The Pillar and the Womb

They say the law: 'You shall not make for yourself a pillar' (Deuteronomy 16:22), signifying that everyone who practices forbidden things raises up a life like a pillar. Therefore, one may also rightly say that the one doing good things is setting up a pillar, as a symbol of the contests through which he has struggled.

For such is the fruit of righteousness (Psalm 58:2), and in Proverbs: 'To perceive true justice and to direct judgment' (Proverbs 1:3). But injustice entangles, joining sin by acting without distinction in evil. This is equal to the binding of one's own sins in a knot. It is not in vain that you work iniquity in the land (Psalm 58:2); for if someone makes iniquity in the heart, he works it in the land, that is, concerning material things.

Those daring to slander the Scriptures and dragging this word into error, saying that those who are led astray from the stomach and speak lies are not true, say that the fulfillment of the word is sinning. It is not right to say that those who have not perceived the habit of the Scripture have thought these things; the newborn infant is receptive to virtue and to wickedness in power, then receiving by operation whichever of these two it encounters, it will know good and evil. For then also the word is fulfilled, when it begins to act according to virtue. It is said that the good has been made from the mother's womb. Such is what Job says: 'Even if I ate my morsel alone and did not share with the orphan' (Job 31:17); for from the mother's womb they guided them and I nourished them as a father. And those who, failing regarding the word, rushed to the fulfillment of the word from error, began to act. And the expression 'to speak' signifies 'having spoken lies.' Perhaps also, as in the preceding verse, to be a shepherd and to be of another birth: those born from a bad teaching, from the very stomach that bore them, referring to the being led astray and the speaking of lies.

They say that the ears of an asp, the so-called 'palms,' stop up its ears. For if ever an incantator according to his own wisdom were to utter some incantation capable of lulling it to sleep, if it should hear, it stops up its ears so as not to hear the voice of the incantator, as if a medicine being prepared by a wise man. And these also stop up, not the ears of sense but the ears of understanding, lest they hear those who utter the wise prophetic and apostolic incantations.

For each of these is wise in preparing drugs, that is, preparing a logical medicine warding off the asp's attack.

But 'of medicine' is to be read as standing in apposition—that is, he is drugged by accompaniment and not by word.

Ps 57:7-8a: And God does this to them as a benefactor, lest, devouring the men deceived by them, they become liable to excessive punishment,

and so he crushed their molars, that they might neither bite nor devour.

And it should be noted that according to Scripture molars differ from teeth; for the cutting teeth divide the food, while the molars chew and grind.

And just as water passing through some channel, not remaining but being scattered, is brought to nothing and becomes contemptible, so also these shall be despised, having nothing firm and permanent but having received temporarily a watery and moist life.

Ps 57:8b-10: And we said before that his arrows signify his punishments, and the bow is that from which the arrows are sent; these are God's judicial power.

He stretches this bow, then, not slackening it until those struck grow weak;

and their growing weak is for their good, since the strength they had concerning evil is being destroyed.

And just as melting wax is destroyed insofar as it is meltable, having the thickness of the first subject changed into fire, so the worthless, having experienced punishment, melting, cast off the thickness from the wicked disposition.

But before punishment is the true light, which is the sun of righteousness;

for after punishment it is not possible to approach the radiance of the intelligible sun.

Hence it is said here: when the punishing light fell, those who fell under punishment did not see the sun.

But those who have understood their own passions, more allegorically called thorns, shall not be tried by punishing wrath,

but before understanding the thorns and bramble spoken of spiritually, as if living, they shall be swallowed up by wrath;

for not living but being like the living, they shall be seized by wrath.

For 'to swallow up' according to Scripture signifies to master and conquer, with the one swallowed already mastered and conquered.

For the mortal is swallowed up by life, with life mastering and conquering death (2 Cor 5:4).