quail, falling from heaven thick as snow, heaped in a heavy mass, fills the open plains and the site of the camp, to the wonder of all. Moreover, when light returned at its first rising, the manna gives snowy food, which, with fine grain like coriander, flowed down from all the stars. At the command, the men gathered it by hand by a fixed rule of gathering, lest anyone should perhaps wish to store more than the measure of just food, which suffices for each day; nor did vain cleverness help anyone who laid up more than was right at home; for when the sun grew hot the meal rotted, spoiled by manifold worms. Only this the two days’ light cannot spoil, which the Preparation brought out to be eaten on the festal day, which God commands to be holy, and that men bear no labour whenever that day returns, which they call the sabbath, granted to slow rest. Moreover this was thoroughly known to all, that on every seventh day no food comes down from the heavenly harvest; for when, with shrewd care, men went out through the countryside and the open plains, seeing nothing but grass waving in the blasts of the winds, they are carried back to their homes with empty laps.

And lest only those to whom the food of the honeyed gift was sent should see the memorials of God, some of it is shut in the protection of a gilded case, for the band yet to be born and to come one day to see, and, revering God, to marvel at the food of their forefathers. After this they move the standards and the long column is led out to a place which, burning with sun and lacking water, made the people bring out biting words against the chief as they demand water; and not with murmuring alone, but they almost proceeded to violence; for the priest, fearing stones would be hurled at him, sends words to God on high and implores rivers for the dry sands. At once, prompted by the great Lord, his word orders the elders likewise to go ahead; then he takes the familiar rod, with which he had known how to halt the waves and divide the sea with a rampart in the middle, and makes for Mount Horeb, which stands very high and lifts its sacred head to the nearby clouds. There a hard flint had enclosed imprisoned waters, above which the Lord stood and roused the springs by the same reckoning of his powers with which he set immense rivers through the whole world and poured out the seas. Ordered to strike it, he strikes, and suddenly the rock bursts and pours forth rivers in flowing waves.

The crowd runs to the waters in rivalry, in a gathered throng, and countless cattle rush in and quench the heat, and strength returns to the weary bodies when filled. At once the place itself takes from the cause the name of Temptation, because the people were doubtful in heart and uncertain in mind whether the highest Almighty dwelt among them, and because the harsh people had wished curses on the leader in words that anger conceives. There Amalek, arrayed with warlike bands, routed the Hebrew ranks; to ward off this disgrace Joshua takes with him the chosen strength of the fighters. As he goes with iron hand into the war undertaken, the leader helps him with vows and prayers, and climbs Mount Horeb with hastening step; Aaron, joined with him, and Hur flank him in the middle, and his limbs, through his age shrinking from toil and not strong for the duty of standing, they make firm with a stone placed beneath, and lay a hard seat under him and spread it for the leader; then they hold up his drooping hands, so that the prayer of his palms might join the words of his breast; for often, falling under their aged weight, they made the contest doubtful. When right hands placed beneath them on either side had made them firm, the enemy ranks give way, and the fields are filled with slaughter of men, and none of so many thousands survives.

When these things had been done at God’s command, the prophet wrote them in a book to teach the times to come, and at once he builds an altar consecrated to God, calling the holy place by faithful words: “My sure hope is God, whose protection alone has always given me help, who with hidden strength and concealed hand drove off the warring Amalekites and kills them, their cohorts and all their youth.” Meanwhile Jethro learns of his son-in-law’s deeds and comes in haste, rejoicing to see with his own eyes what he had been told; and he finds him hedged in by immoderate labour, as he hears all the cases of a crowd past numbering; and, having prayed to the great God, he sacrifices cattle before him; then by his advice he brings it about that tribunes are chosen from the people and further ranks, which the soldiers receive in order, so that the legions may be ruled by sure law and settle small disputes, while great quarrels are to be judged by the leader alone. When this was duly done, Jethro goes back to his own home and left his son-in-law. Meanwhile the third month had hastened by in its varied course, when the Lord’s column is led through lonely fields to Mount Sinai. The prophet quickly climbs it, prompted by a voice and by God’s warnings; soon, prostrate, he hears:

“Remember to tell all these words spoken to you: you have seen, men, what wonders Egypt suffered, while care for you holds me and I gather you all and carry you as if led on the track of the wings that the prince of birds spreads as it ploughs the clouds. And now, if my words come through your ears, so that what is commanded is done and your hearts cling in harmony to the just law, I will always have you as a people distinguished by rich possessions and will set you before all nations, so that you may reign in strength in the whole world. For all this earth is mine, and whatever anywhere is born is always subject to eternal right. You shall be a kingdom of priests, which my right hand makes famous, and a nation holy to me, which prolongs a long age.” He, mindful of the command, repeated what had been said to the chiefs of the people, and the people believed the notable words and submitted their hearts to the great Thunderer, saying that they would do the illustrious commands. The Lord, about to establish another, greater thing from his lofty seats, sends the prophet to his accustomed duties and orders all to wash away in flowing water the stains from their clothing or their limbs, and the men to spend the nights apart, so that, pure in mind and body, they may see God from the lofty stars on the third day, set far off from the mountain, which no one standing near shall touch or approach; the cattle are ordered to be driven into the far desert, lest punishment fall on them with the guilty.

that comes by stone or iron, when the hand drives and hurls the missile weapon or blows shake the rock. These things done, the people, their bodies stained by no blemish, look toward the hill, when dawn on the third day first gave its redness, the stars withdrawn. And now lightnings flash, now from the lofty stars a great roar of voices is heard, and the stormy cloud holds itself poised in its mass, and with awful crash the trumpet repeats terrible sounds, and, fenced by a rampart in the camp, the sad people tremble, and the steep sides of the sacred mountain smoke, bearing witness to God from heaven. And whoever was a priest from the chosen people stays far from the mountain, which only the pious Aaron and Moses may climb. Then in everlasting utterance God gives commands to endure, in this order of the law: “I am the Lord, who, freeing you from peril, brought you out of the land of Egypt and ordered the hard labour that servile care imposed to cease. Let your hearts worship me alone, and do not fashion any idols for yourself or, relying on a made god, worship it; nor believe to be divinities the stars that shine in heaven, nor marvel likewise at anything on earth or what the grey-green waters of the flowing sea cover. I am a jealous Lord, repaying sins and crimes on the fathers and then on the offspring born in the fourth generation;

very merciful, repaying greater and great rewards that just men have deserved, who in the depth of their heart embrace my commands, keep them and follow them in mind. Revere the name of God. Keep the festal sabbaths with your sons and servants, and gladly lay aside all labour whenever that day returns to the world. In twice three days the Lord made whatever flourishes on land and in heaven and in the swelling sea; on the seventh, the end of his mighty works complete, he rested; hence that festal day flourishes, hence it is ever hallowed, ever honoured by the Lord’s indulgence. Give honour, son, to your parents, so that you may have lasting life on earth, which mighty God prolongs from his mighty seat. Do not love adulteresses, nor kill a man, nor bear witness to oaths perjuring yourself wickedly; commit no theft at all, nor as an evil witness defend a litigant by fraud. Keep your mind and your eyes from another’s wife, and shudder at whatever your mind warns is not yours. Let altars rise built from a heap of earth, where it is right to sacrifice devoted sheep. But if perhaps you choose to raise them with a mass of stones, leave iron far away, since things smoothed by a craftsman’s hand become defiled; and you shall not climb them with ready step, lest perhaps you uncover your nakedness.

Whoever is a slave born of the kindred nation, let him bear the servile yoke for twice three years; then let him go free, carrying his rewards with him, his wife sent away with him if she is not yet seen to be pregnant. But if he already rejoices in children and the name of father, he must leave his wife and offspring to his master, himself his own man and released from his master’s bond. But if he decidedly prefers to remain a slave, let him be placed before the holy doors, his master setting him there, to suffer the wound that a thin awl pierces through the soft ear, never free for all time. It is not lawful for a parent to sell a daughter to a foreign nation; the power to sell remains with the allied people; yet it is in no way right to send her away as a slave. If she displeases the master to whom she passed when sold, the coins at which she was valued shall be returned, so that he may send her back to her father’s threshold. But if perhaps she is given to his son, it is fitting that he treat her as his own daughter. And if the son prefers to take another lawfully, he shall openly provide the garments allowed her, with which her limbs are covered, and shall not then deny her what is hers if she is known to him by intercourse; or, if these things entrusted to the man are not kept, he may release her to go and not reclaim the price given. He who with a hard wound strikes down a man, let him lie in the same death with which he kills; but if the harm came rather by chance, the Lord delivering the guilty man to another’s blows, there is a place that can shelter him, to be granted pardon, the Lord indulgently granting safety.

But he who by guile severs living limbs with iron and rejoices zealously in the blood he has shed has a capital charge and seeks in vain the shelter holy to God on high; for he is taken from there and, led far off, will be cut down with the stiff sword. And he who insolently abuses or strikes his parents rushes into a guilty crime that is atoned by death. No less is he sought for punishment who, with deceitful and faithless mind, steals one born of his fathers’ people and rejoices to transfer him for coins received. But if a quarrel has arisen in words and someone struck with a fist or a stone thrown recovers his usual strength, no guilt will cling to the striker; yet he must pay what the physician’s care has cost. He who at once kills his maidservant or his servant with the blow of a rod does not escape the penalty that clings to him. But if the slave dies after another day, there is no guilt, because he has lost his price. But if perhaps a quarrel boils up between two men, while they grow hot with stirred gall, and one of them strikes a wife swelling with conceived offspring, his hand stretched out to strike, and causes the child to come to be thrust from the mother’s womb before its day, he shall make good the child with a price, as the husband assesses it, if its form was not yet complete and shaped.

But if the infant has died with its features formed, he shall fall by a deserved death. Eye for eye taken each guilty man shall give back, giving up tooth for tooth, and for hand he shall give hand, and foot in turn, whoever cuts off a foot; burning by flames devouring fire expiates; wound shall be given for wound; bruised limbs are atoned by a bruised body. But if anyone robs his servant or his maidservant of an eye, let him let them go free wherever freedom calls; or if fragments of a tooth are struck out by his hand, let the injured one receive consolation, so that gifts may make up for the wound. But if a bull, rejoicing in its very strong neck, still unused to the field and free from the curved plough, strikes anyone with its horn, let it be crushed with a mass of stones, and, buried, not to be eaten by any tooth of men, it shall give its limbs to the earth, to be dissolved in its liquid joints, leaving no danger to its innocent owner. But if, used to strike its neighbours with crescent brow, its owner, long warned, has heedlessly not shut it in, let him die for the slaying by the ox, and let the bull be killed. But if a milder sentence demands the price of the dead, let him pay whatever the assessment requires.

Any man may also demand this for the killing of his son or daughter. If a slave has fallen by the blow of a bull, it is the master’s duty to pay thirty coins, and the savage bullock is killed. But if anyone wishes to sink a well by deep digging, removing the soil to the bottom, let him close it soon with a cover, lest, if perhaps a beast has rolled down the slope, he pay the damages, the owner demanding the price of those that fell, and buy the carcasses of the cattle as slight consolation. But if perhaps an ox kills an ox with its hooked horn, let it be sold; let the price be shared by the two, and let them take the divided flesh of the slain bull. But if its fault had been clearly attested before, the owner shall give back beast for beast for the one lost, the innocent man taking the limbs of the slain bullock. Whoever steals a calf shall be compelled to return five; whoever carries off a lamb shall pay twice two. It is lawful to lay low a night thief with iron while he breaks through the doorposts and the barred thresholds. But if he is caught after the sun has risen, the guilty man is ordered to return twofold what was taken. And if this is beyond his property and means, he shall be sold, to pay for his thefts by the labour of his hands.

If anyone’s beast has stripped another’s crop or green vine, cropping it bit by bit with wide mouth, let him at once measure out acres of fertile field of equal yield and extent; so he will repay the damage that was done before. This rule binds those too who sweep all the fallow lands together and reap the leafy vines, consuming the shoots, so that they lose, by the same reckoning, what they had in plenty in their own fields. For the crackling fire, used to catching thorns from a little kindling, dry stubble and trunks stripped of bark, if it has consumed another’s crop or vine with its heat, the guilt returns on its author through the damages he owes, so that he repays whatever the guilty flame devoured. It is right to return a deposit: if the faithless hand of thieves has plundered it, when the thief is found a double sum is paid; but if he who took the stolen wealth remains hidden, a sacrifice alone will make the keeper free of guilt, because he is free of fraud. But if, deceitful, he is exposed in lying cunning, let him return twice the weight of the deposit before a judge. This measure too must be kept in cases of cattle: that he whose guarding was slack restores what was carried off by wicked theft.

But if the mad rage of wolves tears the soft flock, the quarrel is calmed when the flesh is shown. But if anyone lends a pair of bullocks to draw wagons, let him not claim they died under an enormous load if he himself was present as driver as they went. This holds also for other beasts pressed by loads put on them. But if he who drives them loses the animals received in haste, it is right that he bear the whole loss. But if a man hired for an agreed wage loses them, he shall promptly reckon them in the price of the work. If anyone takes for himself a maiden not betrothed, he shall join her to himself as wife with a dowry. But if there is no agreement to marriage with the girl he has taken, let him give her father the gifts that befit a marriage. It is wrong to hide a sorcerer. Hard death shall kill one who mingles with a beast in the act of shameful intercourse. Let life leave men who revere the shrines of demons, since it is right to bow the neck to the Lord alone. Let no one wrong a stranger by word or hand, because Egypt received you when you left your native soil and former seat. Let a woman whose husband has died not be despised, but rather cherished, and boys bereft of parents, lest the guilty suffer the same penalties and, terrified by swift death, leave their own bereft:

for God hears and helps afflicted hearts. Grant on credit to one who asks the use of the coins he requests, putting far away interest and shameful usury; and do not hastily press the trembling man to repay what he took. And if perhaps he entrusts and hands over to you the covering of his body as a pledge for the money, return it before the sun hides its head from heaven. I am the merciful Lord: I hear these at once. Cease, all of you, to curse foreign gods, and especially the men who will hold the reins of the people. Bring pious gifts to the Lord from the first fruits, and whatever you beget as the firstborn of a bride you shall consecrate to the Lord after the seventh sun has measured its high journey, so that you may be a holy race. Let no one eat a beast killed by the tooth of ravening wolves; let him refuse what is unworthy of tables. You shall not believe reports made to you that no support of good faith upholds; nor wish to speak falsely as a witness with unjust mind; nor, joined as one to the many in a crowd, strive to overpower the innocent so as to condemn the weak and humble on a trumped-up charge. Rather, if perhaps you see wandering the beast of one whose heart is not joined to yours, bring it back. And if beasts of burden are borne down by heavy weight, raise them, and, straining, lift them with both hands.

Do not lay low an innocent man, for he is of a just heart. You shall not take gifts to favour a trembling guilty man and an anxious defendant, since they soon blind the eyes and break the words of men and every judgment. On rich clods let the vigorous farmer labour for twice three years, because the seventh must be one that brings slow leisure, in which every poor man may take what has grown openly, and gladly leave what remains to be eaten by wild beasts as they roam the glades. In the perpetual circle, as the winged year revolves, festivals of three kinds are to be kept by you, and on the seventh day it is right, rejoicing, to take soft azyma of wheaten meal, as I warned you long ago, in the first month of the new season, when you had full freedom to depart from Egypt. Let no one come empty-handed before my face. Know that the first fruits of your works and the beginnings of the harvest are festivals for you, whenever you scatter seed in the field, or when rest is joined to the year’s completed course, all things being finished that the care of labour produces. Let every man mark three times in the year at which he may show himself before my face. For when the glad possession of the land has been committed and entrusted to you, the nations subdued, know that only unleavened bread is to be set on my altars;

that manifold cattle and the red stream of blood avail nothing for your feasts, and that the fat shall not last through the wakeful night into the hours of light that return whenever the care of the rites recurs. And let not a tender lamb be cooked in its mother’s milk. See, I send a starry minister from the heavenly citadel to take care of you, to cherish you with much strength as you go to the land that flourishes gladly with rich fields and pours out sweet waves of nectar. Prepare to hear him and trust his holy words. He is joined to you and will remain faithful, keeping an everlasting name at heaven’s summit. Come now, join your hearing to the holy words and take up my command with sincere mind, that you may be a people dear to me and a blessed nation and a lofty kingdom of God, a race always exalted in all lands that the sun, returning on either side, beholds as it embraces the world with its hot axle. I will cherish those who agree with you and resist all who prepare to war with you; the Amorite will yield to you, and the fierce Hittite and those whom now the best of lands sustains, soon to be turned over to you as its tiller for ever. Take care not to bend your necks to forbidden shrines or, relying on them in fear, worship hostile gods.

Rather overthrow the profane things and scatter all the idols with their inscriptions, and blot out the inscribed names, so that you may serve God, before whom all things tremble. Soon I will bless your food and flowing springs and take away the plagues of disease from your body. No one in all the people will grieve for lack of a child that he has not his father’s name and honour. I will grant long days, so that a broader term of life may prolong the times of the life you long for. Before your ranks sad terror will fly, and hornets will run ahead with poisoned sting, so that your standards may be feared by warlike companies and easy victory may come through fierce nations. Yet I will make them, once subdued, decrease gradually, lest the land be empty of men and the crowd of rabid beasts increase too greatly. With your soldiers spread out I will make the bounds of your land and seat extend, from where, by the Red Sea, the slippery ocean surges with windy waves, as far as the Philistine sea, and the land without human tillers, renowned, and with its great flow, where the Euphrates runs clear with glassy waves.” When he had thundered these words, the Lord bids Aaron and Moses climb the hill, and seventy men of noble age, and bow their necks from afar to the eternal and highest God; for he allows the leader himself to hasten near, who, carrying out the holy commands of God, at once builds a lofty altar at the foot of the outstanding mountain that rises into the empty air:

twelve stones, which are the number of the tribes, joining them close. Here he brings forth bullocks never yoked and sacrifices them on the sacred altars; part of their blood he pours out on the altar, lets another part drip into a bowl, and sprinkles the thronging people with a light dew, and unrolls the book that keeps the memorials of the eternal God. After the people dear to him had spoken their docile and harmonious assent, he climbs the swelling hill with slow effort and sets the aged elders and his brother on the summit. These together behold a gem glowing with lightning, on which the feet of the starry King had stood; it has the name of sapphire; and a white sky is seen here stretched across the ridges of the mountain; revering all this, they utter lofty praise and take food. Meanwhile the prophet, having told the elders to remain there, has Joshua join his steps with him with peaceful heart, and leaves Hur and Aaron to his people, so that they may hear the quarrels of disputing men with an equal scale and speak the words of law. When he himself reached the many ridges of the holy hill, a shining cloud glides swiftly from the heavenly sky, enfolds and covers the mountain, and hides the prophet apart from his companions for twice three lights of the sun. And now the seventh day had opened the snowy sky,

when the Lord calls the prophet from the midst of the cloud, while, shining, he begins amid wondrous flames, and gives the prophet commands for forty days, so that he might know what sanctuaries are worthy of the highest God; and he orders them to be fixed with lofty timbers, strong for ever, which no age dissolves. It was made in wondrous ways, and a ductile sheet of conspicuous gold covers the commanded measure, joining pairs of rings with smooth roundness on the right and left side where the holy things are worshipped. Then he made an ark of smoothed wood, in which the commands of the everlasting Thunderer might remain. Moreover he makes cherubim come forth from ruddy gold and places them facing apart where the altar opens, with equal splendour of wings and like flight, as though they moved nimble wings into the windy clouds. And many other contrivances of new things besides were made in wondrous ways; whoever wishes to tell them would sooner set out the sands the sea rolls. But neither how many kinds there are, nor what their names, can verse, bound by metre, set out in speech, while the prophet fashions ladles, bowls and mortars, and makes engraved dishes to be carried for the offerings, and the stands placed under the lamps.

Now whatever covers the sacred ark from above or veils the posts he dyed with burning scarlet; moreover robes are woven with a purple mantle for Aaron and the pious priests, who offer gifts in the holy dwelling of God, and flashing gems cling to the folds, marking the names of the tribes, from whose body the people comes, marking single names with noble gems. The first row in its place: the emerald joined to the topaz; the sapphire follows it, with which the carbuncle burns, and the jasper flourishes and gleams amid tawny gold; the third row with the ligure, the agate and the amethyst, shining, dyed with purple; the fourth, the chrysolite, the onyx joined to the beryl. The venerable sign of the heavenly King is added, formed on a sheet of conspicuous gold. Moreover linen garments of snowy weave are ordered to be gathered into loose folds and put on the limbs to hide the private parts of the flesh, lest the priests uncover what is shameful as they carry the sacred things. Meanwhile the whole order of sacrifices is set out: what gifts lighten sin, what victim struck by iron falls and ends the holy wrath of God. For whoever of men touches the sacred altar is made holier, cleansed of the stain in his heart.

that a lamp should always hang from the lofty ceiling, lit, and overcome the night with its light, God’s decree declares, lest perhaps darkness make a dreadful night through the holy altars. The juice of liquid olive is also set there at times, hallowing the flesh of men, as it flows from the top of the head and drenches the limbs with thick ointment; add incense too, whose light breath becomes fitting for the nostrils and bedews the senses with sweet airs. Then, so that the fabric of the great temple might shine and surpass all buildings in its adornment, God gave teachable minds and the greatest skill to the craftsmen and put all arts in them, in Oholiab of the tribe of Dan and in Bezalel joined with him, who had a famous origin from the company of Judah. And so that the Lord’s words might be best known to the people, the prophet receives tablets formed from a twofold rock, God giving them, which the King’s famous hand wrote with holy thumb and like fingers. Meanwhile the people, placed in the measured camp, groaning in biting heart that their prophet has long been absent and muttering that he is nowhere seen, madly and constantly demand of Aaron perverse divinities for themselves; he, as they raged and pressed long, ordered them to bring and hand over the ornaments their daughters and wives wear in their ears, since their native beauty is thought to have too little splendour, and gold hangs down from a shameful wound.

When the people had gathered this, he threw it into the fire, and then, taking out what the furnace flame had softened, mixed it and formed a bullock with grim brow, and said that the next day would be a solemn feast. At once, when the morning star first brought forth its white fires and shut the night out from lofty heaven, the Jewish band rises and gladly keeps the ruinous feast and floods their breasts with many cups, and, maddened, leads exulting dances. The Lord on high sees these things from his lofty citadel and orders the innocent prophet to go down quickly, saying: “Run down quickly and leave the mountain, leader of a perverse people and master of a crowd that profane things please; Judea has sinned greatly under your leadership, while it despises holy acts. See, those whom you led, who were allowed to loose the bonds of untamed Pharaoh and to go out from dark Egypt, stand as transgressors before a bull’s face and celebrate as God the limbs of a counterfeit bullock, and now call this the divinity of their freedom. Do not try to bend my anger, nor stand in my way, while I send them deserved terrors and a fitting ruin. Nor need you fear loss, as though the power taken away would at once pass to another’s summit.

there shall be given you on earth a nation far more outstanding in arms, unknown to you, to be victorious under your leadership.” Terrified by this, the prophet, prostrate, worships the Lord, speaking thus: “Why does your anger now go out with such great emotion against your people, which, groaning under harsh commands, Egypt in its great fear released, while it fears you, great one, while the strength of your lofty right hand terrifies the wretched tyrant, his neck broken? And now, O Lord, what will the crowd of Egypt say, robbed of its captives and hostile to the people it now sees to be yours, except that you, mighty God, favouring them in vain with your accustomed kindness, led the men out to be killed in a deserted place, while they go to their deaths among vast wastes? O lofty one, be gracious to your own, and show your serene face to one who asks; for who can live on earth or in heaven when you are moved, to whom alone runs all that dies and lives for you? And at last let there return to your mind, venerable one, the gifts you prepared once for Abraham, then for the chief Jacob and for pious Isaac, happy men whom service adorns, because they pleased you; you swore by your own strength, holy one, when you pledged that their offspring would be your care, unconquered King, to be made dense with numerous youth and countless ranks, as the stars of the great heaven and the starry gems sparkle on the world’s pole.

Why do the promises waver? Why does no one possess the benefits of the rich land, and the prophet, to whom you promise streams of honey and rivers of milk, stand an exile in his own seats?” The Lord is moved by this and pours all his anger from his breast. At once the prophet comes down from the lofty hill, carrying the tablets inscribed with the Lord’s law inside and out together, for the holy page was committed to the back as well; and as he goes out in haste, Joshua is struck by the immoderate voices of the people and thinks this is the shout of a crowd at war. But the prophet sees not war but hearts slack with wine sending manifold voices to heaven. And now, when the leader had entered the threshold of the camp, he sees the dances of the revelling people seething and sees the golden bullock with swollen neck, which the crowd looked on as on a heavenly father. At once, hostile, as he conceives a hot anger, he breaks the tablets, rising to the full blow, and melts the calf, thrown on the fire, and then casts it into the water and, taking from that stream, orders the astonished people to drink; and then he rebukes his brother, greatly offended, because he had listened to those seeking vain things and outraged God, whose anger was just. He, asking for peace, confesses the people’s crime, making himself free of the guilty deed.

But the chief, preparing to punish the crimes of the mad mob, orders the Levites to run through the whole camp, bare the sword, and strike the bodies they meet everywhere, though they were of the kindred people. They eagerly run through the lanes they knew and fall upon the bands in their way and swiftly, as avengers of the Lord, slay about three thousand men, to which you may join twenty thousand together. These deeds done, the prophet goes out to his people, now milder, and entreats the eternal King for the people’s crime, speaking thus: “The crowd of your people has sinned, unconquered King, more than mortal hearts seek, worshipping the images of dumb cattle; to these they made vows and believed gold a divinity. And now, O Lord, if you count me worthy of the prayer that I make and pour out to you, forgive the guilt that you alone can release. But if a greater penalty awaits them and the sentence of death holds them all, blot out my name, holy one, from the heavenly page that your venerable hand wrote, to which the world is subject.” God’s favourable answers soothe him as he prays: “Whoever, a sinner, wrongs me by forbidden crime, coming against me, no page of the holy book holds, and his guilty name will be blotted out from it.

But you, make haste and pursue from here the course you have begun, and assign the promised places to the crowd you have taken up. And lest anxious care touch you on your way, a messenger will always go before you as you travel. But their deeds weigh down those whom crimes darken, men of stiff neck and swollen mind; therefore I do not walk with you as a companion.” The people received these words with sad guilt and groans with streaming tears at such reproaches, putting on soiled garments of black thread. The good prophet bids them in words lay aside the sad garments and mourning, and prays earnestly that they take care lest God’s anger perhaps grow greater if he should be wronged by a like crime. These things done, he brings out the tent prepared for himself and pitches it away from the camp, and fittingly gave it a name from the witness, whose judgment is true. All the men eagerly watched him entering the threshold made for God, and they themselves in turn rejoiced to step forward or stand facing it, when suddenly, dreadful to see, a shining cloud glides from heaven and floods the top of the highest temple; and while the pious prophet walks there and then returns,

Joshua always kept himself in the house of the Lord, never going out. But the prophet goes over his accustomed words with the Lord and asks for things not granted before to mortal man: that he might see close at hand the venerable face of the blessed Lord, and that God might always accompany the chief as he goes, however much a heavenly messenger guarded him. It is granted, and God begins in lofty words what must be done before the grace of so great a gift may feed eyes used to seeing worldly things: “Come, make haste, climb the threatening rock and plant your step, and while my glory runs down from on high, returning thus, stay under the arch of the rock, shaded by my right hand, while, passing by in swift course, I take back the shade of the divine palm. Then you can see only the back of God as he goes; it is not right for any of the number of those who breathe, whom the air of the world sustains, to see the face.” These things are done as commanded; soon, with rock hewn, he makes like tablets again for the divine laws and goes alone to the summit familiar to him from his usual ascents, and does not allow anyone to approach near the mountain, and removes from there even the woolly flocks, because such things are close to guilt: holy things never cleave to the corrupt.

At once, having enjoyed the longed-for words of the Lord, he learns what is to come for his people and offers himself freely: “O Lord, whom bountiful mercy makes great for your own in heaven and on earth, gentle in the heavenly hall, alone mighty and likewise most just, gracious alike to the peoples whom the glad world everywhere holds who confess the Lord with all their mind: you lift all from their offences, you can forgive whatever is unjust, because you alone are without crime; you are likewise wont to condemn deadly guilt on the offspring and children of the fathers and the children’s children: remain with us, God, in your surpassing power. For this fierce people is proud with stiff neck; if you forgive the sins committed by their crime, we shall live through the ages as yours.” Soon the holy Lord of heaven speaks from his hall what he had commanded before: that when the people rested after wounding wars, turning to leisure, they should know only marriages allowed from their own people, lest perhaps a wife taken from outside should ensnare the unwary minds of men with deceitful cunning and teach profane rites. And now this prophet had spent forty suns with their swift light and had taken no food, bringing back a fasting breast to the vast camp.

They feared to look at him, shining with the conspicuous lamp of flame, and his brother is in awe and turns his mortal eyes away from the shining light. But the prophet, not knowing that the honour of a sudden power had shone on his consecrated person, learns from the people’s fear that the stroke of the immense light must be veiled, lest the Jewish band turn away their ears along with their eyes. But whenever he betook himself to the peaceful words of the Lord, he took off the yellow linen veil. At once, the people eagerly bringing out their metals and fleeces dyed with Sidonian dye, he completes the consecrated house with outstanding arts. The Lord on high filled it with a cloud he sent, so much that the prophet could not pass the holy doorposts, though the veil was spread across the whole threshold and no guard stood in the way at the doors. When this cloud had moved away on moving breezes, the camp was moved; and night, wont to return, shone with the excessive light of red flame, while the flying point burns and shows the divine presence.

After he had set up the conspicuous temple in the far wilderness, and what benefits the twin turtledove would bring, or the dove joined and paired with a dove … But, a marvel, fire sent from a lofty star swiftly seized the flesh of the slaughtered cattle. Meanwhile young men, vigorous now in their strong years, believing in their foolish hearts that it was allowed them, Nadab and Abihu, the known children of the prophet Aaron, kindle fire with sacrilegious rites. Their death was not long delayed: for lightning flashed from the sky above and killed the men amid their insincere offerings, while their father mourned greatly. And then their cold limbs are buried in a tomb. Soon, however, the father refrained from mourning the buried, and all their brothers too, the prophet forbidding the weeping that was permitted to the people; for the fiery heat, flying from its heavenly seat, had shaken all the men with the terror it brought, and they saw openly that God, who was not absent, was not to be scorned. Meanwhile the priest learns from the Lord’s voice that wine and honeyed strong drink are denied to him and his sons, lest, when they worship the Lord at the altars set up, breath sent from a wine-filled breast should offend. A common rule of food distinguishes for the people what is allowed and what it is not right to take.

he declares; a custom that our own banquets also keep under heaven’s law: that the vulture not be among our foods, nor the raven or magpie, nor the buzzard, nor the keen hawk, nor the kite with hooked beak, and other things it is hard to tell in measured verse, lest things not clean enough, gathered and settling in the breast, make the innocent organs foul by their touch. A woman who empties her womb in lawful childbirth, if she bears a boy, is unclean for seven days in her whole body; but when the eighth day turns, on which it is the custom to cut the private parts, he will remove the foreskin of the member, and then she will sit for thirty and three days after giving birth, lest she boldly pollute, by sight or foul touch, the altars that are honoured with holy rites. But if the child that she brings forth is a girl, she will keep twice the time and so incur no guilt; then, when that is completed, she will at once offer gifts, twin turtledoves or doves like them, or a lamb of white fleece from the soft flock, so that the priest may by his prayers stop the flow.

The forms and signs of diseases are also taught, at least those that leprosy causes, which floods the flesh of the whole body with yellowish pale corruption and fills the white skin with deadly spots, so that, since it sometimes boils up through the Lord’s anger, it may take flight by this remedy and leave the body of the man who prays for his guilt and brings a gift. Poverty, which, rejoicing, often overcomes the rich … because the Lord drinks in the vow of the simple. Yet no great expense need be provided for the healing: for every law prescribes the offering of two young birds and twin lambs, so that a sheep is joined to a calf, with fine flour sprinkled with a stream of olive oil. These a rich man can offer; but small gifts remain for the poor; for either he will sacrifice at the altar a calf that thrives, a year of twelve months complete, and some sacred meal that he mixes with oil, or twin turtledoves, or perhaps doves like them. Moreover, because sluggish pleasure often mocks men’s sleep in the night, if perhaps seed drips from the member, the body of the sleeper becomes foul and remains unclean until the evening star, conspicuous in the sky, goes before the night with glad light; nor do such dreams disfigure only the bodies with foul stain, but whatever he touches in his acts whom dreams have darkened.

For this reason it is right to bathe the limbs in a river, so that purity may return quickly as the guilt ceases. Moreover it is right to break earthen vessels stained by the man’s touch, but to wash those made of metal and draw off the dirt with a glassy stream. Under this law lawful intercourse too is purified. Then, the troublesome stain of the limbs removed, the priest will give help, when, the sun returned, the seventh dawn has shone with purple stars, if the man comes to the altar relying on twin turtledoves, guilty of sin and of a vow, and on paired doves. A woman, when the month has run its course and her period comes, is defiled by the moist discharge that comes from the womb, and whatever she touches she stains, until the seventh day goes out with the return of the morning star; but if the guilty flow presses more abundantly and departs from the order of its fixed time, the form of the evil will be the same and the same the end of the guilt, if she brings to the holy altar a gift of those birds that are known to have pleased the Lord. Meanwhile, after the sons of the chief Aaron had been destroyed for their crime, the mighty Lord makes this known: that, because the altar has shade let down from veils stretched before it and the sacred ark is likewise covered in cloud, the priest should go and stand there at fixed times, bringing pious vows, because the holy Lord stands there, to be seen in a white cloud.

yet so that he slaughters a calf for his own crime, and for the congregation soon sacrifices like he-goats, by a lot cast, so that one may wander off into the wild, carrying the offences of the sinners and hiding them with itself, but the other is slaughtered for the Lord at the peaceful altar, to bring the best benefits of the heavenly gift. A beast or bird that has died without its blood being shed is fit for the tables of no diners, because the life is in the blood of many creatures. And moreover, if perhaps a beast slain by the blade lets out a saffron stream from its cut throat, the blood should be covered with earth, lest it lie unburied as an offence. Next the Lord instructs which unions are guilty and which hearts concord may join in an equal bond, which this order sets out arranged in fixed ways: first, a mother is not fit for the bed in which a bride lies, and let no mind acknowledge such use, but only the dutiful devotion of her son, since she once clung to his father’s embraces. Likewise a sister born of the same mother, or a granddaughter, born to you of son or daughter; let not an aunt on the father’s side or the mother’s be joined to you in foul affection, nor guilty lust stray toward a daughter-in-law or the wife your brother has; let not a daughter know the use her mother knew, nor lie in the same bed,

mingled with one man, and defile the names of kin; nor take a stepmother, as one who is joined to her stepson; and to hold two sisters in one embrace is a thing at odds with the law; nor the wife whom your neighbour of the people joined to you has taken; let no son be given to serve a mighty idol, lest the Lord’s name be profaned in a forbidden act. Let no male be mingled in obscene love, nor dishonour your own sex; nor let any four-footed beast know shapeless intercourse with woman or man: for these crimes many nations offended the mighty Lord, and the land shows its anger at them all and rejects the filth with which it is stained. But when the reaper is cutting the wheaten ears, or when the vintager cuts off the yellow grapes, let no one gather everything, so that a part may be left for the needy, the last part. Let no one tell a lie, nor be willing to serve theft or ruin his brother, nor bind himself by oath upon an unjust cause. Let no one be pleased to harm another or keep what is stolen, nor keep back the wage of the hired man for his work even for one night; nor wish to curse the deaf or reproach anyone for a bodily defect.

Let the judge’s decision never lean to the left or the right side, because the person of the poor man and of the eminent man must be seen as one by those who, with the scale set, can discern what is right with teachable mind. Next, rein in a swollen heart, lest perhaps you become hateful while you despise all. Nor hate your brother if silent anger drives you, but rather rebuke him and set it out before him openly, so that he may avoid what he did before and reform his mind. And when the right to do harm has been entrusted to you, willingly lay aside your emotions and soften all your anger, which, long gathered in a silent breast, was strong, lest you yourself be lord and avenger of your own pain. And as you wish pleasant and profitable things for your own affairs, so ask them for your brother, lest your mind be divided. Keep this, men, and stand firm in the holy law. Let the beasts that draw your wagons be yoked of like body; do not join a bull with a horse in harness; nor scatter grain among green vines when you sow; nor have any garment of different colours woven in a mixed way or with twofold thread. If anyone loves a slave woman bound to another for a price, the right not yet given her that release grants to slaves and freedom bestowed, he is free of mortal crime.

if, not joined to a husband, she has shared his mind, if she grants easy intercourse without struggle, God is appeased by vows, if a votive ram from the soft flock is slaughtered at the Lord’s altar. Whenever shoots are grafted on a wild trunk, do not pluck fruit until three Decembers have passed, but consecrate it to the highest God; for the fifth year will give you the right to eat it with lawful food. Refuse to serve auguries, and shun hearing omens begun as though true; and do not make straight hair glow red with curling locks, or pluck the beard, or mark the skin with iron, or put brands on the body’s limbs, never gentle to limbs. Let not your daughter be sold by you to smooth-talking adulterers or transferred to a shameful bed; and shun men who heal by chants, and bring them to the penalty they deserve. If a young man does not rise for an old man, and if a boy for anyone bearded, he sins, because one greater in age demands the courtesy that is given to a father’s years. Let the measure of your peck never be short, nor keep a balance with a half-ounce of fraud. God, being just, requires what is just in every act. And reject those who seek answers from ventriloquists. Let no one take care to shave his beard for the dead, or bare his head, or defile his serene brow, or wish for anything that makes him more disfigured.

A woman whom a night-wandering adulterer has possessed is unworthy of marriage with a man who would take her afterward; and she who has been sent away by the decision that makes divorces, let her not know another’s bridal chamber; and the pure priest will in all things provide shining oil, with which the summit of his consecrated head was first anointed. Let a wife of his own race, known to him alone, cling to him, and let him avoid a widow or one guilty of lust, lest his offspring be stained by a forbidden mother. And if anyone bears any defect in his body, he will not be worthy to take up the holy duties. Pure bodies please, not smeared with foul blemishes, … which each, according to his means, has vowed to the altar. Moreover it is by no means right to offer blemished animals, for they are foul with blemishes; the Ruler on high is pure. If the daughter of a holy priest has been given under the law of a stranger, let her by no means touch and eat the first offerings; if, her husband dead, she has come back to live in her father’s house, let her take without care the food and bread her father takes, in her turn. But if anyone has unknowingly put his hand to holy things, for the fault let him bring a fifth more to the altar. Let a lamp hang before the dome from the lofty ceiling, so that the oil may give flaming light by night,

lest the day, run out, should mingle pale shadows in the Lord’s house and hide the holy altars. Meanwhile two young men are stirred with hot gall: one was a Hebrew, the other born of Egypt. And while, raging, they hurled curses at each other, the worthless Jew did not fear to darken the immense name of the Lord with his complaint, as he is carried away by anger. For this deed, dragged outside the rampart of the camp and placed in the middle of the field, at the command of the Lord on high he fell under a blow of stones. God goes through his pious laws and sets them all out. Whenever a needy man wishes to take another’s money, leaving a pledge, if he has made over his land to him whose help he asks, let him promptly repay what was lent him when his hand has grown rich, and receive back what had been transferred before; if he remains needy all his life, the land becomes free in that year in which rest and sweet relief are granted to all. But if perhaps someone sells a house in the middle of a city, let him repay within a year the money entrusted to him, lest he lose the property after the time has passed. Yet money is to be given to the hands of those who ask in such a way that interest may not afterwards exact an entangling gain.

Whoever, being poor, cannot sustain the thin means of life and bear hard days, and thinks it better to submit himself to a master, his freedom given up, let him not bear the yoke as one born of a slave woman, but as one engaged for work at a set wage, until, his time having run, he goes back free in the year when leisure is granted to all things together. And if he goes off sold, as by a master’s command, let his next of kin redeem him, or, if he is not there, let anyone of his tribe be charged to transact his brother’s case and take the servile yoke off the man. For if he was sold for lawful money, he will serve until the time comes in the desired year in which all together take back their rights that were let go; or, if the sum of years was small, let him make it up by the labour of his hands that he has given. So let him go wherever he will and take back with him his children, free and safe, together with his wife. Whoever keeps such commands with sincere heart, tranquil peace remains for him, which wars can disturb with no tumult; but leisure sent through long years will fill the granaries with manifold fruit. Moreover, if a fierce enemy draws his weapons, he will go away thrust back by a small fighting band, however immense the ranks he leads into battle.

But him who shuns the lofty commands of God the terror of death will drive, as though an enemy were whirling a sword, and in headlong flight he will hide trembling in a city. Then extreme famine with pale diseases will surround him, and though full he will think his mouth fasting and will always fear, his fear ever returning. And if he wishes to go out through the double gates where his mind has led him, the sad wilderness will confound him as he goes through fields deserted on every side, and he will fear yet more sadly ravening wolves and the beasts that are terrible through the countryside with tooth or claw; and though the spring crop springs from the rich turf of the land, it will put forth no tender ears on its stalks. Then the father will seek the limbs of his children as sweet to bite, and the mother in hunger will send down into her belly what she once fruitfully bore. Then the victor, rejoicing, will put chains on the captives, and flashing flames will raise their ruddy hair through the great houses, the cities turned to ash, which, harbouring foul things, strong walls once surrounded with protection. The inscriptions will fail, the emblems of varied praises, and what was beautiful before will perish, destroyed, so that God may be loved, ever to be revered on high, whom idols cannot touch with their lying worship.

Then what valuation in drachmas holds in vows, whether a woman or a male has been given to the altar, the rubric of God has written out, whether one older in age, or a boy or girl of years not yet grown, or a house or a farm, or whatever is dedicated in the mind, when the untroubled mind rejoices to trust the highest God, or when it is driven and disturbed by anxious dangers, lest error entangle those caught up in it; part remains set out, part is entrusted to the priest, so that the ruling also values the tithes of the fruits. If one wishes to keep the beast or field or house, it was under the right of the giver; let him soon pay at the altar the sum that coins in agreement assign to the prices.

Meanwhile the year had turned in its accustomed course, running in its own tracks as its months unrolled, since the youth chosen by God had left the shores of the Nile and at last migrated from the Egyptian sand, when God, shining from his starry seat, spoke and commands the prophet to bring sure commands to the tribunes of the tribes and then to number all the people, setting aside the boys and those whom a greater age now shows exempt from the care of anxious war, so that he might know what the sum is from twenty years up. They eagerly go over the number running through all, each his own squadrons, and quickly report the names inspected, which stand set down in twelve tribes. These together made six hundred and three thousand, if you take care to add five hundred and five times ten, while then the knowledge of the houses, man by man, showed the chiefs to be twice six. But the Levites, whom the care of the Lord’s sacred things alone awaits, he forbade to be joined to the people’s total. Hence seven thousand of the Gershonites were chosen for God, with five hundred added; Kohath separately makes twice four thousand, with six hundred added to them; but the third, called Merari in their native speech, showed twice three thousand and two hundred.

Since a different guard over the holy things and the temple of God awaits these numbers, so they divide the camps. The first takes the side toward the sea; another stretches to the south; the third looks toward the icy breezes of the north. But where the first flame of coming day reddens, the conspicuous prophet’s men pitch the greatest tents. Next he prepares to single out the boys born first and consecrate them to the Lord, which make twice eleven thousand, if you add on top two hundred and seven times ten; for these the priests may take a drachma and assign it to the sacred things of the temple, since the divine altar releases them as though bought. At once they choose those assigned to the service of sacred things from the band of Gershon and of Kohath and that called Merari, twice four thousand, with five hundred joined and fifty more on top, whom he ordered to carry separately or bring out the ornaments of the Lord’s house. So there they took their leisure in the camp now pitched; from it he chose to shut out beyond the threshold of the gate those whose limbs the dire wasting of disease had corrupted, lest, placed among the healthy, they bring contagion, while hidden dangers run through their hot veins. At once, he who is jealous of his wife in a silent breast and has no witness to betray her, if a secret adulterer has polluted the bed of a once-chaste couch, let him go in haste to the priest and present before him

the woman he believes has sinned against him, and bring white flour, made from barley, to the sacred altar, which he neither smears with incense nor moistens with rich oil. Here the foreseeing priest takes water from a spring in an earthen vessel and tinges it with a little dust that he takes, bending down, from the middle of the temple floor. Soon he will make her bare her head and hold in both palms the offering of the sacred memorial. And the elder will make her drink the water that holds curses within it. If she is free of crime, she remains unharmed in mind and serene in face. But if crimes are hidden in her silent heart, the woman will swell with the sudden distension of disease, and her shameful thigh will melt with rotting flesh. Moreover she provokes the curses of the jesting people, as they reproach her sins with easy laughter. Meanwhile, if anyone resolves to lead his life in a chaste rite and desires with watchful mind to fulfil the obligation of a vow, lest bodily luxury thrive in him within the fixed term, let him gladly deny himself wine and refuse all drinks that the care of drinkers is used to turning into wine with warm water or with honey or fruits, when they renew liquid draughts from pure springs. Let him shudder at grapes and bite no grape,

whether it is moist with the dew of wine or dries in the sun into a raisin, shrunken with wrinkled, cracked edge; moreover let him avoid the liquid of biting vinegar, sipping sober cups from running streams; and let him wear a grown beard the whole time who is enrolled by the vow, and let his unshorn crown keep its flowing hair; let him not visit tombs, the graves of his fathers or his sister’s pyre, so that his holy honour may remain. If perhaps someone under the same roof has loosed his limbs in death, it will make him unclean as if infected. Let him therefore pray for pardon with biting cares and cut the hair grown on his squalid head; and when the bright day has shone at its seventh rising, let him offer turtledoves or doves white with like plumage, so that the fault may be lightened by the priest’s words and prayer; yet let the time be lost in which he had abstained before, and let him take up again a beginning, running anew with the vows he desires, so that he may reach the goal sought by his merits. All this done, when, having gained it, he holds his sure rewards, let him offer like lambs of white fleece, yearlings, a year’s course complete, so that one may fall for the reward sought and lighten sin; the other, now of clean body, and a ram, lie down for the acts that bring salvation.

He also sprinkles snowy loaves with oil, and whatever the solemnities of the ancient rite require, so that he may again take the cups he had given up. Come then, and whenever you wish to consecrate the people as they pray, ask Christ in these words: “While the right hand rests bent over the heads of men, may the shining Almighty bless you from the heavenly hall, and may he become your guardian through the ages, and may God lift his shining face over all your heads, and be merciful for ever; and may he lift up his countenance, so that he may look on you again from his glorious seat, and may the Lord give peace as his immense gift.” Meanwhile the prophet, ready in all God’s commands, adorns the first house of the Lord in the allied camp and sprinkles it with rich oil, and whatever vessels of the holy house gleam, made of silver or gold, he washed with the same stream. Then the wagons, which the tribunes of the tribes had given yoked, he divided with horned oxen for equal use and gave to the Levites; two carts drawn by twice two bullocks were handed to the first band, the Gershonites; but the Merari cohort received four carriages, yoked with twice four oxen, to carry the things made for the rites of God; for Kohath alone, exempt from the gift, carried its loads on the neck.

Meanwhile the chiefs of the tribes, bringing pious gifts, had separate days; for the columns of the people are five hundred and twenty and two thousand, to be led by twice six men; of whom in first order the tribe of Judah vowed its gift through its tribune Nahshon, in which he gave vessels outstanding with tawny silver, which together, when filled, make weights of twice a hundred and ten, full indeed of snowy fine flour, soaked, according to the custom of sacrifices, in a stream of green olive oil; and then a calf and a shining lamb and a ram together, with which is joined a white kid that lightens sins; two bullocks of like brow together, which, joined, help the sacred rites for salvation; five rams and he-goats and lambs following in like number: these were the first gift. After this each tribe on separate days gladly gave gifts, nowhere differing in the brotherly gift, if the sum of all the vessels is set out alike. But in the dishes gleaming with engraved gold the weight comes to a hundred and twenty pounds. When the prophet had dedicated these emblems of the sacred rites, he heard the Lord speaking in the sacred house, while, glowing, he shines above the outstanding summit and gives the teachings of the law between the Cherubim.

And the lamps placed on the other side put forth twice six flames, which the bright row was set to shine separately, while the golden lampstand spreads its arms and holds up its separate lights. Meanwhile the Levite band handling the offerings is taken from the age of twice twenty and five years, and he who has completed the Lord’s service for five times ten years, let him be free of the duty of serving, and let the young man succeed to the old man’s place and be present. Their bodies are made pure with a light sprinkling from river or spring, and a blade of sharp iron trims their hair if their thick locks are dirty. Then their garments are washed with zeal and care, lest contagion ever stain the hidden body. Meanwhile men of the people who were troubled by fierce care for a defilement, confessing it with conscience as witness, ask the chief whether they might celebrate the sacred Passover on the accustomed day; he holds them back a little and, relying on the Lord’s commands, prays, and reports the command that those stained with defilement may hallow the notable day and renew the worship that the glad night recalls when it comes at the year’s end. But if an innocent man of the people turns away from the festival, and no need of travel keeps him far from the temple, he incurs a capital charge: this law is the same for all.

After the pious prophet had completed all the duties worthy of the temple of God, he soon moved the columns and fills the terrifying trumpets with strong blasts, which he had earlier made of silver at the Lord’s command, while a thin sheet is curved into a round tube. It gives a small signal to the windy murmurs, the ranks being set, so that at the first call the trumpet may halt the anxious ranks before the holy oracles. The first part of the camp hastens at this, the part that stretches toward the dawn and the first light of the sun. And when the trumpet repeats other sounds, let the column go forth that the light south wind looks upon from the opposite quarter. But the third blast of the clarion gives the signal to those legions that hold the camp bordering the sea, after which the youth facing the north gathers its gear. But while the Levites chosen for divine duties hold back the columns, the children of the prophet Aaron, already priests, had the fitting duty of blowing the trumpets and of summoning all that was assigned to God. Going into the long desert, they come with their first camp to the place Paran; here the prophet with friendly speech entreats his kinsman Hobab, the young man born of Reuel, a son of the land of Midian, to go with them and come to the promised realms, in which sweet honey flows abundantly from full combs with a great river of snowy milk.

But he, sluggish and lingering a while with doubtful mind, prefers to turn his course back to his native home, not at all won over by the words of his kinsman, who asks: “Why do you go off another way? Turn your mind here, where the Lord’s realms call us, which, ever rich, ever honoured, waver under no fall. And yet what cause, so hard and unknown to us, moves you to seek again the borders of your father’s people, which long ago, far off, when your mind sought better things, you left, and which the wilderness separates by its sands? In that wilderness no thought moved your mind. And then there might have been a cause, because you would more justly have longed for home, when there were no drinks running in wandering streams and the hot sun burned, and when an uncertain journey and uncertain hope of the future shook those who did not know. But now, at the very end of a modest labour, when happy realms show themselves and God joins them to us, you waver so in mind, as though I were urging you to worse than I wish in my heart. Rather, young man, give yourself back to your dear kinsman, finish the road you began and complete the task you took up, so that, as soon as the Lord has settled all in their longed-for seats, you may take up better things and, placed among the chiefs, be greater in deed.” Then they depart and leave the mountain of God behind them:

and the ark, guardian of heaven’s teaching, went before the camp, after the third morning star had lifted itself in the high sky, the night left behind, so that, with the Lord’s holy things always going before, the people travelling under heavy burdens might have fitting rest. Then first the prophet, as he diligently gives the signal to the first columns, speaks these words as a suppliant: “Rise up on high, O God, and swiftly scatter the enemy thousands; let those flee who prepare to fight against your camp, O God, and those who with violent mind have hated you, highest Sower; you are strong against forces however firm, to be laid low by your everlasting word.” As he speaks, a bright cloud covers him, and overshadows the crowded column and the immense ranks with its covering like a garment. But the people, fierce, while they rolled out savage murmurs, also hurled the reproaches of a raging tongue against the Lord. For this the lofty point of fire glides down from the sky above and devours the people and the camp in a certain part; but the flames flashing grimly over their harvest of punishment a pleasing prayer quenched in the holy ears and dissolved them into grey dust, while the pious prophet labours with bowed neck and entreats the immense God for so great a crime, and repeats that he cannot, with his weary breast, bear alone the constant tumults of the people.

But the Lord God gives the prophet his accustomed comfort and calls for seventy elders from the brotherly host together, whose joint judgment and number might easily break the anger of the quarrelsome, when so many prophets’ hearts in harmony together should utter divine oracles as with one mind. Yet when they had spoken words like the others, they withdraw and speak in their former accustomed way. And two young men too, remaining in a part of the camp, speak most certain things with a divine mind and prophesy together in prophetic speech, Medad and Eldad; after a messenger brought this to the chief’s ears, Joshua presses urgently that he restrain and rebuke them, as though they spoke true things unlawfully; but the prophet at once with kindly words rebukes him and teaches that to restrain through envy a mind sent from heaven is no part of faith. At once they come to Hazeroth and pitch the camp with a vast rampart, as though they feared war by night. Here the pious prophet’s sister and brother swell and roar with envy: “Why should the wife joined to the prophet be an Ethiopian woman, and why should one man presume to the honour common to his kin? For we too receive the memorials and glorious commands of the highest God.” The prophet, attentive and milder than all, hears this, silent, with innocent mind, and renounces anger.

Yet the Lord does not let their untamed passions go further from his lofty seat, but rebukes them as they stand before him, and, walled in a clear cloud, he speaks: “Whoever among you of the kindred race is a prophet will rather see true dreams with watchful sense at midnight, when the lulled senses of men relax, and God gives the joys of the holy word, while I speak and fit my discourse to like words; but who could see me and discern my mouth and eyes joined to his own, which no one living can make out? But this is not the custom when my true judgment is given to the prophet who is faithful in all my house, while he joins my heart to lawful rites. He is able to stand before my face and survey and see God with clear sight. Nothing is ambiguous and no riddles are set in my words: I show myself with open face. He, then, who could see the honour of the reigning Lord and turn his mortal eyes to the invisible, could he not set gentle peace among your passions and do away with sad whispers?” Scarcely had he said this, when suddenly, the cloud removed, the anger of the Lord came and, enfolding Miriam, struck her as she trembled and spreads leprosy over her whole body. Seeing this example, Aaron, terrified, began:

“Spare, I pray, Lord, and turn away your harmful anger, and pass over my sin and our sister’s. We did it unknowing: what strikes our limbs and lashes our senses, let not death, sent as the avenger of wickedness, follow; guard us and take thought for us!” Without delay the prophet gives his heart to his brother’s prayers, asking with suppliant vows for the Lord’s remedies for the deadly plague that, spread through all her limbs, was torturing his sister’s flesh with its sad bite, while he cries thus: “The punishment exceeds the guilt, so great is it! God, take away the fear and heal the disease.” At once it is granted; but the woman, thrust from the camp, lives in exile, and, having suffered the wasting for seven days, receives back her limbs unharmed with glad looks, and from then on is held in the accustomed honour of the people. But the Jewish host, making for the promised rewards, moves its standards and then pitches camp in the fields of Paran and builds its walls with a safe rampart. There, urged by a word from the stars, Moses sends twice six young men, whom we have said earlier were the tribunes of the tribes, to spy out quickly the Canaanite land and cities and report the results to their companions. They go and make for the glade called Hamath, and, having crossed the deserts of the wilderness, survey Hebron, which fierce peoples held, Sheshai and Talmai.

When they came to the valley, which was then planted with figs, with sweet apples and those called stony, or rather pomegranates, it was green with flourishing vines. From it they bring fruits to give a sign of their faithfulness, and also from other things the rich field had produced. They cut a huge cluster from the pliant vine and then, straining, carry it back on a pole across their shoulders. And when forty days had passed in anxious care, at last they report what they had seen, adding terror, as they say that the walls are raised to a vast height and the nations are immense, lifting their heads to heaven, as when a very great oak of aged trunk is joined to the starry heavens. The people are broken by this and, stricken with bitter feeling, groan sadly and wet their faces with a flood of tears, while they say: “O men ever worthy to be praised, whom no image of evil so great frightened, and whom death laid in their accustomed land! Whom neither the sad soil scorched with hot sands, nor thirst long endured, nor the crumbs of manna — sweet indeed, but soaked in gall, because it does not strengthen the limbs — afflicted with heavier hunger, manna to which only quail is added, and which wastes the body with thin food.

But when we lived once in the land of Egypt, no such sad foods tormented us, when to sweep up fish was sport, and to set the whole Nile on our tables, or strip the windy sea of its varied swimming people and ease our bellies with glad fattening. We, rich in flocks, we, in all the rich gardens, plucked unbought melons and the biting cucumbers that swell the belly, with greedy mouths. Garlic and onions, and the cut leek there, fed us, and refreshed us, full, in drowsy sleep. Come then, and put an end at last to hardships; turn the standards quickly and give these companies back to the Nile, and appoint a conspicuous leader from the kindred people who will put our safety before his own, or before that of the trembling chief, who, following the words of God — to be feared, as he says — through desert fields has abandoned us wretches and set us against an enormous enemy, so that we, helpless, suffer things heavier than the fear of death, while a beloved wife falls, while a virgin daughter is led away and serves a proud tyrant as a captive.” After these words they prepare worse things; for the roused crowd takes stones and, rising with all their body, poise them. But while they hesitate in fear and steel themselves for the crime, the chiefs tear their clothes and, falling prone, sank to the ground in fear and begged them all

not to hurl foolish reproaches, in uncertain matters, against heaven and the seat of God, nor to think the promises hard for God’s decrees; then Caleb, with Joshua joining him in faith, prays thus, prostrate: “When it was decided to explore the distant lands and the enemy’s homes and set out to you what we saw, the first tribunes of all the tribes were chosen, whose known faithfulness could by no means speak discordantly or deceive the citizens with lying speech. And now, if the same reverence for our name remains and we utter no windy speeches, believe what has been found; for what confidence would make us deceive our fellow citizens, when we follow the Lord’s answers with you and go through all things in the same way? What some think fearful, while a white pallor is on their faces and their senses waver, seized by fear, is vain indeed; for God’s mighty commands make us firm and do not let us be defeated or driven out, though giants raise their high necks and set their companies against us with dense soldiery. The land lies open to us, which, after the barren fields, it is a joy to have surveyed as happy, which flows rich with a great river of milk and a flood of sweet honey. Only do not separate your hearts from the holy God,

and do not hold back timid hands; for victory, as a servant, enriches those who follow God’s standards, never conquered.” When this was said, the venerable majesty of God came at once from its lofty seat and flooded the people and the fathers and the congregation with wondrous honour. Meanwhile the Lord announces sad anger and an extreme plague, by which the immense nation is to be killed amid barren glades and a land left behind, except only two from the fearful plague, whom a shared strength had made firm by like conduct, seeing that nothing can contend with God’s commands. However much the prophet, trying to avert it by praying, asked with gentle speeches amid timid words, lest the Canaanites, hurling foolish words in vain, should clamour that the people was helped by no power, the people who were desired and chosen for the Lord’s rewards, yet he could not bend the fearful words that fly under firm law; for no one was allowed to see the fields granted only to faith; for within forty years the warrior people fell and left the lofty realms to their sons. Meanwhile, armed and roused by foolish cares, the legion rises, sets its standards on the very top of the hill, and is carried headlong against the enemy on the slope.

And because the Lord did not shield the fighting wings, it is defeated and, its soldiers routed, turns its back. Foreknowing this, the prophet stayed in the camp, keeping the sacred ark within protecting ramparts. Meanwhile a man of the people, on the festal day, while gathering sticks, a despiser of the eternal law, is seized and by God’s holy command is killed with thrown stones, lest the forbidden daring spread. Moreover, so that a cautious mind might often warn men to turn their minds to the Lord’s eternal admonitions, a hyacinth fringe with a knotted cord is fastened for all and marks their garments with a known border. Then a cause of evil arises from a forbidden act: for Korah of the tribe of Levi, and with him Dathan and Abiram, believing with mad daring that anyone might offer incense with pious frankincense to the Thunderer, attacked the prophet with swollen complaint. Nor was death long delayed; for, its hinge broken, the earth opened and sent them all to infernal Tartarus, and with them, destroyed likewise, two hundred and fifty, who brought rites to God that were not commanded, see their death, from the whole gathered crowd, and the cattle and whatever had belonged to the guilty; and, as though one death were coming on all alike, scattered, they tremble with fear and try in vain to flee the fire from above and hide themselves.

Moreover, on the next day, those who were not afraid to seethe in tumult are at once overwhelmed by a great slaughter, and in the same death fall twice seven thousand and six hundred men; and unless the prophet, seeing such danger, had entreated the Lord with gentle vows, a greater penalty would have punished the unspeakable guilt. But when quiet returned after the fearful upheaval, the gilded censers, with which the wicked young men had earlier offered to God unaccustomed offerings of heaven, Moses breaks up, and skilfully devotes them all as a thin sheet and sets it on the altars of the Lord; because whatever is brought to the Lord and placed before the lofty face of God becomes holy. Moreover, so that a distinction might be made between the highest priests and the tribes, the prophet asks for a rod from every chief, until the total reached twelve; and the prophet then shows one set apart with Aaron’s name and leaves it in the midst of the Lord’s dwelling. And when the stars had faded as the sun returned, a thing not known before is seen by the gathered people, to their wonder, and revealed the great honour of the Lord. For the rod of the chief Aaron, once knotless and cut off with iron, with no nourishment from the earth flowered and put forth nuts on the dry stick.

It is added to the records and commands of the sacred law that a heifer, whose tawny hide shines over her limbs, should be slain before the doors of the Lord and her body burned in the fire, and that the ash from the burnt flesh should purify bodies soiled by foul touch, sprinkled on the limbs of men, with a sprig of hyssop joined to it, so that with a light stroke it may scatter river water and wash the defiled with clean water. For whoever touches dead bodies with his hand, or under whose roof a lifeless corpse lies, is stained with uncleanness and defiles the eternal temple. Moreover all vessels with open mouths are unclean, and whoever then touches a bloody wound, or the bones of men, or the tomb of one buried, can on the third and seventh day make himself pure, if, having prayed to the Lord in a silent heart, he brings his gifts, purified by the stream from the healing branch. Meanwhile, while the Jewish host walks through desert fields, it comes to Kadesh and buries the chief’s sister, who had died, and is inflamed with great anger, because the region, deserted through thirst, gave no streams from cool springs, and because the mouths of all were dry and their bodies burned in the scorching sun. The Lord, considering this, commands the prophet to bring out the rod and touch the rock with a double touch.

Yet Moses, striking it with a doubtful heart, rebukes the people, saying: “Alas, you fierce in mind and hard in sense! Can any rocks be wet with streams and send forth living springs?” While, moved, he says this, he strikes with the pliant rod. … rivers burst from the rocks. Yet the Almighty rebukes the hesitant hearts of the prophets, chiding: “Since your judgment was in a divided heart, and your mind, not firm, does not see that I can do all things and gives small honour to the command of the lofty Lord, whom it befitted the Jewish ranks to believe openly and to bear witness that God can do anything: for this reason it is not permitted you to lead the people to the seats long promised and the fertile land and to take up the great gifts.” Meanwhile the people reach the fields of Edom, through which Moses, longing to lead his peaceful ranks, asked with calm speech the king, wild in his swollen courage and preparing for battle. Avoiding him, however, the people reach Mount Hor, on which, after very long years of a life run out, Aaron is buried and left his well-known festal insignia to the priest, who adds to the lofty altars Eleazar, greater than all, as mighty God had commanded and chosen him as minister for the altars that please him.

There the Canaanites, trusting in their numerous youth, gave immoderate terror with a heavy defeat to the Jews, as they turned their bare backs through the fields. But yet they take heart and, with the Lord’s favour, lay low the enemy’s companies and set fire to the strong cities and triumph with immense praise. But though benefits flowed with all they desired, sullen roars and murmurs were not lacking, cast against the pious prophet, while each groans with fierce voice that Egypt, full of the rich dowry of its lands, had been left behind, and the Nile, fertile in crops and with its ever-secure tiller. Almighty God, punishing this with level scale, brought forth ranks of vipers from a poisonous source, which laid many men low, since, though the wounds were slight, they swell the bodies with deadly venom. But the people, groaning mournfully, while they pray prostrate before the prophet’s feet and tell of the public deaths, with the recognition of their disgrace laid up in the hearts of all, receive the longed-for remedy, the Lord saving them. For the upright chief, ordered to fashion a swollen serpent of yellow bronze, hung it from a high pole, so that whoever had been pierced by the wandering tooth of the horned snake might escape death by turning toward the hanging serpent.

From there the people come to Oboth, then seek the fields of Iye-abarim, then Zered; soon they pass on to Arnon. Now in a green plain, where the Amorite lives as tiller of a pleasant seat and feeds on rich fields, there is a well, clear with glassy water, near which the Lord, speaking with holy speech, commanded Moses to gather the crowded people, so that he might draw the watering streams and the shining water. Then the tongue of all was wholly in harmony in divine songs, as it sings praises to the Lord in this hymn: “The immeasurable Lord has sent streams and taken away all the heat of the people, while the well lies open in its full depth and gushes abundantly with cool streams; which once mighty kings made, while they ruled mighty nations with the reins and pressed their fearful dependants with sceptres, as though its use lay open to themselves alone, all strangers kept far away. This well, given by the Lord for our salvation, has filled the thirsty with living waters.” When they had sung these songs to the starry King, they move the camp and leave various places behind, led to King Sihon when the border was crossed.

They rout in strong combat the opposing ranks, which Sihon, mocking the words of the innocent prophet, had drawn up, and he boasted in vain with empty praise of the Amorite nation; which, subdued in hard war, lay prostrate, though long hedged in by strong cities. Moreover Jazer, laid waste by a like war, crushed, accepted the yoke and surrendered many towns, asking for the leisure of the peace it longed for. When report told these things to anxious Balak, who ruled the peoples and cities of the Moabites, he is shaken with heavier fear and courts the prophet Balaam with honouring prayers, that by his words he might hinder the people doing such deeds and wholly curb the course of the warriors, since whatever he prays prostrate the Almighty hears and fulfils, however grim. He says that it is not right for him to bring curses on a people going with the Lord always as their leader to their seat and kingdom, and that it seems far juster to pray for what befits their merits, since the Lord, seen in the night, forbids the old man to unlock answers for Balak. But after the dismissed messenger brought back such things, and his care holds the king, breathless he seeks out chosen chiefs and sends envoys again to the prophet’s threshold, asking for what was already denied, in vain, because the words of God fight against it.

But yet the prophet sets out and mounts his she-ass and keeps pace with those going before him. See, in the middle of the road the angel of the Lord soon holds out a drawn blade against him, and, facing him and pressing on, terrifies the beast, which, roused with a swift leap, striving to one side, flees and wanders over the plain. While the prophet turns her round as she scorns the reins in headlong fear and fights her with tight reins, digs his heels in and beats her with the sharp rod, amid leafy vines, their covering now fallen, a half-ruined wall set in the hesitating ass’s way stopped her advance; she struck his foot against the stones and crushed the old man’s foot and caused him bitter pain. Then the messenger quickly stands in another place, in a very narrow path where a thin track led, leaving no way round on any side. The four-footed beast saw him flashing with drawn sword and, in great terror, sinks down. Ordered to rise, she is beaten by her rider and checked with many weals. When she felt great pain, she spoke with sudden speech, while God loosens her speech into unaccustomed words:

“What have I done or deserved of you, that with many blows you drive me on, straining as I fall? Have I refused my back, so used to you? Or have I ever, in fear, fled my burdens, or thrown you headlong, while you, head down over my bent shoulder, slipped and were rolled, thrown over my bent neck?” As she speaks thus, the priest, moved, often returns harsh words and boils with great anger; and while, roaring, he rages, soon the angel shines forth with bright face and addresses the prophet with holy voice: “You beat the undeserving beast now with a third blow, who, bowing low, flees me and lies down, struck to the earth, because your path is not pleasing to the highest God and you now wander far with straying steps. And unless terror had turned the beast aside in another direction, this hand would have laid you low with a hard wound of iron and driven home the cruel sword, so that, with you struck down, she would have been spared by me.” Here the prophet leaps down and, bowing, worships the holy one, and, grieving for his offence, asks to return and for his life. Dismissed, he hastens and fulfils the task he had undertaken, to speak the words of the Lord that were to be given him. And now, completing the road, he reaches the city of Moab and sees the conspicuous king amid dense soldiery, sees him asking help for himself with timid voice, and makes supplication to the Lord on seven altars;

and at once he sacrifices conspicuous calves and chosen sheep and commits all the gifts to the king, and receives the judgment of God in the silent night. Then, unfolding it, he terrified the king with these words: “I was summoned by Moab’s prince from my native mountains, where the coming day and the serene light grow red, where the land lies enclosed by the twin streams of Tigris and Euphrates, that, savage with bitter words, I should wish unworthy things on men whom the holy Almighty protects from on high and assigns to a rich land. It is right, then, to see them soon from the hill far off and now to make out the faces I long to see of the happy people, whom alone the great gifts of God follow, and who, set apart from the nations and sharing nothing with them, receive the seats they long for from a gracious divinity. Who, then, has numbered the famous offspring of ancient Jacob, or could run through the people in numbers? Rather let my life die among these, leaving its bodily seat, and rest joined to the righteous, and may my offspring live with such a progeny!” When he had said this, Balak, his senses numbed, collapsed, and rebukes the prophet for speaking contrary and discordant words; he is told to climb a swollen hill to see a small part of the people over the fields below. Again Balaam adds these things in ordered words:

“Send my words at once through your ears, ruler of the people of Moab, and come as a witness! God is not like men, and when he has spoken truth he does not make his words void or threaten anything without effect. He warns me, as I rely on him, to pray for great gifts, as I do; and I will consecrate God’s people with vows, which all pain and toil of labour will escape, with God as its partner joined to it, who repels all hardships, granting the gifts of enriching peace. Look, Ruler of heaven and earth, from your holy star on this people’s chief: for he is worthy of your honour, who led out the people groaning with neck long pressed from the realm of bitter Pharaoh, a standard-bearer, second to none in praise of virtues; he cherishes a single kingdom and trusts in no augur, chants no spells and grasps at nothing vain. At a fixed time he will receive, secure, the happy words of God above, and perfected power will be accomplished from the strength of the highest Lord. This people springs forth as when through lonely fields the lion with maned neck advances on high, not returning to the lairs of his accustomed wood until, grim, full of thick gore and prey, he has terrified the green mountains with his threatening roar.”

The king, wounded with great anger, refused this too, asking the prophet for a third utterance on a different hill; from its summit, when he saw the people encamped, he brought forth words from a teachable breast: “Lofty and great are the houses that the seed of Jacob has, and they raise their roofs with buildings alike, like the cedar and the shining wood that fans the glory of its leaves and plays whistling tunes on plaintive branches, or the tree that flourishes gladly, planted on the banks of a river. These the Lord built and raised to the lofty stars. From their seed one day will be born one who brings laws to all peoples, notable for an eternal kingdom, whom God, merciful, calls out of Egypt, conspicuous, equal to none and without peer. He will rule the nations rebellious in various lands, hurling very many darts with his deadly right hand. When he then lies down, reclining like a lion, he stretches himself out, sleep slipping away, then shakes off his slumber, at once restored to waking deeds. And who will make him rise again by touching him? Whoever praises your glories with holy utterance will be blessed; but whoever speaks against you brings curses on himself from his windy mouth. These are the things the Lord commands you to be warned of by my voice, which no one may break by eloquence, nor may any man change or add anything besides.

though you give a great talent of silver to carry and all your wealth and a weight of immense gold: gifts avail nothing; what is spoken is fixed.” These things done, he goes home and leaves the king astonished and groaning greatly at the hard words. But meanwhile the Jewish band, after successful wars, runs riot and thinks the altars it had conquered holy, and celebrates gentile idols with unlawful worship, devoted to Baal and to dumb Peor. Hence soon the great anger of God rises, and then he commands the chiefs to go out to an open plain and, turned, orders them to face the light of the returning sun and atone attentively for the guilty deed. The prophet does this in haste and bares the sword, pursuing innocent and guilty with roving blade. Meanwhile a man, betraying the shame of his kin, because he had made for himself an unlawful marriage from the Midianite race, displays before all and before the prophet Zimri and Cozbi, guilty in the same sin. Phinehas quickly seizes a spear and strikes them and stays the immense plague by just atonement, which consumed in death twice ten thousand men and three, while the Lord’s weapon runs against all. For this deed the priest receives the sacred altars and took up the lofty honour of the Lord.

Meanwhile the youth born of the new stock is enrolled and then, counted, is entered by numbers, which, flourishing in its first flower, already with soft down clothing its cheeks, was glad in its twenty years. Its total then came to six hundred thousand and twice eight, with three hundred more added. This deserved blessed seats by the Lord’s gift. At once the Almighty commands the prophet to turn the standards against the hostile enemy and press on with the war begun. Against them they go with twice six thousand men, to which each tribe had sent its own, while each counts its single thousand of fighters from its own companies. Phinehas leads this as commander, while he carries the holy vessels and the terrifying trumpets into the accustomed battles; and eagerly, with chosen soldiers, he at once cuts down the Moabite ranks and kills all the kings, while he presses on the backs of the routed and kills the prophet Balaam and brings back plunder from the conquered nation. But because after the wars he was dragging the women in a captive column, by the chief’s command he is told to spare their life only to the virgins, as they deserved, and to cleanse the bodily stains of the men with water. He also divides the plunder among all the people and gave the Levites a part as a deserved gift, whom pious care always kept in the Lord’s temple.

and first fruits too are given back to the eternal God from all the things brought back from the conquered nation. These things done, the tribe of Reuben and half Manasseh and Gad ask for the happy seats of Gilead, a land easy for cattle; for, joined to the river Jordan, it was green and grassy with abundant pasture. Though the leader refused them with fearless speech, thinking they were changing their minds to avoid battles to come, he grants it nevertheless and provides it, if with their whole army they bear arms and help the allied cohorts in war.

So far, harassed by the sands of the formless wilderness, the people had advanced their arms to the river Jordan, which, gliding slippery among green glades, left outstanding Jericho with its flowing stream and follows on, and then is mingled with the open sea. There the holy prophet, while he sees death coming to him and the end of his days at hand, which had been written for the world, while he lives there gathers the people assembled in companies and crowded numbers and enriches them with such a gift of words: “If you wish to lay the hostile nations wholly low and hold calm peace for ages to come, fear God and store him in your hearts with all your mind, so that he may always be joined to you in unharmed love; he who, when you mourned long with oppressed neck, lifted you from your chains and freed you from the prison of Egypt; who set himself in the clouds between you and the enemy pressing on you in your fear and on your bared backs; who also gave a cloud as a sign of secure day and wiped away pitch-black night with clear light, so that the elements of God, changing themselves, might strengthen you, set on an unknown path through the lands, by which course the dark night comes and the stars shine; he also laid bare with dry sand the ocean, wont to run forward with alternating motion and ever wandering, where the blasts of the wind carry it uncaught,

sweating a blood-red earth, the reddening shores, so that he might lead you, hemmed in by the double danger of your toils, with walls raised on either arm, the sea divided as it hung in a cloven wave. You saw what care the high divinity then had for you, while behind you the enemy, flying, rushes on and seeks a like way through the windy sea. But he, unable to pass the swollen waves, fell and is rolled among the wet sands. You, whom soft Egypt had made rich with spoils, conquered the formless lands of the wilderness, denied to houses, with God protecting you, while at once he brings streams from rocks and sends down manna from shining heaven. And quail, falling in great clouds through the night, filled the plains around the pitched camp. Long use did not tear the coverings of your feet, nor did your clothes perish by decay or wear; weary age destroys nothing around you. Enemy ranks yield and cities lie open; the Lord is your standard-bearer, sending swift fear to weaken all who stand in your way. And now, since we have come to the waters of the Jordan and the land assigned by the highest God now lies nearest, I call to witness the stars and whatever shines in the lofty hall of the Lord, that the heavenly law which the Thunderer’s right hand wrote

you will be willing to hold with your senses and whole heart. It commands nothing hard or rigid; all is just, gentle, pleasant and fitting for a long life, since it commands that whatever no one likes done against himself, he should not labour to inflict on anyone. Love the sabbaths and cherish with sincere heart those whom one law holds and one Lord sets before you; he who loves all, as equal under the law of birth, will wish to have done nothing forbidden. Let the Passover be kept each year, mighty with its night of watching, and for seven days let it bring slow leisure, bound to no care. Let father and mother be dear and ever revered. Beware of forbidden marriage with a foreign nation. Scatter the idols and turn away the sinister rite that wild nations brought forth, while they care for dead divinities and set up offerings in shady groves. Moreover, whenever the hoarse trumpet gives the bloody signal and the clarions lead out the bronze squadrons, let a man dedicate the house he has built and his glad vineyards and join a lawful marriage with the customary feasts; for wars at hand always make the chances doubtful for men, and no one gives himself the years of his life. Keep the unwarlike at home: a wounded mind often unsettles brave men. And at every time of war spare the suppliant and war down the proud.

Avoid, men, overturning a wood fertile with noble fruits; cut down the barren glades in time of war. If perhaps the body of one slain is seen uncovered, the Levites will be charged to cut off the foot of a heifer, lest God be the great avenger of the innocent. If it pleases a man to take a captive to his bed, the whole law will let him keep her under his roof, shear her long-haired head and cut her nails, and grant her thirty days for tears, mourning her elders, dead and slain, from whom she was born, and then at last bind her to himself in lawful marriage. And if, after the loss of her chastity, the captive displeases him, let her lay down the servile yoke and leave her master. If perhaps one man has married two wives and does not keep the partnerships with equal care, the children of the despised one shall by right hold a double portion of all the things that the parent’s care has produced. Bury condemned men and lay all the slain in tombs, for earth is denied to no one. Let a woman by no means put on a man’s clothes, nor men women’s; guilt comes from forbidden dress. If anyone wishes to take the unfledged young of birds, let him not take the mother with her brood. He who builds roofs, let him take care lest perhaps the workman roll down from on high. Let not the vineyard, twice sown, bear heavy clusters,

nor let your harvest be reaped with double ears. Avoid gentile men; and whatever is abhorrent in morals or worship, the holy law drives far away. Keep out unclean prostitutes, lest they bring the wages of the night they sold to the eternal sanctuary of the Lord. Whoever shelters a fugitive slave, let him not return him to his master, lest the fierce master afflict the captive under a harsh lash. Let no one gather a harvest grown in another’s field, nor wish to press wine that the grape produced from his neighbour’s part; it is allowed, of course, to pluck clusters and ears, but not to take away the whole. If a wife, driven from home, perhaps marries another husband, if afterwards she is widowed by his death, let her not return seeking the partnership of the bed that scorned her. Let no one send away a new bride before the year is out. Nor let a mill be sold, which, hollowed in twin stones, flies round in a circle and breaks the grain. Let one not pay the penalty for another’s crimes. Let him receive forty lashes on his back who fiercely hurls insults in foolish speech. Let not the mouth of the bullock that threshes be bound. If perhaps a man has died with no child begotten, and a brother survives him, let the survivor take the widow to his house and beget children, lest the house be emptied of all seed and darken the name of the family, now empty;

but if the man refuses, let the woman soon plead her cause before the chiefs and invoke the law that compels the reluctant. Whenever faithless quarrels turn into a brawl and drive gnashing men into strife with one another, let no woman put herself between them, nor seize the private parts of another’s husband. Whoever devoutly does these things is touched by no plague of evil, nor fears wars and burning diseases, nor feels a barren year when the months are spent, but, calm, rejoices all the time of his life, God granting riches, who looks gently on the crimes of the world and punishes them in the time of anger.” With such words the prophet prayed and warned all the Levites, whom the care of the venerable hall and of God’s rites awaits, to read the commands of the everlasting law constantly to all, so that the fear of God might be readier in the hearts of all men, and also to keep the tablets polished from twin stone, which hold twice five commands to be feared throughout the world, shut in the inner chamber of the holy ark. These things done, he bids the son of Nun come forward and by God’s judgment gives him the right to rule the people; and so that the Jewish band might gladly overthrow the altars and the lying gods, he gives them words in a melodious hymn.

Let heaven grant a hearing and praise God, and what spreads above the stars; and let the earth, divided by the swelling sea, lend its ears and receive the sounds that speech, messenger of the mind, utters: as it is wont to drink the rainy dews when, in the hot flame of the swift heat, the harvest wastes away in the dusty field; the grasses smile and the world gives birth, and, gaping, divided by many open cracks, it drinks in the fruitful clouds. For I have called upon the name of my Lord, to whose glory it befits deserving servants to render honours and praises. To his words truth clings, which ever flourish in strong youth. Right judgment and just ways entangle the traveller in no windings; nothing is unjust and nothing crooked. The Lord of blessed faithfulness does not repay guilt in equal measure, though a generation, wicked in its covenants, swiftly labours for its own punishment. Alas, a people to be given over to grief-bringing death!

Is this how you repay the Lord our God, him who prefers to be called Father while he gives his servants the name of sons, though he rules all with everlasting divinity and could destroy them with sudden death? He established you, he created you, he who holds now and will hold hereafter. Remember rather the everlasting age and what lives after death and burial; ask what years the series to come will take and what is to be created anew. Or if your mind grows dull, ask your father, who will teach you everything at once; or ask one of the presbyters: he will dispel the cloud and give light. When the Lord, ever lofty among the stars, had given the divided peoples to the world, whom the first father Adam begot and gave to the anxious labour of the lands, as the word of the everlasting God had commanded, he set a limit and number for the nations such as the starry hosts hold. The people of Jacob clung to the Lord, whose inheritance is claimed for himself:

for the inheritance of the Lord God lives alone sufficient and firm in itself, where the land lies denied to houses and, panting in the hot flames of the sun, is watered by no lasting waters. There God, drawing out the guilty, struck them now and again with the blow they deserved, and soon gave them holy remedies, putting them under his right hand, as a bird labours to cherish its chicks under the cover of its wings; as we ourselves are used to keeping hidden the central light through which we see, lest some chance blow harm it. Those whom the Lord alone took from the enemy, he who set up the heavens and made the lands, for them he prepared manifold food that the land, watered by clouds, brings forth; and the rocks gave streams of honey, and likewise rich flowing olive oil. The udders of cattle gave milk for food; the fertile land created wheaten harvests and wine from moist grapes. Filled with its streams, the youth exults, drunk, to deny the divinity by whose gifts, enriched, it reigns!

Moreover, following pestilent rites, it prepared rich altars for demons. The light of the Lord God saw this and prepared a death just for their deserts, separating the guilty and driving them far away, while it seems right to him to prefer an unknown nation to the deserters. Fire flashes from the mouth of the Lord, which, as it wanders through the everlasting world, flashes out, fearful even to the underworld. It lays low the pastures and destroys the harvests and all that came from the seed sown. The stars shine and the mountains flash when the Lord is moved with just anger and attacks the fearful with his hot weapon. Lurid pallor, wont to come upon the fasting breast, will kill their bodies. Some the winged birds will carry off; some the beasts will devour with their bites; some wounds harder than iron will make to mourn, their children consumed; so that at last Judea may cease to think itself rich as if by its own gift. The wounding enemy will destroy it, while a thousand flee and fear one.

But again the Lord returns serene, as he at once calmed all his anger; far unlike the gods of the guilty, whose vine is the vine of Gomorrah, all too fruitful with gall-filled juice, more deadly than all the venom of asps. The time of death now hastens, see, by which the Lord as avenger restrains all. And now call on your pestilent gods: let them be present, help, and lighten the penalties, so that healing may return through your vows. I alone am Lord, see: alone the founder of life and judge of death; mine is the right to spare, mine to strike! No stronger judge in the heavens exists, who could release from death him whom the Lord’s hand restrains. As I raise it through the starry heavens, I will say: ‘I will command for everlasting ages, drawing the bare sword from its sheath, which, while it is whirled among trembling enemies, shines white with flashing lightning, deadly to the lowest and fearful to the highest.’ Rejoice ever with the Lord, O heaven!

whom the whole sky and the angels praise, and the nations with a people allied and equal. For the Lord breaks forth in long anger and, while he strikes the wicked from above, spares the submissive and preserves the pious. After the prophet had sung strains worthy of God, about to see from the top of Mount Nebo the land given to the people whom he had ruled, he climbs the lofty ridge and then, his life done, lay down, his limbs covered by no tomb. His life lasted twice sixty years, fearless in all things in its happy course, broken by no evils and liable to no disease; moreover, in the time of his setting, his eyes kept their fire, undimmed in serene sight.

Meanwhile the Lord, deigning to speak to Joshua, promises that he will be exalted with mighty gifts, and tells him to cross the ford of the pleasant Jordan and set the measured camp on the enemy’s bank, and to establish new seats in the remote part of the lands and settle the people in rich places. Moreover he learns the nations by their distinct names as far as the great mountain the inhabitant calls Lebanon, as far as your banks, Euphrates, who glide down in your course, parting the Persians from the Syrian border, or the sea that surges swollen with windy waves. For besides the outstanding strength joined in battle, putting terror far and wide into pale peoples, the Jewish soldier trusts in the Lord’s protection. To him the Lord, bestowing notable merit from the stars, granted that he should take rich lands without a wound. “Come now,” God thunders, “take up manly cares, so that the people may soon take up the realms given them. And do not turn your eyes from the book of the law, so that, safe, you may never be bereft of the everlasting Lord.” He at once tells the scribes who carry the commands that the people should take food and fitting weapons, as he is about to move strong cohorts to the wars at hand when the third dawn marks the world with purple. And addressing the tribes that remain by the Jordan,

that they should leave their cattle and children in the fields they had received, but wage the common war and then, the enemy conquered, return to the peoples they would drive out with the Lord as chief. They eagerly join their companies and mingle their columns, seeking every hardship alike with sword and vows. Meanwhile he orders young men chosen from the fighting column to track out what places there were, what men held them, where the nation’s walls stood, and to report quickly what they had seen. While they survey the rich estates of the land, they burst into the approaches of the city, empty of guards, and secretly survey the site and buildings of Jericho. A harlot receives them, who was then called Rahab, and secretly hides them in their fear and diligently soothes them with words. After this was told to the king, with threatening terror he demands those hidden; she, speaking with steady mind, says that both had long since gone out by the double gates. Yet she had hidden them secretly in a hollow among the wood. The leader’s care seeks them through every byway and, as though an enemy were coming, closes the gates. But the harlot, after the tyrant’s search had stopped, turns to the young men and spoke like a prophet: “I know, brothers, what rewards the Lord has brought you since he first took you out of dark Egypt: how in the middle of the sea the water was suspended with swelling wave like huge walls for you,

or when, through the empty sands of the barren wilderness, snowy manna supplied you the food of heaven’s dwellers, or when terrifying kings, set beyond the roaring streams of the Jordan, falling by your blade, left their native cities to you as victors. Why do I delay? Pallor has besieged minds and hearts; no one takes up weapons or trusts in the curved bow; no foot-soldier thickens bronze ranks for battle; no war chariot flies with its iron-clad car. To you, young men, true victory is given, to you, from the starry King who made earth and stars. And now, young men, say with sworn words that, when the walls are laid low and fall, my safety shall be placed and entrusted in your right hands, lest I become a captive with my kin and house, my fathers and dear ones, for whom my care wearies me.” It is agreed, and she is told to keep at home all whom she wishes to live with her, and, as a sign, to hang her cord of broom carefully from her window, so that, when the legion has poured through the captured city, the wool dyed with crimson colour may be seen. They eagerly cross the ditches and reach safety on a hill, hiding for three days, lest, while they hurry back to their camp, they run into pursuers coming from another side.

But the harlot, secure, carries out his commands. And the chief too, taught by the young men’s report, quickly moves the camp from the valley of Shittim and from afar hastens on, and soothes their minds, giving rest to all for three days, and urges the scribes to tell the people that when they see the sacred ark carried before them and the priests going on behind the lofty altar, they should promptly and eagerly raise the standards and leave a space that comes to two thousand cubits, and should purify their bodies in streams, to be set before the Lord’s face. Meanwhile the chief, honoured with the Lord’s favour, shines forth, outstanding, worthy of the line of Moses. And now the priests, commanded to cross the river, dip their bare feet at the edge of the bank; then the command gives twelve chosen tribunes to the tribes, to gather shining stones from the middle of the bed, so that twelve pebbles taken from the wet sands might witness to the people that the streams were dried for them as they passed. They also set like stones, in number and manner, in the middle of the channel, which the moving wave washes and floods, slippery, with its roaring current. But the tribe of Reuben crosses the bared river, followed by Gad, with the half of Manasseh hastening, sending forty thousand men to war.

when suddenly the flood, used to running down the river, is checked and the course of the waters is bridled with ice; the lower part of the river flies off and hides itself in the ocean and is plunged into the vast tide, from the region that holds the limbs of pious Moses as far as the immense sea with its uncertain waves. And when they had crossed the Jordan in their crowds, the ice is loosened, softened by the warmth of the sun, and joins again with its stream the banks sucked dry before. When the tyrants on the other side learned this, they lose heart; no constancy strengthens anyone. Here the chief prepared knives from twelve stones, with which, as commanded, he removed the foreskins of the people; for through twice twenty years in the wilderness so great a people had produced strong sons, grown to more thousands. They are granted slow rest, so that the scar, gradually closing, may soften the sad wounds of the sufferers. Then the Passover is kept, and the shining manna is denied to those rich in grain, which a very great harvest everywhere offered to the people as they reaped the grain in rivalry. Unleavened bread of snowy flour feeds them gladly. The festival of the holy night is kept in the open plain in the month of new things, when twice six suns had passed. Above, from the gates, a crowd of the fearful looks down on this, guarding only the camp and the walls with chosen soldiers.

Meanwhile the prophet sees someone threatening with a blade and is eager to approach him quickly, saying: “From what side do you come? Are you ours, or rather of the Phoenician race? Speak.” At once he receives the speech he desired, God on high declaring: “I have now come, gliding down from high heaven, I for whom a notable legion fights with all the stars, and under whose leadership it lives.” At this he silently rejoices, mixed with fear, prostrate on the ground and worshipping God, as he begins thus: “O Lord, who have deigned to leave your immense seat, what do you bid your servant hasten to do?” He is told to loose the straps of his feet quickly, since he had set his feet on holy ground. Moreover he sees that Jericho, strong with walls and bars, will fall, and the fierce nations, and the death of the kings, to which ruin is joined. He quickly surrounds the walls with his whole army, placing the priests and the sacred ark behind, commanding the priests, so that the people might be bolder, to blow out the terrifying sounds of seven trumpets. Then the legion, as ordered, silently goes round the city, so that then, massed together, it might raise the war cry when the chief’s watchword had given the terrifying signal. And now the seventh day had opened the glad world,

when Joshua orders the bronze ranks to bring forward a confident step into battle and send a vast shout from their breasts, which weapons promptly follow. No ram shakes the masonry and batters down the towers, assailing the walls and the proud gates too; but the crash and the vast voices with harmonious roar work as a deadly engine, by which the walls sink down, and all lay open, stripped of their bars. They eagerly burst at once into the overthrown city, turning everything over with sword and devouring flame. The woman alone was granted the safety she had earned, set apart from the citizens’ death and hidden in the camp, with her kin accompanying her, lest a soldier, not knowing her, should kill her as he roams among all the doorways. The rich furnishings won by valour are kept for the Lord, of all the things that could feast the eye. These things done, the chief made the people swear that no one should try to rebuild the fallen walls; he would be punished with his firstborn for the foundations, then with his last if he tried to set up the gates. Meanwhile depraved acts spoil success. The people follow idols and worship, bowed down, stones set up by hand, believing rocks to be divinities. The standard-bearer is Achan, son of Carmi, son of Zimri, following whom the band left the Lord and the law.

not glad for long in forbidden things: for after three thousand men, the customary number (a sinful act!), were sent through enemy fields, believing that the youth of Ai would be easily put to flight, they turn their backs in fear through the fields and in headlong flight seek again their camp and their leader. After this disgrace reached the leader’s ears, he tears his clothes and beats his foreseeing breast. A crowd of mourning elders accompanying him at once makes supplication, while Joshua asks with innocent words: “O Lord, what cause was there to lead your people out of the seat of Egypt? Why suspend the waves of the sea and all the things you know were then handed over by your mighty giving hand, than which nothing is richer? Was it for this, that the swollen Amorite might lay the afflicted low? It would have been safer to live beyond the great river, which lay open to us, dried, with thirsty sand. What will wounded Israel do, or what will it say in confusion, that you should rather wish to thrust your chosen into slavery? And yet true salvation and the gifts of sure healing are in your power, and whatever gentle mercy provides. The nations will gather that you had given us to conquer; the Jebusite and the Amorite, in a mixed phalanx, will move fierce wars against you, highest Sower. Will you then let the proud laugh at your name, and nations unknown to you have more right?”

The Lord is moved by this and bade the prophet rise, recounting little by little the guilt of the hideous offence, to be punished by the death of the one who had urged such things. Then, when the first day had removed the dark night, he rouses his body from sleep and stirs his companions and visits the kindred tribes name by name; catching the guilty head, he gives the wicked to death, while the cattle too are sent into the fire. Unhappy Achan first said that he had committed the crime, inflamed by love of plunder and spoils, which he had buried at home and covered in his own earth. At once men sent search for them; they are quickly found and set out before the leader and the crowded people. When he saw that the plunder sought was not missing, the ruler speaks thus and terrifies the frightened man: “Come now, tell everyone what madness seized you, or what ignorant use of things helped you, that, forgetful of the law, you followed the rite of the guilty? And had the lofty glory not saved the people, the victorious Amorite would have pressed our free necks with the yoke. Come now, pay for all the guilt you have committed, so that God and the Lord may return to the camp now saved.” When he had said this, a shower of stones is raised and crushes the condemned man and beats down his family;

and the cattle and whatever things he had kept the white flame seizes and dissolves into grey dust. These things done, their cares were removed: God gently looks again on all and restores to all alike their accustomed strength, by which they could drive back every rank. Here the ruler receives the notable commands of the Lord, to draw up the allied cohorts for any war, choosing a thousand young men notable in body and years, so that, while they prepare the stratagems of war, they hide in the thickets, hiding them silently not far from the walls of Ai, so that when he began to turn his back in feigned fear and draw the shut-in men out onto the plain, they would at once quickly leave their wooded lairs and strive to burst through the gates stripped of men. Without delay all goes as the prophet had planned. After the companies had fought in slanting column, the chief ordered his men at once to turn their backs; the hostile crowd rushes upon them in dense column and presses on with much shouting and brandishes its swords. Seeing this, the band that lay hidden in the hollow valley flies out and bursts into the walls by the empty gates, setting swift fires to the lofty roofs. Then a confused sound and a tearful murmur compelled the men of Ai to turn their heads and look.

They look back and see black ash flying to heaven and balls of flame that the captured roofs belched out, and another band threatening their rear and front; caught, they shudder and let their useless weapons fall. Pierced before the eyes and faces of their weeping parents, some are driven into the steep ditches as the victor rushes on, or dash themselves against the gates of the captured city. Twice six thousand young men are laid low by the sword. The king himself too, exulting and daring to burst out onto the plain, is taken at the first onset and held in chains, and fixed to a cross; stones give the wretch a tomb. When all was consumed, the fire did not swallow only what the hasty hand had seized; and only the beasts of burden, which carry loads on their backs, were spared from death. Meanwhile the news of victory flies to the kings. All hear it: the Amorite joined to the pleasant Jordan, and those who set their halls in the thorny mountains or dwell in glad plains and sloping valleys, and those who live on the margin of the blue sea. The Hittite and the Canaanite whisper together, the Hivite fears and the Perizzite wavers, and the Jebusite and Girgashite bands grow pale alike. Yet, not wholly broken and wholly prostrate, they raise their spirits and steel themselves for battle; all have one desire, to drive Joshua from their realms.

and they gather at Gibeon in one place and halt their columns. Joshua himself, amid the cares of war, builds an altar to God in the manner of Moses, which no bonds of iron bind, while the stones hold together, fitted side by side; bringing out offerings pleasing to God, from which a sweet odour breathes on high. Moreover he writes out the statutes of the teaching law: its name is Deuteronomy, since it goes over what was done before, and it is right for the whole world alike to know it. The life-giving ark is carried on the necks of the priests, so that all may see the gifts of the highest Lord. And the prophet, used to blessing the people, runs through what was commanded before and what was later safeguarded, with like reckoning of the deeds and in sure order. But after the band of Gibeon saw that with lofty successes the Jews had grown and the tyrants were slain, the cities overturned and none able to resist, they hasten to a cunning collusion by a crafty deed, and, though the region had joined them to Israel in neighbouring fields, they pretend that they have come from a land far away, admiring the man’s trophies and fresh palms, to see whether by prayers they could join right hands with the victor and ally their houses and attach their whole nation, so as to survive by an agreement given, unless discordant hearts should despise the humble and reject the necks submitted to them.

And so that they might keep up the appearance of sure faith, they drive mules loaded with heavy weight, carrying mouldy grain with swift effort, which old sacks held in their weary covering; and wineskins sewn up with many a wound scarcely hold the wine, while the gash refuses to bind the liquid. Their clothing bared their bodies with torn rags, and their shoes gave wretched covering to their worn soles. The leader of the people is broken by this, while he is won by their suppliant hands and believes their minds agree with their speech. He receives them as they ask for pardon and admits them to the camp. But, as often happens, feigned things are not long hidden, and the witness of the truth uncovers the contrived deceit. At once the prophet chastises them openly, but in friendship; and, because he had sworn by the name of the eternal Lord, the friendly faith remained; but common rights were denied them: they were ordered, in the service of camp-followers, to carry water from pure springs around the sanctuary, without a share. After it was reported that they had gone over, Adoni-zedek, who then ruled the Jebusite realm in his hall, moves five kings, faithful to the war he undertook, more fiercely hostile to the allies for breaking the treaty than against the people who had routed immense ranks with arms. But Gibeon, terrified by the gathering of many kings, sends envoys and begs the friendly prophet

to help the sorrowful at once with all his soldiers. Without delay he takes up the standards and leaves Gilgal, making for the enemy camp, the Lord giving him strength with these words: “Do not fear the many names of kings together, nor think their cohorts strong; however much their bands trust in an immense cloud of men, the infantry will achieve nothing, nor will the horsemen’s weapons prevail; scorn the four-horse chariots armed with curved scythes. For I will shake the nations with pale fear; nowhere will the enemy meet you face to face with equal front, scattered in swollen slaughter by your strong soldiers.” When he learned this, he advances against the numerous enemy; for the warring tyrants held the seat of Aphek, and at once, dismissing their soldiers, they take to flight. The rest of the crowd fell in a heap of confused slaughter and, strewn about, filled the open plains. Nor did the sword of the victors strike so many dead as the ice-cold clouds dense with hail; and though here swords, there bright lightnings flash, one day is not long enough for such great triumphs. So, seeing the swords grown dull and the slaughter slow, the chief asks the Lord for the help he was used to: “However its hours are stretched, this light is not enough, unless you bid the hours of night be joined to the day.

Let the flame of the wandering sun now stand in balanced weight, and let the circle of the moon not move its trembling fires, so that the elements, as though not knowing how to run to their goals, may prolong the time while the dense enemy falls.” He is heard at once: the sun stands still, and the wandering moon held back her easy course at either pole. And the kings too, whom hollow rocks had hidden, he ordered to stand openly with bound necks. Then from every side, weapons laid down, Judea runs together and, pressing with the knee, tramples the necks of the groaning kings. At once the bloodless men are fixed on high crosses, hanging until the black night returned. Then he takes down the hung bodies of the men from the wood, and they are loaded with stones heaped upon them. These things done, the warrior hastens to subdue Libnah, and kills the aged; nor was the sword spared the boys; none at all of the whole nation was allowed to live. Then Lachish is attacked and burns with its walls laid low; the king of the people too is captured and killed with the sword. Debir too, buried in like ruins, perishes, its legion destroyed along with its allied tyrant. And whoever held citadels on thorny hills or dwelt in curving valleys and level plains fell, his companies destroyed along with their king. And while all things flow gladly with favourable success,

Jabin, seeing the mighty deeds of the victorious nation, he who ruled the rich realms of Hazor for its peoples, hastening to put out the flame of the war nearby, gathers outstanding kings and fierce peoples. Jobab comes to him quickly from the hall of Madon, and the king of Shimron, and Achshaph, made a companion in arms, and he who reigned as leader in the citadel of Sidon, Chinneroth and the Arabah, whose neighbouring realms strengthened their spirits by love of an allied sceptre. Dor is joined, and the Canaanite who tills the fields joined to the sea, and those who see the red beginnings of the sun when the rosy sky first opens. Besides these the Amorite hastens, neighbour to the Jebusite; the Hittite and the Hivite and the Perizzite follow, who dwell in the desert byways of barren Mizpah. All are minded to charge in a massed crowd. Then each hurls his darts in his own fashion: here the legion of infantry advances in a dense cloud, and four-horse chariots rush on with iron-clad soldiers, so that the very crash may rout the enemy as he strains near. But on the other side Joshua, not at all terrified, presses on, coming by the waters called by the name of Merom; and when he had climbed a hill with chosen soldiers, rushing down from above he crushes the careless enemy. Everything is wet with slaughter and the earth is stained with gore.

Soon fire set beneath them devours the swift chariots, and the horses’ feet are cut off with the sharp sword. The prince of the kings himself, of Hazor, gives his breast to the sword; the city too falls, undermined with all its walls. Here all the plunder is given in common to the victors. In this war he slew twice ten and nine leaders, he alone who had received the sign from the starry hall. At once the prophet records and divides man by man the cities taken from such perishing nations, set in the shelter and the pole of the land, from where the saffron flame of the coming day reddens, beyond the river called by the ancient name of Jordan, as far as the sloping valley called by the name of Hebron, to Mount Hermon, which rises with vast summit, and to the sea of Chinnereth and its grey-green waters, and Pisgah set apart and what was long called Ashdoth. When the wars were settled, one prey alone remained, the ruler of Bashan (the ancients called him Og), fierce with the strength of the giants whom he ruled, whose house was Ashtaroth and his seat in Edrei. His land is given to two tribes and a half to plough, since the glad and grassy valley pleased them, to Reuben and Gad together and allied Manasseh. The rest the leader divides justly among all the allies.

The region is added where Lebanon rises into the air, and the sea of Misrephoth and the fertile fields of Sidon. The Lord withholds the title of estates from the Levites. Balaam falls, he who used to foretell the future. But Caleb, his companion, whose heart was always joined to the leader, speaks, relying on a calm breast: “You know, leader, the judgment of my mind from that time when, sent together to see the enemy’s lands, while all trembled, I alone, with you as partner, declared that nothing could stand against us; however immense the giants who might wage new wars, God stood against them and helped our side. Surely you remember how the old man graciously promised us all the greatest things and by a separate lot gave this hill to me and all mine. And now, since war with the race of Anak remains, I will wage it with my kindred youth, not degenerate with age, though twice forty years are now rolling for me. Remember the order and assign the seat to me who ask it, for my sons and my sons’ offspring to hold as their own.” To him, asking this, he gave the hill of Hebron, and Arba, no less than great cities, is added. These things done, he hastens to destroy the people of Debir, whose usual work was to write learned speech and for grave masters to dictate the letters to boys.

He calls out a man for the covenant of the promised daughter, one whose valour is ready and whose courage is present in his breast. Meanwhile, though all the peoples were compelled to serve, the Jebusite band does not leave its ancestral fields, and the Canaanite remains at home in the houses of his fathers. The rest of the land, measured out, is given to three times three tribes. For the Levites he rightly sets apart twice three cities and gave them as a refuge to one who feared for a guilty deed, lest punishment should strike faults committed by chance; these he charges the chiefs to weigh with balanced scale, so that a fitting death may condemn the guilty for a graver deed. He himself assigns four times ten cities to the Levites, free from tribute. Then, by the harmonious voice of the people, he receives the hill country of Ephraim for times to come, with a city joined above it whose name remained Timnath. Here he laid up the knives made of hard stone, with which he had cut the parts shameful to name. All this completed, to the allies wishing to return beyond the waters of the wandering Jordan he gave these words: “Band pleasing to us and chosen by the holy Thunderer, by your brave deeds you have earned equal honours, which the Almighty has given to all who on these hills have built their houses. And now return rejoicing. This above all I will repeat and often warn you:

be mindful with how great an everlasting care the Almighty loves you and what rewards he has given you, and know that what he has established by his holy words must be kept, because everlasting life is sought by these things, if the grace of the law remains unbroken with God and always lives in the heart. So let God and the Lord be both feared and loved with all our inward parts and all our heart: so it will be that nations are pressed under your yoke.” When he had said these words and wished all well, they complete the journey they had begun and approach the river, and set up a conspicuous mass with a towering top. When this monument became known to the nine tribes, they wish to clash with them in war as men forgetful of the Lord; yet first men were sent who could learn the truth: Phinehas is chosen, the shining heir of Aaron, and ten leaders of the tribes, first in merit and place, who, mindful, together set out the commands of the chief and the fathers, though the sorrowful men had committed no crime: “Say, what was the purpose of the shrine you have built? Has God slipped from your minds? The oracles of the holy law? Have you then deserted the Thunderer to seek gentile rites, and do you, living, found altars of the dead? Did Peor give little warning to all, condemned to hideous destruction for its wretched daring?

These things they command, in their hatred of foreign nations, to peoples and fathers, while they prepare a war among allies and take up arms again. “Have you been given too few acres of land, the land that pleased you? Or if you wish to extend and advance your borders, take from our plains, provided that the congregation, ever consecrated to the starry Thunderer, is our common parent and does not stand apart from us in discord. Let the deed of mad Achan warn your minds, when he formed dead idols from rigid stones. Did not the headlong evil of the crime he contracted drive on the avenger, who struck the people for the guilt of one?” They humbly answer with gentle words: “We worship him who created all things by his holy word and who sees the crimes that cling to silent hearts; nor do we need to call witnesses to public deeds: God himself knows why we built the altar. Our care was to build a lasting mass by the river, so that it might remain a testimony to the conquered land, lest the divided oracles of the holy temple should ever become a reproach to the coming offspring of believers. We know of no offerings made to vain gods. No indeed, may no such madness change the pious, that anything should please us that displeases the Lord on high! For us it is right to sacrifice and lay out only what the congregation has been used to offer to the everlasting God.”

With these words their good faith was manifest, and the calm tribunes left them rejoicing, honoured with deserved praise. Meanwhile the prophet, now old with long age, fills the people he has summoned with faithful warnings: “You see, citizens, how long old age now weighs me down and my limbs are slowed by their last movement. And now I either warn you or, if you do not mind, I beg you, that God and the law be your life, ever in your mouth, and that your mind recount with mindful speech what he has granted us and all the fathers of our parents. For the fierce nations whose realms you now hold our sword did not tame, our bow did not strike, but the Lord, who graciously went before the standards and the column, going before us whenever the enemy is near; who subdued such peoples, sending cold fear, and willed that kings should yield to us; and who, preparing fields empty for our tillers, after war and arms bade wild creatures burst forth, to take the remaining part with their hired stings. Come then, and learn that the sea was dried for you and the river halted in an unaccustomed way, frozen, though the thin water above was not usually bound into ice and hardened in the summer heat; so that God may receive through mighty ages the praise due for his immense deed, while the tongue sings in harmonious applause that nothing is more sublime than the one God.

Go where the teachable judgment of the law leads, lest ambition, driven through varied turnings, go astray. Let no idols of the men of the conquered nation remain. Let the Lord be your God, lofty God and mighty God. But if empty things and dead divinities please your heart, say so; I will depart, lest worshippers of vanities harm me. Choose, all of you, what suits you. The Almighty deserts those who desert him and rejects them far away, he who once, at the monuments of baneful Balak, promised all glad things instead through the friendly prophet. Look at what you hold, what strong enemies you have routed, and how great the things God adds to all the faithful. Worship him and bind strong minds to the law.” The harmonious judgment of the people answered the prophet: “Hear, greatest of leaders, what our confidence is: him who deigned to lead us out of the lands of the Nile we worship, and all acknowledge him alone to be God of heaven and earth and of the deep sea, at whose command the waters of the Red Sea lay open, and who gave signs well suited to our prayers, who has subjected all nations to our steps.” When the people had spoken these faithful words, a praiseworthy page of holy words is read. The old man himself sets a stone under the terebinth, recording it in the book, to be known as a witness of everlasting faith.

So, the deeds of his life completed, the best of leaders, whose life was stretched through a hundred and ten years, having died, gives his limbs, as he deserved, to a tomb on the hill of Ephraim, which had been suited to his dwelling. For the merit of his justice he is mourned by no friend, only they joined to the chief’s ashes the knives with which the Jewish youth had been circumcised; and the bones of Joseph, laid at Shechem, rest where the limbs of Jacob too had been buried. After him Eleazar leaves the deeds of earth. So, after such great men had died after notable deeds, the people took up gentile cults and idols, fleeing the Lord of the earth and Lord of the heavens. For these deeds it is made subject to the tyrant Eglon and lived captive for forty years.

After Joshua had departed with conspicuous deeds and God had given his servant rest after his wars, at once Judea, swelling, begins to ask for a king for itself and asks the Lord what his judgment is, so that the Canaanite band, not yet subdued in war, which was stirring rival hearts in warlike tumult, might learn to submit to commands, the sword struck from its hand. Judah is set over them, who with his brother Simeon at once destroys the Canaanites in the battle they began, and with them the Perizzites are laid low in mingled slaughter: nearly ten thousand fell, their blood poured out. The head of the war himself, the cause of great evils, was the leader and prince Adoni-bezek; wandering off, he is caught and pays the deserved penalty for his crime. For, with hands and feet cut off together against all custom, he mourns with abundant tears the limbs he no longer has, or those he has, while the wicked man rages in the same way: he had once maimed the bodies of seventy kings. So he paid the penalty he had inflicted, and, suffering fitting evils, he died at Jerusalem and left his kingdom. Jerusalem itself is taken and, burned by flames, falls, quickly torn down in a mighty ruin; after it Hebron falls and the Canaanite youth that holds the lofty ridges of the land rising to heaven. Debir is taken afterwards, rich in its fearful war,

skilled in setting out the numbers of a learned tongue. And so that its walls might fall the more quickly, Caleb her father offered to join his daughter Achsah in marriage to whoever, lofty in strong arms, should overturn its frowning citadels from the base. At once, inflamed with desire for the promised wife, Othniel, the praised son of Kenaz, takes it, and when he had fulfilled his joys with his vows completed, he receives her, well earned, with her father’s great dowry. For he gave very high acres, steep on curving hills, and granted the use of the waters she desired. Dismissed, the Kenites hasten, and leaving the known walls of the Phoenicians, search out the lonely sands of the wilderness. They come swiftly where the south wind, roused, spreads its wings and covers the stars with shady clouds. A home is made for both, which they call by the name Arad, and Amalek, admitted, is joined to its pleasant fields. Then Judah attacks Zephath, tilled by the Canaanite, and calls the subdued land by a sad name, that it might be outcast and always set apart. Only Gaza he could not bring under his sceptre, nor Ashkelon and Ekron, nor subdue the borders of Ashdod. Trusting in God and joined to the eternal Lord, he won easy successes in every war.

He possessed the hill country, because he could not subdue the curving valley, which had been promised to strong Caleb. These things done, the band of Joseph, with Judah as avenger, hastens to cut down Bethel with warlike iron. Then the routed band of the enemy conceives returning anger and, inflamed by its wounds, comes out more warlike, and now strips the victor of the honour he had won; yet the Amorite, made subject, is ordered to pay tribute and is held in check, fined a great part of his lands. For where level Idumea of the fruitful earth lies, and where the rough rocks of overhanging Akrabbim swell, the victor holds all, and servitude presses the subject. Meanwhile the Lord shakes his gathered anger and orders his servant to come down from the heavenly realms, to declare, mindful, the eternal words of the Lord. He shines out in flight, coming from Gilgal to Weeping, coming to Bethel, where the Jewish youth had taken sweet leisure when the wars were lulled, having worshipped gentile gods and long since offered profane incense, guilty, to carved stones. So he approaches them with these words and terrifies them in their fear: “Forgetful of the command and of your own affairs, where, Judea, are you rushing? What divinities do you now fashion? What superstition is this, to prefer earth to heaven and to attend clay gods with insane worship?

Where has God gone, profane one, who, when you groaned in hardships among the nations of the Nile under the tyrant Pharaoh, brought you through the divided sea and the torrid rocks of the wilderness and made such nations yield to you, that now, victorious and finished with all your wars, you should melt away and dedicate other rites and sacred things than those the rule of the starry law had given you? See, you hold the land that was sworn to the sacred prophets and is given to the chosen people through the ages. The covenants of my word are no longer known, since, mingled with gentile peoples and evil counsellors, you entreat dumb gods, the offspring of craftsmen. Rather it would have befitted your life to crush them all and turn away from false cults. But because no trust has been given to my commands, I will give the realm to the conquered; I will send you under the yoke again, so that you may be like the gods you believe exist.” After Judea received these commands of God, it turns to groaning and, beating its sad breast, asks pardon with abundant tears; nor was there any delay to their prayers, and mercy follows them as they seek God through his holy temples, gladly releasing the sorrowful. So the scattered people gladly run back to their known homes and gave the place a name of weeping. … Again their hearts waver; they return to their accustomed crimes and worship the Baals; the Lord being wronged by such things, they suffer the penalties deserved for their lying divinities.

They are made subject to masters whom they had conquered — alas, cruel grief! — nor does conscious valour answer the wretched anywhere. Soon the anger of God is softened and chiefs are raised up, who snatched the people from headlong peril. These too despised, the accustomed madness rises again; nor do they share rites only: they intermarry, dedicate unshorn groves and restore altars. Yet their deeds do not go unpunished: they are pressed into slavery and tremble before King Cushan-rishathaim, who then gave laws where the island between the twin rivers parts the Persians from the Assyrian border, holding them subject for eight returning years. At last Judea groaned at its deserved guilt and prostrate entreats the Lord, who, softened, in his kindly divinity restored to the fearful the comforts of life; for a saviour is sent and comes and brings salvation to the people and wipes sad cares from their breasts, a warrior, son of Kenaz, the hero Othniel, strong with his brother Caleb, but younger in age. The Spirit of the Lord raised him, famed for the gift of courage, and set him on high in a lofty seat. He, strong and faithful to God, took away the dangers from the defeated and forced the fearful king to serve. In such things Judea prevailed for many years and was exposed to no deceit.

But after the chief, his course of life run, lay down, the people gladly restore the old rites; times change, and war and slavery press upon them; the peoples whom King Eglon led run together, the Ammonites and the Moabites and the strong Amalekites, and rout the Hebrew line with a hail of iron, and the victors tear away the very sceptres of the land. Those who seek to escape death are handed over to the chief, and suffered masters for ten and eight harvests. Bent by these evils, the nation shudders at what it had done and calls on God, who alone forgives crimes. At once Ehud is chosen to take the sceptre; he, strong with the strength of the right hand in both hands, felt his left in no way weaker under any weight. When he was bringing his people’s tribute to the victor, secretly girded under his garment with a two-edged sword, and was admitted, he then worships the king, relying on his weakness; for his limbs, emptied of muscle, tottered so much that he could fall at a slight push. He declares that he has something he wishes to say and asks the thronging crowd of companions to withdraw. It is granted, and the barbarian leader, sitting in the middle of the hall, rises and, drawing near, joins himself with his whole body; and after the column of trusted men had gone far off, he snatches from his thigh the sword he hid under his garment and buried it whole, up to the hilt, in the king’s belly.

Then he rushes out and leaves the iron in the wound, shutting the chief’s doors and proud doorposts. But the servants wonder that their lord, used to coming out to his duties, remains alone in his silent chamber, perhaps relieving the burden of his belly in secret, while he avoids the eyes of the company. And now Ehud, mindful of the deed, rouses his allies to war and mingles the terrible sounds of the trumpet; moving the standards quickly, he closes the banks of the Jordan, lest anyone be able to cross by the shallow streams. And when he had routed ten thousand with hard iron, he restored their lost name and honour to his allies. Then wars are silent, battles stir nothing, and weapons rested for twice four times ten years. After this Shamgar, proud with like valour, ruled the Jewish peoples and left them famous. But while their joys are fed on secure prosperity, the grim nation spurns God, and with empty prayer consecrates altars to the wretched divinities of those it had conquered. So they are chastised with penalties and suffer punishments worthy of their crime. Jabin, the royal hero, having gathered the youth of Hazor in a Canaanite band, fights with Sisera as leader and prince of his army and fills his iron ranks with nine hundred chariots.

And though he draws immense squadrons in a faithful column, the terror he sought does more: for, with flying axle, the hoof shakes the crumbling plain with four-footed sound. The men of Jerusalem are defeated everywhere as the Canaanite rages, and they spend twice ten Decembers in every sorrow. At that very time Deborah reigns as prophetess, whose husband was Lappidoth, giving laws to the peoples as she leaned on the trunk of a palm. She calls the chief Barak from the city of Kedesh and, taught by God’s warnings, orders twice five thousand to stand against Sisera’s companies. He fears and asks the prophetess as his ally in the war, not knowing that the palm of the great undertaking would be denied him if he called with him to the camp one to whom the first glory belonged; but the woman, alone of her sex, takes up new duties and moves the chosen cohorts through the barbarians’ fields to the river Kishon, which, coming with headlong flood, rolls rocks and, swelling, delights to overcome its banks. And now the phalanxes had come within a spear’s throw, when the Lord, in whom is the power by which he changes the stars and the lands tremble, by which the lightning burns in the clouds, by which he moves the uncertain sea with its ebbing force, sent terror and put Sisera to flight; he, headlong in his ruin, abandons his chariots and, taking every byway, left the youth to fall in the middle of the contest.

And, driven by thirst — for he had fled the enemy on foot — he asks Jael for a drink; soon, covered with a skin, he hastens to save his life by a woman’s gift; but Jael, desiring praise, scorns the coward and hastily bursts the hollow temples of the man with a stake. He, seized by cold death, his brain flowing out, breathes out his thin life, his head transfixed. Then the chiefs sing psalms to the Thunderer in like words: “Whoever is famous in a kingdom, you who govern great cities, you who as satraps hold sceptres second to the king, bow down and worship God; give worthy songs to the everlasting one; for the Lord does not wish to compel you otherwise, he who shakes the lands and the rocks, who stirs the sea with his blast and furrows the black clouds with thunder, who lifts the lowly on high and changes great things. Sing, sweet-sounding choirs; and let hills and grove respond, and the sky renew praises with ringing, and at once let the echoes agree with your voice. The Lord has looked again on those he had left, and to the sorely broken has restored their rule and taken them back from the midst of the enemy.” So there is a wondrous rest for four times ten years. And while the people enjoys good things, its guilt returning again, what had been condemned pleases; for they gladly set up idols and forsake the name and divinity of God.

Whom the Lord, wronged, ruined for seven years and ordered, in their fear, to serve the king of Midian. They trust themselves to no field, nor face the enemy breast to breast, but rejoice only to hide behind walls; they strengthen camps and lofty defences in fear, and, hidden in hollow caves, even so they grow pale. Then all their cattle begin to be seized, all their estates burned, and nothing but punishment left within their enclosures. So, destitute and fearing hunger and the sword together, they returned to the Lord God, who is moved by the suppliant crowd and sends a prophet bearing his holy commands, that at last, mindful of the past and of the recent war, they should look back and worship the Lord, who with favouring power called back his beloved people from the city of Egypt, lest again, while they burn altars with forbidden flames, they always incur the anger of a divinity not easily appeased. Then the messenger of God sat under a pleasant oak and urges Gideon, while he is threshing grain, with these words: “Come now, no more delay! The Lord has ordered you to take the sceptre, with which you may rescue the people from harm.” He argues with biting words on every side that the Lord, hostile, is weighing out ruin all too sad, and moreover that the people, worn out, with no soldiers now, and he himself, not strong enough, could not press on with war.

He is urged to serve God, who with lofty strength terrifies manifold armies by his unconquered power. He assents to the commands and invites the holy one to a meal; a kid is chosen, fed only on milk, softer than all, which strayed not knowing grass; soon unleavened loaves made of snowy flour are set out; these, when the young man had been told to pour them out on a nearby rock, the holy one himself, stretching out his hand, touched with the tip of his staff and left the man in the middle of his speech. So when Gideon perceived and turned over in his pious mind that the Lord’s minister had flown before his eyes, at once he raises an altar consecrated to the Lord and gave the place a name and called it Peace. Warned by visions in the night, he overthrows the gentile temples and tears up the groves from the deep root. And lest his profane father should raise contrary quarrels, he silently overturns the ill-founded shrines by night, setting a young bullock at the overturned temples. After this was discovered and the sudden ruin inflamed their minds, the author of the deed is sought through the town, and they are told that Gideon laid the groves low. Joash is asked to hand over his son for the crime; refusing, he reminds them that the gods are their own avengers and ought to protect what is theirs, if they exist and live.

Here the Spirit of the Lord strengthens Gideon for battle, and now the clarions sound; the horn trumpet gives the signal. The Lord is asked that on the white fleece of wool heavenly dew should flow in the night; without delay it was soaked and, wrung out, filled a basin; then he set another out again, and the dry wool did not feel the frosty moisture, though the ground was wet. Another thing is added: that he should order twice ten thousand and two thousand of the fearful people to return, and set the number of fighters at ten thousand. Warned, he reduced this too, lest the gathered crowd, trusting in its own strength, should not see the Lord’s arms. As the chief of the young men leads the line to the river, he bids them lap the flowing water in the manner of dogs, so that he might have companions of glad courage. Three hundred men were approved; for the rest of the crowd, languid, did not take the drink as shown, from the palm, to return to their homes, as though they knew nothing of battle. Trusting in this company he makes war on so many thousands that men cannot count them who, taught by skill, are used to reckon sums on outstretched fingers: on this side lines of cavalry with mingled companies of foot, on that side innumerable camels in a grim mass.

But Gideon, hastening with his servant Purah following, makes for the enemy camp and, covered by dark night, goes down, and, surveying the site and their minds and spirits, heard a man telling a companion his dreams, which he had noted with waking sense in his troubled sleep. For he seemed to see a loaf rolling, such as barley makes whenever wheat is denied, and winding in various ways through the camp, through the column, until it came through the middle of the rampart’s defences and with its weight broke right into the king’s seat. The men declared these portents an augury of a man’s blood, and say that the end of Midian has come. Then, after the young man had worshipped the Lord and gone away, more exalted, he begins to explain to his men the dream he had learned, and soon leads his band in three columns. He puts horn trumpets as weapons and torches in their hands and bids them take him as their example in the toil, and, giving thanks to God, to begin the battle, lest the Lord be absent, under whose lead they conquer. Now the first hour of the night had changed the watches, when they swiftly rush on the gates and tear away the closed bars and fill the trumpets with windy blasts; then they whirl the jars, which, shaken with great weight, burst apart; they rouse the glades and, with ringing bronze, give forth sounds and raise broken cries to the stars.

Columns of flame held out in their left hands flash and conquer the night, shining with much light. At this roar their spirits are shaken, all minds terrified; where a gate is open they rush out and leave the terrified camp. Soon all Judea gathers and follows the scattered enemy; part seize the watering springs and roaring rivers, so that the enemy crowd, scattered in fear, dry in their thirsting veins, rushing on, may run into the guards’ weapons. Nor did such stratagems fail; for in a headlong column come the chiefs of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb, implacable, and meet the sword instead of the stream. And though envy of his valour tormented those who had been far off and lacked a share in the common praise, yet Gideon soothed them with eloquent and humble speech, because they held the trophies of the two leaders. He is scorned for the remaining part of the unfinished contest, and the enemy kings are said to be still alive; yet he postpones the punishment and withdraws with threats. Then he completes the work begun and presses on the fleeing. He found the Sabaeans encamped at Karkor; for they massed their column with four times ten thousand after the slaughter in which a hundred thousand had fallen by the sword and twice ten thousand more: this number was renewing the war. But the whole nation, entangled in its deserts, fell.

The leader Zebah, after such deaths of his men, and Zalmunna flee; for the mind, overcome by danger, faltered, coming to the mockery of the last extremity. For Gideon leads the captives together from place to place and shows them to the men who earlier, with harsh murmur, had mocked him with foolish laughter when he asked for help. Without delay the guilty men’s limbs are dragged through thorns, and the unshorn bushes are bedewed with men’s blood. Moreover, lest any traces of so great a crime should remain, the city, overthrown by the sword, falls, and its threatening towers, torn up from the foundations, drew down a long ruin. Afterwards he orders the kings to be shown in public, whom on every side the crowd of the marvelling people encloses; then he orders them to say whom and how many men, in their pride, they had laid low in the slaughter in which Judea was perishing. They said they had been such that their noble beauty marked them as the sons of kings. He thinks of his brothers in his brotherly breast, picturing the bearing of the slain as if it were before him. Then, moved, he speaks thus: “I call you to witness, holy one, Almighty, and the lofty deeds of your right hand, that you give memorable merit even to a woman’s praise.” After him comes Tola, who was judge for twice ten years and three, troubled by no plague of war. Then Jair the Gileadite flourishes and, in peace, equally powerful …

very rich, a father rejoicing in thrice ten children, noble, he holds the kingdom twice eleven years. After his death new idols spring up quickly; for besides the accustomed altars of the demon Astarte and the gods of Assyria, Sidon and Moab, Judea prepared for itself rites unknown before. For these, pressed by Ammon in hard wars, it dragged out twice nine winters, worn down by dangers. At last it remembers on high and at last considers that God must rather be appeased, who by his highest power could calm even the long guilt of the people. And they renew God’s holy laws; for at once they throw down the altars and all the gods and break the stone idols, mindful of the Thunderer who abides through the ages. Meanwhile the order turns in its distinct courses, and the people choose a leader who with firm soldiers could govern the cities in war or in peace. A certain Jephthah was approved, a Gileadite by birth, whose nobility drew a stain from his mother, who lived prostituted to men everywhere in a brothel. His brothers drove him from the house, because, a tarnished heir without a known father, he belonged to his mother’s side. Fearing them, he fled, and among the dark hills found companions in crime and lives by plunder.

But on the other side the Ammonite was waging war, pressing the Jebusite people of Jerusalem; for Judea lacked a leader and, weakened, gave easy triumphs. Young men are sent to meet Jephthah, famous in war, and call him to battle with coaxing persuasion. At first he refused help; soon he joins the columns and, holding command, drives back the Ammonite enemy. But first, ready to end the war by negotiation, he gave instructions to envoys, who then return and report that nothing was done and that the enemy presses on. So when the hope of the desired peace was laid aside, Jephthah rushes to the sword and, having prayed to the Lord, vows great vows that would cause the parent great grief: that whoever first came to meet him on his return should become a fitting victim for the everlasting Thunderer. These things done, he goes forth exulting and with chosen soldiers moves the standards and routs the enemy, and, finishing them with bloody slaughter, quickly overthrows twice ten cities. But while he returns, himself the messenger of his glory, and victory follows in a long procession, his daughter, the only child to share her father’s labours, runs to meet him and sings sweetly with a gathered crowd and rises on tiptoe for his kisses. When her father saw her, he tears the garments girded on him and moves his eyes, seeing the evil, to weeping.

“Alas, victory deadly to my fate! This vow was rather my enemy! Where are you running, daughter, where are you rushing? This is the last time I speak to you. For while, moving the standards, I asked the Lord for protection, you, made a victim to God, are set before the holy altars.” But the virgin, unconcerned for herself and her blessed death, exults the more sweetly and plays amid the danger. Moreover she begs that his resolve stand firm and that her father not doubt or hesitate, and asks for a little time in which she may lament her youth with tears. It is granted, and two months are given her as she rejoices. So the appointed day came, and her father, as priest, sent the virgin’s spirit to the Lord in heaven. Meanwhile the people’s rage runs to arms, and fury drives kindred ranks against each other, and devouring envy, while it carps at the man’s pious deeds, destroys itself: for thirty-two thousand fall by the sword of your peoples, Ephraim, and Jephthah, victor in the war, earned triumphs in civil strife as well. Judea, bereft of its former leader, takes another. Ibzan, once an Israelite of Bethlehem, afterwards called leader, was chosen and took the reins of his fatherland as governor, the father of many: for he had forty sons from lawful marriage beds, so great a hope of grandsons, and kept thirty brides for them at one time.

Having completed seven years as he judges as ruler, he died and, covered by a tomb, left the things of the world. Elon of Zebulun follows and holds the sceptre, who as ruler left the government after two lustres. Quickly the chief Abdon the Pirathonite is set after him, father of thirty daughters; for his male offspring was forty, since the father was much richer by a substitute mother and a number of bastards. He holds the judgment of the people for twice four years. And while the worship of God alone flourished, lasting peace was kept for the glad people; for idols, worshipped again by men, stirred up bloody war; for the Lord subjected all to the arms of warriors and made them pay penalties for eight lustres. In those times the young man Manoah flourished, not yet a father; for, joined to a barren wife, he longed in his prayers to rejoice in the name of children. To his wife the Lord, gliding down from above the sky, stood near, promising the gift of an unaccustomed birth, commanding that the son should not taste wine or strong drink, nor let unclean things be bitten with open mouth, because she would be happier than all mothers and would make up in one son the loss of number. “For he will be of noble courage, and no one will be allowed to violate his unconquered head or harm it with iron,

chosen of the Lord from the fruitful womb of a mother, so that he may save the people and, beating back war, fiercely turn losses against the enemy’s companies.” She came and told her husband; for she said that the man’s face was fiery and that she had seen the glory of shining God, and that, when she asked God’s name, the Thunderer was silent. “He who is born of you will be a Nazirite,” she says. Manoah joins his wife in vows, that the holy one who had been sent might repeat his pious words and kindle a new light by which they might know what befits the boy, who is loved before he is born. At once he is sent down from heaven and, revealing new things, hastens and, seeing the wife lying on the grass with her husband away, at once stands close by. She rises and quickly tells her husband what she had seen. He follows, trembling, and rejoicing to see the holy one, and sees a face shining with outstanding light. He approaches and asks the man whether he speaks truly and bids him set out what he wishes done. To them, with serene face, the angel declares that the same rules hold for all, and that the child to be born must not put unclean things to his mouth, nor drink wine or strong drink, nor take any drinks by which the mind could be driven from its senses. Exulting, the young man offers the holy one a kid to eat, but is soon told rather to offer the accustomed gifts to the Thunderer, which he might wish to be accepted for the gift of life.

Moreover they seek to learn the Lord’s name, which no one can search out, for it is wonderful. Then the young man brings the offerings he was bidden, setting the goat’s offspring among the holy gifts. But soon the flame, rising toward the bright stars, beat with its tip on the sky and reached heaven, and by it the holy one, conspicuous, climbed the clouds. Without delay the womb swells with the promised child, and the longed-for offspring is given, whom by a sure name the parents called Samson; this pleased them both. And while the boy, tottering, plants his first steps, he walks with God beside him; for the Spirit was his guide, at whom the earth trembles, whom the stars obey. Relying on him he moved through the camps of Dan and Eshtaol. Then, his body now grown to youth, he came to Timnah, where he is captivated by the fairness of a conspicuous girl. He tells his parents; he asks for her as wife. They demur and say it is not lawful, because the woman was not born of their tribes. He presses the more sharply, affirming and swearing that she pleased him. She is sought and joined to the one who longed for her. And while he walks through green vines with glad shoots and turns his silent gaze on each thing, see, a lion holds sway in the wilds of the Jawbone:

rousing itself with horrible roar and the lash of its tail and shaking its muscles, it comes to meet him with open mouth. He takes it on — for it was no labour — and with impetuous right hand tears it apart and scatters it, its limbs rent asunder. Endowed with the gift of silent courage, he hides the deed and rejoices, content with his own mind as witness. After some days he returns and looks for the prey: here indeed — a horrible portent and wonderful to tell — he sees honey in the middle of the lion’s jaws mixed with yellow comb, which he at once takes away, and, having tested it by taste, more confidently offers it to his excellent kin. And now he had begun to be feared by many for his outstanding renown for valour. So he goes out with thrice ten men accompanying him, men of outstanding valour; then a riddle is set to all, and he jests, laying a forfeit on the ignorant, that they must at once produce garments woven of snowy thread if they could not utter the truth in speech. Beginning, he wraps his words in a varied figure: “From the eater of man came forth common food, and from the body of the strong flowed something sweeter than the comb.” When no one brought it forth with truthful mouth, and after seven days the forfeit would fall on the friends, they, confused, built a plot and, hating their companion, came to their fellow citizen, whom we said before had pleased the man as a bride, and ask her with threats

to find out the secret by tricking Samson; and if she does not do it, they declare that flames will avenge it. Terrified, she softens the man’s hard heart with womanly weeping; for he keeps it shut, reminding her: why does she, a chatterer, ask what was not told to his father and his mother? But what does a woman’s weeping not strive to compel? He is overcome and lays bare the secrets of his silent mind, and she tells the men. On the seventh day the setting world grew pale with doubtful light; the companions answer: “What is sweeter than honey, or what can be stronger than a lion shaking his mane?” The hero at once recognizes his wife’s treachery and says: “O young men, this answer is not yours: for unless the woman had coaxed me with soothing persuasion, the riddle with its tangled sense would not have been known.” Then the Spirit of God sends the young man against the enemy; exulting, he cuts down thirty and, victorious, holds all that the fallen had, and gives his companions the garments he had promised. And gradually the seeds of courage grow in the man; for his father-in-law, led by the whim of an unsteady mind, refuses the young man his wife and himself gives her to a stranger, lest afterwards, inflamed and fierce, he should perhaps ask that she be restored, and promises his younger daughter, if he wishes. “O mighty avenger!” he exclaims, and threatens monstrously from grim eyes, and, about to take long and great vengeance for such daring, at once found a means of destruction by which to rage:

he eagerly catches three hundred foxes and, tying their tails together and joining them two by two in order, sends them out, driving them everywhere through the olive groves and vineyards of the pleasant hill, and puts burning torches in their tails. Scarcely let go, they made for the fertile fields; wherever they hasten they drag wide fires behind them. At once the devouring fire, increased by the blasts of the winds, rolls on; the flames prevail and spread as they are drawn along. Nor was the trick hidden. The crowd of farmers flocks together, stricken by such heavy evils, and the young men throw his wife and her father into the flames and burned the roofs of their houses. So the penalty was their burial mound, the flame their tomb. Heavy vengeance spurs him on, for he threatens much, and deals ruin with vast slaughter to the enemy and his own. Meanwhile three thousand young men of the tribe of Judah grow hot with hatred, to kill Samson with so great a force and seek one man with so many thousand swords. But the young man soon takes up arms and begs his allies, as they press on, to let the war be waged for the glory. As he wished, the pledge was given; then they bring out bonds of tow, with which they bind his arms in nine knots; he is driven from the rock. He comes to the edge of the Jawbone, and the gathered crowd rejoiced to see him captured.

And while greedily they stretch out their hands and threaten him with horrible roar, he pulls his hands apart and breaks the linen bonds; then — for what does anger not supply? — straining, he grasps the curved jawbone of a slow ass, and with it (a wondrous thing) strikes and kills a thousand men. And when thirst, his lungs dry, warned the young man to hope for the help of God, who creates all things without seed, for whom, when he wills, the parched thing is a spring, who at his command waters dry ground or dries up rivers, who among vast crags and the hot wilderness released watering rivers from hard rocks: without delay a crack opening in the light bone of the jaw flows, and the stream trembles in its escaping course. The young man is filled with drink from a heavenly flood. He does wonders and sees great things and deserves praise, under whose command Judea, strong, shone forth for twice ten years, trusting in this leader and soldier. Then he went off and came to Gaza, where a cheap woman, wounded, sold her nights to hot young men. He went to her, who was soon the first cause of danger. See, the band of Gaza flies and secures the hard gates with a bar and sets iron chains under them, keeping him shut in, as it longs to mock its captive. At about midnight Samson’s dreams leave him;

roused, he rages monstrously; then, beating at the threshold, he tears the two doorposts from their grating hinge and, getting under the load, quickly carries them up the steep ridges of the mountain far opposite. And, stronger than danger, the warrior is then captured by love of Delilah. All the men whom envy drove came to her, to overcome the unconquered man, that, joined to him in bed, she might soothe him, softened by sweet allurements, and soon learn what nourishment renews his strength, what source feeds such great power: whether he is so strong by nature or by art. If she tells them, they affirm that she will be rewarded. The young man, entreated, says craftily: “If I am bound with seven sinews that are still moist, I will lose all strength and become weaker than all.” The woman, deceiving the deceiver, instructs her people. The young man is bound with the hard strength of sinews, which he broke with a slight pull like soft fleeces. Asked again, he says that new ropes are to be feared, never used, which would never be loosed. She binds the man when, now wearied with labour, his drooping breast breathed out thin sleep. As soon as he felt the knots, he lashes the air and laughed at them as at nets a spider spins. Twice deceived in different ways, yet daring to ask, she tries Samson again with a veiled request.

He answered things quite different and untrue to her asking: “Loosen my hair and, twisting it again, weave it carefully, plaiting no more than one ell; so my strength will perish, robbed of its vigour.” She does what had been said and, anxiously turning it, weaves it with hanging hand, and, fastening it with stakes, binds it, and Delilah hands the captive over to her allies; leaping up, he throws back the stakes and unties his hair. Perjured so often and so often repulsed, she fears nothing; again she adjures him with tears made ready, in her madness, and called in every art to make him yield. His softened mind can no longer bear her feigned griefs and deceit, but revealed to his beloved what was dire for himself: “I am, believe me, a Nazirite of the everlasting Lord, and my strength is in my hair, and no blade cuts my locks with iron edge; if anyone, driving it home, makes my head bald with bared crown, that will be the sure end of my unbought strength.” With these words her faith was manifest; soon, the reward received, the woman cherishes Samson in her lap; a barber hired for a fee takes away all his strength and hair. Samson is shaken from the couch; changed, yet the same, he is seized, and God departs with his strength. At once he is bereft of both his eyes; for, his eyeballs dug out, they left empty hollows, and he mourns, his legs bound with a hard fetter;

yet he does not know the shadow that the blind man possesses. Shut in prison, he turns the mill with his strong right hand; so the use of his sides helps him with a double weight. Without long delay, by the honour of returning hair, the shorn locks revived, which at the same time restored with them both strength and grace. See, on a certain day the chiefs gathered in crowds to hold a solemn feast for the god whom those who worship vain things hold as divinity: they call him by the ancient name Dagon. Here, while they rejoice in the downfall of the deposed Samson, standing far off in the central vault of the temple, they ordered the man, now ready to conquer, to be summoned. He, ordered to die, is dragged in, and to those loosed in laughter his blindness gives occasion for their wickedness. By chance the whole house hung on two columns beneath it; going between them, he grips both and holds them in a full embrace and leans back, so that it might fall with greater force, and, having prayed to the Lord, he drew down an avenging ruin with his own death. Bereaved of him, his father and brothers and all his kin gather and mourn the dead and honour him with a tomb.

Meanwhile Micah asks his mother for a very large talent of silver; the woman, trusting, explains that it is holy and vowed to God, but to be returned at a fixed time; soon she makes lofty gifts for the holy one, and teraphim and a temple to God; and, his lap filled, his younger son, as priest, brings gifts to the Lord. Afterwards Micah chooses a young man from Judah and binds to himself one seeking a dwelling, with a heap of gifts, and, taken in, he earned God’s sanctuary by his vows. See, the tribe of Dan, suddenly seeking new realms, sends five envoys from its company, searching, to test everything, which portion of land is better, where then they might settle their homes. While they go round and survey the glades and byways, they come to the man from Judah and fall into talk, asking what he does, what rites he practises; when asked, after he had told them, compelled, he consults the commands of the high Lord God, and declared heaven’s favour, and commends them, bidding them depart. Returning, they told this to their people; and now in a dense column six hundred come. They carry off the ephod and the carved image and the teraphim, and ask the man from Judah to stay with them.

When Micah prepared to call back the fugitive, he is driven off; the priest, now adopted, does not wish to return. Laish is attacked in war and, its houses burned, loses its homes and is denied its citadels in grief. And the band of victors eagerly settles there and gave it the tribe’s name; for it is called Dan. There was a certain man, a Levite, who, having no wife, seeks a concubine from among the slave women. She, given to him, yielded, then, dissolving the shared yoke, hostile, flies far off and flees the partnership of the scorned bed. When her husband anxiously wished to call her back, he was leading with him a servant they shared and beasts, and, coming to his father-in-law, asks for the daughter according to their covenant; the father promises and gently cherishes him and, by detaining him, gradually entices him to stay with him. Soon he, settling down, eats and rests untroubled in a peaceful home.