(11) What is the meaning of, “But thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace, being nourished in a fair old age?” (#Ge 15:15). He here clearly indicates the incorruptibility of the soul: when it transfers itself out of the abode of the mortal body and returns as it were to the metropolis of its native country, from which it originally emigrated into the body. Since to say to a dead man, “Thou shalt go to thy fathers,” what else is this but to propose to him and set before him a second existence apart from the body as far as it is proper for the soul of the wise man to dwell by itself? But when he says this he does not mean by the fathers of Abraham his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfathers after the flesh, for they were not all deserving of praise so as to be by any possibility any honour to him who arrived at the succession of the same order, but he appears by this expression to be assigning to him for his fathers, according to the opinion of many commentators, all the elements into which the mortal man when deceased is resolved. But to me he appears to intend to indicate the incorporeal substances and inhabiters of the divine world, whom in other passages he is accustomed to call angels. Moreover the words which follow are not by any means without an object, that he is nourished in peace and in a fair old age. For the wicked and depraved man is nourished in battle, and lives and departs in a very bad old age. But the good man, in both phases of existence, both in that which is in connection with the body and in that which is apart from the body, cultivates peace, and is alone completely virtuous, such as no foolish person is found to be, even though he should live longer than an elephant; on which account he here carefully said, “Thou shalt go to thy fathers, being nourished-not in an advanced old age, but-in a fair old age.” For many foolish persons also have their lives extended to a greatly lengthened period, but it is only the man who is desirous of virtue who enjoys a good old age and one endued with virtue.
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