Homilies on Numbers 16.4–16.8

After this he says: “When he has spoken, will he not do it? Will he speak and not abide by it?” The passage is to be read as though spoken in the manner of a question: He himself, that is, God, will he not also do what he says? And what he has spoken, will he not abide by it? For men certainly do not do what they say, and through the fault of human frailty they do not abide by what they speak: for man is changeable, but God is unchangeable. But someone may come forward and say: How then did God not abide by what he said about Nineveh, that it would be overthrown after three days? Nor by what he said about David, where death had been promised for three days, to lay waste the people, and within one day, indeed up to the hour of the midday meal, it ceased? And perhaps it will seem that these things, said in the form of a question, are not to be taken as altogether settled; that this is rather a certain figure of speech which seems to show something in between, yet does not declare the force of a fixed and irrevocable sentence: so that something more moderate seems to be said in what is written, “When he has spoken, will he not do it?” than if it had been written, “When he has spoken, he will do it in every way.” But let us also go over the very passages of Scripture that are found in Jonah and in the books of the Kingdoms, in case there too, as is their custom, the divine Scriptures hold something secret. It is written, then, in Jonah: “And the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying: Arise, and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it, for the cry of its wickedness has come up to me.” And after the command was given to the whale and it cast Jonah out on land, it is written again: “And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying: Arise, and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it according to the preaching that I spoke to you.” And Jonah preached and said: “Yet three days,” or (as the Hebrews say they have it written) “yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed. And the men of Nineveh believed in God and proclaimed a fast and clothed themselves in sackcloth, from the least of them to the greatest.” And a little later: “And God saw their works,” it says, “that they turned from their evil ways, and he repented,” or (as we read in other copies) “God relented concerning the evil which he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” Observe, then, in what we have quoted from the prophet, that it is not found in the words of God which he spoke to the prophet that “yet three days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed”; but Jonah, when he had entered the city about a journey of three days, as it says, himself said, “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”; so that this saying, which was written and did not come to pass, appears to have been uttered by Jonah rather than by God. Let us also bring forward what is written in the second book of the Kingdoms, where, when David had numbered the people, “the word of the Lord came,” it says, “to Gad the prophet, the seer, saying: Go and speak to David: Thus says the Lord: I will lift three things against you; choose one of them for yourself, which I shall do to you. And Gad came in to David and announced to him, saying: Either famine shall come upon your land for three years; or for three months you shall flee before your enemies, who will pursue you; or for three days there shall be death in your land. Now therefore know and see what I shall answer him who sent me. And David said to Gad: I am in great straits on every side. But let me rather fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercies are many, and let me not fall into the hands of men. And the Lord sent death on Israel from the morning until the hour of the midday meal, and there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men. And the angel of God stretched out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, and the Lord relented concerning the evil and said to the angel who was destroying the people: It is enough; withdraw your hand.” Observe, then, how not even in these three threats is God found to have spoken of a death of three days. For it is placed in the words of Gad, not in the commands of the Lord; and the things said through a prophet are not always to be received as said by God. Indeed through Moses too God spoke many things, yet Moses also commanded a number of things on his own authority: which the Lord in the Gospels distinguishes with a most evident distinction when, asked about the dismissal of a wife, he says: “Because of the hardness of your heart Moses wrote these things for you; but from the beginning it was not so. For he who made man made them male and female, and blessed them, and said: For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh.” And he adds: “What therefore God has joined, let man not separate.” You see, then, here too that God did not command divorce or wish it to happen, but that Moses, because of the hardness of heart of the Jews, wrote that a bill of divorce was to be given. Paul too shows this in his letters, when he says of some things: “The Lord says, and not I”; and of others: “But this I say, not the Lord”; and again in others: “I have no command of the Lord, but I give counsel”; and again: “What I speak, I do not speak according to God.” Hence likewise in the other prophets too the Lord spoke some things, and not the prophets, but the prophets spoke others, and not the Lord; and so the objection raised will appear to be resolved, since the Lord recalls and changes for the better not so much his own words as the prophet’s. But I rather think that the first solution agrees with the sense of the whole of Scripture, and especially with those sayings in which God is called patient and of great mercy, and repenting of evils; or above all with those things that are pronounced in general by Jeremiah, in which it is plainly shown that God, because of his many mercies and his incomprehensible goodness, speaks and does not do, says and does not abide by it. For God says through Jeremiah: “I will speak to the end,” that is, I will speak definitively, “concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to take them away and destroy them. And if that nation turns from its wickedness, I will repent of all the evils that I thought to do to them. And I will speak to the end concerning a nation and a kingdom, to rebuild them and plant them again; and if they do evil in my sight, so as not to hear my voice, I will repent of all the good things that I had said I would do for them.” How then can we prefer what is said tentatively through Balaam to what was said absolutely through Jeremiah, unless it is that Balaam’s words are to be affirmed for the negligent and contemptuous, while Jeremiah’s are to be noticed more secretly by the more perfect?

But after this Balaam says: “Behold, I have been taken to bless; I will bless, and I will not turn it away.” Balaam was taken to bless not by Balak but by God, who put the word into his mouth by which he was to bless the people; and he did not turn this blessing away. For even if he wished, a human tongue cannot overturn the word of God. After this: “There will be no toil,” it says, “in Jacob, nor will grief be seen in Israel.” In these words he openly announces the state of the life to come. For who is there who passes through this life without toil and grief? Not even if he be a Peter or a Paul. How is he not in toil and grief when he is beaten with rods three times, stoned once, suffers shipwreck three times, is a night and a day in the depth of the sea, and endures countless other things which he writes about his toils and griefs? But there this will be fulfilled, where it is said: “Grief and sorrow and groaning will flee away.” This, however, refers not to all, but only to those who have been of the merit of Jacob and Israel, as was that poor Lazarus who spent the present life in toil and grief, but there it is said to the rich man: “Remember, son, that you received good things in your life, and Lazarus likewise evil things. But now he is at rest here, and you are tormented.” He, then, is Israel and Jacob, upon whom toil and grief do not come. That rich man was himself also Israel according to the flesh, for it is said to him that his brothers have the law and the prophets, let them hear them; but because he was not Israel according to the spirit, therefore toil and grief came upon him.

“The Lord his God is with him; the glories of princes are with him.” For God never deserts his Israel. But let us see of which princes the glories are with Israel. The glories of princes are power, principality, and kingdom. But since there are also some princes who are to be driven from their principality, or have perhaps already been driven out, and those who are truly Israelites are to be brought into their place and principality, this Israel and Jacob, who wrestled and prevailed, will receive all those glories which those princes had in heaven who “did not keep their principality but left their eternal dwelling,” and so the glories of princes will be with him. “God, who brought him out of Egypt, is like the glory of the unicorn for him.” That Israel was brought out of this earthly Egypt; but this spiritual Israel out of the Egypt of the world and out of the power of darkness, and his glory is like that of the unicorn. The unicorn is said to be an animal formed with the shape which the indication of its very name designates. We read that this animal is often mentioned in the divine Scriptures, but especially in Job its power and strength are set out by the voice of God himself, in which, as in very many places, Christ is understood to be signified. And in the divine Scriptures we often find “horn” put for kingdom, as the prophet also says: “The four horns are four kingdoms.” Under the name of the unicorn, then, this seems to be shown in Christ: that all that exists is his one horn, that is, his one kingdom. For the Father has subjected all things under his feet, until the last enemy, death, is destroyed, and Christ, like the unicorn, holds the one kingdom of all things, since, as it is written, “of his kingdom there will be no end.” There will be, then, it says, for him, that is, for that spiritual Israel, glory like the glory of the unicorn. For so the Lord himself says in the Gospel: “Father, grant them that as I and you are one, so they too may be one in us.” And therefore a glory will be given to Israel like the glory of the unicorn, especially when he will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory.

“There will be no augury in Jacob, nor divination in Israel. In due time it will be told to Jacob and Israel what God will accomplish.” Since, then, it has now seemed good to us to discuss each thing more carefully, it will not seem absurd if we also inquire what augury or divination is, since Scripture has chosen to mention them, lest anyone perhaps fall into them in ignorance. It seems to me, then, that foreknowledge of the future, as far as the thing itself is concerned, is something intermediate, that is, neither properly good nor properly evil: since sometimes foreknowledge of the future can come to men’s notice even from the devil’s side. But without doubt, when time and occasion require and it is God’s will, foreknowledge is also given to men by God through prophets; and therefore we said that what sometimes comes from Satan cannot be called properly good, nor can what sometimes descends from God be called properly evil. And although examples of this are abundantly supplied from the divine Scriptures, we believe it enough if we use what we read written in the book of the Kingdoms, where the ark of God was captured by the foreigners and brought into Azotus. And there “they brought it,” it says, “into the house of Dagon, and Dagon was found fallen face down on the ground before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. And the hand of the Lord was heavy on the people of Azotus, and he scattered them and struck them in the buttocks.” After this, it says, the ark went into Accaron; and the people of Accaron sent and gathered all the satraps of the foreigners, “and they gathered their priests and diviners, saying: What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we shall send it back to its place. The priests and diviners answered: If you send back the ark of the Lord God of Israel, do not send it away empty, but you shall surely give it something for the offence, and then you will be healed, and it will be made known to you. Otherwise his hand will not depart from you.” And a little later: “And now,” it says, “make a new cart, take two cows that have calved, on which no yoke has been laid, and yoke the cows to the cart, and take their calves back home; and take the ark of the Lord and put it on the cart, and the golden objects which you have offered it for the offence, put them together on the cart, and all its holy things; and send it away, and let it go; and watch: if it goes by its own road and goes up to its own borders, to Beth-shemesh, it is it that has done us these great evils. But if it does not go there, we shall know that its hand has not touched us, but these things happened to us by chance.” Observe, then, in this how the priests and diviners consider, by signs set before them, the cause of the evils that had befallen the foreigners, whether it came from the hand of God and for the injury done to the ark, or happened by chance, saying: “If it goes up by its own road to its own borders, to Beth-shemesh, it has done us these evils.” Then in what follows it is related: “And when they had placed the ark of the Lord on the cart,” it says, “the oxen went straight on the road, toward the road that leads to Beth-shemesh, and did not turn aside to the right or to the left.” Who, then, if he looks carefully at this, would call this straight going of the oxen, which had been foretold, either chance or something contrived by some art, and not managed by a certain working of demons, who were terrified of the power of the ark of the Lord, by which not only were the foreigners afflicted and punished, but the very worship of demons was being destroyed, since their images and temples were collapsing at the entry of the ark of the Lord? There is, then, a certain working of demons in the service of foreknowledge, which is gathered by certain arts by those who have sold themselves to demons, and seems to be grasped and understood now through what they call lots, now through what they call auguries, now also from the inspection of entrails, which they call extispicy, and by other tricks like these. These arts have advanced so far in deceiving the human race that even Manasseh, son of the most just Hezekiah, deceived by this error, built (as Scripture says) an altar to all the host of heaven in both houses of the Lord. I think this host of heaven is what Paul wrote of as the spiritual forces of wickedness placed in the heavenly places. Unless, then, there were much deception and error in these arts, I do not think that the son of so great a man, educated in the law of the Lord, could have plunged into those impieties which are related of him in the fourth book of the Kingdoms. For it says: “And he cast lots and practised augury, and made his sons pass through fire, and made soothsayers abound, so as to do evil in the sight of the Lord and provoke him.” Such, then, were the sins he committed, of which it could be said that they were done “with all power and lying signs and wonders,” “so that even the elect were deceived.” For through him the people too were deceived, so as to do evil in the sight of the Lord beyond those nations whom God had driven out before the sons of Israel. And in the second book of Chronicles similar things are written about Manasseh: “And he made groves,” it says, “and worshipped all the host of heaven and served them, and built altars in the house of God, where the Lord had said: In Jerusalem shall my name be for ever; and there he set up altars to all the splendour of heaven in both houses of the Lord. And he made his sons pass through fire in Gehinnom, and cast lots, and practised sorcery, and augury, and appointed ventriloquists and enchanters, and multiplied them, so as to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him.” All these things, then, that is, augury, extispicy, any kind of sacrifice, or casting of lots, or any movement of birds or cattle, or any inspection of entrails, done so that they may seem to show something about the future, I do not doubt are done by the working of demons, who direct the movements of birds, or cattle, or entrails, or lots according to the signs which the same demons taught to be observed by those to whom they handed on the knowledge of this art. From all of these, he who is a man of God and is endowed in God’s portion must be wholly estranged, and have nothing in common with what the demons work by hidden devices, lest perhaps he do evil in the eyes of the Lord and provoke him. Such things, then, he must shun, lest perhaps through them he again be joined to demons, be filled with their spirit and power, and be brought back once more to the worship of idols. For our divine and heavenly religion abjures all these things, marking them out by an open law in Leviticus and saying: “You shall not practise divination, nor shall you practise augury.” And a little later: “You shall not follow ventriloquists,” it says, “nor shall you attach yourselves to enchanters, to be defiled by them; I am the Lord your God.” And again in Deuteronomy: “But if you,” it says, “enter the land which the Lord your God will give you, you shall not learn to act according to the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you one who purifies his son or his daughter by fire, nor one who divines by divination, nor one who casts lots, nor a sorcerer, nor an enchanter, nor a ventriloquist, nor an inspector of portents, nor one who inquires of the dead. For everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord. For because of these abominations the Lord your God overthrew those nations before your face.” In all of these he seems to show that everyone who is engaged in them does nothing else than inquire of the dead. For they are dead, because they do not share in life. But our God “is the God of the living and not of the dead.” And to all these laws is added this too: that whoever wishes to be perfect should learn from no one else except from one who has been chosen as a prophet by the power of God to minister to the people. For it says: “Be perfect in the sight of the Lord your God: for these nations whose inheritance you have taken listen to soothsayers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not granted so to you. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from your midst, from your brothers; him you shall hear in all things, whatever you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said: We will not again hear the voice of the Lord our God, and we will see this great fire no more, lest we die.” God does not want us to become hearers and disciples of demons, nor does he want us, if we wish to learn anything, to learn it from demons. For it is better to be ignorant than to learn from demons; and it is better to learn from a prophet than to inquire of diviners. For divination (divinatio) is not, as some think, given divinely (divinitus), but rather, as it seems to me, it received its name by antiphrasis, that is, from its opposite, being something done through men filled with demons. But the rite of the Gentiles believes everything divine that is uttered by any spirit whatever. God, however, bids us learn nothing from them, lest we become their companions and incur what Isaiah says: “And your words will be humbled to the earth, and your speech will sink into the earth, and your voice will be like one speaking from the earth, and your voice will grow faint toward the ground.” For this reason our Lord Jesus too does not deign to accept testimony from demons, but says: “Be silent, and come out of him.” His apostle Paul also imitated him, and, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit of Python: “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her.” Here you may perhaps ask why Paul, being grieved, rebukes the spirit of Python. Had it said something blasphemous? For a woman, it says, having a spirit of Python, followed Paul and those who were with him, and cried out, saying: “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim the way of salvation; and she did this for many days.” From this it is shown that Paul was grieved not on account of blasphemy, but because he judged it unworthy that testimony should be given to his preaching by a spirit of Python. And if Paul does not allow it to give him testimony, but grieves over it, how much more should we grieve whenever we see souls deceived by those who believe a spirit of Python as though it were some divine spirit, or a ventriloquist, or a diviner, or an augur, or any other demons of this kind! For this reason, then, “there will be no augury,” it says, “in Jacob, nor divination in Israel.” But what is added to these? “In due time,” it says, “it will be told to Jacob and to Israel what God will accomplish.” What is “in due time it will be told”? When it is fitting and when it is expedient: that is, “in due time.” If, then, it is expedient for us to know the future beforehand, it will be told by God through a prophet of God, through the Holy Spirit. But if it is not told or announced, know that it is not expedient for us to know the future beforehand. And if things are not told us because it is not expedient for us to know them, those who are eager to know the future beforehand by various arts and invocations of demons do nothing else than desire to learn what it is not expedient for them to know. By Jacob in these words is to be understood everyone who has a wrestling against principalities and powers and against the rulers of this world. And understand by Israel everyone who through purity of faith and cleanness of mind sees God. But someone may say: If we must learn about the future from God alone, and must not accept a diviner or an augur or anything else of this kind, then not even this Balaam himself is to be accepted by us; for he is one of those whom the divine sentence forbids us to accept. But pay closer attention, and remember what we read above, where it is said of him that the Lord put his word in his mouth. We learn these things, then, not from Balaam, but from the word of God which was placed in his mouth. For unless they were words of God, he would certainly not have revealed them to his servant Moses; since, when they were spoken by him to King Balak far away, it is certain that Moses could not have known them unless they had been revealed to him by God. Moreover, to destroy divination and augury and other such things altogether, we shall fittingly add this too: that all these use the service of birds or animals, but of such as are written as unclean in the law and are always found to be lying in wait for the human race; which is surely why they were judged suitable and worthy of the service of demons. For serpents and other snakes are said to serve the Pythons. For augurs, and for those who are thought to catch auspices for divination from chance occurrences, either wolves bring omens, or foxes, or hawks, or crows, or eagles, or other such creatures, which Moses in the law (as we said) marked as unclean, I believe for these reasons.

After this: “Behold,” it says, “the people will rise up like a lion’s whelp, and like a lion it will exult.” In these words he seems to me to describe the confidence of the people who believe in Christ, and the freedom it has in faith, and the exultation it bears in hope. For it is compared to a lion’s whelp when it strives toward perfection, joyful and swift; but it is likened to a lion when it already possesses what is perfect. For just as the lion and the lion’s whelp fear no animal, no beast, but all things are subject to them, so too for the perfect Christian, who takes up his cross and follows Christ, who can say, “For the world is crucified to me, and I to the world,” all things are trodden underfoot, all things are subject. For he despises and scorns all the things that are in this world, and imitates him who is called the lion of the tribe of Judah and is called the lion’s whelp; for just as he is the light of the world and granted his disciples that they too should be the light of this world, so too, since he himself is the lion and the lion’s whelp, he has assigned the name of lion and lion’s whelp to those who believe in him. But see how plainly these things are said not of the people who existed then, but of the one that was to come. For he says: “Behold, the people will rise up like a lion’s whelp, and like a lion it will exult.” He says that the people will rise up, meaning, of course, the one that was to come. For if he were speaking of the one he saw, he would without doubt have said, “Behold, the people has risen up like a lion’s whelp.” But it is certain that he is speaking of that people of which it is written in the Psalms: “And the heavens will declare his righteousness to a people that will be born, whom the Lord has made.” This people, then, is a lion’s whelp while, like newborn infants, they still long for the rational and guileless milk; but an exulting lion when, as a perfect man, it has put away the things of a child.