On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and Truth, Book 14

Book Fourteen begins: coming clean before God§1

1ON ADORATION AND WORSHIP IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH — BOOK FOURTEEN. That those who wish to attend the churches must be clean, washed of the stain that sin leaves, and so present themselves before God.

Cyril: I think I have now said quite enough about the tabernacle, and also about the priests and the service of the Levites, and I believe I have examined these matters closely. It would be fitting…

Coming to God's house cleansed; the unclean sent out of the camp§2

2Cyril: …above all for those who choose to live rightly, and to set on their own heads, like a crown, the full beauty of the life lived in Christ, to urge one another on eagerly, as it were, saying: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will declare his way to us, and we will walk in it’ (Isaiah 2:3). At this some, receiving so glorious and profitable a call, all but leap for joy and say: ‘I was glad when they said to me, “We will go into the house of the Lord”’ (Psalm 122:1). So then, Palladius, for those who hasten to go into the house of God, what would their aim be? Where is their mind looking, and what do they long to accomplish, as they press on toward the holy and divine tabernacle?

Palladius: Well, my friend, the matter is not obscure. For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord in his holy court’ (Psalm 96:9), and: ‘Bring sacrifices, and come into his courts’ (Psalm 96:8).

Cyril: So, then, some enter the house of the Lord and his courts bringing sacrifices on their own behalf, spiritual ones of course, and also intending to draw near in inward worship.

Palladius: That is what I say.

Cyril: Are we then to suppose that those who wish to go in should simply rush in, not washed clean of sin, not freed from vileness, not scraped clean, as it were, of the filth of love for the flesh, but with their mind steeped in it and their heart eaten with rust? Not at all. Rather, they should be adorned with the brightness that is in Christ, and shine with the many-colored beauty of virtue, which is most dear to God.

Palladius: Certainly. For I say that we must come before the eyes of the Lord with every stain first wiped from our thoughts.

Cyril: You are right, since he counts the sick man hateful, and indeed casts him off, and sends him away from the company of the saints. The inspired Paul understood this very well when he wrote: ‘Drive out, then, the wicked person from among you’ (1 Corinthians 5:13). And I would not call this the fruit of a savage temper, but a wise safeguard. ‘For a little leaven,’ he says, ‘leavens the whole lump’ (1 Corinthians 5:6). And again, the sacred law sketched this for us in a riddle. For it is written in Numbers: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the sons of Israel, and let them send out of the camp every leper, and everyone who has a discharge, and everyone who is unclean through a dead body. Male and female alike, send them outside the camp, and they shall not defile their camps, in which I dwell among them. And the sons of Israel did so’ (Numbers 5:1–4). Is it not true to say that the burden of the law is very heavy indeed and truly hard to carry? For you see how it prescribes a penalty even for illnesses that no one chooses, although…

Why bodily illness barred a person, and what the leper signifies§3

3Cyril: …those who have fallen into such misfortunes ought to be pitied. For one might very reasonably wonder why it made the leper an outcast and sent him away, and with him the one held fast by the affliction of a discharge, and again the one unclean through the dead.

Palladius: I could not work it out; perhaps you would explain it yourself.

Cyril: Well, I think that God, as he prefigured for us the divine and spiritual worship, did not take much account of material and bodily matters. For what lies outside the law is punished, and whatever plainly oversteps what is fitting, this I would say falls under judgment and penalty; but a bodily illness could in no way offend against the laws. It will rightly, then, lie far beyond the reach of any charge, and there could be no ground at all for anyone to accuse it. Or is it not plain to everyone that no one is ill by choice, and that everyone, I think, counts good health the thing most to be prayed for?

Palladius: True.

Cyril: So even if the literal history of the passage has something unlovely about it, no harm is done, provided the spiritual meaning is worked out well, in keeping with what the lawgiver intended. Now leprosy is a deadening of the flesh, and an affliction that eats away more than most. That is why the inspired Moses, when Miriam had become leprous, was filled with fear and deep distress, and pleaded, saying: ‘O God, I beg you, heal her’ (Numbers 12:13). For he said: ‘Let her not become like a stillborn child coming out of its mother’s womb, and it will eat away half of her flesh’ (Numbers 12:12). As for the man with a discharge, why should I say what kind of affliction it is? No one is unaware of it. Now as for some being unclean through the dead, this means something like the following. To touch one who has departed and to come near a dead body the law counted, for the people of old, as a kind of defilement (Numbers 19:11), showing that deadness is hateful to God, who has power to give life to all things. It also took the matter in another way, as a rough type of the deadness of mind and soul. And the mind that loves sin, and is used to having no share in the noble deeds that lead to life, is dead and cold. But if someone happened to die, it was altogether necessary that his relatives by blood and family should gather and perform the customary rites over him; yet these too were unclean according to the law, though not for good and for all time, for there was a way for them to be cleansed (Numbers 19:12). There you have a sufficient explanation of the literal history.

Palladius: Quite so.

Cyril: Come, then, let us transpose it into spiritual contemplation and say this: the leper signifies for us the one who is spotted all over with the varied passions of youth. These are the works of the flesh, which the most wise Paul himself listed for us, saying: ‘Sexual immorality, impurity, idolatry, enmities, strife, fits of rage, jealousies’ (Galatians 5:19–20). The second figure, however,…

Discharge and corpse uncleanness read spiritually; Deuteronomy's exclusions§4

4Cyril: …that is, the man with a discharge, signifies the one who lives always and without restraint in defilements, and wastes for nothing his nature’s aptitude for bearing virtuous and admirable fruit.

Palladius: Such as what?

Cyril: There is a great deal to say on all of this; but for now I will use one clear and most vivid example to show what I have said. Those who have a gifted mind, polished, so to speak, and who apply it to the teaching about the truth, will they not reap the beauty of right and exact doctrine as a fruit worth marveling at?

Palladius: Quite so.

Cyril: But those who have not chosen to think and do this, and instead turn their mind aside from the road it must take, and set it up as an advocate of unholy doctrines, or show it to be a servant of the wickedness that is in the world, make it a father of deceit and fraud. Losing to no useful end their nature’s aptitude for the good, they portray very well for us the man with a discharge, and show in their own ways a sickness of soul akin to the bodily affliction.

Palladius: You are right.

Cyril: And the one unclean through the dead surely signifies the one who has shared in the deadness of others, and who carelessly lets himself be filled with other people’s offenses. To such a one the divine David also said somewhere: ‘If you saw a thief, you ran along with him, and you took your share with the adulterer’ (Psalm 50:18). For just as doing what is not permitted harms and deadens both soul and mind, so does approving of those who do such things; and the one who consents would be a partner with those who commit the sin themselves, for he is in no way blameless. That is why Paul too says: ‘Keep yourself pure, and do not share in other people’s sins’ (1 Timothy 5:22). This, I think, is what it means to be defiled by a dead body in the spiritual sense.

Palladius: So it seems.

Cyril: Very rightly, then, he commanded the leper, the man with a discharge, and the one unclean through the dead to go away from the congregation, not allowing those whose uncleanness is hard to wash away to be joined to the companies of the saints. ‘For what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what share has a believer with an unbeliever?’ he says (2 Corinthians 6:14–15).

Palladius: So it is dangerous, then, to go into the house of God with unwashed feet, as it were.

Cyril: Most dangerous indeed, if it is true that offending God does not go unpunished. In Deuteronomy he also shuts others out of the holy court, saying: ‘One who is crushed or cut off shall not enter the assembly of the Lord. One born of a prostitute shall not enter the assembly of the Lord. An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord; even to the tenth generation he shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, and even forever, because they did not… (Deuteronomy 23:1–4)

The crushed, the cut off, the Ammonite and the Moabite§5

5Cyril: …meet you with bread and water on the way when you were coming out of Egypt, and because they hired Balaam son of Beor from Mesopotamia against you, to curse you. But the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, and the Lord your God turned the curses into a blessing, because the Lord your God loved you. You shall not speak words of peace to them, or words for their good, all your days forever’ (Deuteronomy 23:4–6).

Palladius: I should like to learn who is to be understood by the crushed and the cut off, the Ammonite and the Moabite.

Cyril: Listen, then. Eunuchs are not made in one way only, not one, Palladius; there are said to be two ways, and so it has been found. Some are castrated, with the male parts torn away; others still have them, but crushed and wholly useless. And sometimes people cruelly and impiously have the part of the body that begets children cut off, and they are incapable of a man’s functions, even though by nature and age they are counted among men. Now the male parts are a symbol of manly courage. We must take the crushed man, then, to be the one who has not, so to speak, been wholly torn away in soul and mind, but rather keeps somehow within himself his courage for what is good, though it is shattered; and the man cut off to be the one who has thrown these away entirely and been deprived of what most befits men. And to love a courage that is not sound stands, as it were, under the same charge as not wishing to be brave at all.

Palladius: Such as what?

Cyril: Some have slumped into fleshly desires, letting go of the reins entirely, as it were, to passion, and they cast their mind, rotten and unmanly, before the pleasures of licentiousness. Others, again, admire self-control, and sometimes take up splendid efforts toward it, but they dread the struggle and, unable to bear the onslaught of pleasure, end in weakness. Will you not, then, rightly call the one who has wholly given up efforts toward courage cut off? And will you not think the one who has in mind the will to be brave, yet is not also able to achieve virtue, crushed, neatly recasting even the body’s afflictions as qualities of character, and taking what is perceived by the senses as an image of things grasped by the mind and more hidden?

Palladius: Certainly.

Cyril: Along with these, the Ammonite and the Moabite were shut out too, as unholy and utterly loathsome, men who set upon the saints like lions and pour out the arrows of envy and spite on those who are held in good repute. The Ammonites would be a type of the heretics, who know no pity; the Moabites, of those still lying under the errors of idolatry and the wickedness of demons. For both are hateful to God, and both are sick with a kindred boldness, as it were, against the saints.

Kinsmen who refused Israel passage, and the heretics§6

6Palladius: I do not quite understand what you mean.

Cyril: You will understand very well, and before long. The Ammonites, being descended from Esau, were near kin and of one blood with the sons of Jacob, I mean Israel. Yet those from Esau somehow disregarded nature itself and were false to the bond of kinship; from then on they proved harsh and unbending toward those who were close to them and of their own blood, that is, toward Israel. For when Israel set out from the land of the Egyptians and was passing by the country of the Ammonites, he begged the man who lived there, as a brother, to let them pass or hurry through, and to pity them as people who had been wronged; but he would not give way. But why do I say this? He went further: he took up arms and even made war. And he would have done them terrible harm had Israel not turned aside at the word of God. The text runs this way: ‘And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom, saying: Thus says your brother Israel: You know all the hardship that has come upon us. Our fathers went down into Egypt, and we lived as strangers in Egypt many days, and the Egyptians ill-treated us and our fathers. And we cried out to the Lord, and the Lord heard our voice, and he sent angels and brought us out of Egypt. And now we are at Kadesh, a city on the edge of your borders. We will pass through your land. We will not go through fields or through vineyards, nor will we drink water from your cisterns. We will travel by the King’s Highway; we will not turn aside to the right or to the left until we have passed your borders. And Edom said to him: You shall not pass through me. Otherwise I will come out to meet you in war’ (Numbers 20:14–18). And a little further on: ‘And Edom came out to meet him with a great host and with a strong hand. And Edom would not allow Israel to pass through his borders. And Israel turned away from him’ (Numbers 20:20–21). Is the point not now clear and plain?

Palladius: Not altogether.

Cyril: Do you not see that, though they were joined to Israel by the tie of kinship, they were shown by the events themselves to be without natural affection and hard of heart, no different from wild beasts? When they ought to have pitied them as brothers, toiling and sweating as they were, they marched out to lay them waste. That is why the law says: ‘They shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, because they did not meet you with bread and water when you were coming out of Egypt’ (Deuteronomy 23:3–4); that is, because they were so utterly without compassion and had strayed into the unholiness of savage ways. You can see that the heretics, both their peoples and their leaders, are like this toward us who have chosen to walk uprightly. For as far as knowing the one and only God, the Father, and accepting faith in the Son and the Spirit is concerned, though not wholly soundly, they have a false show of brotherhood with us, and their kinship is counterfeit in intent. Yet when we are under persecution they do not come to our aid; rather, they even…

Moab and Balaam; no greeting for heretics§7

7Cyril: …load us further with wicked deeds of their own. ‘For they went out from us, but they were not of us,’ as it is written. ‘For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us’ (1 John 2:19). To these, whose gentleness is put on for show and who are not in the habit of doing what serves his glory, the Savior himself might very fittingly say: ‘Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters’ (Matthew 12:30). Do the workshops of the heretics, hateful to God, seem to you like the Ammonites, sick as they are beyond all bounds with a lack of compassion and of love for God?

Palladius: Very much so.

Cyril: Now consider the Moabites too, if you like, who were openly the bitterest enemies of those who wish to serve the God who alone is God by nature and in truth. They were worshippers of idols, who put special trust in divinations and sorceries and were taken up beyond all measure with the flights of birds. Grinding their teeth at Israel’s good fortune, they hired Balaam and set him to curse; but by the inexpressible power of God the soothsayer’s mouth was turned to blessings they did not want (Numbers 22:5–6; Deuteronomy 23:4–5). Such would be the war that the pagans wage against us. They begrudge our Savior his glory and stir up all the strength of the devil against us; but divine grace from above shakes that strength down, pours feebleness over the herd of demons, and turns their way of plotting into something that brings gladness.

Palladius: Very much so.

Cyril: The holy places, then, are barred to the Ammonites and to the Moabites too, and very rightly. For those whose crimes are akin and whose boldness is of one kind may fittingly be caught in equal penalties. And see how careful the law is. It sets the saints wholly apart from them and charges them not even to wish so much as to enter into conversation with them, saying: ‘You shall not greet them in peace, and you shall not speak to them for their good, all your days for ever’ (Deuteronomy 23:6). Is this not plainly what that pair of saints, Paul and John, also taught us? One of them said: ‘If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not greet him’ (2 John 1:10); and this, I think, is ‘You shall not greet them in peace, nor for their good.’ The other, again: ‘After a first and a second warning, have nothing to do with a heretical man, knowing that such a person is perverted’ (Titus 3:10–11). This is ‘You shall not speak to them for their good.’ For the law says that we must give way to the utterly perverted as to madmen, and say to them: ‘Walk by the light of your fire, and by the flame that you have kindled’ (Isaiah 50:11). But the Ammonite is barred to the third generation, and the Moabite even to the tenth (Deuteronomy 23:3, 8); by the length of time, I think, God hints to us how great his indignation is against each. For the penalty of the heretics, as one would expect, is the lighter. For one might say…

No covenant with the nations; why the clean keep apart§8

8Cyril: …of them too, just as of the Jews: ‘For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge’ (Romans 10:2). Thinking that they speak rightly and are wise, the wretches do not notice that they are fighting against the doctrines of the truth; and, mastered by a counterfeit zeal, they think that they are pleading the cause of God’s glory when they set themselves against those who walk uprightly. But the Moabites, that is, the ranks of the pagans, fight against the divine glory nakedly and openly, holding nothing back. That is why the law has hung a heavier penalty over them. Yet both are sent away from the sacred precincts as unholy and hateful to God.

Palladius: So it is no harmless thing, where defilement is concerned, to be fond of entering into talk with strangers and people of other beliefs, even if it goes no further than talk.

Cyril: You understand very well. That is why the law walls off from their foulness those who have been washed and are clean and who already belong to God, saying: ‘And it shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to inherit, and you remove great and many and strong nations from before you, the Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, seven nations many and great and stronger than you, and the Lord your God hands them over into your hands, and you strike them, you shall destroy them utterly. You shall not make a covenant with them, nor shall you show them mercy, nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son; for he will turn your son away from me, and he will serve other gods’ (Deuteronomy 7:1–4). So the law keeps us safe. ‘For you shall not make,’ it says, ‘a covenant with them’ (Deuteronomy 7:2). For what is still unholy cannot agree or be joined with what has been made holy, nor what is in mist and darkness with what has been enlightened, nor what is rejected with what has been received, nor what is thrust out of the holy and divine tabernacle with one who enters it.

Palladius: What, then, is the law guarding against? Why does it separate the clean so entirely from the unholy, even when someone is well established in virtue?

Cyril: Because the fear is very great, my friend, that even what seems to stand upright might somehow be shaken toward what it should not and be carried away from what is fitting, forced perhaps by someone, or by pleasure stirring it, or by the leaning toward this that is in our nature pushing it down into wrongdoing. For nature always leans somehow toward what is bad, and the divine word bears witness to us: ‘For the mind of man,’ it says, ‘is intently set on evil things from his youth’ (Genesis 8:21). If you wish, I will set before you as clear proof all that the daughter of Jacob is said to have suffered.

Palladius: You mean Dinah, I suppose; at least, I take it so.

Cyril: Certainly, Palladius. For this is written in the book of Genesis: ‘And there came…

Dinah leaves her father’s tent; David stays in God’s§9

9Cyril: …Jacob to Salem, a city of the Shechemites, which is in the land of Canaan, when he returned from Mesopotamia in Syria; and he camped facing the city. And he bought the piece of the field where he had pitched his tent from Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred lambs; and he set up an altar there and called upon the God of Israel. And Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob, went out to get to know the daughters of the people of the land; and Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of the land, saw her. And he took her and lay with her, and humbled her. And he set his heart on Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman, and spoke to her in keeping with the young woman’s own mind’ (Genesis 33:18–20; 34:1–3). Notice, then, that while she still loved to stay in her father’s tent and lived there, where he had called upon the God of Israel and a holy altar had been raised, she was still undefiled and kept the glories of her virginity. But when she ran out of her father’s tent, and leaving the holy ground mingled with foreign women, she was at once forced into a defilement she had not known, and was no longer a virgin. At first she was subjected against her will to the pleasures of others; but afterwards she came to suffer this as well, that she wanted to be with the man who had taken advantage of her. For ‘he spoke to her,’ it says, ‘in keeping with the young woman’s own mind’ (Genesis 34:3).

Palladius: So it is.

Cyril: Then let us take what the senses perceive as an image of what the mind perceives, and say this: a soul that dwells in an excellent way of life, as in a kind of tent, will be wholly pure and clean and free from every foulness; but if it wanders off somewhere and hurries to the daughters of foreigners, that is, if it searches out and spies on the life of those in the world, its mind, gifted and noble as it is, will be corrupted. For to those whose aim is to live a shining life, spending their days with the wicked would do no small harm. But the divine David was never found wanting to go outside the holy tent; rather, he made it one of the chief things in his prayers to linger there and live close by, saying: ‘One thing I have asked of the Lord, this I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the delight of the Lord and to visit his holy temple. For he hid me in his tent in the day of my troubles; he sheltered me in the secret place of his tent’ (Psalm 27:4–5). By the divine and holy tent, I think, he means here the firm and unshaken state of a holy way of life; having, as it were, entered into it, he could not be taken by the passions that wished to ravage him.

Palladius: So it seems.

Cyril: Well then, might one not learn more clearly and more truly that dealings with foreigners can sometimes bring defilements worse than any, even on those who are believed to stand firm, by bringing forward…

Solomon's fall through foreign wives§10

10Cyril: …the end of Solomon’s life as proof, and what befell him on the very threshold of old age?

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: He was so brilliant and so celebrated that he had, in a sense, already won a glory beyond compare; yet he passed over into what is shameful, or rather he leapt down basely into the very depth of impiety toward God. His story runs like this. It is written in the Third Book of Kingdoms: ‘And Solomon grew greater than all the kings of the earth in wealth and in wisdom. And all the kings of the earth sought the face of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which the Lord had given in his heart’ (1 Kings 10:23–24). Yet this man, so glorious and so celebrated, who had advanced so far in wisdom that he became an object of boundless wonder even among the most eminent, was pried loose by pleasure in wicked women; and that pleasure, as it were, dragged him out of the divine tent itself and threw him into the pits of idolatry. For it is written of him: ‘And King Solomon was a lover of women, and he took foreign wives, and also the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Syrian, Hittite and Amorite women, from the nations about which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, You shall not go in to them, and they shall not come in to you, lest they turn your hearts aside after their idols. To these Solomon clung in love. And he had seven hundred wives who were princesses, and three hundred concubines. And it came to pass in the time of Solomon’s old age that the foreign wives turned his heart aside after other gods. And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. And Solomon went after Astarte, the abomination of the Sidonians, and after their king, the idol of the sons of Ammon. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not follow the Lord as David his father did’ (1 Kings 11:1–6).

Is it not right to lament over one who is said to have suffered such things? The man who raised that famous temple in Jerusalem, who asked for the wisdom that sits beside the divine thrones (Wisdom of Solomon 9:4), who was admired for his matchless understanding to the very ends of the earth beneath heaven, who shone like the morning star over cities and lands: overcome by shameful women and following after a most loathsome pleasure, he is found to have fallen into such folly that he utterly disregarded even piety toward God itself. Beyond dispute, then, it is dangerous to keep company with foreigners. And it is altogether terrible to be overcome by fleshly pleasure. Such a man is unclean and hateful to the all-pure God, and without virtue he may not enter the holy and divine tent. Nor could he even offer an acceptable sacrifice. For it is written in Deuteronomy: ‘There shall be no prostitute among the daughters of Israel, and no fornicator among the sons of Israel; and there shall be no… (Deuteronomy 23:17)

The prostitute's wage and the price of a dog§11

11Cyril: …woman who pays tribute among the daughters of Israel, and no man made to pay tribute among the sons of Israel. You shall not bring the hire of a prostitute or the price of a dog into the house of the Lord your God for any vow, for both are an abomination to the Lord your God’ (Deuteronomy 23:17–18).

Palladius: How severe the law is, and how very profitable!

Cyril: Well said, Palladius; you understand it rightly. And I think you would be still more astonished if you noticed that, by firmly checking the easy slide into pleasures, the law sends the lewd and unbridled man away. For see how it lays its charge both on those who wish to practice shameful defilement willingly and by their own choice, and also on those who are in the habit of bringing others down into it as if by compulsion. By what it says must not be done, it makes them safer, and leaves them hard put to find any word that could serve for their defense. For the charges are no longer charges of ignorance; from now on the indictment is one of carelessness and an unsubmissive mind.

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: Do not some people go into fornication of their own accord? And do not women and youths who are willing to hire themselves out sell their bloom to the lusts of others?

Palladius: Yes.

Cyril: And again, are there not some who are overcome by shameful gain, who hand over to anyone who wants them their own maidservants, or such males as they may happen to have bought, and so the wretches collect money? Of them the prophet says: ‘And they sold the girls for wine, and drank’ (Joel 3:3). For it is true that some sink to such depths of wickedness and impurity that they impiously dare at times to levy tribute even on shameful things like these.

Palladius: I understand.

Cyril: So, then, those commit fornication willingly who, though they stand clear of the evil themselves, then go to it of their own judgment; but those who ‘pay tribute’ would be the ones who pay dues to others as if under compulsion, and gather the wages of lewdness for those who have bought them.

Palladius: You are right.

Cyril: The law, then, forbids the thing in every form. It declares unholy anyone convicted on this charge, shuts him out of the holy tent, and at once closes the divine altar to him, saying that his sacrifice will not be received and his vow will not be accepted. For it is true that vows paid from a prostitute’s hire are not pure (Proverbs 19:13, Septuagint). In the same way it makes the price of a dog hateful and most loathsome. By ‘dog’, I think, it means the man who is easily drawn into impurity and simply gives himself to anyone who approaches; and the ‘price of a dog’ is whatever may be offered to him in payment for himself. So let the law cry out: ‘There shall be no prostitute among the daughters of Israel, and no fornicator among the sons of Israel’ (Deuteronomy 23:17). And let the most wise Paul sound in harmony with it, crying aloud: ‘Flee… (1 Corinthians 6:18)

A living sacrifice, and Israel's sin at Peor§12

12Cyril: …from fornication. Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body’ (1 Corinthians 6:18). And let him also call those who press nobly toward the glories of self-control to strive for what is better. For again he said: ‘I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and well pleasing and perfect’ (Romans 12:1–2). Or would you deny that putting away shameful things is a sacrifice truly holy and wholly pure?

Palladius: I would certainly say it is; how could it not be?

Cyril: When we turn away from fleshly pleasure, God rejoices over us; but he looks with deep displeasure on those who turn aside to weakness, and on those who have chosen to fall in behind the flesh he brings punishment. For hot and unbridled pleasure sometimes forces a man even into apostasy from God. That this is true, the account of Solomon would show at once. But before him Israel is found to have been led astray into this very thing in the wilderness. For it is written: ‘Israel encamped at Shittim, and the people profaned themselves by committing fornication with the daughters of Moab. And they invited them to the sacrifices of their idols, and the people ate of their sacrifices and worshipped their idols. And Israel was initiated into the rites of Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry with Israel in his wrath. And the Lord said to Moses: Take all the chiefs of the people and make an example of them before the Lord in the face of the sun, and the fierce anger of the Lord will turn away from Israel’ (Numbers 25:1–4).

Do you see how the divine and most gentle nature is somehow provoked by us, and all but driven into an anger it does not desire? For it is a thing fit for beasts, I mean going mad over the beauty of women; and it is utterly unholy as well to dare to give up piety toward God in exchange for unbridled pleasure. That is why they are made an example before the Lord in the face of the sun: that is, they were hung on upright stakes turned toward the east, and this was the manner of their punishment. The type all but cries out plainly and raises its voice to say that no one caught in such sins will escape the all-seeing eye of the Judge, which cannot be deceived, nor will he get away unpunished; rather, as the prophet’s word says, he will be set out ‘as a spectacle to all flesh’ (Isaiah 66:24), paying the bitter penalty for his offenses.

Palladius: So by ‘in the face of the sun’ it means being punished openly, and being made an example, as it were, before the eyes of God.

Cyril: Quite so; and our reading is not wide of the mark. And that those who commit fornication, or who have been prostituted, must give account to God for so cold and profane a life, and that hidden things are laid bare…

The law of the wife suspected of adultery§13

13Cyril: …and what is in each person will be clearly known, this is sketched out for us again through another law. For it is written in Numbers: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: If any man’s wife goes astray and wholly disregards him, and a man lies with her carnally, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she conceals it, and she is defiled, and there was no witness against her, and she was not caught in the act; and a spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and he is jealous of his wife, and she has been defiled; or a spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and he is jealous of his wife, and she has not been defiled: then the man shall bring his wife to the priest, and shall bring the offering for her, a tenth of an ephah of barley meal. He shall not pour oil on it, nor put frankincense on it, for it is a sacrifice of jealousy, a sacrifice of remembrance, which brings sin to remembrance. And the priest shall bring her near and set her before the Lord. And the priest shall take pure living water in an earthen vessel, and some of the earth that is on the floor of the tent of witness, and the priest shall take it and cast it into the water. And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord, and uncover the woman’s head, and put into her hands the sacrifice of remembrance, the sacrifice of jealousy; and in the priest’s hand shall be the water of conviction that brings this curse. And the priest shall put her under oath and say to the woman: If no man has lain with you, if you have not gone astray to be defiled while under your own husband, be free from this water of conviction that brings the curse. But if you have gone astray while under a husband, if you have been defiled, and some man other than your husband has lain with you… then the priest shall put the woman under the oaths of this curse, and the priest shall say to the woman: May the Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people, when the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your belly swell. And this water that brings the curse shall enter your belly, to make your womb swell and your thigh fall away. And the woman shall say: So be it, so be it. And the priest shall write these curses in a book and wash them off into the water of conviction that brings the curse, and he shall make the woman drink the water of conviction that brings the curse. And the water of conviction that brings the curse shall enter into her. And the priest shall take the sacrifice of jealousy from the woman’s hand, and lay the sacrifice before the Lord, and bring it to the altar. And the priest shall take a handful from the sacrifice as its memorial portion and offer it up on the altar, and after this he shall make the woman drink the water. And it shall be, if she has been defiled and has escaped her husband’s notice, that the water of conviction that brings the curse shall enter into her, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall fall away, and the woman shall be a curse among her people. But if she has not been defiled… (Numbers 5:11–28)

The suspected wife and the judgment seat of Christ§14

14Cyril: ‘…and is clean, she shall be free of guilt and shall conceive offspring.’ (Numbers 5:28) That is what the law says. And I would say that the divine Paul, gathering very aptly into a few thoughts what is set out at length in these writings, writes to us: ‘For we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive back what was done through the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.’ (2 Corinthians 5:10)

Palladius: I think that is rightly said. But explain carefully each point of what has been decreed.

Cyril: He commanded that the woman suspected of adultery, when she faces a charge that has no proofs, be brought to the priest and stand in the sight of God (Numbers 5:15–16); and this, I think, means that all are going to stand before Christ (Romans 14:10). Next, he commanded that the gift offered for her be barley meal, not sprinkled with frankincense, not moistened with oil; for it is a sacrifice of jealousy, which brings sin to remembrance (Numbers 5:15). It is plain, then, that from each person’s life a kind of odor, as it were, rises up to God: against those who have let themselves slide into carelessness it brings the charge of every monstrous deed, but for those who have striven earnestly to live rightly and well it bears witness to their genuineness. That is why we say, and with very good reason, that the gifts of those who are not under suspicion consist of fine wheat flour, with frankincense added and oil poured over it (Leviticus 2:1). For it will surely follow that a life which stays human, of which the fine wheat flour would also be a type, must be reckoned as fragrance and gladness before God, who loves virtue. But barley meal would be a very clear sign of a spurious and beastlike life. For to be unrestrained in appetite, and to want to rush without a bridle into monstrous pleasures, is somehow more fitting for cattle, and not at all becoming to a human being. That is why the woman accused of a spurious life brought barley meal to God without frankincense and oil, that is, without fragrance and gladness; for it is a sacrifice that brings sin to remembrance. And where sin is brought to remembrance, how or from where could gladness come? For the one on trial is not in hope of crowns, but in fear of punishment and fire. Besides this, the woman is brought to the judge with her head uncovered (Numbers 5:18), that is, not in her usual and fitting adornment. And what would be the reason for this? The charges are of unseemliness, and the indictment is for shameless conduct. Remember that Paul, who was learned in the law, does not allow a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered (1 Corinthians 11:5), and takes the law of nature (1 Corinthians 11:14) as his proof that she must be covered: ‘For her hair,’ he says, ‘is given to her as a covering.’ (1 Corinthians 11:15) So the woman, accused of unseemliness, was no longer in seemly adornment. But she is uncovered in another sense too. For all things are naked before the eyes of the Judge (Hebrews 4:13), and no one at all could escape the notice of him who searches hearts and inward parts (Psalm 7:9), who also says through the voice of the prophet: ‘I am a God who is near, says the Lord, and not a God far off. Shall anything be hidden from me?’ (Jeremiah 23:23–24) Yet the law hints again, in a riddle, that Christ is the one who judges. For it said that living and…

The living water in the earthen vessel: the Word made flesh§15

15Cyril: …pure water must be poured into an earthen vessel, together with some of the earth that lies in the tent (Numbers 5:17). Then, when the words of the curse had been washed off into the water, he commanded the woman suspected of fornication to drink it (Numbers 5:23–24). And he says: ‘If she is guilty of the charge, her belly will swell and her thigh will fall away; but if she is clear of the accusation, and what was suspected of her is not true, she will conceive offspring.’ (Numbers 5:27–28)

Palladius: What, then, is the meaning? Or how would Christ be signified to us even through the things just named?

Cyril: By the living and pure water you will understand the life-giving Word of God, who is truly pure and has no share in sin at all, and who came to be in flesh as in an earthen vessel. For how, or on what ground, could anyone doubt that the flesh is dust and comes from the earth? By the earth from the tent you will understand him who was in death for our sake; for it was said to human nature: ‘You are earth, and to earth you shall return.’ (Genesis 3:19) And by the words of the curse you will understand very well him who became a curse for us by being hung on a tree (Galatians 3:13). For it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’ (Galatians 3:13; Deuteronomy 21:23) So when Emmanuel, who is God by nature, reaches down into the depth of the human mind, he will convict and punish those who are guilty of sins; but those who are not caught in them he will show to be fruitful. For this, I think, is the meaning of ‘she will conceive offspring’: the bodily experience signifies the fruitfulness of the soul.

Palladius: Excellently said.

Cyril: Fornication, then, and the passions of the flesh debase a person and drive him out of his closeness to God; for ‘those who are in the flesh cannot please God.’ (Romans 8:8) By ‘flesh,’ as I take it, he means the mind set on the flesh (Romans 8:6–7); for that is how the text would rightly be understood. And besides this, a wicked disposition, a savage cast of character, and a drift into anything whatever of the most monstrous kind make us loathsome and unholy. For it befits us not only to master the passions of the flesh, but also to excel in gentleness of character, to show ourselves above all diligent in love toward the brothers, to be seen crowned with the glories of righteousness, and besides this to keep within ourselves a mind that is keen and well trained, that approaches the teachings about God without distortion, and that in searching into doctrines keeps what is blameless at every point. For such people are perfect, since in truth they lack none of the highest goods. The divine Paul also told us that the man of God must be complete (2 Timothy 3:17); and by ‘complete’ he means one who is equipped for every good work and well fitted to achieve virtue fully. Or is it not so?

Palladius: How could it not be?

Cyril: See, then, how the law, speaking in riddles,…

Scripture teaches through animals, plants and stones; the clean and unclean beasts§16

16Cyril: …brings in many irrational animals, and kinds of birds and water creatures as well, to sketch human characters, and so benefits us in countless ways. And do not be surprised at this, since at times it likens us even to plants, using the natural quality of each to mark out neatly what belongs to each of us. For God said somewhere through the voice of Isaiah, hinting at the fragrance of those who through faith in Christ have blossomed anew into life (a spiritual fragrance, clearly), and at the heights they reach in virtue: ‘And I will make living water in the desert, and rivers in a waterless land’ (Isaiah 43:19–20), ‘and I will set in the waterless land the cedar and the box tree, the myrtle, the cypress and the white poplar.’ (Isaiah 41:19) And again: ‘And it shall be,’ he says, ‘that instead of the scrub a cypress shall come up, and instead of the fleabane a myrtle shall come up.’ (Isaiah 55:13) By scrub and fleabane, I think, he aptly names souls still untamed, which appear in the eyes of the Godhead like wild thorn. And at times the venerable company of the saints is also likened to stones: ‘For holy stones are rolling on the earth.’ (Zechariah 9:16) And the Savior, too, said that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven and like a grain of mustard seed (Matthew 13:31–33). So it is the custom of the divinely inspired Scripture to make human things plain through many very vivid examples.

Palladius: I agree.

Cyril: Observe, then, that Scripture, bringing forward to good purpose countless kinds of beasts, and of birds and swimming creatures too, brands some as unclean and wholly defiled, and accepts others again and clears them of reproach, so that those who serve God may rightly know what conduct would keep them from being accepted, and by wisely abstaining from what they will be far from blame and will shine, worthy of acceptance and honored by the verdict from above. The law on this matter runs as follows: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: Speak to the sons of Israel and say: These are the animals that you shall eat out of all the animals on the earth. Every animal that parts the hoof and is cloven-footed with two claws, and brings up the cud, among the animals, these you shall eat. But of these you shall not eat, of those that bring up the cud and of those that part the hoof and are cloven-footed: the camel, because it brings up the cud but does not part the hoof; it is unclean to you. And the hare, because it brings up the cud and does not part the hoof; it is unclean to you. And the rock badger, because it brings up the cud and does not part the hoof; it is unclean to you. And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed, but does not bring up the cud; it is unclean to you. You shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall not eat of their carcasses; they are unclean to you.’ (Leviticus 11:1–8) Now Christ says most plainly: ‘It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person.’ (Matthew 15:11) And somewhere it was also said to the inspired Peter, when the sheet was let down from above by its four corners (Acts 10:11–12), in which, it is written, were all the…

The law defiles nothing: animals as pictures of character; righteousness is twofold§17

17Cyril: …four-footed animals and birds: ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ (Acts 10:13) When the disciple cried out, still fearing the observance of the law, and said, ‘By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean, nor has any profane meat entered my mouth’ (Acts 10:14; Acts 11:8), God spoke again: ‘What God has cleansed, you must not call common.’ (Acts 10:15) And the inspired Paul also writes that ‘food does not commend us to God.’ (1 Corinthians 8:8) It is quite clear, then, that the law by no means makes anything that exists profane, but knows that all things are pure to the pure (Titus 1:15). Rather, by taking the natural traits of each animal very aptly as pictures of the qualities of human character, it does no small good. And you could learn from the following, too, that what I say is true and beyond doubt. For he is seen to command that things condemned by everyone must be abhorred: I mean the camel and the rock badger, the night raven and the cormorant, the gecko and the shrew, and things still more shameful than these (Leviticus 11:4–5; Leviticus 11:17; Leviticus 11:30). Would not the lawgiver’s aim be plain, then, at least in these cases, my good friend?

Palladius: Certainly.

Cyril: So we must aptly carry over to the quality of character the traits that are naturally present in certain irrational animals, each animal, so to speak, depicting in itself the ways of a certain kind of person and indicating what traits he has. For are we not ourselves accustomed, in a way, to call those who are very hot-blooded and very strong, and who surpass others in boldness, boars or lions or something else of that kind; and to call those who are gentle and quiet, and whose minds are humble, sheep and doves, and sometimes to crown them with the name ‘calm’, giving to each person’s ways the fitting description drawn from things more easily seen?

Palladius: True.

Cyril: Let us go on, then, to the aim of the law, and inquire carefully into what it is that it enjoins.

Palladius: Let us go on.

Cyril: The glories of righteousness, and in a word of all goodness, spring perhaps from each person’s own choice; yet they are achieved, I think, in two ways, and in a sense they have a twofold outworking.

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: Either we do some good to ourselves: cutting away monstrous and blameworthy pleasures, putting to death our members that are on earth (Colossians 3:5), settling the mind in gentleness of spirit, practicing poverty, and keeping our thinking as pure and untroubled as we can; or else we fulfill our good endeavors toward our brothers: showing no malice to those who choose to grieve us and who have heartlessly offended us, helping the weary, comforting those who grieve, turning those who have strayed through ignorance back to what is right, leading them by the hand toward what is better…

The parted hoof and the chewed cud§18

18Cyril: …coming to the aid of those in need, and taking great pains to carry out whatever things God delights in. Is not the way of righteousness, then, in a sense twofold, since it is carried out both toward ourselves and toward others?

Palladius: It seems so.

Cyril: The law, then, always likens such a person, in a way, to a parted hoof, that is, to a foot divided in two (Leviticus 11:3). For the foot would always be for us a symbol and type of the road we travel in practical action. Indeed we speak of those who are truly eager to go blamelessly toward what leads to their good as walking with a straight foot. David also sings somewhere: ‘For my foot has stood on level ground’ (Psalm 26:12), that is, I have walked in righteousness and uprightness, and I have hated what is crooked. And of those who love sin he says: ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths’ (Romans 3:15–16). So the foot is a symbol of the road we travel in deeds. And the parting of the hoof would be a clear type of our being able to walk rightly and beyond reproach in both ways: in what concerns ourselves, and also toward others.

Palladius: The argument is persuasive.

Cyril: Suppose, then, there is someone who knows how to walk rightly and skillfully in both ways, and is able to benefit both himself and others (I mean by the quality of his character). Suppose that besides this he is sensible and very wise, and gives his heart to the words about God as a kind of lodging and dwelling place; that he is always turning over within himself, this way and that, the meanings of the divine doctrines, and so knows how to search them out often and wisely, grinding fine, as it were, the thoughts he has come to know so exactly. Such a person will surely resemble an animal that brings up the cud: it is always bringing back up the food in its belly and putting it under its teeth, so that it may be ground finer still and, made fine enough to digest, may turn to its benefit.

Palladius: Well said.

Cyril: Now the law says that an animal is clean if its foot ends in a parted hoof and it also brings back up the cud from its belly (Leviticus 11:3). For the one who is by nature excellent and good toward himself and toward others, and who has also taken on a love of learning and practice in knowledge (plainly, the knowledge of God), will be fully fitted for virtue and for every admirable thing, and blameless, at least in what concerns himself. And if someone comes to share in such a person (I mean by learning from him), and feasts, as it were, on the teaching he gives; if he becomes his imitator and chooses to emulate one so distinguished and outstanding, he will be undefiled and clean. For he will be living with one who is clean, and he will at once show his own way of life to be a kind of imprint of the understanding and sound learning found in that man. This, I think, is what is meant by our having to eat of every animal that by nature splits its foot at the hoof and brings up…

Works without doctrine, doctrine without works§19

19Cyril: …the cud (Leviticus 11:3; Deuteronomy 14:6). For the law calls such animals clean, at least in the sense we have just explained.

Palladius: I understand what you mean.

Cyril: So the law has shown in a riddle the person who is excellent and fully formed in virtue, as in an animal that by nature parts the hoof and brings up the cud. And it teaches in turn that it is good and profitable to make a habit of shaking off the person who is not of this mind, who limps, as it were, toward the good and falls behind in the perfection of virtue. It does this by giving its favorable verdict neither to the animals that bring up the cud without having the parted hoof, nor to those that part the hoof by nature if they do not chew the cud; rather, it records their uncleanness and numbers them among the things that defile (Leviticus 11:4–8). So we affirm, and rightly, that the parting of the foot is a type of practical action and of the quality of our conduct, and in this way we recast into the truth what was said in riddles. And we define the chewing of the cud as a sign of the word that accords with godliness, and of doctrinal knowledge that is both correct and well practiced. Or is it not so?

Palladius: Certainly.

Cyril: Then the one who prides himself on good works but falls short of right doctrine, and does not hold the words of truth in his mind, would rightly be thought incomplete in virtue, and he stands far from deserving admiration. And it is plain that the reverse is also true. For right doctrine and a sweet concern for the divine words would profit us nothing toward being held perfect in virtue if brightness in deeds were not yoked with them. The one who is skilled in both will carry off the verdict of full approval; but for the one who lacks either, whatever admiration he wins for goodness will have no strength. The Savior also points to something of this kind when he says that the one who teaches but does not also do is called least in the kingdom of heaven, while the one who has done and taught is great and distinguished (Matthew 5:19). Under the law, then, the one who falls short in either of the two is unclean. And that we ought to keep away from such people and in no way be seen to have any share with them, the law made clear by saying: ‘You shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses’ (Leviticus 11:8). That is, it means that you shall not keep company with them while they live. And if one of them should happen to die, you will keep your own mind undefiled, not so much as touching, so to speak, the things they have produced, that is, their discourses and their foul writings; for such things are the remains of a person’s life. Yet handling such remains is just what the untaught heretics are in the habit of doing. For those who became the leaders of the ignorance that is in them have, beyond dispute, gone astray, and they have left with their own disciples what amount to the remains of their own impiety. These disciples welcome them with great delight and take them to live in their minds, and so they carry a stain that is hard to wash off, as though they were handling the flesh of carcasses, which is full of the worst stench and uncleanness.

Camel, hare, rock badger and pig§20

20Palladius: True.

Cyril: As an example of the animal that does not part the hoof yet brings up the cud, then, the law takes the camel, a strong and very large beast, and the hare and the rock badger, which look smaller, one might say, than all the others (Leviticus 11:4–6). In this way, I think, it took in everything at once by means of the extremes, and left out nothing that lies between them. It is as though one were to say: ‘From the very high and the highest of all, down to the small and the very lowest, everyone who is like this is loathsome and unclean.’ For there is no partiality with God, as it is written (Romans 2:11). If someone is great and proud, raised high by wealth and worldly glory, he will receive a verdict without honor or reward if he is liable to the charges of wickedness. And if someone is small, living with poverty and obscurity, he will be condemned as unclean unless he can boast of a virtuous way of life. Nor could anyone turn his lowliness into a pretext for claiming that the just Judge must have mercy on him, if he lacks what is fitting in deeds, that is, in deeds of godliness and virtue. So the camel, the hare and the rock badger would be a clear type of small and great alike. The law also brings forward the pig as unclean, because it parts the hoof but is not made by nature to chew its food again, that is, to bring up the cud (Leviticus 11:7). In this way it shows that boasting in works is feeble and useless without the word that accords with godliness. For just as faith without works is dead (James 2:26), so the reverse is also true: good order of life and decency in deeds are surely dead when the knowledge of God is absent and the word of godliness has not made its home in our souls. This good order stays low; it is bent toward the earth, and seems somehow afraid to lift its eye upward. We shall find not a few who have suffered something of this kind. At times they lead a dignified and pure life, but because they have not come to know the One who is God by nature and in truth, they fix the eye of their mind, as it were, on earthly things alone. Such a person, too, is unclean; for ‘no one is crowned unless he competes according to the rules,’ as it is written (2 Timothy 2:5).

Palladius: So the law counts us defiled, under the figure of the pig and of the other animals as well, once we have come under its charges.

Cyril: You have put it quite rightly. And the law is not content to set before us images of the unclean through these animals alone. It has chosen rather to benefit us through the whole of creation, as it were, and sets out in rich measure the knowledge of what is useful and fitting. So it goes through the kinds of water creatures too, and the flocks of birds, so that by carefully examining what is natural to each, we may be able to discern what, then, is pleasing to God and what is rejected and hateful to him, and so, by practicing a life fully in keeping with the law, may flee with all our strength from everything that usually defiles. Now the law has spoken…

Fish with fins and scales, and creatures of the mud§21

21Cyril: …again, in words like these: ‘And these you shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales in the waters, in the seas and in the streams, these you shall eat. But all that have neither fins nor scales in the waters, in the seas and in the streams, of all that the waters bring forth and of every living creature in the water, it is an abomination, and they shall be abominations to you. You shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall abhor their carcasses. All that have neither fins nor scales, of the things in the waters, this is an abomination to you’ (Leviticus 11:9–12).

Palladius: But you yourself should explain what the difference is among these, I mean as spiritual contemplation reads them; for I hardly understand it at all.

Cyril: Certainly. I shall tell you as best I can, recasting into plain terms what the law has taken up by way of examples. Those creatures in the waters that the Creator of all has fashioned well after the pattern of fishes are always rowing their way along, as it were, by thrusting out their fins, and they move strongly and very swiftly wherever they may choose. When the sun sends the warm stroke of its rays down into the waters from above, they swim upward and all but dare to leap out of the water itself, refusing to stay below always; and they easily slip through the nets of those who hunt them. But those that are not furnished with scales and fins (those, that is, that live in hard casings and are clothed in a shell that grows with them) know almost nothing of what is above. They are always creeping down into the weeds at the bottom, and they love to linger in muddy places. They are sluggish and easily caught, and anyone who has once caught sight of them can take them without the least effort. That is the plain and true account of those creatures. Now let us go on, as from images and types, to what is clearer.

Palladius: You would do well to explain it, and to go on with it gladly.

Cyril: The Psalmist, pointing out to us with fine wit the distractions of this life and the bitter flood and confusion of affairs within it, sings: ‘This is the sea, great and wide; there are creeping things without number, living creatures small and great’ (Psalm 104:25). For we must surely liken to fishes those who at times dart this way and that for nothing needed for their good, and gather only such things as prove them fleshly and set them to endure pointless toil.

Palladius: Well said.

Cyril: The disciple of Christ also rebukes such people somewhere, speaking in this way: ‘Come now, you who say, “Today and tomorrow we will go into such and such a city and spend a year there, and trade and make a profit”’ (James 4:13). And a little later (James 4:15–16): ‘Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, and…

Scales and fins: those who hide their faults and lift their minds; the shameless are unclean§22

22Cyril: …we will live, and we will do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance’ (James 4:15–16). So then, like fish, we swim through this broad and spacious sea, that is, the world (Psalm 104:25); for each person’s life differs in some way. For some have not wholly given themselves over to sin. They know, indeed, that at times they are weak and held by the greedy cravings of the flesh, and they do not claim to be clear of other faults either; for ‘we all stumble in many ways’ (James 3:2), as it is written. All the same, they shake off as something ugly any wish to behave shamefully with nothing to cover them, and no one could persuade them to practice their wrongdoing openly and without concealment. They take great care to escape notice; for ‘the wise will hide their own shame’ (Proverbs 12:16), as it is written. This, I think, is what it means to have scales as a kind of covering. They also very often swim up toward the heights; for they do not always look downward, but also set their minds on the things above (Colossians 3:2), and they easily slip away from those who would wish to net them for destruction. This, one may say, is to use fins, as it were, in a spiritual sense, and to make the movement of the mind very fervent.

Palladius: What you say is reasonable; for the riddle does in some way lead one to think that the meaning runs this way.

Cyril: But some sin with no restraint, practicing their wickedness naked, as it were, and wholly uncovered; and of them it may well be said, ‘Their glory is in their shame’ (Philippians 3:19). For they are always bent toward uncleanness, and as they wallow in the lowest mire they are in truth brute beasts, or something other than that. Such people would be utterly feeble in every way and easily caught, ruled like slaves of a tyrant by pleasures that lead to every kind of outrage. Or is not the life of those given up as lost something like this? Lewd women and harlots, the utterly shameful and most counterfeit tribe of effeminate men, those who make a name for themselves on the stage, those whose love of the flesh cannot be satisfied, and those who love to wander off into profane idolatry: all these live a truly accursed life, a life that sinks into the most shameful defilements. So the law declares clean those who have been weak in human ways but have not yet turned aside altogether; who swim up, as it were, toward the heights, and have not settled on earthly things alone, but have also set their minds on the things above, and are divided, as it were, between God and the world. But it declares unclean those who give themselves over entirely to choosing, without ceasing, both to do and to think the things of the flesh and of the world; who in these matters have stripped off all shame and are used to behaving shamefully, naked and undisguised. And it usefully removes us from fellowship with these, while not dishonoring fellowship with the former. For to walk the same road as the wicked is not safe; but with those…

Keep good company; the unclean birds, and the proud who soar on high§23

23Cyril: …who are more upright it is safe. For it is written: ‘He who walks with the wise will be wise, but he who walks with fools will be known’ (Proverbs 13:20). And Paul too writes: ‘If anyone called a brother is greedy, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or a swindler, do not even eat with such a one’ (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Palladius: Well said; for the matter is not without profit.

Cyril: This, then, is what the law tells us in riddles about creatures that swim and live in the waters. Then, widening, as it were, the range of examples it sets before us, it goes on to the flocks of birds, saying: ‘And these you shall abhor among the birds, and they shall not be eaten; they are an abomination: the eagle, the bearded vulture, the sea eagle, the vulture, the kite and its kind, the ostrich, the owl, the gull and its kind, every raven and its kind, the hawk and its kind, the night raven, the cormorant, the ibis, the purple gallinule, the pelican, the swan, the heron, the plover and its kind, the hoopoe and the bat (Leviticus 11:13–19). And all winged creeping things that go on all fours are an abomination to you (Leviticus 11:20). But these you shall eat among the winged creeping things that go on all fours: those that have legs above their feet, with which to leap on the ground. These you shall eat of them: the young locust and its kind, the cricket and its kind, the grasshopper and its kind, and the locust and its kind (Leviticus 11:21–22). Every winged creeping thing that has four feet is an abomination to you, and by these you shall be defiled. Whoever touches their carcasses shall be unclean until evening’ (Leviticus 11:23–24). Is the meaning of these words clear to you?

Palladius: Not in the least.

Cyril: Do you not perceive by now that, just as with the others, the traits that belong by nature to each of the creatures named would be images of characters and of different ways of life?

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: Shall we take them one at a time, distinguishing each with care?

Palladius: By all means.

Cyril: The law, then, rejects the eagle, the bearded vulture, the sea eagle, and the vulture as well. For birds like these fly about on high; they love to pride themselves on the loftiest heights, and they hate what is low. ‘The young of the vulture,’ it says, ‘fly to the heights’ (Job 5:7). Such, in a way, is the boaster, the man of overweening haughtiness, who has his mind lifted up within himself, who is used to looking down on a gentle and moderate frame of mind, and who has no love at all for associating with the lowly (Romans 12:16). Together with these the law also condemns the kite and its kind, and the raven and its kind. By these it signifies very well the kind of people who know how to plunder and are clever at wrongdoing: the kite is a type of the first, and the deep, jet-black raven of the second. For those who are shrewd…

Greedy, cruel and night-loving birds; great and small alike condemned§24

24Cyril: …in wickedness are in some way dark and not plain to all, and they keep the baseness of their character hidden within themselves, out of sight of the many. In those who are sick with the accursed disease of arrogance there always grows up beside it the wish to take advantage of whomever they can, to besiege them with wicked devices of every kind, and so to plunder them, and that insatiably. That is why it adds at once: ‘And the ostrich and the gull’ (Leviticus 11:16). For these, I think, are most insatiable, always gathering up whatever comes their way. Then it says: ‘And the hawk and its kind, the night raven, the cormorant, the ibis, the purple gallinule, the pelican and the swan’ (Leviticus 11:16–18). These too would portray in themselves those who plot cruelly and savagely against others and fasten without restraint on whomever they can, so that they do not shrink even from putting some in danger and fear for their very lives. For the hawk swoops fiercely on every weaker bird; it darts at sparrows, and when it catches them it kills them. The cormorant, the ibis and the purple gallinule, and I would add the pelican too, fall furiously on the fish and make their destruction their food. Such, as far as conduct and savagery of character go, are all who count it as nothing to destroy others for the sake of their own pleasure. They have thrust aside the law of mutual love and offended against the ordinances of love, and it would be altogether fitting for them to hear this, even from us: ‘Do not seek your own interests, but also those of others (Philippians 2:4; 1 Corinthians 10:24); for love,’ it says, ‘does no wrong to a neighbor’ (Romans 13:10). Again, it said that one must refuse the owl, the heron, the plover and their kind, the hoopoe and the bat (Leviticus 11:16–19). These, I think, are lovers of the night. They delight in the darkness and are practiced at taking their flight in it as their sweetest pleasure, but they hate the light of the sun and cannot bear to do anything in it. Such birds would plainly stand for those who work evil. For what Christ said is true: ‘Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, so that his works may not be exposed; but whoever does the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be made manifest, that they have been done in God’ (John 3:20–21). The winged creeping things too are unclean, those ‘which go,’ it says, ‘on all fours’ (Leviticus 11:20): for example, the various kinds of flies and anything akin to them. These are countless, small and loathsome, and they cannot fly high. We must therefore look closely at the reason why the law came down even to these. For just as, when it made mention of the beasts, it named the camel and then added the hare (Leviticus 11:4–6), declaring all those charged with wickedness equally unclean, whether one were great or small — for, as it is written, there is no partiality with God (Romans 2:11) — so here too it calls to mind the eagle, naming the most kingly of birds, but then comes down again to the very smallest of winged creatures, putting small and great on an equal footing if one is a worker of outrageous deeds, and so cannot escape the condemnation that is his due. Yet it does set apart from this kind…

Leaping insects, the worldly man, and washing toward evening§25

25Cyril: …the locust and the young locust and creatures like them (Leviticus 11:21–22), because of their strength: they can leap up, they are least inclined to linger below, and they often rise on high and spring easily from place to place. Such, in a way, is the person who lives a worldly life and yet is not wholly without a share of decency in other respects and of love for God. Such a person is not bound altogether to earthly things, nor does he settle among what is below. He has learned in some measure to set his mind on the things above (Colossians 3:2), and at times he wins approval, springing up toward the things above and flying over the things of earth.

As for one who touches unclean things and has been defiled, he must wash his garment, and toward evening, the law says, he will be clean (Leviticus 11:24–25). In this it very aptly points to the mystery of Christ, through whom we have been cleansed and are rich in the forgiveness that comes through holy baptism. This came about, clearly, at the time of his coming, a time that fell, as it were, toward evening, that is, when the present age was already drawing toward its end. Or do we not say that the Word of God became man in the last times?

Palladius: Certainly.

Cyril: The law also says that a person becomes unclean in another way, if he happens to touch a wild beast, or any other of the unclean animals. It speaks thus: ‘Every creature that walks on its paws, among all the beasts that go on all fours, is unclean to you. Everyone who touches their carcasses will be unclean until evening, and whoever carries their carcasses shall wash his garments and be unclean until evening. These are unclean to you (Leviticus 11:27–28). And these are unclean to you among the creeping things on the earth: the weasel, the mouse, the land crocodile, the shrew, the chameleon, the gecko, the lizard, and the mole. These are unclean to you among all the creeping things on the earth. Everyone who touches them when they are dead will be unclean until evening (Leviticus 11:29–31). And anything on which one of them falls when they are dead will be unclean, whether any vessel of wood, or a garment, or a skin, or sackcloth. Every vessel with which any work is done shall be dipped in water, and it will be unclean until evening, and then it will be clean’ (Leviticus 11:32). To these it added that every vessel on which any of their carcasses falls will be defiled, an earthen jar and a leather one, a garment, food and drink, except, it says, a spring of water, a cistern, a gathering of water, and seeds (Leviticus 11:33–37).

Through the wild beasts the law seems to point to the most savage of robbers, who count as nothing even murder, the evil beyond all others, and who all but devour whomever they come upon, destroying without pity, with all mercy cast out. Through the mouse and the weasel, and the creatures close to them and like them (I mean the land crocodile, the lizard and the gecko), it points to the easily startled and cowardly kinds of thieves who prowl about at night. They love to prey unseen on those who are dozing, but they are terribly afraid of being caught, and…

Robbers, thieves, and the company that defiles§26

26Cyril: …they shun the watchfulness of those they wrong. Are not the weasel and the mouse most thievish creatures, and quick to take fright? Do they not dive into their holes in the ground if anyone makes a noise? And would not they, and the land crocodile and its kin, far rather feed by night than by day?

Palladius: True.

Cyril: So everything of the robber’s kind is unclean, whether a man has a beast’s ways and bloodthirsty hands, or whether he pilfers small things, like the mouse and the weasel, and, after the manner of the mole and the gecko, springs up walls and onto roofs. And if anyone touches those so defiled, he will share in their guilt, for fellowship with such people makes those who share it wholly and altogether unclean. The defiled vessels would stand as a type of human beings, for man has the form of a vessel. Yet the law frees a spring of water, a cistern and a gathering of water from having to be defiled, even if something defiled under the law should happen to fall into them. In this, I think, it does not let those under the law consider the matter altogether burdensome and hard to carry through, or find the keeping of the law impossible to practice, as they would if they suffered harm here, in their most vital needs. For at times they would have had to leave their cities and houses, since their water would have been defiled and they would have lost a use they needed and could not do without. So the law relaxed the strictness of its literal rule for the sake of what was necessary and useful for those under the law.

Palladius: The argument is persuasive.

Cyril: Yet it says that even the carcass of a clean animal is unclean, just as the others are, and it added that this too will defile whoever touches it. It writes thus: ‘If one of the cattle that you may eat dies, whoever touches its carcass will be unclean until evening; and whoever eats of its carcass shall wash his garments, and be unclean until evening, and bathe in water, and be clean. And whoever carries its carcass shall wash his garments, and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening’ (Leviticus 11:39–40). This, I think, is plainly the same as the saying: ‘If anyone who bears the name of brother is a fornicator, or greedy, or an idolater, or a drunkard, or a reviler, or a robber, do not even eat with such a one’ (1 Corinthians 5:11). For if anyone at all who is held in esteem for holiness, who has already been cleansed and received through faith into spiritual fellowship, undergoes the deadness that comes from sin, ‘let him be loathsome,’ it says, ‘and hated.’ For, defiled by dead works, he surely defiles whoever clings to him. But if anyone does suffer that defilement, let him become clean through water toward evening; and what this means, our argument has already shown us plainly. Notice too that the law says the one who eats…

Keep clear of the dead; the burning bush and the sandal§27

27Cyril: …of their carcasses will be unclean, and so will anyone who only touches them. It does not free from blame and accusation the one who has shared in their deadness, nor does it call anyone guiltless even if he only comes close and draws near. For I think we must soberly keep away not only from doing the same deeds as the wicked, but even from merely keeping company with them. ‘For whoever touches pitch will be defiled,’ it says (Sirach 13:1). And the saying is true. That the law took up the lessons of these examples for the forming of character, one may learn from what follows. For it said again: ‘You shall not make your souls loathsome with any of the creeping things that creep on the earth, and you shall not be defiled by them, and you shall not be unclean through them; for I am the Lord your God’ (Leviticus 11:43–44). For what defilement could an animal’s dying, or touching what has died, bring upon the human soul? What harm could food do, which goes into the belly and is sent out into the drain, as the Savior said (Matthew 15:17)?

Palladius: None, I think; you understand it rightly.

Cyril: Then I say that we must, like the most skillful sailors, crowd on every sail and run clear of defilements, and put in to the life most dear to God as to a calm shore where no waves break. For God could become approachable to us in this way alone and in no other, and that this is true is easy to see. For it is written again in Exodus: ‘Moses was tending the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the sheep into the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb. And an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the bush, and he saw that the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not consumed.” When the Lord saw that he was drawing near to look, the Lord called to him out of the bush, saying, “Moses, Moses.” And he said, “What is it?” And he said, “Do not come near here; take the sandal off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground”’ (Exodus 3:1–5). Do you see, then, that no one could come near the all-pure God without first washing every stain from his own soul, and freeing his foot from all the deadness that lies in deeds? By the foot I mean the spiritual walk by which we go toward what must be done. For is not the sandal the remains of a dead animal?

Palladius: Of course it is.

Cyril: Then the sandal is a type of deadness. If anyone throws off this deadness like a load and breaks the bonds that would be his ruin, he will come near and belong to God, and from then on he will be fit to save others as well. So it was that Moses was appointed to be sent out, and to redeem the sons of Israel. And a sacred saying has told us: ‘Son, if you become wise, you will be wise for yourself and for your neighbor’ (Proverbs 9:12).

Palladius: Well said.

Made ready to see God: Sinai and the circumcision of Abraham§28

28Cyril: Well then, shall we not add this point to these as well?

Palladius: Which one?

Cyril: When God, who rules over all, was about to come down on Mount Sinai in the form of fire (Exodus 19:18), Moses was commanded to make Israel ready to see God. The manner of the preparation the Master of all laid down himself. For the Lord said to Moses: ‘Go down and solemnly charge the people, and purify them today and tomorrow; let them wash their garments, and let them be ready for the third day; for on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai before all the people’ (Exodus 19:10–11). Those, then, who long for close fellowship with God, and whose aim is, as it were, to stand before him and serve him with strength and eagerness for every good thing, must first be purified. Such a person would then be quite fit even for this: that he too should already, in some way, behold God, according to the Savior’s word: ‘For blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’ (Matthew 5:8).

Again, if you wish, you will see the divine Abraham himself advanced to this same splendor. Come, let us recount in turn what concerns him. For it is written thus: ‘And the Lord said to Abraham: As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you, throughout their generations. And this is the covenant that you shall keep between me and you, and between your offspring after you, throughout their generations: every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. A child of eight days shall be circumcised among you, every male, throughout your generations, both the one born in your house and the one bought with money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. The one born in your house and the one bought with money shall surely be circumcised. And my covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day, that soul shall be utterly destroyed from its kindred, because he has broken my covenant’ (Genesis 17:9–14). Then it says: ‘And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all those born in his house, and all those bought with his money, and every male among the men of his house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin on that very day, as God had spoken to him’ (Genesis 17:23).

What, then, was the reward of his obedience, and in what way did circumcision benefit him? We shall learn from what follows. ‘For God appeared to him,’ it says, ‘by the oak of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent at midday. And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing near him. And when he saw them, he ran from the door of his tent to meet them, and bowed down to the ground (Genesis 18:1–2), and said…

True circumcision opens the way to God; the story of Dinah begins§29

29Cyril: ‘…Lord, if indeed I have found favor before you, do not pass by your servant. Let water be brought, and let them wash your feet, and refresh yourselves under the tree; and I will bring bread, and you shall eat; and after this you shall go on your way, since it is for this that you have turned aside to your servant. And they said: We will do so, as you have said’ (Genesis 18:3–5).

For circumcision in the flesh would be a very clear type of the inward circumcision, the circumcision in the spirit (Romans 2:29), by which Christ removes all defilement from our thoughts. For, in the words of the blessed Paul, ‘we have been circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the putting off of the flesh’ (Colossians 2:11). For when we have, as it were, stripped off the old self, which is being corrupted by deceitful desires (Ephesians 4:22), and have all but cut away the pleasures of the flesh by the keen edge and the working of the Spirit, we shall already, in some measure, show ourselves fit to be counted worthy even of seeing God, and of becoming a sacred dwelling place of the holy and consubstantial Trinity. ‘For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this generation, we will come, I and the Father, and make our home with him, and dwell in him,’ said the Savior (Mark 8:38; John 14:23).

Nor does the reward of goodness stop there. Rather, as those already received into close fellowship with God, we shall come to know the things that are in him, through the revelation that comes from him, of course; just as the divine Abraham too was taught about the overthrow of Sodom (Genesis 18:17–21). For God shared his counsel with him as with a friend. See, then, that to be rid of defilements would bring us in return countless good things. Therefore Paul too says: ‘I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable worship’ (Romans 12:1). And indeed the prophet Jeremiah cried out plainly: ‘Wash your heart clean of wickedness, Jerusalem, that you may be saved’ (Jeremiah 4:14).

Palladius: We must approach the all-holy God, then, not with a profaned soul, but in a holy and blameless life. For in this way we shall go straight to what is fitting.

Cyril: Quite so, Palladius. And I think it will take you no great labor to see that what is said on this point holds true, if you choose to search into the lives of the saints with a love of learning and with a mind that agrees with mine. For the divine Paul said that the things that befell those of old as types were written down as a way of admonishing us (1 Corinthians 10:11). That we must approach God pure and washed, then, one could learn once more from the following as well. For Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, being a virgin and of an age for marriage, ran out of her father’s tent to look at the daughters of the people of Shechem (Genesis 34:1). But Shechem, the son of Hamor, did not keep still. He at once fell in love with the girl (Genesis 34:3) and was swept away by unrestrained desires toward what he had set his mind on. Going about it rather brutishly, the foreigner, who was still uncircumcised, forced the Hebrew virgin (Genesis 34:2). The sons of Jacob found the matter unbearable (Genesis 34:7), and by the law of war they fell upon those who had impiously outraged a Hebrew woman, their own sister (Genesis 34:25–29). As for the divine Jacob, who was distressed and terrified, and who feared that he would be utterly destroyed…

Jacob purifies his house before Bethel; clothed in a clean life§30

30Cyril: …with all his family, God received him and saved him once more; and it is worth seeing how. It is written thus: ‘And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi: You have made me hateful, so that I am odious to all who live in the land, among both the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and I am few in number; they will gather against me and cut me down, and I shall be wiped out, I and my house. But they said: No, they have treated our sister like a prostitute’ (Genesis 34:30–31). ‘And God said to Jacob: Arise, go up to the place Bethel, and dwell there; and make there an altar to the God who appeared to you when you were fleeing from the face of Esau your brother. And Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him: Put away from among you the gods that are with you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments; and let us arise and go up to Bethel, and let us make there an altar to the God who heard me in the day of affliction, who was with me and kept me safe on the way by which I went. And they gave Jacob the foreign gods that were in their hands, and the earrings that were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that is in Shechem, and destroyed them, to this day’ (Genesis 35:1–4).

You see that the Master of all received the righteous man in his terror, and commanded him to build an altar for a pleasing aroma and as a splendid votive offering for the salvation and help that would be his. And Jacob, knowing well that this had to be done, commands them first to purify themselves, putting away the falsely named gods from among them and changing into other garments. But this, I think, would at once signify sincerity in faith and a life kept free from profanation. For to love to cleave to God single-mindedly, not divided in mind, nor inclined to remain sick with the remnants of the demons’ deceit, may fittingly be understood in the removal of the foreign gods; and in the changing of garments, the putting on, as it were, of a pure way of life.

For this is how the most wise Paul too saw fit to write. Or do you not hear him saying plainly: ‘Put off the old self, which is being corrupted by deceitful desires (Ephesians 4:22), and put on the new self, which is being renewed after the image of its Creator’ (Colossians 3:10)? And by ‘the putting off of the flesh’ he means the laying aside of fleshly pleasures (Colossians 2:11). Solomon too writes somewhere: ‘At all times let your garments be bright’ (Ecclesiastes 9:8). I would say that our wise Solomon, who understood very rightly, would not go so far in trifling as to urge us to revel childishly in bright clothes; rather, he likens to a bright robe the life that is, so to speak, washed clean and free from all filth. Otherwise, how could anyone put on our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14)? Would you not say, my friend, that one who is clothed in the glories of the gospel way of life surely achieves just that?

Palladius: Very much so.

Joseph refuses Potiphar's wife§31

31Cyril: And if one turns to the celebrated Joseph himself, he will find that Joseph neglected no part of uprightness, but understood that God would work with him in anything at all and come to his help, if he refused outright to let himself be defiled. For he could have prospered and given himself up to luxuries, letting himself run with the fiery leaps of youth toward whatever was sweet and dear, and be carried along by impulses that no one rebuked. This he did not do; far from it. Instead he reckoned the portion that is with God the better, as it were, and preferred the labors of self-control to everything that pampers for the moment. For he knew that the stirring of the flesh is somehow sweet at first and bewitches the mind as if with honey, so far as there is pleasure in such things; yet in the end it turns to what is no longer sweet. For at once penalties and punishments, and every evil of that kind, will hang over the head of the one who has sinned. Shall we recount a few of the things written about him?

Palladius: By all means.

Cyril: ‘And Joseph,’ it says, ‘was handsome in form and very beautiful in appearance. And after these things his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” But he would not, and he said to his master’s wife, “If because of me my master knows nothing of what is in his house, and he has given into my hands all that he has, and nothing in this house is above me, and nothing has been kept back from me except you, because you are his wife, how then shall I do this evil thing and sin before God?” And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to sleep with her and be with her. Then a certain day came, and Joseph went into the house to do his work, and none of the household was inside; and she caught hold of him by his garments, saying, “Lie with me.” And leaving his garments in her hands, he fled and went outside. And when she saw that he had left his garments in her hands and fled and gone outside, she called those who were in the house and spoke to them, saying, “See, he has brought in a Hebrew servant to us to make sport of us. He came in to me, saying, ‘Lie with me,’ and I cried out with a loud voice. And when he heard that I raised my voice and cried out, he left his garments with me and fled and went outside.”’ (Genesis 39:6–15) You see how the wretched woman tried to force him to her bed against his will, yet his mind stood firm in self-control and was overcome by nothing at all? He was still a lad, only about seventeen years old (Genesis 37:2), with his first beard just coming, at the height of pleasure, amid the most fiery stirrings and, if we may put it so, amid hard desires that heed no warning. For youth is always somehow given to impulses of craving that are still unbroken, and it does not readily bear the bridles that lead to self-control.

Joseph's reward and David's witness§32

32Cyril: But the wondrous Joseph was unshaken. He did not have the loose, undisciplined ways of youth, nor was he afraid because he was a foreigner and a household slave; for he had been forced into both by his brothers when they sold him to the Ishmaelites (Genesis 37:28). And since he was stronger alike than that most loathsome pleasure and than the stirrings toward lewdness, the wretched woman slandered him and turned the charge round against the young man (Genesis 39:17–19). He would not yield to her demands, and she branded him an assailant. From then on the young man was a prisoner (Genesis 39:20); yet by divine grace he was kept safe, and at once he won, as the wage of his self-control, rule over the whole land of the Egyptians (Genesis 41:41). So even if this course brings labors, even if heavy sweat lies before the glories of self-control, it counts for little with one who has chosen to love God wholly. For he will have, yes, he will have praise to match it and rewards of equal weight. That is why the inspired David too marvels at the most praiseworthy young man for what he suffered in this cause, saying, ‘Joseph was sold as a slave; they humbled his feet in fetters; his soul passed through iron’ (Psalm 105:17–18). By iron, I think, he means the hard and unbreakable onset of such sweat, through which one may hold sin in check and depart from all filth, and indeed attain the holy and most pure life, I mean the life of the Gospel, the life in Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to the Father, with the Holy Spirit, to the ages of ages. Amen.