Collectio dictorum veteris testamenti

 is forced to descend into a foreign state and if the demons should see any good understanding accompanying him, they hasten to subject it to the sowi

 escaping. The heifer, taken first, signified the first generation. For just as the heifer struggles against the yoke, so also the first generation of

 the river, but to keep alive every female. For the devil, the spiritual Pharaoh, also conceived a threefold manner of plotting against the spiritual I

 He interprets what that one speaks spiritually and obscurely, and transforms his weak voice to be more melodious. For I have not come, he says, to abo

 the Gospel according to Christ, had as a son the multitude of those being reborn to it through the Holy Spirit whom she also circumcised with a stone

 and easy to comprehend is the mystery concerning Christ. But God did not lead the Jews to this immediately, but through the long law and the many ridd

 Moses commanded Joshua son of Nun to choose mighty men and go out and fight 77.1196 Amalek, signified that Jesus Christ would be subject to the comman

 of the people of the Jews, and servant of God, he ascends to the highest knowledge of God but the people are prevented from approaching, lest they di

 coming after it, demands this final penalty, as one who, after being freed from the burden of sin, is again voluntarily subjected to it. And He comman

 But the eighth ineffably suggests the mystery of the eternal well-being of the 77.1204 beings. The sixth day is called Preparation, because on it the

 and poverty of intellect, they make their neighbors, that is, those of the same faith, partners, so that through one another they may be raised to hig

 unmixed with wickedness, those partaking of the true Lamb nourish their own soul, throughout the whole weekly age, which is measured by the week. And

 the body bears uncircumcision. Circumcision is mystical, a voluntary removal of the passions. The circumcision of circumcision is the putting away of

 of rational discernment, as Israel did in the time of Moses, commits idolatry. For having cast into the fire of the passions the words concerning theo

 to do good things, and to walk toward good things. Humpbacked is the one bent downwards, and not able to look up from earthly things. Sun-spotted is o

 God, ostracizing stupidity, and wishing his subjects to belong to necessity alone, through the not weaving together of linen and wool, banished variet

 but in heaven God Himself whom alone they both worship and attend. And on the day that the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, an

 they were catechized by the evangelists. Or otherwise, the four types of meanings were a symbol of the four types of moral discourse. Of which the one

 Aaron's rod, as a symbol of watchfulness. For to Jeremiah, seeing a staff of a nut tree, God says: Behold, I am watchful over my words. And it budded

 bracelets, and rings, and armlets, and braided chains. For the leaders of the people in Christ and the eminent often surpass the evangelical commands

 with bodily ways of the ministry of the virtues, they return to the contemplation of kindred intelligible things. A foreign boy and a servant-girl are

 undertaking. For she will pay the penalty for the offense to God, the Father of spirits, and she will be his wife, as having already been joined to hi

 of the other man wherefore he is required to pay the penalty for the murder, but he alone suffers loss in his soul. For this, I think, is what this m

 war for one year he shall cheer his wife, whom he has taken. For it is not right that one who has just taken a spouse for himself should be led out t

 Virtue is the mother of the good deeds from it. And its nest is the soul in which it dwells. It is necessary for those who encounter them to be benefi

 its fruit for three years will be unpurified for you. It shall not be eaten, and in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy to the Lord. But in th

 dragging down to earth, those things that draw up to heaven. Saul, is the natural 77.1249 law, which from the beginning received from the Lord the lot

 David is the law according to the spirit, who reigns over the Christians who worship God spiritually. But Saul is the law according to the letter, who

 the face of the Lord, according to David, and learns the cause of such a famine, that this injustice was against Saul, and against his house, with whi

 taking from the spiritual David, that is, the law according to the spirit, may kill the aforementioned sons and grandsons of 77.1257 Saul then in eve

 of knowledge, if it should receive the divine and discerning word, which brings to memory former sins, and will prefer even to nature itself the heali

 The Lord in the desert I mean in the world, and in the nature of men, digging out and cleansing the hearts of the worthy from material weight and min

 of the city. Since Hezekiah is interpreted as 'strength of God,' every mind 77.1265 that through practical philosophy has acquired divine strength, wh

 through themselves they again turn him away, as he flees into his land which is the fixed habit of evil, whom his sons kill as he is fleeing, and the

 the king of the Assyrians, flees to God, and silently cries out to Him, through progress in virtue and knowledge, and receives an angel as an ally th

 at once a philosopher and a lover of God has both Judah and Jerusalem the one taken as the habit of confession and repentance for Judah is interpret

 becomes a lofty and exalted mind, and in the good things given to it by God, boasts as if in its own accomplishments. There comes by providence upon t

 the spear and the flask of water that is, the power of practical virtue, and the grace of gnostic contemplation, even if he again gives these things

 of king Darius, I mean of the natural law, having conquered by him, lifts up his face to heaven, that is, the disposition of the soul, in which are th

 not being guarded. For lead is a symbol of punishment, but silver of brightness. And the seven eyes of this practical faith are the seven gifts of the

 constituted. For since matter is indeed a tetrad, because of the tetraktys of its elements, and form is a pentad, because of the fivefold nature of se

 they rise up for mischief. And approaching Zerubbabel, and Joshua and the leaders of the families, they say to them: We will build with you for like

coming after it, demands this final penalty, as one who, after being freed from the burden of sin, is again voluntarily subjected to it. And He commanded also through the voice of Jeremiah, not to carry burdens on the day of the Sabbath, nor to do any work, nor to go forth from Jerusalem. For it is necessary for those who keep the Sabbath spiritually not to take up again the burdens of sin, nor to do an evil work; nor to be carried outside the most holy and God-fearing commonwealth. That he forbade evil work is clear from the fact that the priests on the Sabbath both slaughtered the victims, and carved the meat, and circumcised, and did all things that pertain to the worship of God. And Jesus the son of Nun, by besieging Jericho on the Sabbath, typified that it is fitting for those who keep the Sabbath spiritually to act manfully against the opposing demons. And in Deuteronomy, discoursing about a Hebrew man-servant and a Hebrew woman-servant who have been sold, he has said. But in the seventh year you shall send him away, 77.1201 but you shall not send him away empty; but you shall furnish him, from your sheep, and from your grain, and from your winepress. For since the Sabbath is the seventh, and the last of the whole week; and in the last days God the Redeemer became man; then indeed He sent us forth through faith in him and adoption, which is through holy baptism, free from the slavery of sin, having been sold to it; and he furnished us from his sheep, that is, from the sacrifice according to him, and from his body and blood; which are signified by the grain and the winepress. For the mystical bread and wine are called and believed to be the body and blood of the Savior. And in the same book he also commanded these things: After seven years you shall make a release of debts. And you shall not demand it of your brother, but of a foreigner you shall demand it. For in the last days, as has been said, God, having become man, forgave for all who believe in him the debts of their own sins. And from him who has become his brother through adoption to the Father which is through holy baptism, he does not demand, having forgiven the past debts. But from the one who is a foreigner to faith in him, he in every way demands everything. The sixth day according to Scripture introduces the completion of those things which exist according to nature. The seventh circumscribes the movement of temporal property; and the eighth indicates the mode of the state beyond nature and time. He who has divinely completed the sixth day for himself with fitting works and concepts, and has himself well completed his own works with God, has passed beyond in understanding all the substance of things under nature and time, and has been transferred to the mystical contemplation of the ages and of eternal things, keeping sabbath unknowingly, according to the mind, in the total cessation from and transcendence of beings. But he who has been deemed worthy also of the eighth, has risen from the dead, from all things, I say, after God, both sensible and intelligible, and of reasons and thoughts, and has lived the blessed life of God, of the one who alone in truth is properly life and being and is so called, having himself become God by deification. The sixth day is the complete fulfillment of practical matters concerning the energies according to nature. But the seventh is the completion and cessation of contemplative matters concerning the ineffable knowledge, of all natural concepts. And the eighth, the transference and transition of the worthy toward deification; and perhaps the Lord, possibly indicating this seventh and eighth more mystically, called it a day of consummation, as circumscribing the mysteries and reasons of all things, which none at all of the heavenly and earthly powers will be able to know before the experience of suffering them, except the blessed divinity itself that made these things. The sixth day indicates the principle of the being of things that are. But the seventh signifies the mode of the well-being of things that are.

μετερχόμενον, τὴν ἐσχάτην ταύτην ἀπαιτεῖ δίκην, ὡς μετὰ τὸ ἀπαλλαγῆναι τοῦ βάρους τῆς ἁμαρτίας, αὖθις αὐτῇ καθυπαγόμενον ἑκουσίως. Ἐνετείλατο δὲ καὶ διὰ φωνῆς Ἱερεμίου, μὴ αἴρειν βαστάγματα ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν Σαββάτων, μηδὲ ποιεῖν ἔργον, μηδὲ ἐκπορεύεσθαι ἐξ Ἱερουσαλήμ. Χρὴ γὰρ τοὺς πνευματικῶς σαββατίζοντας μὴ πάλιν αἴρειν βάρη ἁμαρτίας, μὴ δὲ ποιεῖν ἔργον πονηρόν· μηδ' ἔξω τῆς ἱερωτάτης καὶ θεοσεβοῦς πολιτείας φέρεσθαι. Ὅτι δὲ τὸ πονηρὸν ἔργον ἐκώλυσε, δῆλον ἀπὸ τοῦ τοὺς ἱερεῖς ἐν Σαββάτῳ καὶ σφαγιάζειν τὰ θύματα, καὶ κρεανομεῖν, καὶ περιτέμνειν, καὶ πάντα ἐργάζεσθαι, ὅσα πρὸς θεραπείαν Θεοῦ. Καὶ Ἰησοῦς δὲ ὁ τοῦ Ναυῆ ἐν Σαββάτῳ τὴν Ἱεριχὼ πολιορκήσας, ὑπετύπωσεν ὅτι προσήκει τοῖς πνευματικῶς σαββατίζουσιν ἀνδρίζεσθαι κατὰ τῶν ἀντικειμένων δαιμόνων. Καὶ ἐν τῷ ∆ευτερονομίῳ δὲ περὶ παιδὸς Ἑβραίου καὶ Ἑβραίας πεπραμένων διαλεγόμενος, εἴρηκεν. Ἐν δὲ τῷ ἑβδόμῳ ἔτει ἐξαποστελεῖς αὐτὸν, οὐκ 77.1201 ἐξαποστελεῖς δὲ αὐτὸν κενόν· ἀλλ' ἐφοδιάσεις αὐτὸν, ἀπὸ τῶν προβάτων σου, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ σίτου σου, καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ληνοῦ σου. Ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἕβδομον μὲν τὸ Σάββατον, καὶ ἔσχατον τῆς ὅλης ἑβδομάδος· ἐπ' ἐσχάτων δὲ τῶν ἡμερῶν ὁ Λυτρωτὴς Θεὸς ἐνηνθρώπησε· τότε δὴ τότε ἐξαπέστειλεν ἡμᾶς διὰ τῆς εἰς αὐτὸν πίστεως καὶ υἱοθεσίας, τῆς διὰ τοῦ ἁγίου βαπτίσματος, ἐλευθέρους τῆς δουλείας τῆς ἁμαρτίας, πεπραμένους αὐτῇ· καὶ ἐφωδίασεν ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τῶν προβάτων αὐτοῦ, τοῦτ' ἔστιν, ἀπὸ τῆς κατ' αὐτὸν θυσίας, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος καὶ αἵματος αὐτοῦ· ἃ δηλοῦνται διὰ τοῦ σίτου καὶ τῆς ληνοῦ. Ὁ γὰρ μυστικὸς ἄρτος καὶ οἶνος σῶμα καὶ αἷμα τοῦ Σωτῆρος λέγονται καὶ πιστεύονται. Ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ δὲ βίβλῳ καὶ τάδε προσέταξε· ∆ι' ἑπτὰ ἐτῶν ποιήσεις ἄφεσιν χρεῶν. Καὶ τὸν μὲν ἀδελφόν σου οὐκ ἀπαιτήσεις, τὸν δὲ ἀλλότριον ἀπαιτήσεις. Ἐπ' ἐσχάτων γὰρ, ὡς εἴρηται, τῶν ἡμερῶν, ὁ Θεὸς ἐνανθρωπήσας, ἀφῆκε πᾶσι τοῖς εἰς αὐτὸν πιστεύουσι τὰς ὀφειλὰς τῶν οἰκείων ἁμαρτημάτων. Καὶ τὸν μὲν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ γενόμενον διὰ τῆς πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα υἱοθεσίας τῆς διὰ τοῦ ἁγίου βαπτίσματος, οὐκ ἀπαιτεῖ, συγχωρήσας τὰ προωφειλημένα. Τὸν δὲ ἀλλότριον τῆς εἰς αὐτὸν πίστεως, ἀπαιτεῖ πάντως πάντα. Ἡ ἕκτη κατὰ τὴν Γραφὴν ἡμέρα τὴν τῶν ὑπὸ φύσιν ὅντων εἰσηγεῖται συμπλήρωσιν. Ἡ ἑβδόμη δὲ τῆς χρονικῆς ἰδιότητος περιγράφει τὴν κίνησιν· ἡ δὲ ὀγδόη τῆς ὑπὲρ φύσιν καὶ χρόνον ὑποδηλοῖ καταστάσεως τὸν τρόπον. Ὁ τὴν ἕκτην θεϊκῶς μετὰ τῶν προσφόρων ἔργων καὶ ἐννοιῶν ἑαυτῷ συμπληρώσας ἡμέραν, καὶ αὐτὸς μετὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ καλῶς τὰ ἐαυτοῦ συντελέσας ἔργα, διέβη τῇ κατανοήσει πᾶσαν τὴν τῶν ὑπὸ φύσιν καὶ χρόνον ὑπόστασιν, καὶ εἰς τὴν τῶν αἰώνων καὶ τῶν αἰωνίων μετετάξατο μυστικὴν θεωρίαν, σαββατίζων ἀγνώστως, κατὰ νοῦν, τὴν ὁλικὴν τῶν ὄντων ἀπόληψίν τε καὶ ὑπέρβασιν. Ὁ δὲ καὶ τῆς ὀγδόης ἀξιωθεὶς, ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν ἀνέστη, τῶν μετὰ Θεὸν, λέγω, πάντων, αἰσθητῶν τε καὶ νοητῶν, καὶ λόγων καὶ νοημάτων, καὶ ἔζησε τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ μακαρίαν ζωὴν, τοῦ μόνου κατ' ἀλήθειαν κυρίως ζωὴ καὶ ὄντος καὶ λεγομένου, οἷα καὶ αὐτὸς γενόμενος τῇ θεώσει Θεός. Ἕκτη ἡμέρα ἐστὶν ἡ τῶν πρακτικῶν περὶ τὴν τῶν κατὰ φύσιν ἐνεργειῶν παντελὴς ἀποπλήρωσις. Ἑβδόμη δέ ἐστιν ἡ τῶν θεωρητικῶν περὶ τὴν ἄῤῥητον γνῶσιν, πασῶν τῶν φυσικῶν ἐννοιῶν ἀποπεράτωσις καὶ ἀπόπαυσις. Ὀγδόη δὲ, ἡ πρὸς θέωσιν τῶν ἀξίων μετάταξίς τε καὶ μετάβασις· καὶ μήποτε ταύτην τὴν ἑβδόμην καὶ τὴν ὀγδόην τυχὸν μυστικώτερον ὑποφαίνων ὁ Κυρίος, προσηγόρευσεν ἡμέραν συντελείας, ὡς πάντων περιγράφουσαν τὰ μυστήρια καὶ τοὺς λόγους, ἃ οὐδὲν οὐδαμῶς τὸ παράπαν τῶν ἐπουρανίων καὶ ἐπιγείων δυνάμεων γνῶναι πρὸ πείρας τοῦ παθεῖν δυνήσεται, πλὴν αὐτῆς τῆς ταῦτα ποιησάσης μακαρίας θεότητος. Ἡ ἕκτη ἡμέρα τὸν τοῦ εἶναι τῶν ὄντων λόγον ὑποδηλοῖ. Ἡ δὲ ἑβδόμη τὸν τοῦ εὖ εἶναι τῶν ὄντων τρόπον ὑποσημαίνει.