Hair as the mind’s thoughts: Israel’s vow, and the shaving before the eighth day

Cyril: Then I will tell you as best I can. But you, for your part, must forgive me if I stray at all from the road; for the subject is a subtle one, and the riddle obscure.

Palladius: Agreed.

Cyril: Since the head of the body, Palladius, represents in itself the mind for us (for so the divine and holy Scripture saw fit), we liken to hairs and locks the thoughts that rise naturally from the mind and within it, by which we are guided to the knowledge of anything that exists, whatever it may be. For these are what spring up for us from the head.

Palladius: I will keep that in mind.

Cyril: So in us too the mind is, in a manner of speaking, unshorn, and has a full head of hair for God, when it is filled with good thoughts. But it is bare and stripped, and suffers a most shameful baldness, if it neither holds right conceptions of God nor is enriched with the best and blameless knowledge of all that ought to be done.

Palladius: True; we were going over this just now.

Cyril: So then, before the coming of the Savior, Israel was called through Moses to the knowledge of God, and for this reason he was also sanctified. And in a certain way he made to God the vow of purity. For at Mount Horeb he plainly promised that he would keep the law, saying: ‘All that the Lord God has spoken we will do and hear’ (Exodus 24:7; Deuteronomy 5:27). So his mind was full of the teaching of the law, and the glories of the commandment given through Moses were, as it were, a head of hair grown for God. But they were defiled by a dead body, for they killed Emmanuel. The death of Christ was truly holy, but for those who killed him the guilt of killing the Lord was a defilement. So the law now commands them to shave off the teaching of the law like a head of hair, and, one might almost say, to crop off on the seventh day whatever was in types (Numbers 6:9), that is, whatever came before the eighth day, the day on which Christ came back to life, renewing us to incorruption and refashioning us for a new life, the life of the Gospel. So, having cropped off what came before the eighth day, he grows his hair again and sanctifies his head after the eighth day (Numbers 6:11). And the mind grows its hair again no longer with types and shadows, as before, but with the very teachings that stand in faith and truth. Or do you not think that those justified by faith must be stripped, as it were, of the good repute won by worship under the law, and must grow anew and take into their inmost mind and heart the knowledge of the Gospel way of life, as far better and more excellent than the way given at the beginning?

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: Did not Paul, a man schooled in the law, cry out clearly and openly about those ancient glories of the law, saying: ‘Whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ our Lord, for whose sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them…’ (Philippians 3:7–8)