Since, therefore, […]{26}{there is something lost from the text here, and Mangey professes himself unable to supply it without the assistance of some MS. which may be hereafter discovered.} but diseases and infirmities which have been sent against us flourish; let us endeavour to overturn and destroy them. For to offer prayers over them has nearly such an effect as this: it is confessing that, though we have them in our soul living and flourishing, we nevertheless do not yield, but make a stand against them all, and resist them vigorously, until we have entirely sent away the scape-goat and made atonement.
XXI. (73) What, then, follows a man who lives not in accordance with the will of God but the death of the soul? And this is named Methuselah, the interpretation of which name is, “the sending out of death,” on which account he is the son of Mehel, who has quilted his own life, to which death is sent, that is to say the death of the soul, which is nothing else than a conversion of it by irrational passion. (74) This passion, therefore, when it has conceived, brings forth incurable diseases and infirmities with great pains, by which it is thrown down and convulsed, and humbled and tortured. For each of the diseases oppresses it, bringing upon it an unspeakable burden, such that no one is able even to raise his head beneath it. And this is named Lamech; the interpretation of which name is, “humiliation;” so that Lamech is properly represented as the son of Methuselah, being the passion of the death of the soul, humble, yielding, an infirmity which is the offspring of irrational desire.
XXII. (75) “And Lamech took to himself two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other was Zillah.”{27}{#ge 4:19.} Everything which a wicked man taketh himself is altogether blameable, as being polluted by his impure mind; and so, on the contrary, all deliberate actions of virtuous men are praise-worthy; on which account now, Lamech, who is taking wives unto himself, is choosing the greatest possible evils. Again, when Abraham, Jacob, and Aaron take to themselves wives, they choose appropriate good things to dwell with. (76) Now Moses speaks thus in the case of Abraham: “And Abraham and Nachor took unto themselves wives; the name of Abraham’s wife was Sarai.”{28}{#ge 11:29.} And in the case of Jacob he says, “Rise up and go into Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother’s father, and take unto thyself a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother’s Brother.”{29}{#ge 28:2.} In the case of Aaron he says, and Aaron took Elizabeth, the daughter of Aminadab, the sister of Naassom, unto him to be his Wife.”{30}{#ex 6:23.} (77) Isaac too and Moses take unto themselves wives, but they do not take them of their own act entirely; but Isaac, “When he went into the house of his Mother,”{31}{#ge 24:67.} is said to have taken a wife; and to Moses, “The man with whom he lodged gave his daughter Zipporah to be his Wife.”{32}{#ex 2:21.}
XXIII. (78) Now it is not without a purpose that the differences between these persons are recorded by the lawgiver. For in the case of those who practise virtue and improve, and become
better, their deliberate choice of the good bears testimony that their labour shall not be dismissed without its reward; but in the case of those who are endued with self-taught and naturally implanted wisdom, it follows that reason is betrothed to them not by their own act, but by God, and that they take unto themselves knowledge, the fitting companion through life of the wise. (79) But he who is wholly devoted to the things of ordinary men, the lowly and grovelling-minded Lamech, first of all takes for his wife Adah, which name being interpreted, means “witness,” having been his own manager of this marriage. For he thinks that Leah, which means the motion and passage out of the mind according to easy perceptions, without anything interfering to hinder its easy comprehension of all things, is the first good for man. (80) “For what,” says he, “could be better than that one’s thoughts, one’s contemplations, one’s conjectures, one’s suspicions, in a word, all one’s ideas, should, as I may say, proceed on well-set feet, so as to arrive at their desired goal without stumbling, the mind being borne witness to in everything that is uttered.” But I, if any man employs a felicitous and well directed mind to good objects only, account that man happy taking the law for my teacher in this view. For the law called Joseph “a prosperous Man,”{33}{#ge 39:3.} not in all things, but “in those matters in which God gave him prosperity.” And all the gifts of God are good. (81) But if any one uses the acuteness and readiness of his nature, not solely for virtuous objects, but also for opposite purposes, being himself indifferent in a matter which is not indifferent, he should be accounted unhappy. At all events, it is said, in the manner of a curse, in the place where mention is made of the confusion of tongues, “And now nothing will be restrained from them of all the things which they have imagined to Do.”{34}{#ge 11:6.} For in truth it is an irremediable calamity for the soul to be prosperous in whatever it undertakes, when its undertakings are disgraceful. (82) But I should pray, if ever I had a design to commit injustice, that I might fail in my iniquity; and if I had a wish to live in a manner unbecoming a man, that I might fail in my intemperance; and if I wished to conduct myself with boldness and unscrupulous wickedness, that my failure in such boldness and unscrupulous wickedness might be complete: unless in the case of those who have determined to steal, or to commit adultery, or to murder, it is not an advantage to find their purposes in all these matters fail and become abortive.
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