Homilies on Numbers 26.1–26.7

That there are differences of advances and merits among the faithful people, anyone who attends carefully to the reading will discover in many places in the divine volumes. And we gather this no less from the present reading too, from what is written: “And all who had been appointed princes by tribes in the army, the tribunes and centurions, came to Moses and said to Moses: We your servants have taken the sum of our warriors, and not one of us has dissented; and we have offered a gift to the Lord, each man whatever he found: a vessel of gold, a necklace, or an armlet, or a ring, or a bracelet, or a little chain, to make propitiation for us before the Lord.” The chosen princes, then, who were appointed over the army, speak to Moses and offer gifts to God for things well done, saying: We are your servants, who have taken the sum of the warriors of the sons of Israel. And they call “the sum of the warriors” those twelve thousand men who were chosen from all the tribes of Israel to fight against the Midianites. There are, then, in the people of God many warriors, and there are very many who are unwarlike; and again among the warriors there are some who are called “the sum of the warriors,” more eminent without doubt than those who are called warriors, just as the warriors are more eminent than the unwarlike. And again there are some higher than those who are called the sum of the warriors: namely those who were appointed princes over them and set over each thousand of the chosen. There is, then, much diversity in the order of those who are called warriors. But among the unwarlike too there is no less some difference. For not all of them are called unwarlike equally and in one order. For some are so unwarlike that they can never become warriors, such as old age, and the whole female sex, and also the condition of slaves. But boyhood is unwarlike in such a way that it has hope of one day becoming warlike, namely when it has come to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature: then boys hope not only to become warriors, but even to come into the sum of the warriors, and to be chosen, and to be numbered among the twelve thousand, or even to be put in charge and be princes of the chosen.

Consider now the state of the present age, and see that everything is full of wars, and all human life is pressed hard by invisible battles and attacks of demons; but that in the people of God there are some so strong in faith and armed with virtues that they wage war daily against enemies of this kind, and, always placed in readiness for battle, protect from the snares of the enemy not only themselves but also the others who, by sex or age or the condition of slavery, cannot fight, defending them by the word of doctrine, by the example of their life, and by the diligence of their admonition: provided only that faith is not lacking in them; for whether warriors or unwarlike, it is impossible to be saved without faith. Among the warriors themselves, however, those at least who serve as soldiers of God, consider that some are so prepared and unencumbered that they entangle themselves in no worldly affairs at all, so that they may please him who enlisted them, but meditate on the law of God day and night. Those, then, who are of this kind are called the sum of the warriors. Indeed it is not said of the common number of warriors that none of them dissented, but it is said of those who are named the sum of the warriors. For in those who are such there is no dissension, no discord. For they are those of whom it is said: “Now the heart and soul of those who believed were one, and no one of them said that anything was his own, but they had all things in common.” These, then, are the sum of the warriors, among whom no one dissented. These are the ones who by fighting took very much gold, and offer to God all the gold and every ornament, whether of the head, or of the arms, or even of the fingers, that is, whatever they have in understanding, whatever in works. For they know that his gifts are his presents, and therefore not one of them dissents. For they cannot offer gifts to God while placed in dissension. I think these are, according to the Gospel, those who carefully keep that precept which the Lord and Saviour commands: “But if you are offering your gift at the altar and remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar and go first to be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift,” so that they may lift up their hands to God without anger and dissension. These, then, are the ones who say: “We have taken the sum of our warriors, and not one of us has dissented, and we have offered a gift to the Lord.” We must, then, greatly learn the discipline of concord: because, as in music, if the harmony of the strings is fitted in concord, it gives the sweet sound of a well-tuned song; but if there is some dissonance in the strings, a most unpleasant sound is produced and the sweetness of the song is spoiled; so too for those who serve as soldiers of God, if they have dissensions and discords among themselves, everything will be unpleasant, and nothing will seem acceptable to God, even if they wage many wars, even if they bring back many spoils and offer many gifts to God. For it will be said to them: Lay down your gift at the altar, and go first to be reconciled to your brother, so that you too may be numbered among those who are the sum of the warriors, and say that not one of us dissented. I say something further too. Unless you are such as to dissent in nothing from the commandments of God, you will not be able to conquer the enemy, you will not be able to overcome the adversary. For in the very thing in which you dissent you are already conquered; and by the very thing in which you are in discord with God you are overcome by the devil. But if you wish to conquer the enemy and be the sum of the warriors, cleave to God and be in concord with him, like him who said: “Who will separate us from the love of God? Tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?” And again: “Neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Such a one can conquer the Midianites, and kill all the sinners of the land, and destroy all their image from the city of the Lord. And I, then, ought to destroy the sinners from myself and from the land of my flesh, and to kill sexual immorality, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and avarice. For these are the sinners of my land, whom I shall at last be able to root out and kill if I do not dissent from the commandments of the Lord: and then I shall truly be worthy to offer gifts to God. “Every vessel of gold,” it says, “a necklace, or an armlet, or a ring, or a bracelet, or a little chain.” The necklace is the ornament of wisdom. For in the Proverbs it is said of wisdom that whoever acquires it should put a golden necklace around his neck. The armlet and the ring are ornaments of the hands, by which the signs of works are marked; likewise the bracelet. And the little chains declare the connections of word and doctrine. “To propitiate,” it says, “God for us.” If we say that God is made propitious to men on account of gold, see how absurd, or rather how impious, it would be judged. For this is held a disgrace even in a good man, if he is appeased by receiving gold from his inferiors. How much more, then, is it unfitting to think this of God? Hence I think the reasoning of this explanation of the church holds better, which teaches that by the kinds of gold are indicated the virtues of the soul and the performance of good works, which alone it is worthy for men to offer to God, and for which alone it befits God to become propitious to men. “And Moses and Eleazar the priest,” it says, “received the gold from all the tribunes and centurions, and brought it into the tabernacle of witness, a memorial for the sons of Israel before the Lord.” You see that what is said refers not to visible sight but to the memory of the mind. For blessed is he who remembers that he did some good work before the Lord and offered gifts well-pleasing to God, the virtues of the soul and the ornaments of godliness.

After this follows the account of the inheritance of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Proposing to discuss something about it, we wish first to stir the diligence of the hearers and rouse their minds to the contemplation of spiritual understanding. Everything that is said is to be weighed not only from the very words that are spoken, but the person of the speaker too must be greatly considered. For example: if it is a boy who speaks, we fit our minds to hearing a boy’s speech, and expect nothing more in what is said than a boy could perceive. But if the speaker is a man, we at once consider whether what is said is worthy of a man. And again, if the man who speaks is learned, we weigh the words too in view of his learning. But if he is a man, yet unskilled and uneducated, we take what is said otherwise. So too, if the one who speaks is an elder, of much and proven skill, as one who has grown old in learning, a far greater expectation of his words will be held. Listen why we have said this first, wishing to set out the account of the inheritance of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh. He who narrates these deeds which we read is neither a boy, such as we described above, nor some such man, nor an elder, nor any man at all; and to say something more, he is not one of the angels or heavenly powers either, but, as the tradition of the elders holds, the Holy Spirit narrates these things. For how could Moses have narrated either what was done from the origin of the world or what was to be done at its end, except by the inspiration of the Spirit of God? How could he have prophesied of Christ, unless the Holy Spirit was speaking? For so Christ himself bears witness to him and says: “If you believed Moses, you would surely believe me too. For he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” It is established, then, that these things were spoken through the Holy Spirit; and therefore it seems fitting that they be understood according to the dignity, or rather according to the majesty, of the speaker. And I consider it most apt to mention this too in this place: that Abraham, when he heard that rich man placed in torments asking that he be sent to come and warn his brothers to live godly lives, so that they too might not come down into that place of torments, answered him: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” He was certainly not speaking of some men placed in the body as Moses and the prophets; but these things which were written through Moses at the dictation of the Spirit of God he called Moses. Someone may say, then: Since these things are written thus, if Abraham sends me to the words of Moses so that by reading them I may escape that place of torments, how will it help me to escape Gehenna if I read how Reuben and the sons of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh take an inheritance from Moses across the Jordan, because they had many cattle beyond the other tribes; and that Moses says to them: See that you do not provoke God, as did those ten who were sent with Joshua and Caleb to spy out the land and said that the land is such and such, and we cannot take it; and that to this the sons of Reuben and the others with them answered: Give us this land and its inheritance, and we will not seek the land of inheritance within the Jordan with our brothers; but we will leave our beasts here, and our baggage, and our wives, and our children, but our men will go together and cross the Jordan; and that after this Moses commends them to Joshua son of Nun and to Eleazar the priest, son of Aaron, but on this condition, that they cross with the sons of Israel and fight with them against the enemies who were across the Jordan, until the land is freed from them, and then they receive the land they asked for, that of King Sihon and King Og; and that to them alone an inheritance is given through Moses outside the Jordan, but to all the others through Joshua within the Jordan? Someone will say, then: What do these things profit toward what Abraham said, “Moses and the prophets; let them hear them,” so that by reading and hearing these things they may not come into that place of torments? We have said these things to rouse the minds of the hearers, so that they may attend more watchfully to what is read or said, and, with the veil of the letter removed in the writings of Moses, may so understand what is written that they find said to each one what, if understood and observed, can keep the hearers from being led to that place of torment into which that rich man was carried away, who scorned to hear these things that are written in secret; but that they may go into the bosom of Abraham, where Lazarus rests. Let us pray the Lord, then, that the veil may be taken from our hearts at the reading of the Old Testament, so that we may be able to see what is hidden and secret in the writings of Moses, according to the warning of the prophet who says: “And unless you hear in secret, your soul will weep.” And indeed, that these things are mystical and contain some divine sense, I think no one can doubt from what has been asserted above, even if he is insatiably devoted to Jewish fables; yet, as I think no one denies this, so to know clearly what is indicated by these narratives, and what face of realities is covered under this veil, belongs, I think, to the Holy Spirit himself, who inspired these things to be written; and to our Lord Jesus Christ, who said of Moses, “For he wrote of me”; and to almighty God, whose ancient counsel is indicated to the human race not naked but veiled in the letters. But let us pray from the heart to the Word of God, who is his only-begotten and who reveals the Father to whom he wills, that he may deign to reveal it to us too: for in these things are the mysteries of the promise which he has promised to those who love him, so that we too may know the things that have been given us by God. But you too help us with your prayers, and attend carefully, not so much to us who speak as to the Lord, who illuminates those whom he finds worthy of his illumination. In contemplation of them may he deign to give us too a word in the opening of our mouth. But come now, if you have lifted your hearts to the Lord and asked for the illumination of his holy word, let us come to search out the meaning of the things that seem to lie hidden.

It has often been said already, by our predecessors and by us, that the figure of the going out from Egypt can be taken in two ways. For when someone is brought from the darkness of errors to the light of knowledge, and is converted from earthly conduct to spiritual instruction, he seems to have gone out of Egypt and come into the wilderness: namely to that state of life in which, through silence and quiet, he is exercised in the divine laws and imbued with the heavenly oracles; instructed and directed by these, when he has crossed the Jordan, he hastens on to the land of promise, that is, through the grace of baptism he comes to the instruction of the gospel. But we said that this too is a figure of the going out from Egypt, when the soul leaves the darkness of this world and the blindness of bodily nature, and is transferred to another age: which is indicated either as the bosom of Abraham, as with Lazarus, or as paradise, as with the thief who believed on the cross; or even, if God knows there are other places or other dwellings, through which the soul believing God passes, and coming as far as that river which gladdens the city of God, receives within it the lot of the inheritance promised to the fathers. Since, then, as we have recalled, the going out from Egypt is signified in a twofold way, and the passage to the wilderness, and from there the entry into the inheritance of the holy land, let us now see what is meant by the inheritance of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh, which is handed over through Moses and decreed outside the Jordan. The people of the sons of Israel in its twelve tribes embraces, by certain hidden and mystical reasons, the figure of the whole human race, or certainly of all men who have come to the knowledge of God. Of these, then, a certain part obtains its inheritance outside the Jordan through Moses, a part across the Jordan, and receives its inheritance in the land of promise through Jesus. And those to whom the inheritance outside the Jordan is decreed are firstborn: though less noble, though not blameless, yet they are firstborn. For Reuben is the firstborn of Jacob: though he defiled his father’s bed, yet he is firstborn. And Gad, though born of a maidservant, is himself also firstborn. Manasseh too, half of whose tribe obtains its inheritance outside the Jordan, though himself born of an Egyptian woman, is yet firstborn. All these, then, are firstborn, and therefore they signify the former people, which receives the lot of its inheritance not through Jesus our Lord but through Moses, outside the Jordan. But consider more carefully also the reason for which the former obtain their inheritance both outside the Jordan and separated from the others. “We have beasts,” they say, “and many cattle.” This, then, is the reason why the former people could not come to the inheritance of that land which flows with milk, which abounds in honey, which is a honeycomb above every land, nor could recognize the Word made flesh: because they had many beasts and many cattle. The natural man, then, could not perceive the things of the Spirit of God, nor judge spiritually; because “man, when he was in honour, did not understand, but was compared to the senseless beasts and became like them,” on account of which he received his inheritance outside the streams of the Jordan and made himself a stranger to the holy land. That people, then, received its inheritance through Moses; it received the land of two kings only. For Moses could not kill more than two kings, whose land he might divide among peoples having many animals and many cattle. But to those who cross the Jordan Jesus divides the land; though they too have animals, have cattle, yet not so many as to exclude them from crossing the Jordan; but with them, and with their wives and their children, they strive to cross the Jordan and come to the promises of the fathers. But those, because of their cattle and beasts, and their wives and children, could not cross the Jordan, nor enter into the faith of Christ, which is the land of promise.

Moses, however, rebukes them and says to the sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad: “Your brothers will go to battle, and will you sit here? And why do you turn aside the hearts of the sons of Israel, so that they do not cross into the land which the Lord gives them?” And when he had rebuked them with words of this kind, “the sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad came to him,” it says, “and said: We will build folds here for our sheep and for our cattle, and cities for our baggage, and we ourselves, armed, will go in the first rank before the sons of Israel, until we bring them to their place.” And by promising these things they appeased Moses, so that he himself commended them to Joshua and Eleazar. For so it is written: “And Moses brought them to Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun and the princes of the families of the tribes of Israel. And Moses said to them: If the sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad cross the Jordan with you, every man armed for battle before the Lord, and you take possession of the land in your sight, you shall give them the land of Gilead as a possession.” We find the word “land” used in the divine Scriptures with different meanings; and first, this land on which we live was not called land from the beginning, but dry ground; and afterwards what had first been called dry ground received the name of land; just as this visible heaven too was not called heaven from the beginning, but first firmament, and afterwards it was also called by the name of heaven. In the beginning, however, God is said to have made heaven and earth, and afterwards dry ground, and afterwards the firmament. Do you wish to know that in the Scriptures dry ground is one thing and land another? Hear the prophet Haggai saying: “Yet once more, and I will shake heaven and earth, and the sea and the dry ground.” You see how the prophet sets down land as one thing and dry ground as another. And in many places of Scripture we find land named as praiseworthy; but we do not easily read dry ground set down as praiseworthy. For Adam too, as one blameworthy after his sin, is thrust down into this place, which is named dry ground. For before he was not on dry ground but on land. For paradise is not on dry ground but on land. And what the Lord promises to the meek in the Gospel is not dry ground but land. “For blessed,” he says, “are the meek, for they shall inherit the land.” And again in the Gospel, the seed that gives fruit a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold is said to be land, not dry ground. And I think there is a certain advance in coming from dry ground to land, just as there was a certain advance in this dry ground’s being called land. For all of us, as long as we are fruitless and bring no fruit of righteousness, none of chastity, none of godliness, are dry ground. But if we begin to cultivate ourselves and to rouse our idle minds to the harvest of virtues, we become land instead of dry ground, which, receiving the seed of the word of God, multiplies it in a rich harvest. There is, then, in the kingdom of God too a certain land, which is promised to the meek, and which is named the land of the living, as a land placed on high, of which the prophet says to the righteous man: “And he will exalt you to inherit the land.” The inheritance of this land, then, the soul believing God obtains after it has gone out of the Egypt of this world: those who lived under the law in one place, and those who have been ordered by the faith and grace of Jesus Christ in another. Yet those who seem first, ordered through Moses, will not obtain the inheritance decreed for them, which they merited under the leadership of Moses, unless they too cross with those whom Jesus orders, and fight with them against the enemies, and settle them in their seats; and so they will obtain the inheritance which they merited under the leadership of Moses.

But these things, unless they are proved from the divine Scriptures, will seem fables. Let Paul, then, be brought forward as a suitable witness of them, who in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he describes all those fathers and patriarchs and prophets who pleased God through faith, after enumerating them all, says of them in his final conclusion: “And all these, having received the testimony of faith, did not receive the promises, God providing something better for us, so that they should not be made perfect without us.” As though it were said: Do not the nine and a half tribes say of those two and a half tribes that they did not take the promises of that land which was decreed to them outside the Jordan through Moses because God provided something better for us, so that they should not be made perfect without us? For this reason, then, they cross with us armed for battle, and help us to make war and to overcome the enemies. But those cross who are armed, who are strong and mighty men; the rest, a cowardly and unwarlike band, remain outside the Jordan. But if any among them are strong men, leaving behind their animals and cattle and all their baggage, they fight against the enemy with us until our enemies are conquered, until we take the inheritance of the good land, the land of honey and milk. For who doubts that all the holy fathers both help us by their prayers, and strengthen and exhort us by the examples of their deeds, and also by their books, teaching and instructing us, through what they have left written for our remembrance, how we must fight against the hostile powers and how we must endure the struggles of the contests? They too, then, fight for us; they go armed in front of us. For having them as an example, and seeing through the Spirit their brave deeds, we are armed for spiritual battle and fight against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. So, finally, those who serve under Jesus as leader slay thirty and more kings, and receive their lands by lot of inheritance. For when the spiritual forces of wickedness have been driven from the heavenly places, they receive the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom from Jesus our Lord.

A third mode of explanation can also be seen: that among the sons of Israel, that is, in the people of the church, some are understood to be spiritual and to receive within the Jordan the inheritance of the land flowing with milk and honey, namely taking the sweetness of wisdom and knowledge, whose land is surrounded and watered by the river of God, which is filled with the waters of divine understanding. But others are carnal, who abound in beasts and cattle, that is, in gross and stupid senses: such as were those of whom the Apostle said: “Are you so foolish that, having begun in the Spirit, you are now being made perfect by the flesh?” and: “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth?” And each one of us too, unless he arms himself and, casting away brutish and beastly senses, hastens to spiritual understanding, will remain outside the Jordan, and will not be able to walk through the river of wisdom, which gladdens the city of God, that is, the soul capable of God: he will not attain the inner things of the oracles of the Lord, which are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, but will obtain only that land in which two kings were killed, where it may be said to him: “I decided to know nothing else among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” But he who has been able to cross the Jordan and penetrate to the inner things, following there Jesus our Lord, will kill thirty and more kings, perhaps those of whom it is said that “the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ”; and when these kings have been driven out and laid low, he will recognize more secret mysteries, until he comes to that place where the seat of God is, and Jerusalem, the city of the living God, not this one which is in slavery with her children on earth, but that heavenly one, which is free and is the mother of us all: to whose inheritance may our leader, the Lord Jesus Christ, deign to bring us, to whom is the glory and the dominion for ages of ages. Amen.