Homilies on Numbers 9.6–10.3

“And the destruction ceased,” it says, or, as we said it reads in other copies, “the breaking,” which will better suit the interpretation of the truth; for breaking is what happens to clay vessels. Sinners, then, become clay vessels, as the prophet Jeremiah indicates in Lamentations, saying: “The sons of Zion, who were honorable and exalted in gold, how they are reckoned as clay vessels, the works of the potter's hands!” And: “In a great house,” says the Apostle, “there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.” There are, then, clay vessels for dishonor, which can also be broken. But let us consider more carefully what the Apostle says next about these clay vessels: “If anyone,” he says, “cleanses himself from these, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work.” In this he seems to show that the vessel that is made and the one by whom it is made are one and the same man. Understand, then, that a man's purpose is what does the work, while the rest of the man is the vessel itself, which is made either for honor or for dishonor. When, then, our mind chooses what is good and draws us to good conduct, it makes us a useful vessel. But when it has neglected this, and our purpose has fallen away from good things, we are made a vessel for dishonor. If, then, our understanding is of mud and always thinks of mud and earthly things, we are made a clay vessel and the work of the potter's hands. And perhaps for this reason one who is such is rebuked by the Apostle as one who, having a muddy and earthly mind, inquires into great things which he cannot grasp, and says: “Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will?” To him the Apostle answered as to one made of mud: “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me thus?” Moreover, our body is called a clay vessel, or also the letter of the law, where the Apostle says: “But we have this treasure in clay vessels.” For both can be taken from this saying: both that the Lord bestows the treasure of grace through the Holy Spirit on us while we are placed in the body, and that in the words of the law, which are held cheap and in contempt because they seem polished by no grammatical art, the treasure of the wisdom and knowledge of God is hidden; so that it may rightly be said that in them are hidden the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Let this be what we say about the breaking, which is said to have ceased; but now also a few things …

“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the sons of Israel, [and take] from them a rod for each house of their families, from all their leaders, twelve rods; and write each one's name on his rod; and write Aaron's name on the rod of Levi; for there is one rod for each tribe; by the houses of their families they shall give them to you. And you shall put them in the tabernacle of testimony before the ark, where I shall make myself known to you. And it shall be that the man whom I choose, his rod shall sprout, and I will take away from you the murmuring of the sons of Israel, with which they murmur against you.” Every leader of a tribe and of a people has a rod. For no one can rule a people unless he has a rod. Hence the apostle Paul too, because he was a leader of the people, said: “What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?” If, then, each leader of the tribes must have his own rod; but there is only one, as the Scripture relates, the high priest Aaron, whose rod sprouted. But since, as we have often shown, the true high priest is Christ, he alone it is whose rod of the cross not only sprouted but also blossomed, and bore all these fruits of believing peoples. And what is this fruit that it bore? Nuts, it says: a fruit whose first covering is bitter; by the second it is protected and covered; the third feeds and nourishes the one who takes it. Such, then, in the school of Christ is the teaching of the law and the prophets. The first face of the letter is bitter enough: it commands circumcision of the flesh, gives orders about sacrifices, and the other things that are designated by the letter that kills. Throw all these away like the bitter rind of the nut. In the second place you will come to the protection of the shell, in which either moral teaching or the principle of self-control is designated. These are necessary for guarding what is kept within, yet at some time they must surely be broken and dissolved. For example, abstinence from foods and chastisement of the body are doubtless necessary as long as we are in this corruptible and passible body. But when it has been broken and dissolved, and at the time of the resurrection made incorruptible from corruptible and spiritual from natural, no corruption will any longer rule the body, not through the labor of affliction nor through the chastisement of abstinence, but by its very quality. So the principle of abstinence seems necessary now, and afterward not to be sought. But in the third place you will find hidden in them the secret meaning of the mysteries of the wisdom and knowledge of God, by which the souls of the saints are nourished and fed not only in the present life but also in the future. For this is the high priest's fruit, of which the promise is made to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, that they shall be satisfied. In this way, then, the principle of this threefold sacrament runs through all the Scriptures. So too Wisdom admonishes us to write them down in our heart threefold, so as to answer, it says, a word of truth to those who put questions to us. So the patriarch Isaac dug three wells, of which only the third was named by him “breadth” or “room.” And because the rod of the nut tree is a priestly sacrament, I think that for this reason Jeremiah too, who was one of the priests of Anathoth, saw a rod of the nut tree and prophesied about it what is written, either about the rod of the nut tree or about the cauldron, the boiling pot: as if showing through these that in the rod of the nut tree is life, and in the boiling cauldron death. For life and death are set before our face. And life is Christ in the sacrament of the nut, while death is the devil in the figure of the boiling cauldron. If, then, you sin, you will set your portion with the boiling cauldron; but if you act righteously, your portion will be in the rod of the nut tree with the great high priest. And in the Song of Songs too the bride is said to go down into the garden of nuts, where, together with the nuts, she is described as having found an abundance of fruits that are in some way priestly. However, concerning the rods, as we had begun to say, God promised one fruit on the rod and gave several. But attend more carefully, in case we can perhaps show that God's liberality is more generous even than his own promises; in case from these too we can search out and investigate that ineffable goodness of God which is always covered in the letter of Scripture, since we see him more generous in giving than in promising.

The wording of the Scripture we are now speaking of, then, runs thus: “And it shall be,” it says, “that the man whom I choose, his rod shall sprout.” This is the only thing God promised: that the rod of the one he chose would sprout. But when it comes to the event, so that what was promised may be shown to be fulfilled, not only is that one promised thing said to have happened, but see how much is added. For it says: “And behold, the rod of Aaron of the house of Levi had sprouted.” This is doubtless that one thing which had been promised; but other things are added, and it is said: “And it put forth leaves and brought forth blossoms and produced nuts.” Since, then, the promise had been only of a sprout, see how much God bestows: the rod produced not only a sprout but leaves; not only leaves but blossoms; and not only blossoms but fruits. What, then, ought we to gather and contemplate from this? First of all, the sacrament of the resurrection from the dead. For the dry rod sprouts when the dead body has begun to come back to life. And what are these four things that will be granted to the rising body? That what is sown in corruption rises in incorruption; what is sown in weakness rises in power; what is sown in dishonor rises in glory; and what is sown a natural body rises a spiritual body. These are the four things which the rod of our dry body will put forth in the resurrection. And in the second place we shall say this too: that just as in these God gave his promise fourfold and bestowed much more and more precious things than he promised, so much more, in all the places of Scripture where any promise of God is contained, if anyone deserves to attain it, it will be prepared many times over in the future; and so will truly be fulfilled what the Apostle says, that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” See, then, how great and of what kind those things are which it has been granted to no one not only to see and hear, but which could not even enter the heart, that is, human thought. Whether, then, you speak of the earth, or of heaven, or of this sun and the brightness of visible light, the eye has seen all these and the ear has heard; and they cannot be among those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered the heart of man. Pass beyond all these, then, and transcend whatever you see, whatever you hear, whatever you can even think, and know that what is laid up for those who love God is that which could not even enter the thought of your heart. Hence I think that in promises of this kind nothing is to be thought of in terms of bodily things. For the nature of bodily matter cannot altogether escape the sense of human thought; but those things which can enter no one's sense and no one's heart are the ones contained in the wisdom of God alone. And indeed by this reasoning it will seem that the good things of the promises are given in greater measure than they are promised; and likewise the punishments threatened against sinners are to be inflicted with multiplied torments, as we explained above, where a year is set for a day as punishment: unless someone thinks that some third possibility can happen, gathering some consolation from what is contained in the threat made to David, where a devastation of death for three days was announced, and the time of punishment seems to have been shortened to within six hours. But these things can profit you where a time of repentance and a place of satisfaction is granted. Yet God is written as repaying the wicked to the third and fourth generation, but showing mercy to the good not only to the third and fourth generation but, as Scripture says, to a thousand generations.

But let us return to what we began to say about the rods. We can also understand the differences among the things that had sprouted on the rod in this way. Everyone who believes in Christ first dies and after this is reborn; and this too is figured by the dry rod's sprouting afterward. The first sprout, then, is a man's first confession in Christ. Second, he puts forth leaves, when, reborn, he has received the gift of God's grace from the purification of the Holy Spirit. Then he brings forth blossoms, when he has begun to advance and to be adorned with sweetness of character and to pour out the fragrance of mercy and kindness. Last of all he also bears fruits of righteousness, by which he not only lives himself but also gives life to others. For when he has come to perfection and has brought forth from himself the word of faith, the word of the knowledge of God, and has won others, this is to have borne fruits by which others are nourished. So each of the believers sprouts from the rod of Aaron, which is Christ; and these four differences are designated in other places of Scripture as four ages, which the apostle John comprehends in his letter by a mystical distinction, for he says: “I write to you, children,” and, “I write to you, young men,” and, “I write to you, fathers.” In these he certainly sets out not ages of the body but differences in the soul's progress, as we observed is designated by the sprouting of the priestly rod. All these things, then, are found not so much in the rod of Aaron as in that rod which came forth from the root of Jesse; and the flower rose from his root, on which the Spirit of God rested. In this, not even the very fact that the rod is said to come forth and the flower to rise seems idle. For although Christ is one in substance, he nevertheless becomes different for each, according as the one in whom he works needs. To one who is more sluggish and negligent, then, Christ becomes a rod for discipline, and as a rod he is said not to rise but to come forth. For one who is idle and sluggish must come forth from the state in which he does not rightly stand and pass to another state, as if driven by a rod, that is, admonished by the severity of a sterner teaching. But for one who is righteous, because “the righteous will flourish like the palm,” in this Christ is said to rise. So to one who needs blows he comes forth as a rod; but for one who advances in righteousness he rises as a flower. And he will rise until he bears the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, and the other virtues, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is honor and glory and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.

Those who are better always take on the faults and sins of their inferiors. For so the Apostle too says: “You who are stronger, bear the weaknesses of the weak.” If an Israelite, that is, a layman, sins, he cannot take away his own sin; but he looks for a Levite, he needs a priest, or rather he seeks something still more eminent than these: he needs the high priest, in order to receive remission of sins. But if a priest or the high priest offends, he can purge his own sin, provided he does not sin against God; for of sins of that kind we do not easily see any remission indicated in the letter of the law. We have said these things because of what was read to us: “And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: You and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear the sins of the holy ones.” This passage can indeed be expounded so that “You and your sons with you shall bear the sins of the holy ones” is written on account of the offerings that the high priest makes for the sin of each, purifying the one for whom he has offered. But it does not seem idle to me that it mentions the sins of the holy ones, for this expression is repeated in many places of Scripture. Hence we must ask how some are called holy and yet their sins are written of. For it is not the case, as some think, that as soon as someone has begun to be holy he is at once to be thought to be without sin. For if the holy one did not sin, it would surely not be written, “You shall bear the sins of the holy ones.” If the holy one were without sin, the Lord would not say through the prophet Ezekiel to the angels whom he was sending to punish sinners: “And begin from my holy ones.” For if the holy are without sin, how are they the first to succumb to the punishments of sinners? If the holy were without sin, the Scripture would never say that “the righteous is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech.” If the holy were without sin, the apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, would never say, “Do not for the sake of food destroy the work of God,” to those to whom at the beginning of the letter he had written: “To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called holy.” And again, the same Apostle, writing to the Corinthians, says: “Paul, called an apostle of Jesus Christ,” and a little after: “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called holy.” Hear, then, how many sins he rebukes in these whom he calls sanctified and holy. For he says in what follows: “For when there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not carnal and walking according to man?” And again: “Already you have become rich; you reign without us; and would that you did reign!” And again: “Some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you.” And a little after: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not found even among the Gentiles.” And in what follows: “And you,” he says, “are puffed up, and did not rather mourn.” In this he certainly left no one exempt, charging some with the crime of sexual immorality and others with that of pride. He rebukes them also in what follows about lawsuits, and says: “It is already altogether a fault among you that you have lawsuits among you.” He reproves those whom he had called holy also for eating things sacrificed to idols, and, as if passing sentence among them, says: “Thus, sinning against the brothers and wounding their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.” And no less he refutes them for presuming to take not only food sacrificed to idols but also the cup of demons, and says: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” To them he also says: “When you come together in the church, I hear that there are divisions.” And again: “For each one takes his own supper first in eating, and one is hungry and another is drunk.” And for these offenses he says: “For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and many sleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged.” After this he heightens against them a charge no longer of moral faults but of faith. For he says: “How do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” And again: “But if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; for you are still in your sins.” It would take long, and would not suit the present time, to bring forward the very many testimonies about these things by which it might be proved that those who are called holy are not on that account to be understood to be without sin; let that be the opinion of those who do not attend carefully and diligently to the divine Scriptures, in which it is taught that there are many differences among the holy, as we have said more fully in other treatises too. But we shall speak of it now too, as far as the passage requires. Those are called holy, and at the same time sinners, who have vowed themselves to God and have separated their life from the conduct of the crowd in order to serve the Lord. Such a man, then, in so far as he has cut off his other activities and given himself over to the Lord, is called holy. But it can happen that in this very service of the Lord he does not do everything as it ought to be done, but offends in some things and sins. For just as one who separates and withdraws himself from all activities in order, for example, to acquire the discipline of medicine or of philosophy is certainly not, as soon as he has given himself to such disciplines, at once so perfect that he is found to err in nothing; rather, by erring very often he will scarcely reach perfection at some time; and yet, as soon as he has given himself to such schools, it is certain that he is counted among the physicians or among the philosophers: so too it must be understood of the holy, that as soon as someone gives himself over to the pursuits of holiness, he is called holy according to his purpose; but because he must offend in many things until by practice, discipline, and diligence the habit of sinning is cut off from him, he will also be called, as we said above, a sinner. And I add something further: unless someone has a holy purpose and pursues holiness, when he has sinned he does not know how to repent of the sin, does not know how to seek a remedy for the offense. Those who are not holy die in their sins; those who are holy repent of their sins, feel their wounds, understand their falls, seek the priest, ask for healing, seek purification through the high priest. Therefore the word of the law carefully and significantly indicates that high priests and priests bear the sins not of just anyone but only of the holy ones; for the holy one is he who treats his sin through the high priest.

But let us return to our high priest, the great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus our Lord, and see how he, with his sons, that is, the apostles and martyrs, bears the sins of the holy ones. That our Lord Jesus Christ came to take away the sin of the world and blotted out our sins by his death, no one who believes in Christ is unaware. But how his sons too, that is, the apostles and martyrs, take away the sins of the holy ones, we shall try, if we can, to prove from the divine Scriptures. Hear first Paul saying: “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls”; and in another place: “For I am already being offered,” he says, “and the time of my return,” or “of my departure, is at hand.” The Apostle says, then, that he is spent and offered for those to whom he was writing. But when a victim is offered, it is offered so that the sins of those for whom it is slain may be purged. And of the martyrs the apostle John writes in the Apocalypse that the souls of those who were slain for the name of the Lord Jesus stand at the altar; and one who stands at the altar is shown to perform the office of a priest. And the office of a priest is to supplicate for the sins of the people. Hence I fear that perhaps, since martyrs are not being made and the victims of the saints are not being offered for our sins, we may not deserve the remission of our sins. And therefore I fear that, as our sins remain in us, there may happen to us what the Jews say of themselves: that, having no altar, nor temple, nor priesthood, and therefore offering no victims, “our sins,” they say, “remain in us,” and therefore no pardon follows. And we, on the contrary, must say that because the victims of martyrs are not offered for us, therefore our sins remain in us; for we do not deserve to suffer persecution for Christ or to die for the name of the Son of God. And therefore the devil too, knowing that remission of sins comes about through the suffering of martyrdom, does not wish to stir up public persecutions by the Gentiles against us; for he knows that if we are brought before kings and governors for the name of Christ, as a testimony to the Jews and to the Gentiles, it is joy and exultation for us, because our reward is great in heaven. The enemy does not do this, either because he envies the glory, or perhaps because he who foresees all things foreknows that we are not fit to endure martyrdom. Yet the Lord knows those who are his, and among those in whom it is not expected he has his treasures; for God does not see as man sees. I do not doubt that in this assembly too there are some, known to him alone, who are already martyrs before him by the testimony of their conscience, ready, if anyone demands it, to pour out their blood for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ; I do not doubt that there are some who have taken up their cross and follow him. These things, though said by a kind of digression, nevertheless seemed necessary, so that we might understand how remission of sins comes about among the holy through the high priest and the sons of the high priest.

After this follows: “And you,” it says, “and your sons shall bear the sins of your priesthood; and your brothers of the tribe of Levi, the people of your father, take to yourself, and let them be joined to you and minister to you; and you and your sons with you before the tabernacle of testimony shall keep your charges of the tabernacle.” It befits especially those who glory in the priestly order to observe more carefully and attend to what is written, so that they may know what the divine law has commanded them to observe. “You,” it says, “and your sons with you, before the tabernacle, keep your charges, and the altar, and the charges of the tabernacle.” The commands are certain and evident, that we must keep the charges of the tabernacle, of the altar, and of the priesthood; but who truly keeps and does what is commanded to priests, and who enjoys the rank and honor of the priesthood but does not keep the works and the mystery of the priesthood, he alone can know who searches hearts and reins. They are commanded to keep not only the things that are outside, but also, it says, that the priests should take special care of what is within the veil; as if to say: let the priests take care to fulfill the evident and plain commands of the divine law, and to contemplate its hidden and veiled mysteries with all insight. But if you wish to refer the tabernacle of testimony to man, since Paul calls the body of man a tabernacle, saying, “For we who are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be further clothed”: if, then, we refer the tabernacle to man, we shall say that the inner part within the veil, where the inaccessible things are covered, is the ruling part of the heart, which alone can receive the mysteries of the truth and be capable of the secrets of God. And the two altars, the inner and the outer, since the altar is a sign of prayer, I think signify what the Apostle says: “I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the mind.” For when I pray with the heart, I enter the inner altar. And I think this is what the Lord too says in the Gospels: “But you, when you pray, go into your room, shut your door, and pray to your Father in secret.” Whoever prays thus, as I said, enters the altar of incense, which is within. But when someone pours out prayer to God in a clear voice and with words uttered aloud, as if to edify the hearers, he prays with the spirit and seems to offer a victim on the altar outside, set up for the whole burnt offering of the people. The priests, then, must take special care of and guard what is covered within the veil, that nothing polluted, nothing unclean be found there; that is, they must care for the inner man and the secrets of the heart, so that these may remain undefiled. The cherubim and the mercy seat are to be understood as the knowledge of the Trinity; for the interpretation of “cherubim” indicates a multitude, that is, a perfection, of knowledge: and what other perfection is there than to have known the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? These things, then, must be so cared for by the priests that they are kept uncontaminated and unharmed. And the urn holding the heavenly food, the manna, is surely the treasure of the divine word. And the golden ark, in which are the tablets of the covenant, is declared, I think, to be nothing other than our mind, in which we ought to have the law of God written. And this mind ought to be golden, that is, pure and precious, so that we may always have the law of God written in it, as the Apostle says: “Written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of fleshly hearts.” For this is what is said also of certain people who show the work of the law written in their hearts. And who wrote it in their hearts but God with his finger? Surely the natural law, which God gave to the human race and wrote in the minds of all; from it we take our beginnings and receive certain seeds for searching out the truth; and if we cultivate these seeds well, they will bring forth in us the fruit of life in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is glory and dominion for ages of ages.