LX. (172) There is a certain peculiarity which is attached to this word. For when it calls the soul to itself, it excites a congealing power in everything which is earthly, or corporeal, or under the influence of the external senses. On which account it is said to be “like the hoar-frost on the Earth.”{81}{#ex 6:16.} For when the man who beholds God, meditates a flight from the passions, “the waves are frozen,” that is to say, the impetuous rush, and the increase, and the haughty pride of the waves are arrested, in order that he who might behold the living God might then pass over the Passion.{82}{#ex 16:15.} (173) Therefore the souls inquire of one another, those, that is, that have clearly felt the influence of the word, but which are not able to say what it is. For very often, when sensible of a sweet taste, we are nevertheless ignorant of the flavour which has caused it, and when we smell sweet scents, we still do not know what they are. And in the same manner also the soul very often, when it is delighted, is yet unable to explain what it is that has delighted it; but it is taught by the hierophant and prophet Moses, who tells it, “This is the bread, the food which God has given for the Soul,”{83}{#ex 16:15.} explaining that God has brought it, his own word and his own reason; for this bread which he has given us to eat is this word of his.
LXI. (174) He says also in Deuteronomy, “And he has humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knowest not, neither did thy fathers know, that he might make thee know that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man Life.”{84}{#de 8:3.} Now this illtreating and humbling of them is a sign of his being propitiated by them, for he is propitiated as to the souls of us who are wicked on the tenth day. For when he strips us of all our pleasant things, we appear to ourselves to be ill-treated, that is in truth to have God propitious to us. (175) And God also causes us hunger, not that which proceeds from virtue, but that which is engendered by passion and vice. And the proof of this is, that he nourishes us with his own word, which is the most universal of all things, for manna being interpreted, means “what?” and “what” is the most universal of all things; for the word of God is over all the world, and is the most ancient, and the most universal of all the things that are created. This word our fathers knew not; I speak not of those who are so in truth, but of those who are grey with age, who say, “Let us give them a guide, and let us turn Back”{85}{#nu 14:1.} unto passion, that is to say, to Egypt. (176) Therefore, let God enjoin the soul, saying to it that, “Man shall not live by bread alone,” speaking in a figure, “but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” that is to say, he shall be nourished by the whole word of God, and by every portion of it. For the mouth is the symbol of the language, and a word is a portion of it. Accordingly the soul of the more perfect man is nourished by the whole word; but we must be contented if we are nourished by a portion of it.
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