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Interpretation on the book of being. Interpretation on the book of Genesis Genesis 6 9

Who are the sons of God and the daughters of men. Interpretation of Genesis 6:4

Let's read these texts. Genesis 6 chapter

1 When people began to multiply on the earth and their daughters were born, 2 then sons of god saw daughters of men that they are beautiful, and they took them as their wife, which one chose. 3 And the Lord said, My Spirit will not last forever neglected by people; because they are flesh; let their days be a hundred and twenty years. 4 At that time there were giants on the earth, especially since sons of god began to enter daughters of men, and they began to give birth to them: these are strong, glorious people from ancient times.

Looking carefully at the text, it is clear that the Lord did not like that sons of God take to wife daughters of men. It is after these words that the indignation of God follows: “My Spirit will not be neglected forever. people". That is, it means that “sons of God” are the same, “men” who “neglect My (Holy) Spirit”. This means that we are not talking about aliens or Angels who marry people.

So what do these seemingly controversial verses say? Holy Scripture? In fact, everything is very simple, if you carefully study the Bible.

Already on the first pages of the Holy Scriptures it is described that soon after creation, people were divided into two groups - some lived according to the will of God, the second decided to exist independently and lead a lifestyle that they like and think is right.

The son of the first people Adam and Eve Cain after the murder of Abel away from the Lord:

"And Cain departed from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod"(Genesis 4:16).

And the children of their third son, Seth, chose let with God:

Gen. 4:25 And Adam also knew his wife, and she gave birth to a son, and called his name: Seth, because, she said, God put another seed for me, instead of Abel, whom Cain killed. 26 Seth also had a son, and he called his name Enos; THEN began to CALL on the name of the Lord.

That is, the sons of God are the tribe of Seth, since they lived with God according to His laws. The children of men are the descendants of Cain, who have departed from the Lord.

"Then the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and took [them] for themselves as a wife, which one they chose"(Genesis 6:2).

And gradually, evil penetrated all people to such an extent that God repented that he had created man:

“And the Lord saw that the corruption of men was great on the earth, and that ALL the thoughts and thoughts of their hearts were evil at all times; and the Lord repented that he had created man on earth.”(Genesis 6:5).

As for the giants, these are large people who have always met (remember Goliath). Probably, there were giants in the clan of Kain, who, naturally, became more after mixing with the clan of Seth, since giants also began to appear in the families of the Sethites. Perhaps here we are talking about people whom we today call Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons. Or maybe other tall races of people were called giants. Several skeletons have already been excavated, the height of the owners of which was about 3 meters.

After mixing people who worship God with peoples who had departed from the Lord, God’s people gradually began to move away from the Creator… This happened gradually, until they completely forgot His laws, eventually falling in love with evil. And then followed the cleansing of the earth from the sin that had devoured it, by the Great Flood. God wanted to give mankind a second chance. But as we know, then people again departed from God. And as Jesus said, cleansing awaits the earth again. But not with water, but with fire.

Analyzing the negative consequences of mixing believers and unbelievers, one can understand why the Lord in His law gave a strict ban on the relationship of His people with the pagans.

Ref. 34:15 Do not enter into an alliance with the inhabitants of that land, so that when they fornicate after their gods and offer sacrifices to their gods, you will not be invited, and you would not taste their sacrifice; 16 And you shall not take wives from their daughters for your sons, lest their daughters commit fornication after their gods, and lead your sons to fornicate after their gods.

Ezdr. 9:11 the land into which you are going to take possession of it is an unclean land, it is defiled by the uncleanness of foreign peoples, their abominations, with which they filled it from end to end in their defilements. 12 Therefore, do not give your daughters to their sons, and do not take their daughters to your sons.. When using, indicate the author, site name and material

Valery Tatarkin
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. then the sons of God saw the daughters of men,

This is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to interpret; his main difficulty lies in determining who is to be understood here by the "sons of God." Some, mainly Jewish rabbis, based on the philological meaning of the root El (God), saw here an indication of the sons of nobles and princes, in general, of higher and noble classes, allegedly marrying girls of the lower social strata. Hence, the term "sons of God" in Arabic. the text is translated - filii illustrium, in the Targum of Onkelos - filii principium, in Symmachus - υἱοὶ των δοναστεύοντων . But this explanation does not positively withstand any criticism, being completely arbitrary and not explaining the further consequences of the indicated fact.

Most of the other Jewish and Christian interpreters of antiquity, together with the rationalists of modern times, understand Angels by "sons of God". Being thoroughly developed in the apocryphal books - Enoch and Jubilees and in the writings of Philo, this opinion in the first centuries of the Christian era was so widely known that it was shared even by many of the fathers and teachers of the Church (Justin the Philosopher, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Ambrose and others). Although it is true that under the term "sons of God" Holy Scripture sometimes, mainly in the poetic sections, means "angels" (and others), nevertheless, both the very context of this narrative and its positive historical character, and the philological dogmatic requirements do not allow one to take the side of this opinion.

The only correct one, happily avoiding the shortcomings of the two above opinions and satisfying all the philological, textual and historical-dogmatic requirements, we consider the third opinion, according to which the pious “Sephites” should be understood as “sons of God”. Most of the Fathers of the Church (John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Blessed Theodoret, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Augustine, etc.) and a number of modern scholarly exegetes (led by Keil) stand on his side.

This opinion is fully justified philologically, since the name "sons of God" in the Holy Scriptures of both Testaments (; ; ; ; ; and others) is often applied to pious people. This is also favored by the context of the previous narrative, in which, when calculating the offspring of Seth, the name of God is placed at the head of it, which is why all the Sethites are presented as if His children. Even more emphatically the same is indicated by the final verse of chapter 4, where () it is said that in the days of Enos the Sethites began to solemnly call on the name of the Lord and themselves were called "sons of God" in his honor. Finally, the very nature of the marriages concluded between the sons of God and the daughters of men speaks for this: in the sense of the biblical expression used here, these were not temporary and unnatural ties (which could only be the intercourse of Angels with wives), but ordinary marriages, correct legally, though pernicious in its moral consequences.

that they are beautiful, and took: their to himself as a wife, which one has chosen.

If we remember that when describing the Cainites, physical beauty and sensual charm were in the foreground (Ada, Zilla, Noema), then it becomes clear that here the writer of everyday life is talking about the Cainites. With such an understanding of “sons of God” and “daughters of men,” we fully support the opposition given in the text: both of them are representatives of the same primitive humanity; but, being similar in nature, they are opposite in their spiritual and moral mood: the “sons of God” were the spokesmen for everything good, exalted and good; the daughters of men, behaving seductively - the personification of earthly sensual interests. Over time, the opposite of morals disappears - the sons of God mix with the daughters of men, which blurs the line between good and evil and gives full scope to the dominance of the lower, sensual interests of the flesh to the detriment of the higher interests of the spirit.

. And the Lord [God] said: My Spirit will not forever be neglected by men [these],

Obviously, here there is a continuation of the previous narrative: the fact itself was indicated there, here an assessment is given corresponding to it; and if here the actors are clearly called people, then they (and not Angels) were also understood above. In particular, the words of the biblical text: “To My Spirit” and contain an indication either of the inner, spiritual essence of human nature (with a deaf reference to the history of human creation, ), or, even more likely, of the Holy Spirit, as a building principle any in general () and religious-ethical life par excellence. Neglect of Him is precisely that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which, according to the Savior, is one of the most serious deadly sins (), since it characterizes such a degree of sinful hardening of a person, with which no correction becomes psychologically impossible.

because they are flesh;

This is the reason why people have neglected the divine Spirit and deserved to be punished. Met. Philaret translates the first word of this phrase more precisely: “in his error,” obviously, the biblical author by this again pointed to the unholy intercourse between the Sethites and the Cainites. Since, entering into such marriages, people testified to the decline of their higher, spiritual interests and the domination of lower, carnal interests, they themselves, as it were, turned into that rough flesh, which in the language of Holy Scripture serves as a synonym for everything vile, material and sinful.

let their days be a hundred and twenty years.

These words cannot be understood in the sense of reducing human life to the limits of one hundred and twenty years (as I. Flavius understood, Antiquities 1, 3, 2), since it is reliably known that for a long time and after the flood, mankind lived for more than 120 years, sometimes reaching up to 500, but one should see in them the period appointed by God for repentance and correction of people, during which the righteous Noah prophesied about the flood and made appropriate preparations for it ().

. At that time there were giants on earth,

The antediluvian humanity is called "giants", in the original nephilim - "nephilim". Although, indeed, in Scripture this term sometimes serves as a designation for giants or giants (), but the main meaning of this root is “destroy, overthrow”, but in the form nif- "make fall, seduce, corrupt." Therefore, in these primitive "nephilim" one can see people not only distinguished by extraordinary physical strength and growth, but also persons who deliberately violated the truth and oppressed the weak. There were such figures among the Cainites before, probably from the time of Tubal Cain, who invented weapons, and Lamech, who sang to him a victory hymn; since the mixing of the Sethites with the Cainites, these “nephilim” have especially multiplied as a result of the general corruption and the fall of all moral foundations.

These are strong, since ancient times glorious people.

Here we are talking about the fruits of mixed marriages, which, in contrast to the "nephilim" in the Hebrew text, are called "gibborim" (strong ones). The last name, according to biblical word usage, means an outstanding person (;), a selective warrior, a person who surpasses others in his strength (). From this it is obvious that the descendants of mixed genera (Sethites with Cainites) surpassed their prototypes, both in physical and immoral properties. Calling these "gibborim" from ancient times "glorious people", the writer of everyday life probably meant here the fact that they, under the name "heroes of antiquity", received world fame in the universal traditions of mankind ().

. all the thoughts and thoughts of their hearts were evil at all times;

The root of the deep corruption of antediluvian humanity is indicated in the damage to the heart, and since the latter, according to the biblical view, is considered the central focus of all human conscious activity, its corruption is tantamount to infecting the very source of life ().

. and the Lord repented that he had created man on earth,

The concept of the property of repentance attributed to God can be borrowed from the story of Saul, where repentance is attributed to God twice () and where, meanwhile, Samuel says about God that He is not a man to repent of Him (). From this it is clear that when it is said about Him as a man, it is because, in the words of Aben Ezra, the law speaks the language of the sons of men, that is, the language of a simple, folk meaning (Filaret). In particular, God's "repentance" - as it were, a special way of changing the immutable - is the highest expression of the thought of extreme divine regret, reaching, as it were, to the point that the immutable Being itself seemed ready to change.

and grieved in his heart.

Like the previous one, this is the same humanoid expression. “The sorrow of God is the foreknowledge of the impossibility for a person created with free will, who deliberately and stubbornly abuses it, to return to the good path; therefore, where it is said about the sorrow of God, as, for example, about cities that have incurred the wrath of God (;), there you need to understand that the sentence of the eternal truth of God has come true, that this race, or man, must perish so that evil does not was immortalized" (Vlastov).

. And the Lord said: I will destroy from the face of the earth the people whom I created, from man to cattle, and the creeping thing and the birds of the air, for I repented that I created them.

Here is given a stronger expression of the same thought - about the profound inconsistency of the actions of human freedom with the plans of divine providence and the desires of the Almighty to destroy this disharmony.

At the same time, the sad fate of man, according to the verdict of the divine court, was to be shared by the whole world of living beings around him, since between the fate of man and the life of nature, according to the teachings of Scripture, there is the closest, moral connection; hence, the fall and rise of man is reflected accordingly on the rest of creation. And this was not, strictly speaking, the extermination of mankind (since the righteous Noah and his family were saved and revived him), but only the eradication of the evil that reigned on earth by washing in the waters of the flood (;).

Righteous Noah

. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord [God].

A phrase completely analogous to the one previously said about Enoch "and please Enoch God"() (Slavyan., LXX) and having corresponding parallels in other places of the Bible (; and others).

Here is the life of Noah:

This is the beginning of a new biblical section - the story of the righteous Noah and the Flood ().

Noah was a righteous man and blameless in his generations;

i.e. he was morally pure and whole (tamim - in Hebrew), standing out from among his vicious contemporaries, unsightly moral characterization which the apostles themselves and give us (and parallel, cf.). The very same review of Noah is repeated almost verbatim in a friend. passages of Scripture (; ; ).

Noah walked with God.

The conclusion of Noah's characterization is a trait already familiar to us from the story of Enoch (). In the sacred language of the Bible, this is a special form in which a completely moral character was usually revealed among sinful contemporaries.

. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

But the earth was corrupt before the face of God, and the earth was filled with evil deeds.

And [the Lord] God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupted, for all flesh had perverted its way upon the earth.

The four verses that conclude this section are an almost literal repetition of the above in verse. But this should not confuse anyone: since in 9 tbsp. this chapter, as we noted, began new story- the story of Noah and the flood, which originally constituted a separate and independent narrative, then such a repetition is more than natural; and the surprising coincidence in content is only a new proof of the truth of the very events that serve as the subject of the narratives under consideration.

And [the Lord] God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I will destroy them from the earth.

Many commentators, not without reason, assume that here we are talking about the end of that one hundred and twenty years period, which was appointed by God for the repentance of people and during which He waited in vain for their correction (; ).

Building them an ark

. Make yourself an ark out of gopher wood;

In the Hebrew text, this "ark" is designated by the term you, which is once again attached in the Bible to the basket in which Moses was saved (); whence one can think that Noah's colossal ark is a type of such a primitive structure. The gopher tree itself, from which the ark was built, belongs to a species of light, resinous trees, like cedar or cypress (). In the construction of the wooden ark, where the primitive world in the person of its representatives escaped death from the element of water, the Fathers of the Church see a symbolic foreshadowing of the tree of the cross and the water of baptism, through which the New Testament humanity finds its salvation.

make divisions in the ark

Literally from the Hebrew - "nests" (kinnim) or cages, obviously for birds and animals, which, according to divine command, Noah had to place in the ark.

. And make it thus: the length of the ark is three hundred cubits; its width is fifty cubits, and its height is thirty cubits.

On the basis of these testimonies, we still cannot get an exact idea of the size and capacity of the ark, mainly because the cubit, as a measure of length, was not a stable enough metric value and its dimensions allowed strong fluctuations, as can be seen from the Holy Scripture itself. (; ; ). According to the Metropolitan Philaret, the longitude of the ark inside it was approximately 500 feet, the width - 80 feet. and the height is 50 feet, with which the calculations of one French scientist agree quite well, determining the length of the ark at 156 meters, the width at 26 meters. and a height of 16 meters. The capacity of such a structure, according to the calculations of specialists (for example, Vice-Admiral Thevenard), was quite sufficient for its purpose, i.e., to accommodate Noah's family and the minimum number of all animal genera with a supply of annual food necessary for all.

. And thou shalt make a hole in the ark, and bring it down to a cubit at the top, and make a door into the ark at its side; arrange in it a lower, second and third [dwelling].

The details of the construction of the ark further convince us that it was by no means like our modern ships, but rather resembled a large chest, or a box, or a huge houseboat, which had an almost flat roof (descent from the top only one foot) and illuminated by a single, more or less significant window at the top of it. In 1609, one Dutch Mennonite, a certain Peter Jansen, built a special vessel, similar to an ark, only on a reduced scale, from which he was experimentally convinced that although such a ship was not well suited for navigation, it was much more spacious than any other ship (almost on whole third) of a different type with the same cubic volume.

. And behold, I will bring a flood of waters on the earth to destroy all flesh that has the breath of life under the heavens;

These words are for the first time definitely called the means or instrument of divine punishment over the primitive, corrupt world, which was the Flood ().

everything on earth will lose its life.

Since the whole earth is corrupted and filled with the iniquities of those who live on it, then all the perpetrators of its defilement perish on it, led by the first and chief among them - people. However, this global flood cannot be considered as something like a personal revenge on the part of God to man: no, it was a necessary consequence of the spiritual death of primitive, morally degenerate humanity. This humanity was an exceptional “flesh”, as if forever losing its soul and representing a decaying corpse, the further preservation of which would not only be useless, but also positively harmful to the spiritual and moral atmosphere of the world. And so, the first world perishes in the waves of the flood in order to wash away the filth lying on it and begin to live on new (reborn) principles.

. But with you I will establish my covenant,

The union of God with man is here for the first time called by its special term "covenant" (berit). Confirming the existence of the covenant that was made by God in the first promise about the seed of the wife (), the Lord thereby clearly testifies that although He destroys almost all of humanity, He does not destroy His eternal covenants (); only the evil seed of the serpent will perish, but the seed of the woman in the face of Noah will triumph in their victory (

From [all] birds according to their kind, and from [all] cattle according to their kind, and from all creeping things on the ground according to their kind, from all, two by two will come in to you, so that they live [with you, male and female] .

For the preservation and subsequent revival of also animal life, God commands Noah to take with him to the ark one pair of each of their main clans. Based on the words of verse 20, one can think that these animals, driven by instinct in view of the impending storm of the flood, themselves approached the ark and sought salvation in it, which greatly facilitated Noah's task. As for the expression, how such a number of animals could fit in one ark, it should be noted about it that, firstly, Noah, from saving space and fodder, could choose only the youngest animals, and secondly, the number of main the tribal groups that had developed by the time of the flood were not yet so large as to create any insurmountable obstacle for Noah to place them in the ark.

. And Noah did everything: as [the Lord] God commanded him, so he did.

In these words, the best praise is given to Noah, as the Apostle Paul also makes clear, saying: “By faith Noah, having received a revelation of things not yet seen, reverently prepared an ark for the salvation of his house; by it he condemned (the whole) world, and became heir of righteousness by faith.”(). “The construction of the ark (about which the holy narrator speaks so simply, conveying this purely calm, obedient fulfillment of the will of God) was, however, for Noah a deep test of his faith in God. All around was a depraved world and completely calm about its future (), a world that reproached Noah and scolded him for many years of building the ark. Therefore, Noah had to be transported with his whole thought and soul into the future, and this faith, which saved him from death, was the highest merit of his spiritual life and prefigured that state of the human soul when it is saved from eternal death by faith, accepting holy baptism"(Vlastov).

We have come to one of the outstanding parts of the book of Genesis. Enoch is no longer on earth; his life as a wanderer and stranger on earth ended with his rapture to heaven. Before evil reached its highest development and the judgment of God befell the inhabitants of the earth, Enoch was taken to heaven. The first two verses of chapter 6 show us how little Enoch's life and migration into heaven did, however, affect the world. "When people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them, then the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and took them as their wife, which one they chose."

The confusion of what is God with what is human is feature evil, serving as a powerful tool in the hands of Satan to eclipse the testimony of Christ on earth. This mixture is very often clothed in a brilliant, attractive form; sometimes it does not seem evil, but rather is taken as an expression of the essence of God, for an expression of the power of the fullness of the action of the Holy Spirit, for something good and joyful. But it is enough to look at it in the light of the presence of God in order to immediately radically change our judgment about the nature of such mixing: before God, we cannot imagine that the people of God can derive even the slightest benefit for themselves by mixing with the children of this world or under the influence of people perverting the truth of God. This is not the means chosen by God for the dissemination of the truth, or for the encouragement and protection of souls called to be God's witnesses on earth. Separation from evil is a principle of God, the violation of which cannot but damage the truth.

The text of Holy Scripture, which now occupies us, reveals before us all the pernicious consequences of the union of the sons of God with the daughters of men. According to human reasoning, the fruits of this union were excellent, and in verse 4 we read: "These are strong men, glorious of old." But God judges otherwise; He does not look like a man, "His thoughts are not our thoughts": "And the Lord saw that the corruption of men on earth is great, and that all the thoughts and thoughts of their hearts were evil at all times." Such was the position of man before God; his thoughts were fulfilled only"evil", and filled with evil "at all times"; the combination of holiness with impiety and cannot give a better result. If the holy seed loses its purity, all possibility of God's witness on earth is lost. Satan's first effort to overthrow the plans of God was to uproot the holy seed; when this attempt failed, Satan began to try in every possible way to corrupt him.

It is very important to understand well the purpose, character and result of the union of "the sons of God with the daughters of men." And in our time there is a great danger of distorting the truth from the desire to be in union with others; should be carefully guarded against. No association should be made to the detriment of truth. "Keep the truth at all costs," is the motto of the Christian. If, under such conditions, union is possible, unity is possible, that is wonderful, but above all, cling to the truth. The worldly principle, which applies to everything, on the contrary, says: “At all costs, stay in unity, and if at the same time everyone manages to preserve the truth, so much the better; but unity is above all. This worldly principle requires its implementation at the cost of everything spiritual in [It should never be lost sight of that "wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceful" (James 3:17). Earthly wisdom from below would, of course, be first of all "peaceful", and for this alone would have lost its purity.] True testimony disappears with the violation of truth: so in the antediluvian world we see that the union of holiness with sinfulness, the divine with the human, only helped evil to reach its highest limit; then the judgment of God came for the world.

"And the Lord said: I will destroy from the face of the earth the men whom I have created." It took no more, no less than the complete destruction of that which perverted the path of God on earth: "strong, glorious people of old" should all be swept away without distinction. "The end of all flesh is come before me." God is not talking about parts, but oh all flesh, because all of it was corrupt in the eyes of God; everything was definitely wrong. The flesh was weighed and found corrupted; and behold, the Lord proclaims to Noah his remedy, saying, "Make thyself an ark of gopher wood" (vv. 13-14).

So God believed Noah His thoughts about the fate that awaited the whole earth. The word of the Lord was to reveal the depth of the corruption of the world on which the gaze of man rested; world, which is the object of his vanity. The human heart was filled with pride and emotion when looking at the crowd of brilliant artists and geniuses, "strong people", people "glorious from ancient times!" The sounds of musical instruments delighted the ear of man, while the successes of agriculture covered everything. worldly needs his. All this, it seemed, for a long time excluded the possibility of the very thought of the nearness of God's judgment. But God said: "I will destroy" - and these solemn words cast a dark shadow on the jubilant humanity. But perhaps the genius of man will invent some means of getting rid of judgment? - "A mighty, strong man" will not be saved by his "great strength"? - Unfortunately no! exists just one a means of deliverance, but this means is available only to faith, remaining hidden both for vision, and for reason, and for the imagination of man.

"By faith Noah, having received a revelation About, that has not yet been seen reverently, he prepared an ark for the salvation of his house; by it he condemned the whole world and became an heir of righteousness by faith" (Heb. 11:7). The Word of God sheds light on everything that deceives the human heart; it tears away the illusory veil with which Satan tries to close the transience, vanity and deceit of the world, over which hangs the sword of God's judgment. Only faith accepts the "revelation" of God, and accepts it, while nothing is yet visible. Nature is guided by the visible, guided by the senses. Faith chooses the pure Word of God as its only guide, this invaluable treasure bestowed on the world of darkness! Faith in the Word it gives firmness, whatever the apparent appearance the surrounding world. When God announced His judgment to Noah, nothing foreshadowed its nearness. The court "has not yet been seen"; but for the heart, in which the Word of God was "mixed with faith," this Word became an obvious reality. Faith doesn't need vision in order to believe; for "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom. 10:17).

To know that God said it is what a man of faith needs. The fact that "thus saith the Lord" instills unconditional confidence in his soul. One line of Holy Scripture puts an end to all philosophies, all fermentation of the human mind; a man whose convictions are based on the Word of God, strong to resist all kinds of currents of human opinions and prejudices, the Word of God served as a support for Noah's heart in all his long service to God; in the same Word, millions of true believers from the days of Noah to this day have found and are finding support among the resistance and contradictions of the world. Therefore, the Word of God cannot be sufficiently valued. Without it, everything is wrong; with him all the world and light. Wherever this Word shines, it leads the man of God in paths of blessing and safety; but a person whose path is not illuminated by this Word is doomed to wander in the labyrinth of human traditions. How could Noah have been a "preacher of righteousness" for one hundred and twenty years if the Word of God had not been the solid foundation of his preaching? How could he resist the ridicule and contempt of an unholy world? How could he invariably insist on approaching "the coming judgment" when not a single cloud darkened the horizon of this world? Impossible! But the Word of God was the foundation on which he relied, and the "Spirit of Christ" made him able to hold on to this unshakable foundation, preserving in it the holy firmness of spirit.

And to us, beloved Christian reader, what else can give us the strength to remain faithful in the service of Christ Jesus in the evil days of this age? Absolutely nothing, and we want nothing else; the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, through single medium Which can be understood, put into practice, and become our guide this Word - that's all we need in order to be "prepared for every good deed"(2 Tim. 3:16-17). What peace for the heart! What a deliverance from all the wiles of the devil, from all the deceptions of the human mind! Instead of them, we have the Word of God, pure, infallible, eternal; let us give worthy thanks to God for the priceless treasure it! "The thoughts of the heart of man were evil at all times; but Noah took refuge for himself, full rest to his heart in the Word of his God.

"And God said to Noah: The end of all flesh is come before me... Make yourself an ark of gopher wood..."

These words testify to us of corruption and of God's salvation. God allowed man to complete the evil he did, so that his evil intentions and his wicked ways would reach their highest development. The leaven has risen, and the whole dough has turned sour. Evil has reached its apogee (highest point). “All flesh” became wicked and perverted its way: corruption reached its extreme limits, so that God had no choice but to completely destroy “all flesh” and at the same time save all those who, in His eternal intentions and counsels, were united with the "eighth", the only righteous person on earth at that time. Here we see a striking prototype of the cross: on the one hand, the judgment of God, condemning all flesh and its perversion; on the other hand, the manifestation of saving grace in all its fullness in relation to those who have reached the lowest point, moral decline in the eyes of God. "The East has visited us from above" (Luke 1:78). And visited where? Exactly there, where we stood sinners before God; God descended "to the underworld of the earth." The light of the East from above penetrated into the innermost recesses of the sinful soul and revealed to us our true state before God. Light condemns everything that does not agree with it, but, condemning evil, it also makes it possible to "understand salvation in the forgiveness of sins." The cross, revealing God's judgment on "all flesh," also reveals salvation to the guilty, lost sinner. Sin is fully condemned; the sinner is completely saved, God is revealed and glorified on the cross.

Opening 1 Pet. 3:18-22, the reader will find much light illuminating the whole subject: "And Christ, in order to bring us to God, suffered once for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, was put to death according to the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit, by whom He is even in prison. Having descended, he preached to the spirits, who had once been disobedient to God's long-suffering, in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved from the water. The promise to God of a good conscience, saves by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who, having ascended into heaven, is at the right hand of God, and to whom angels, and authorities, and powers have submitted.

This is a very significant place: it sheds a bright light on the doctrine of the ark in connection with the death of Christ. As in the days of the flood, so in the death of Christ, all the waters and waves of God's judgment passed over that which was in itself sinless. The whole creation was buried under the waves of Jehovah's righteous wrath, and (Ps. 41:8) the Spirit of Christ exclaims: "All Thy waters and Thy waves have passed over me." "All the waters and waves" of God's wrath passed over the head of the pure and undefiled person of the Lord Jesus as He hung on the cross; none of these waves will touch, therefore, the one who believes in Him. On Golgotha with our own eyes, we see, "all the fountains of the great deep broke open, and the windows of heaven were opened."

"Deep calls to deep with the voice of Thy waterfalls" (Ps. 41:8). Christ drank the cup of God's wrath to the dregs. He legally took upon Himself all the heavy responsibility for His people and abundantly satisfied all the requirements of God. By this, the soul of the believer gains lasting peace: if the Son of God destroyed everything that was against us, overcame all obstacles and took away sin, if He drank the cup of wrath and judgment for us, dispelled all the clouds, is not eternal peace becoming our property? The world is our inalienable lot; we also have a deep, inexpressible bliss and holy confidence, which are the fruit of redeeming love and Christ's sacrifice for us.

Did Noah fear the waters of God's judgment? Of course not. He knew that All they spilled over the earth, while these same waters raised it higher and higher, outside the region, doomed to death from judgment. His ark floated peacefully on the surface of the waters sent to destroy "all flesh"; and the Lord Himself brought him into this ark. Noah could, of course, also join in the solemn cry, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rom. 8:31). Jehovah himself commanded Noah to enter the ark: "Enter you and all your family into the ark" (ch. 6). When Noah entered the ark, "the Lord shut him up"(art. 16). The ark served as a safe haven for all those who were brought there by God. Jehovah guarded the entrance to the ark; without His knowledge no one could enter or leave. The ark had a door and a window. The Lord guarded the door with His mighty right hand, leaving Noah a window through which he could look at the sky, from where the judgment of God came, and see that this judgment did not touch him. The saved family could only watch up, since the window was placed at the top (ch. 6.16). Neither the waters of judgment, nor the death and devastation caused by them, were seen by Noah and those close to him. The Salvation of God, the "gopher tree", separated them from everything around them. They could only look up and see the cloudless sky above them, the eternal dwelling place of the One who saved them by condemning the world.

Nothing testified to such an extent about the perfect security of the soul believing in Christ, as the words: "And the Lord shut him up." Who can open what God Himself has closed? Nobody. Noah's family was in the utmost security, the security that only God can give; no power, angelic, human, or satanic, could have penetrated the door of the ark to let in the waters of the stream. The door was shut by the same hand that "opened the windows of heaven and cracked open the fountains of the abyss." And about Christ we read that "He has the key of David", that He "opens, and no one will close; He closes, and no one will open" (Rev. 3:7). He "has the keys of hell and death" (Rev. 1.18). Without Him, no one can cross the threshold of the tomb either to enter it or to leave it. He has "all authority in heaven and on earth" He is "the head of the Church" and in him the believer finds complete security (Matt. 28:18; Heb. 1:22). Who could touch Noah? What wave could penetrate the ark, "tarred inside and out?" and now who can touch those who by faith have taken refuge under the shadow of the cross? Every enemy is forever slain, silenced. The death of Christ victoriously guaranteed everything, but the resurrection of Christ proclaims that God has received full satisfaction through the sacrifice, in the name of which His justice accepts us and on the basis of which we dare to approach Him.

And now that the “door” of our ark is guarded by the faithful hand of the Lord Himself, we are called to use the “window”, to walk, in other words, in blessed and holy fellowship with Him who delivered us from the coming wrath, making us heirs of the coming glory, which we expect. The Apostle Peter speaks of "who is blind, closed his eyes, forgot about the cleansing of his former sins" (2 Pet. 1.9). This miserable condition is the lot of those who, by the spirit of prayer, do not achieve constant communion with the Lord, who has rooted us forever in Christ.

Before proceeding to a further consideration of the story of Noah, let us glance, this time, not at those who were in the ark, but at those to whom Noah preached the truth for so long and who, however, remained outside the ark. More than one anxious look with supplication followed the ship of mercy as it rose higher and higher on the surface of the waters. But, alas, the door was "closed", the day of salvation had passed; forever gone is the time of testimony for those to whom it was addressed. The hand that shut the door behind Noah turned off at the same time everyone who was outside of it from the ark. Remaining outside the ark was irretrievably lost; the prisoners in it found salvation. Absorbed by their everyday, worldly affairs, people with contempt rejected both the long-suffering of God and the long-term testimony of His servant. They "ate, drank, married; married until the day Noah entered the ark. And the flood came and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:26-27). In itself, all this was not reprehensible; the evil was not in this, but in the people who did it. Any of the above actions can be performed in the fear of God, to the glory of the holy name of God, by faith. But, alas, there was no faith: the Word of God was rejected. God spoke of judgment, but the people did not believe; God spoke of sin and the fall, but people were not convinced of this; spoke of salvation, but the people did not heed Him; they pursued their plans, their worldly interests, not caring for God's salvation. Judging by their actions, one might have thought that they had an eternal contract in their hands, securing their possession of the land; in doing so they lost sight of the covenant word "until." God was excluded by them. "All the thoughts and thoughts of their hearts were evil at all times," there was nothing good in their deeds. They thought, spoke, acted on their own, having in mind only themselves, forgetting God.

Reader, do you remember the words of the Lord Jesus: "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man" (Luke 17:26). They want to assure us that even before the coming of the Son of Man, truth will dwell from the clouds of heaven from one end of the earth to its other end, that we must live in expectation of the coming of the kingdom of truth and peace, to the reign of which all human efforts are currently directed on earth; but it suffices to read the above saying, so that all those vain and deceitful hopes shatter into dust. Was righteousness reigning in the days of Noah? Has the truth of God ruled the world? Did the knowledge of the Lord fill the earth like water fills the sea? But this Holy Scripture answers that "the earth was filled with wickedness," that "all flesh perverted its way on the earth," that the earth was "corrupt." And so: So will be in the days of the Son of Man. - It's perfectly clear. "Righteousness" and "crime" or "violence" have nothing in common, just as there is nothing, isn't it, in common between universal malice and universal peace. A heart that bows obediently before the divine authority of the Word of God and renounces preconceived opinions is able to understand the true character of the days that will immediately precede the “coming of the Son of Man.” Let us not, reader, be in error, but bow with reverence before the words of Holy Scripture; let us consider what was the state of the world "in the days before the flood"; and we will remember that "how" it was then, "So" will be at the end of this century. It's perfectly simple and convincing; there was nothing like universal righteousness and universal peace, and there will be nothing like it after a while.

Undoubtedly, man displayed a mighty energy to make his sojourn in this world comfortable and pleasant, without any thought of making him worthy of the sojourn of God, which would make him act quite differently. In the same way, now a person strives in every possible way to equalize the path of human life, to remove obstacles of all kinds from it; but this does not yet mean "straighten out crookedness and make uneven paths smooth", so that "all flesh may see the salvation of God" (Is. 40:4-5). Civilization prospers, but civilization is not righteousness. Efforts to sweep away and beautify the world tend not to make it worthy of accepting Christ, but to make the Antichrist reign in it. Under the cover of their own deeds, people strive to hide the spots and ulcers of all mankind; but to hide stains does not mean to remove them; they also see through the veil and will soon be revealed in all their ugliness; the blush disappears and the carved cedar is destroyed. The dams by which man so diligently tries to hold back the flood of human misfortune will soon give way to the pressure destructive force evil: then all the efforts used by man to keep the physical, mental and moral corruption of Adam's offspring within the boundaries created by human humanity will be in vain. God said, "The end of all flesh is come before me." The end came not before the face of man, but before the face of God; and though mocking voices are heard: "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers began to die, from the beginning of creation, all things remain the same" (2 Pet. 3:4). However, the moment is fast approaching when these scoffers will receive an answer: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night; and then the heavens will pass away with a noise, the elements, having flared up, will be destroyed, the earth and all the works on it will be burned up” (2 Pet. 3:4- 10). Such is God's answer to the mockery of the wise men of this world, but not to the reverent expectation of God's children. The latter, thank God, are destined for something completely different: they will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Bridegroom in the air before evil reaches its extreme limit and the judgment of God strikes the earth. The Church expects not the destruction of the elements of the world by means of fire, but the appearance of "the bright and morning star" (Rev. 22:16).

But from whatever point of view we may approach the question of the future, whether it be the Church in glory or the world on fire; the desired coming of the Bridegroom or His unexpected and terrible appearance when He comes, "like a thief in the night"; whether the morning bright star, or the burning midday sun, whether the rapture of the Church, or the judgment, we cannot but be imbued with the consciousness of how important it is to hold on to the testimony of God's mercy to lost sinners. "Here, now is the time favorable; Here Now day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2). - "God in Christ reconciled the world to Himself, not imputing their transgressions to men" (2 Cor. 5:19). Now God reconciles; soon He will judge; now all is grace; then there will be all wrath; now God forgives sin through the cross; then he will punish him with eternal torments in hell. Now God sends an appeal for mercy, mercy pure, abundant and free; He speaks of complete redemption through the precious sacrifice of Christ, announces that everything has already been completed and waits to have mercy: "Count the long-suffering of our Lord as salvation." - "The Lord is not slow in fulfilling the promise, as some consider slowness, but is long-suffering to us, not willing that any should perish, but that they should come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3, 9:15) How significant in view of all this is this present period of time!

If God has given us to understand all this, with what deep interest must we follow the progress of His purposes! Scripture sheds light on everything; thanks to him, we do not have to be surprised at all the events that happen in the world, as is characteristic of people who do not know where they are or where they are going. We can and must have an accurate idea of our present position; we should know well where the principles now ruling in the world lead, to see the huge whirlpool to which all the streams of the world are swiftly rushing. People dream of a golden age; people create in their imagination a blissful millennium of the dominance of the arts and sciences, lull themselves with the thought that "tomorrow will be like today, and even more" (Isaiah 56:12). But in vain - alas! - these thoughts, these dreams and hopes are deceptive! Faith already sees the clouds gathering on the horizon of the world; judgment draws near; the day of wrath is coming; the door will close soon, the "work of delusion" (2 Thess. 2:11) is manifest! At the sight of all this, how not to raise a warning voice and try to dispel the delusions of a self-confident person with a sure testimony? Just as Ahab accused Micah, the world will certainly not fail to accuse us of speaking only evil things; but before that? Let's say what the Word of God says and do it for the sole purpose of "instructing people" (2 Cor. 5:11). The Word of God, and this Word alone, is powerful, destroying the false foundation on which we rest, to put our feet on an unshakable, eternal foundation. Only it can only, taking away the "broken reed" and false hope, give us "hope that does not shame"; can lead us up to "the unattainable rock" (Rom. 5:5; Ps. 60:3). True love does not proclaim: "Peace, peace" when there is no peace (Jer. 6:14; 8:11), it does not erect walls, "smearing it with mud" (Ezek. 13:10). God wants the sinner to rest in peace in the ark of eternal security, already now enjoying fellowship with Him, feeding on the sweet hope of finding rest with Him in a renewed creation, when destruction, calamity, and judgment have passed forever.

But let us return to the story of Noah and look at him in his new position. We have already seen him building the ark; saw him then in the ark; now we shall see him going out and settling in a new world. [I would like to ask the reader in the spirit of prayer to consider the thought common to all those who have put their hearts into the study of biblical truths. This thought refers to Enoch and Noah. The first, as we have seen, was caught up from the earth before the judgment of God, while the second, although excluded from the judgment, in some way passed through the judgment. The students of the Word of God see in Enoch a type of the Church, which will be taken before evil reaches its extreme limit and before the judgment of God falls on the evil ones. In Noah they see a type of the remnant of Israel, who will have to pass through the deep waters of distress and the fire of judgment before reaching the blessed time of the millennium based on an eternal covenant with God. I myself fully share this view regarding these two "fathers" Old Testament, finding it quite consistent with the harmony of the general plan in harmonizing the individual books of Holy Scripture.] "And God remembered Noah." - "A strange adventure" (1 Pet. 4:12) of God's judgment passed, and the Lord remembered the saved family and all who were with him. "And God sent a wind upon the earth, and the waters stopped. And the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were closed, and the rain from heaven ceased" (ch. 8.2). And now the rays of the sun begin to live the world, which has just received the baptism of the judgment of God. Judgment is a "strange adventure" for God. He does not rejoice in it, yet he is glorified by it. May His name be blessed. He is always ready to leave the place of judgment and take the place of mercy, because He loves to be merciful!

"After 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made. And he sent out a raven, which, having flown out, flew off and flew in, until the earth dried up from the water" (v. 6.7). The unclean bird flew away, finding refuge in all probability on some corpse floating in the water; she never returned to the ark. But the dove "finding no resting place for its feet, returned to Noah in the ark...; and again released (Noah) the dove from the ark. The dove returned to him in the evening; and behold, he had a fresh olive leaf in his mouth" ( vv. 8-11). Is this dove not a miraculous type of a renewed spirit, which, in the midst of the desolation that surrounds it, seeks and finds its rest and part in Christ; and not only that, but also a pledge of inheritance, testifying that the judgment has already passed, that the new earth is already showing. The carnal spirit of man, on the other hand, can rest in everything except Christ: it is inclined to feed on all kinds of uncleanness; the "oil-leaf" has no attraction for him; the sight of death does not repel him; therefore he does not care at all about the new world. But the heart, taught and tested by the Spirit of God, finds peace and joy only in that which constitutes peace and joy for God; it rests in the ark of His salvation until "the time of correction." May it be so with us, reader! Let us not try in the world, doomed to the judgment of God, to find rest and our inheritance; May Jesus be our peace and prosperity! The dove returned to the ark to Noah, waiting there for the end of the disasters that befell the earth; so we are called to rest in Christ until the hour of his glorification comes, and his glory appears in the age to come. "He who comes will come and will not tarry." Just a little patience is all we need. May God direct our hearts to His love and to "the longsuffering of Christ."

"And God said to Noah, 'Come out of the ark.'" God, who had said to him, "Make yourself an ark" and "enter the ark," now said to Noah, "Get out of the ark." Noah went out and "built an altar unto the Lord" (v. 15-22) Noah could only obey the Lord: faith and obedience go together: an altar was erected where the judgment of God had just taken place. Noah marked his entry into this world by offering a sacrifice to God.. And, note this, Noah erected an altar to the Lord. the ark, served as an instrument of salvation. The heart is always inclined to put the instruments of God in the place of God Himself. The ark was a clear instrument in the hand of God, but Noah's faith ascends from the ark to the God of the ark: that is why, leaving the ark, he did not hesitate, did not turn his gaze back, did not make the ark an object of veneration and worship, but built an altar to the Lord; the ark is not mentioned anywhere else.

All this is full of simple but important edification: from the moment the heart moves away from God Himself, boundless scope opens up for human inventions; a person walks the path of deep idolatry For faith, tools are important to the extent that God chooses them as the means of His living communication with the soul, that is, as long as faith finds Christ in the tool prepared by God Himself. Without this, the tool loses its value; standing even in the smallest degree between the heart of the believer and the work of glory and the person of the Son of God, it already ceases to be an instrument of God and becomes an instrument of Satan. For superstition, the tool is everything, but God is forgotten, and the name of God serves only to glorify the tool, making it attractive to the heart and strongly influencing the mind of a person. Thus, the children of Israel reached the worship of the bronze serpent. That which at one time in the hands of God served as an instrument of blessing for them, became, as soon as their heart departed from the Lord, an object of superstitious worship, so that Hezekiah had to destroy the copper serpent, grinding it into powder, like a "piece of copper" (Nekhushtan) (2 Kings 18:4). The serpent itself was only a "piece of copper"; but as an instrument of God he served as a channel for the great blessings of God. Faith saw in him what the revelation of God pointed out to her in him; superstition, rejecting revelation as usual, lost sight of the true intention of God and made a god an instrument, in itself devoid of any significance.

Isn't all this filled with profound teaching for us? We live in an age of all sorts of human institutions; the religion of our day bears in itself all the signs of traditions alien to Christ and His salvation. For the most part, it is true, man does not dare to completely deny Christ and His cross; open denial might open the eyes of many; evil takes on an incomparably more subtle and dangerous character: a multitude of human inventions are mixed with faith in Christ and the work accomplished by Him. Therefore, they say that the sinner is not saved by Christ alone, but rituals are needed. Thus the sinner is completely deprived of Christ, because Christ and the rites eventually lead to rites without Christ. This is a very serious consideration for those who are in favor of a religion with rites. "If you are circumcised, you will not benefit from Christ" (Gal. 5:2). You can see only Christ, or not see Him at all. The devil convinces people that they honor Christ by performing His rites and giving them a meaning that is not characteristic of them, although he knows very well that by doing so, a person moves away from Christ and idolizes the rites. I am only repeating here what I have already mentioned in other places, that superstition gives the chief importance to the rites; unbelief, blasphemy and mysticism do not attach any importance to them; faith does not use them according to the divine purpose.

Longer than I thought, I stopped at this part of our study; I will now proceed immediately to Chapter 9. This chapter of Scripture speaks of the new covenant that God entered into with the creation after the flood, as well as the sign of this new covenant "And God blessed Noah and his sons; and said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." Commandment , given by God upon his entry into the promised land, commands him to fill the earth, not just some parts of it, but "the whole earth." God's will was that people should be scattered over the entire surface of the earth and that they should not expect to act with common forces, as they tried to do according to the testimony of chapter 11.

After the flood, the fear of man entered the soul of the whole lower creature, so that all the services it renders to man are an inevitable consequence of fear and horror before the power of man. Both the life and death of the lower animals must now serve for the benefit of man. All creation, according to the eternal covenant of God, has been delivered from the fear of the coming of the second flood to the earth: in this form, the judgment of God will no longer overtake the world. “The world then perished, being drowned by water; but the present heavens and earth, which are contained by the same word, are preserved fire on the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men" (2 Pet. 3:6) fire: but then only those who take refuge in Christ, who passed through the deep waters of the judgment of God and experienced the fire of that judgment, will escape judgment.

"And God said, Behold the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you... I will put My rainbow in the cloud... And I will remember My covenant" (vv. 12-17) All creation believes in the unchanging firmness of the eternal covenant with God whose sign is the rainbow; he has no reason to fear a second flood. Moreover, whenever a rainbow appears in a cloud, God sees it, so that this is the joy of the human heart - the safety of a person does not depend on his own unfaithful and imperfect memory, but on the memory of God. "I I will remember,” says God. It is joyful to think about what God likes to remember and what He does not want to remember: He remembered the covenant Mine, but he will not remember the sins of his people. The cross, which confirms the former, at the same time erases the latter: faith, on the other hand, assimilates to itself the entire meaning of the cross, giving peace to the troubled soul and the troubled conscience.

"And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud upon the earth, that a rainbow shall appear in the cloud" (v. 14). Wonderful, expressive image! The rays of the sun, reflected by what threatens judgment, and receiving an intense radiance from the surrounding clouds, calm the hearts, speak of a covenant with God, of salvation, of the remembrance of God. The rainbow in the cloud resembles Golgotha There, we saw, menacing clouds, the clouds of the judgment of God, struck the holy head of the Lamb of God; the clouds are so thick that in the middle of the day "there was darkness over all the earth" (Luke 23:44). But, thanks be to God, the rays of God's eternal love dispelled the darkness, and in this dark cloud faith discerns a rainbow, unique in beauty and splendor; the word “It is finished” reaches her from the midst of darkness; and this word confirms to her the eternity of the covenant of God, not only with earthly creatures, but also with the tribes of Israel, and with the Church of God.

The last part of this chapter describes to us a shameful fact for a person. The one who is placed as the king of creation is unable to govern himself. "Noah began to till the land and planted vines. And he drank of the wine and became drunk, and lay naked in his tent" (vv. 20-29). In such a state we find Noah, the only righteous man of that time, a preacher of the truth! Alas! What is a person? In whatever position we find him, everywhere he is close to falling. He sins in Eden, sins on the renewed earth, sins in the land of Canaan, sins in the Church and in the sight of the glorious and blessed millennium. Sins everywhere and in everything; nothing good lives in it. No matter how great and glorious advantages he may be endowed with, no matter how high his position, he is not capable of committing anything but mistakes and sins.

However, we must consider Noah from two points of view: as prototype And How person. The type is full of greatness and significance, while man is full of sin and folly. And yet the Spirit of God wrote the words about him: "Noah was a righteous man and blameless...; Noah walked with God" (ch. 6,9). The grace of God covered all his sins, clothed him in spotless robes of righteousness: "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (ch. 6,8). Even when Noah was naked, God did not see his nakedness; He looked at Noah not in the weakness of his natural position, but in the strength of divine and eternal righteousness. This makes us understand how mistaken Ham was, how far he was from God and alien to the thoughts of God, acting as he did. He apparently did not know the blessedness of a man "to whom iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered" (Ps. 31:1). The behavior of Shem and Japheth, on the other hand, presents us with a wonderful example of how God looks at the nakedness of man and deals with it; therefore they inherit the blessing, and Ham the curse.

Chapter 10

This chapter contains the genealogy of the three sons of Noah and focuses primarily on Nimrod, the founder of the Kingdom of Babylon or Babylon, whose name occupies an important place on the pages of the holy Book of God. The very name of Babylon evokes in us a quite definite idea. Starting from 10 ch. Genesis and up to 18 ch. Revelation, the name of Babylon is constantly encountered, and always in connection with enmity directed against any open confessor of faith in God. From this, however, one should not conclude that the Babylon of the Old and Babylon of the New Testaments are completely identical. The first Babylon was undoubtedly a city, the second Babylon is the name associated with the Bible to the whole system; both Babylon had a powerful influence in the world, invariably directed against the people of God. As soon as Israel declares war on the Gentiles of Canaan, the "robe of Shinar" brings sin and confusion, defeat and strife into the army of Israel (see Joshua 7). This is the most ancient, reliable story that establishes the fact of the pernicious influence of Babylon on the people of God. How strongly the influence of Babylon affected the history of the people of Israel is obvious to any attentive student of the Holy Scriptures.

Without listing here all the individual places that mention Babylon, we will confine ourselves to noting that whenever a certain number of God’s witnesses appeared on earth, Satan immediately created Babylon on it in order to distort and destroy the testimony of God. Whether God finds confessors for Himself in any city, Babylon also takes on the appearance of a city; Does the Church show the greatness of the name of God, Babylon is embodied in a false religious system, called in Revelation "the great harlot", "the mother of fornicators and abominations of the earth", etc. (Ch. 17:1-6). In a word, Babylon is an instrument of Satan, created and arranged by his hand with the aim of hindering the work of God on earth. So it was in relation to ancient Israel; the same applies now to the Church. From the beginning to the end of the Old Testament, Israel and Babylon were in irreconcilable enmity; when one ascended, the other fell to dust. Thus, when Israel completely ceased to be Jehovah's Witnesses, "the king of Babylon crushed her bones" Jer. 50:17), and swallowed him up; vessels of the house of God, which were to remain in city Jerusalem, transferred to city Babylon. The prophet Isaiah, on the contrary, in the wonderful prophecy of the 14th chapter of his book, shows us the reverse order of things, painting before us a majestic picture of the growth of the glory of Israel and the shame of Babylon: and from the heavy slavery to which you were enslaved, you will sing a song of victory against the king of Babylon, and say: As the tormentor was gone, robbery was stopped! unstoppable persecution" (vv. 3-7).

This is the meaning of Old Testament Babylon. The meaning, character and end of the Babylon mentioned in Revelation is revealed to us when reading the 17th and 18th chapters of this book: here Babylon is a striking contrast to the woman, the Bride of the Lamb; then he throws himself into the sea like a millstone; in conclusion - the marriage supper of the Lamb with all the blessedness, with all the glory associated with it.

However, I will not attempt to continue this very interesting subject here: I have only lightly touched upon this subject in connection with the name of Nimrod. I am sure that my reader will be fully rewarded for all his labors in carefully researching all those places in the Holy Scriptures in which the name of Babylon is mentioned. Now we turn to our chapter.

"Cush also gave birth to Nimrod - this one began to be strong on earth. He was a strong hunter before the Lord, therefore it is said: a strong hunter, like Nimrod before the Lord. His kingdom at first consisted of: Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Halne, in the land of Shinar"(vv. 8-10). Here is the character of the founder of Babylon; he was strong on the ground", was "a mighty hunter before the Lord"; and the whole character of Babylon, from the beginning to the end of Scripture, conforms in a striking manner to the disposition of its founder. Babylon constantly bears the imprint of a powerful earthly influence that rises against every heavenly principle; and only after its complete destruction is heard from heaven the voice of, as it were, a numerous people, saying: "Hallelujah! For the Lord God Almighty reigns" (Rev. 19:6). Then the end of Babylon will come; all his power and his glory, all his pride and all his riches, all his brilliance, all his irresistible charm for the world, all his great influence, all this will cease, disappear forever. Babylon will be swept off the face of the earth, will be cast into the darkness, horrors and despair of eternal night. - Oh my God, how long?

Chapter 11

The content of this chapter is of great spiritual interest; it tells about two significant facts - about the construction of the Tower of Babel and about the calling of Abraham, or, in other words, describes to us a person's attempt to eliminate God from his life, to do without Him, and the revelation of God, given to man faith concerning what God has prepared for those who believe in him; a person's desire to settle down on the ground, and the calling of God, by which He tries to tear a person from the earth and make him seek his inheritance and residence in the sky.“The whole earth had one language and one dialect. Moving from the East, they found a plain in the land of Shinar,” and they settled there ... And they said: “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens; rather than be scattered over the face of all the earth" (vv. 1-4). The human heart is full of desire to become famous on earth, to be the center, to possess earthly blessings. Not to heaven, not to God, not to the glory of heaven, his desires rush; they are directed towards earthly things. Left to himself, man always stops at a place low, far from heaven. Only the calling of God, the revelation of God, the power of the Lord can lift a person above his commitment to this world.

From the picture presented to us by this chapter, we are convinced that man does not know God and does not seek; the human heart is not inspired by the thought of preparing a place on earth worthy of God's presence, it does not collect the materials necessary for the construction of the temple of God; no: alas! - does not even think about God. In the valley of Shinar, all human thoughts tended only to glorify the name of man; such is the state of the human heart to this day; whether in the valley of Shinar, on the banks of the Tiber, everywhere a man seeks only himself and his own exaltation, everywhere and in everything neglecting the interests of God; in this respect, complete, deplorable solidarity is seen in all the intentions, principles, and ways of man. He always seeks to exclude God and exalt himself. From whatever point of view we look at the Babylonian agreement, it is important to note in it the first glimpses of human genius, human abilities, independent of God. In examining the further course of history, we notice a strong inclination of people to enter into agreements or alliances; people mainly in this way carry out their plans; whether it is a matter of philanthropy, whether it concerns religion or politics, the harmonious, regular organization of society is striking everywhere. This phenomenon deserves our special attention, it is important to consider its first impulses, its first application to life in the valley of Shinar. Holy Scripture presents us at once with the plans, the goal, the very attempt, and the disintegration of this first union of people. And at the present time we find alliances everywhere; in vain would we think of listing them all; there are as many of them as there are intentions in a person's heart. But it is important to note that the first alliance was the alliance of Shinar, formed with a goal that our enlightened and civilized age would not disdain, in order to strengthen human interests on earth and glorify man. Faith sees the great error that occurs in every union of this kind: the exclusion of God from it. To set a goal to elevate a person without God means to raise a person to a dizzying height, on which his foot will not stand and falling from which a person will be beaten to death. Christians should be alien to all unions, except for the Church of the living God, gathered into one body by the Holy Spirit, who descended from heaven to glorify Christ, to baptize all believers into one body and build the temple of God from them. Babylon is in every respect the opposite of the Church, and in the end it is done, as we see in 18 ch. Revelation, "the habitation of demons" (v. 18.2).

"And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; but this is what they have begun to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do. Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city" (vv. 6-8). Such was the fate of the first union of men; the same end awaits all human agreements. (Isaiah 8:9).

But how else everything works out when God Himself gathers people together. In the 2nd ch. Acts, we see how God, in His infinite goodness, condescends to a person living in the conditions created by the fall. The Holy Spirit empowers the messengers of grace to convey their message in the very language in which everyone was born, because God wanted to touch the human heart with a joyful announcement of His grace to him. It was not so on Mount Sinai when the law of the Lord was proclaimed: declaring to man what he should be, God spoke in one language; but revealing Himself, God speaks in many dialects. Grace destroys all the barriers created by the pride and madness of man, in order to make the good, saving news "about the great works of God" intelligible and understandable to everyone (Acts 2:11). And why all this? In order to unite people on the principles of God, to make God the center of their union; with the aim of giving them really one language, one center, one task of life, one hope, one life; in order to unite them so that they can never again be scattered; in order to create for them a new name and an eternal dwelling; to build them a city and a tower, not only reaching to heaven, but whose unshakable foundation is laid in heaven by the hand of God Himself; in order to gather them together in Christ, risen and glorified, so that all of them with united forces would praise and glorify Him forever.

Reading Rev. 7:9, we see that "a great multitude that no one could number, from all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb," giving glory to Him. An amazing connection exists between the three passages of Scripture we have just considered. In the 11th ch. Genesis various adverbs express court God's; in the 2nd ch. Acts. they are a gift of grace; in the 7th chapter of Revelation, all languages merge, giving praise to the Lamb. How much better, therefore, for us to find our place with God than with man! The former ends in glory, the latter in displacement; the former is filled with the energy of the Holy Spirit, the latter with the unsanctified energy of fallen man; the former has as its object the exaltation of Christ, the latter has as its object the exaltation of man in some way.

Finally, I want to say that all who wish to know the true character, object, and effect of human unions, let them read the first verses of Genesis 11; on the other hand, those who desire to know the excellence, beauty, power, and duration of the character of the divine union, let them know that holy vital heavenly corporation which is called in the New Testament the Church of the living God, the body of Christ, the Bride of the Lamb.

May the Lord grant us, in His mercy, in the spirit of faith, to consider and assimilate all this for ourselves, because only in this way will our soul receive edification. Points of truth, however interesting; the knowledge of the Word of God, however deep and vast it may be; biblical criticism, however accurate and precious, can all leave the heart barren and devoid of love: it is necessary to seek and find Christ Himself in the Holy Scriptures; having found Him, one must feed on Him by faith in order to receive spiritual freshness, anointing, life force, energy and depth, which we so essentially need in our age of dead formalism.

What benefit can a dry dogma bring to the soul, deprived of the living Christ, cognizable in all his power, in all his perfection? It is impossible, of course, to deny the whole great significance of holy dogma; every faithful servant of Christ knows that it is his duty to "keep the standard of sound doctrine" (2 Tim. 1:13). And yet only the living Christ constitutes the soul and life, the core and essence of holy sound doctrine. May the Lord grant us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be more and more deeply imbued with the consciousness of the beauty and superiority of Christ, so as not to defile our souls with the spirit and teachings of Babylon!

We, by the will of God, will cover the rest of chapter 11 in the next section.

Chapter 12

The book of Genesis devotes a lot of space to the story of seven people: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. The history of each of them is a separate truth. For example, in the story of Abel, we see by type that a person can approach God only through redemption accepted by faith. The life of Enoch shows us what exactly is the destiny and hope of the heavenly family, while Noah shows us the fate of the earthly family. Enoch was taken to heaven before judgment. Noah was transferred to a new earth through judgment. Each of these stories of life reveals to us a separate truth, and therefore reveals separate phases in the development of faith. The reader can study this question in detail in connection with the 11th chapter of Poel, to Heb., and his labor will not be in vain.

But now we have come to Abraham and will deal with his story.

Comparing Gen. 12:1 and 11:31 with Acts. 7:2-4, we discover truths of great practical importance for our spiritual life. "AND said Lord to Abraham: Get out of your land, from your kindred and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1). the conscience of the one with whom He spoke. "The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham in Mesopotamia, before he migrated to Haran ... and from there, after the death of his father, God moved him into this land in which you now dwell" (Acts 7:2-4). The result of this command of God we see in Genesis 11:31. "And Terah took Abraham his son, and Lot Aranov's son his grandson, and Sarah his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abraham his son, and went out with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; but having reached to Haran, they stopped there... and Terah died in Haran."

All these passages, taken together, show us that the bonds of kinship prevented Abraham's heart from fully obeying the call of God. Called to go to the land of Canaan, he stopped in Haran until death broke the natural bonds that held him close to his father; then, without stopping along the way, he goes to where he was "called by the God of glory."

All this is very significant. Natural tastes are always opposed to the full realization and carrying out in life of the "calling of God." Unfortunately, we tend to be satisfied with only a small part of this calling. Only faith, simple and pure, gives the soul the opportunity to rise to the height of the thoughts of God and assimilate the promises of God. The prayer of the Apostle Paul (Ephesians 1:12-22) proves to us how well he understood, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the difficulties with which the Church had to struggle, and to know where the hope lies. his calling, and what a wealth of glorious heritage His for the saints.” Without being imbued with the spirit of this calling, we obviously cannot act “worthy of the title.” Before that, we need to know where we are called, and then set off on our journey.

If Abraham had been completely imbued with this truth, if he had firmly remembered that it was to the land of Canaan that "God called him to go," that this land was his lot, he could not have stopped in Haran. The same applies to us. If by the power of the Holy Spirit we understand that the calling with which we are called is a heavenly calling; that our residence, our part, our hope, our heritage is there, "where Christ sits at the right hand of God," we will never cherish a high position in the world, we will not seek its glory, we will not collect treasures for ourselves on earth. These two things are incompatible; here is the true way to consider it. The heavenly vocation is not an empty dogma, not a lifeless theory and not fruitless calculations: if its divine character is taken away from it, it loses all its force. Was Abraham's calling only a special state of mind that he could evoke in himself while living in Haran? Of course not; it was divine, powerful, vital truth. Abraham was called to go to Canaan, and there was no way God could approve of his stopping in Haran. As it was with Abraham, so it is with us: if we want to enjoy the presence of God, to win His favor, it is necessary that by faith we act according to the heavenly calling; in other words, it is necessary to achieve by experience, practice and morality what God has called us to, seeking unceasing fellowship with His Only Begotten Son. fellowship with Him in His rejection here on earth, and fellowship with Him in His glory in heaven.

But just as death alone broke the bonds that held the natural Abraham in Haran, so for us, only death breaks the bonds that bind us to this age. It is necessary to realize that we have died in Christ, our Head and Representative; what in the world and nature is already old for us passed, that the cross of Christ is to us what the Red Sea was to the Israelites: it separated us forever from the kingdom of death and condemnation. Only in this way can we, at least in part, "walk worthy of the calling to which we are called" (Eph. 4:1), the high, holy, heavenly "call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:14).

Let us stop here and consider these two important aspects of the cross of Christ: the cross as the foundation of our hope and our ministry, our peace and our testimony, and the cross as the foundation of our relationship with God and our relationship to the world. If, imbued with the consciousness of my sin, I look at the cross of the Lord Jesus, in the cross I see the eternal foundation of my world; I see that "my sin" is removed, i.e. the principle and root of sin is destroyed; I see that my sins have been taken up on the cross; I see that God is really "for me", and for me exactly in the position in which I saw myself, when my conscience woke up in me. The Cross is God's Friend sinner: makes Him righteous and justifies the most ungodly sinner. Creation and Providence were powerless to accomplish this; through them, of course, I could know the power of God, His majesty and wisdom. But by themselves, from an abstract point of view, they were against me, because I am a sinner and because power, greatness and wisdom cannot take away my sin from me, they cannot open access to the Righteous God for me.

On the cross, on the contrary, I see that God completely reverses the state of things and settles accounts with sin, and this shows His immense glory; I see a wonderful manifestation and complete harmony of all the properties of the Divine; I see love, and love strengthening my soul, diverting it from everything earthly as I realize this love; I see wisdom, wisdom confounding demons and astonishing angels; I see power, and power that overcomes all obstacles; I see holiness, and holiness that does not tolerate any shadow of sin, holiness that shows how disgusting sin is to God; I see grace, and grace, bringing the sinner into the presence of God and, moreover, into the bosom of God. Where, besides the cross, can I see all this? Search everywhere: nowhere will you find anything so closely, so wonderfully linking two great facts: "Glory to God in the highest" and "peace on earth."

Infinitely precious in this respect is the significance of the cross as the foundation of our peace, worship of God, and eternal covenant with God, whose glory the cross proclaims. The Cross is infinitely precious in the eyes of God as a foundation on which He, without compromising His justice, has the opportunity to reveal all His great perfection, acting with the sinner according to His unspeakable goodness. The significance of the cross for God is so immensely great that, according to the just remark of one of the modern writers, “everything created by God from the very beginning, everything that He said, proves that the cross occupied the first place in His heart. This cannot but amaze us, since we know that the Beloved Son of God had to be nailed to this cross and on it become the subject of shame and all the suffering that the combined efforts of demons and people could only bring on, solely because He joyfully did the will of the Father, dying to atone for the sins of the sons the grace of God. The Cross will always remain an attractive force, as the most expressive manifestation of God's eternal love."

No less important is the cross as the foundation of our active service, our witness in the world. It is superfluous to prove that in this respect the cross also fully corresponds to its purpose, as in the previous case. The very cross that connects me to God separated me from the world. The dead man has done away with his world once and for all; so the believer, dying in Christ, is crucified to the world, and the world to him (Gal. 6:14); having risen with Christ, he is united with Him in the power of new life and new nature. Inseparably united with Christ, the believer participates directly in the acceptance of the Son by God and the rejection of the Son in this world. These are two inseparable facts: the first makes us servants and citizens of heaven; the second turns us into witnesses of God and strangers on earth; the first brings us into the veil, into the Holy of Holies, the second brings us out of the camp; and both these facts are equally important and true. If the cross took a place between me and my sins, reconciling me with God, it also stood between me and the world, uniting me with Christ, the rejected world, and making me a humble and patient witness to the precious, incomprehensible and eternal grace of God, revealed on the cross.

The believer must clearly assimilate and distinguish from each other these two sides of the cross of Christ. It is not befitting for him to enjoy the blessings flowing from the cross and refuse to enter into conditions that are inseparably connected with the second meaning for us of the cross of Christ. If his ear is open to hear the voice of Christ from within, behind the veil, he should be kept open to hear the voice that sounds outside the camp. Having appropriated to himself the redemption made on the cross, he must actually carry out the rejection that accompanied the first. To put an end not only to sin, but also to the world - this is our blessed advantage. The doctrine of the cross includes everything; this gave the apostle Paul the opportunity to say: "I do not want to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal. 6:14). The world, according to the apostle, must be nailed to the cross; Having crucified Christ, the world crucified in Him also all who belonged to Him. Let us think carefully about all this; sincerely and prayerfully dwell on these questions, and may the Holy Spirit grant us to fulfill all their vitality!

But back to our research.

How long Abraham spent in Haran is not said; what is known is that in His great mercy God waited for Abraham, freed from all the fetters of the earth, to fully obey His command. However, there is no doubt that there was not, and indeed could not be, harmony between the command of God and the circumstances of life that Abraham chose for himself in Haran. God loves his servants too much to give them under such conditions the full spiritual blessing that results from total obedience to God.

It is useful to note that during the entire period of his stay in Haran, Abraham did not receive a single new revelation from God. To receive new revelations from the God of light, it is necessary to live on the level of the light we have already received. "To him that has it shall be given," is the Divine rule. Let us, however, remember that God will never lead us by force along the path of obedience and true service; it would violate the moral perfection that characterizes all the ways of God. God does not bring us to Himself attracts; He attracts us and leads us along the path that leads us to the inexpressible bliss contained in Himself. And if we do not understand that it is in our own interests that we must cast aside all the barriers that prevent us from going to the call of God, we are Unworthy of the mercy shown to us. But - alas! We are slow of heart in understanding this truth. We stop at sacrifice, obstacles, and hardships instead of hastily running down the path of obedience, because we have come to know and love the One whose voice has reached our ears.

A blessing, and an essential blessing, seals every step of obedience; because obedience is a consequence, the fruit of faith, and faith brings us closer to God, leads us to living communion with Him. From this point of view, obedience is in every respect the opposite of subordination. A man under the law, burdened with all the weight of his sins, obeys the law and thus thinks to serve God; as a result of this, his soul melts away in suffering, and he not only does not advance hastily along the path of obedience, but hardly even has the strength to step on it. True obedience, on the other hand, is the manifestation and fruit of a new nature imparted by the grace of God. God, in His mercy, gives this new nature the instructions that govern it; divine nature, guided by divine instructions, of course, cannot be subordinate to the law. The law is held by the carnal nature of man, making efforts to fulfill divine instructions; it is useless and foolish to hope to reconcile the fallen nature of man with the law of God, pure and holy. How can spoiled nature breathe such a pure atmosphere? Impossible! Everything should be divine: both nature and atmosphere.

But the matter was not limited to the fact that God communicates a new nature to the believer and directs his nature with His heavenly instructions: He also sets before him the corresponding hopes and expectations. So it was with Abram; The God of glory appeared to him, and appeared to remind him of the desired object, of "the land that I will show you." Without forcing the soul, God draws it to Himself. The eye of the new nature saw in the land of the Lord the incomparably better country of Ur and Haran; not yet seeing this land, faith was already aware of all its beauty and price, and, in order to possess it, was ready to sacrifice the temporary comforts of life. That is why, we read, "by faith Abraham obeyed the call to go into the country which he had to receive as an inheritance; and he went not knowing whither he was going," in other words, "he walked by faith, and not by sight" (Heb. 11:8; 2 Corinthians 5:7). Although not seeing with his eyes, he believed with his heart, and faith became a powerful lever of his soul. Faith rests on a foundation much stronger than our senses: it rests on the Word of God; our feelings can deceive us, the Word of God - never.

Sub-legalism rejects any teaching about the divine nature, the new beginnings that guide it, and the hopes that inspire it. The law teaches that in order to reach heaven, it is necessary to give up the earth. But where would fallen nature get the strength to leave that with which it is firmly connected? How will she be attracted to something that is really devoid of any charm for her? To the natural man the sky presents no attraction; least of all he wants to go to heaven. The carnal nature does not think about heaven, nor about the interests and inhabitants of it. Even if it could be transported to heaven, it would feel completely miserable there. Nature is incapable of giving up the earth, incapable of wanting to go to heaven. It is true that she would gladly run away from hell and its torment; but the desire to get rid of hell and the desire to go to heaven come from two completely different sources. The first is characteristic of the first nature, the second arises only in the new, second. Had there not been a "lake of fire" in hell, had it not threatened the "undying worm", spoiled nature would not have been afraid of hell. And this is reflected in all desires, in all strivings of a carnal person. The law requires us to give up sin in order to achieve righteousness; but human nature cannot renounce sin; as for righteousness, the flesh directly hates it. Nature, it is true, would not mind having a certain amount of religion; and her desire is explained by the hope in this way to get rid of the eternal fire; but not because, even now, to delight the soul with communion with God and the observance of His ways.

How different in all respects is the "glorious gospel of the blessed God" from the under-law (1 Tim. 1:11)!

Having announced this, he reveals God Himself, descending, in the fullness of His grace, to earth, taking away from the sinner a sacrifice on the cross all his sins on an eternal basis, for the sake of the sufferings of Christ, who "became a sacrifice for us for sin." And God not only takes away sin; He communicates to the contrite heart new life, eternal life, the life of His Only Begotten Son, risen and glorified; the life prepared for every believer, which, according to the eternal predestination of God, is inseparably united with Him who was nailed to the cross; now he is seated on the throne of glory in heaven. This nature, as we have noted above, God, in His goodness, adapted to obey the ordinances of the holy Word of God, revealed by the Holy Spirit; then the Lord revives her also with His unchangeable promises, showing her from afar the "hope of glory", "a city that has foundations", "a better fatherland", i.e. heavenly homeland, "many mansions of the Father", "golden harp", "palm branches", and "white robes", "unshakable kingdom", eternal union with God Himself in the land of bliss and light, where neither darkness nor sorrow will penetrate; unspeakable mercy, promising an eternal stay "in the green pastures, by the still waters" of redemptive love. How far is all this from a concept under the law! Instead of ordering me, for the sake of acquiring heaven, which I hate, to renounce earthly well-being; instead of trying to develop and correct my corrupted nature, God, in His infinite mercy and for the sake of Christ's sacrifice, endows me with a new nature capable of enjoying heaven; gives me the sky, by whose interests this nature is able to live; but besides the sky, God also grants me Himself, an inexhaustible source of heavenly joy.

This is the "most excellent" way of God. The God of Abraham led this way, led Saul from Tarsus; He also leads us to them. "God of glory" showed Abraham a fatherland better than Ur and Haran; To Saul of Tarsus he showed a glory so dazzling that his eyes were closed forever for the world; From that moment on, he no longer saw the brilliance of the worldly and considered everything earthly as “litter” in order to gain Christ, who appeared to him and whose voice shook his soul to the depths. Saul saw the Christ of Heaven in all the radiance and glory of Him; from that hour until the end of his life, despite all the weakness of the "clay vessel", Christ, heavenly and heavenly glory consumed the whole being of Saul.

"And Abraham went through this land to the place of Shechem, to the oak forest of the Sea. In this land the Canaanites dwelt" (v. 6). No doubt it was hard for Abraham to discover the presence of the Canaanites in the land of the Lord; it was a test of his faith and firmness of hope, a test of his heart and patience. Leaving behind Ur and Haran, he went to the land of which the God of glory had spoken to him; and behold, the Canaanites live there. But there he found the Lord. "And the Lord appeared to Abraham and said: I will give this land to your offspring" (v. 7). It is important to note the connection between these two facts. "In this land lived the Canaanites," the connection of these two facts. “The Canaanites lived in this land,” and now, out of fear that Abraham would not envy this pagan people, who then owned that land, Jehovah appears to Abraham with a reminder that He will give this land to him and his offspring forever. In this way Abraham's thoughts turned now to the Lord, and not to the Canaanites, and therein lies a profound lesson for us. The Canaanites who rule in the country are an expression of the power of Satan, but, despising the power of Satan, who is trying to give us away from the moment we enter the promised land, we are called to put on the power of Christ, which leads us into it. "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but ... against spirits of wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12). The very atmosphere in which we move breathes hostility against us. Should we be afraid of the struggle? Not at all; Christ is for us, the triumphant Christ, in whom we are more than conquerors. And therefore, not yielding to the spirit of fear, let us abide in reverent worship of Him. And Abraham "built there an altar unto the Lord, who had appeared unto him. From there he went to the mountain east of Bethel; and pitched his tent" (vv. 7-8). The altar and the tent are typical traits of Abraham's character: he was a servant of God and at the same time a stranger and a stranger in this world; not having on earth "an inheritance not to the size of a foot" (Acts 7:5), but he had God; and that was enough for him.

But if God responds to faith, He tests it. Faith must be tested. It should not be thought that the path of the believer will always be easy and even; this is far from being the case - a stormy sea and thunderstorms await him on the way. But it is by following this path that he reaches spiritual maturity; from deep experience he will know what God is to a heart that trusts in Him. A cloudless sky and a level path would not give him the opportunity to know the God with whom he is dealing: we know how inclined the heart is to take the visible, outer world for the world of God. When all is well, when our wealth is not in danger, our affairs prosper, our children and servants obey us; when our dwelling is comfortable, our health is good, in a word, when everything in our life develops according to our desire, how then are we inclined to confuse the world lying on all this surroundings with the world flowing from the consciousness of Christ's presence! The Lord knows all this; that is why, when we rest in circumstances, instead of resting in Him, He visits us and, in one way or another, shakes our imaginary supports.

But the matter is not limited to this. Often we consider the path to be straight, because, walking along it, we do not meet any trials, no contradictions. This is a big misconception. The path of obedience is often replete with temptations that are most sensitive to flesh and blood. So Abraham not only had to meet the Canaanites at the place indicated to him by God, but also "and there was a famine in that land" (v. 10). Should Abraham have concluded from this that he was out of place there? No, because by doing so, he would prove that he judges "by the look of his eyes," which faith never does. This was undoubtedly a test of his faith, it was incomprehensible to his carnal nature; but for faith everything was clear and easy. Called to go to Macedonia, the apostle Paul first of all found in it a prison for himself in the city of Philippi. A heart that is not in communion with God would inevitably see this as a death blow to its cause. But the apostle Paul never rested on his difficult position; that is why he was able to "sing of God" even within the walls of the dungeon, in full confidence that everything that happens to him is necessary for him; and the apostle was right, because in the prison of Philippi there was a vessel of mercy, to which, according to human understanding, the gospel preaching would never have reached, if its preachers had not been thrown exactly where it was. To his own detriment, the devil thus became God's instrument for proclaiming the Gospel to one of God's chosen vessels.

And Abraham should have treated the fact of the famine in that land as the apostle Paul had treated the prison. True, there was a famine; Egypt, where Abraham could get rid of him, was close at hand; but the way of the servant of God was clear. It is better to die of hunger in the land of Canaan than to live in abundance in Egypt. It is better to suffer in the way of God than to prosper in the way of Satan. It is better to suffer shortcomings with Christ than treasure without Him. In Egypt, Abraham had flocks and cattle, and donkeys, and slaves, and slave women, and horses, and camels, "- the obvious, the carnal heart will say, proof of how well Abraham did when he went to Egypt; but, alas, in In Egypt he had neither an altar nor communion with God! The country of Pharaoh was not the place of the presence of God, and by settling there, Abraham lost more than he gained. It always happens; nothing can ever replace our communion with God. Deliverance from temporary disasters and the acquisition of the greatest blessings of the earth will never make up for us what we lose, even if we deviate by a hair from the path of obedience.How many of us can say "amen" to all this?To get rid of the trials and difficulties that are inseparable from the path of God Do not many turn away from this path, following the current evil age and, as a result, falling into a state of barrenness, dryness, sadness, spiritual darkness? , sn sought the disposition of the world, "found favor" in the eyes of "their pharaohs"; but what is all this in comparison with their lost joy in God, communion with God, peace of mind, a pure conscience and not tormented by reproaches, a spirit of evangelism and gratitude, a living witness and true service to God? Woe to the man who thinks like this! Meanwhile, how often there are people who are ready to sacrifice all the blessings of God for the sake of acquiring a certain degree of prosperity, influence and wealth!

Let us carefully watch ourselves, so as not to follow the inclination of our heart, deviating from the path of obedience, simple and complete; the way, though narrow, but always safe, sometimes difficult, but always blessed. Let us be vigilant, trying to "keep the faith in a good conscience"; nothing earthly can replace it. If the hour of testing comes, instead of leaving the path of obedience and going to Egypt, let us wait for the intervention of God, then the test will not be the cause of our fall, but the proof of our obedience to God. And when we are drawn to go with the world and at the same time with it, let us think of Him "who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father" (Gal 1:4). If such is His love for us, such is His view of the present age, that He gave Himself to deliver us from it, shall we, by denying Christ, plunge us again into the world from which He forever delivered us through the cross? May this not happen to us! May the Almighty in His right hand and under the shadow of His wings keep us until the moment when we see Jesus "as He is," and when, "having become like him," we will abide forever with Him!

Chapter 13

The beginning of this chapter is full of profound teaching for us spiritually. When somehow our Spiritual life goes down and we lose fellowship with God; when then the awakened conscience convicts us of this, we run the risk of not being able to widely use the grace of God again bestowed on us and not fully fulfilling the communion with God that we have temporarily interrupted.

Everything the Lord does, we know, He does in a way worthy of Himself. Whether it be creation or salvation, communion or restoration, in all things He acts according to His divine nature, He glorifies His name in all His ways. This is precious to us, who are always inclined to "offend the Holy One of Israel" (Ps. 77:41), especially in the matter of restoring His grace. In the chapter we are considering, Abraham not only had to leave Egypt, but also to go back to the very place where his tent was before ... to the place of the altar, which he made there at the beginning; and there Abraham called on the name of the Lord "(v. 3 -4). God does not rest until He again leads the one who has gone astray or belated on the path to the straight path and restores the full communion of his soul with Himself. Our hearts, filled with the consciousness of our own righteousness, would undoubtedly decide that such a person should now take a place lower in comparison with that which he voluntarily lost; so it really would have happened, if our merits and character were taken into account; but it is a matter of grace, and God Himself determines the degree of restoration of the fallen; what this degree is, we learn from the following words of the prophet Jeremiah: "If you want to turn, Israel, says the Lord, turn to me!" (4.1). That's how God restores; and only such restoration is worthy of God: He either does not restore at all, or, in restoring, exalts in such a way that the riches of His grace are glorified. When the Old Testament leper returned to the camp of Israel, he was first brought "to the entrance of the tabernacle of the assembly" (Lev. 14:11); the prodigal son, returning to his father's house, was immediately seated at the table; Apostle Peter, restored after his fall, could say to the men of Israel: “You denied the Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14), thus accusing them precisely of what he himself did and under circumstances that aggravated his guilt. In all these and many other similar cases, we see that in restoring, God restores wholly; By the action of His mighty grace, He brings the soul back to Himself, arousing in it complete trust in Himself. "If you want to contact To me turn!" "And Abraham returned to the place where before was his tent."

Then, as regards the action of the moral on the restored soul, it is extremely deeply practical. If the underlaw gets its answer in character recovery, then illegality gets the answer as a result recovery. The restored soul is imbued with a deep and living consciousness of the evil from which it has been delivered, and this consciousness gives it the spirit of vigilance, the spirit of prayer, holiness and spiritual diligence. God is not restoring us so that we can condescend to sin so that we fall back into it; He says, "Go and sin no more!" (John 8:11). The more we are conscious of action grace God, who restores us, the more we realize the obligatory holiness of this restoration. This thought is permeated from beginning to end throughout all of Holy Scripture; but it is especially clearly expressed in two well-known places: Ps. 22:3 and 1 John 1:9. - "Reinforces my soul, guides me to the paths of truth, for His name's sake"; and "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from any untruth." The strengthened soul must walk in the "paths of righteousness." The use of grace entails a righteous life: to speak of grace and live in unrighteousness means "to turn the grace of our God into an occasion for debauchery" (Jude 4). If "grace reigned through righteousness unto eternal life" (Romans 5:21), it will certainly manifest itself also in righteous deeds, which are the fruit of such a Life. Grace, which forgives us our sins, cleanses us from all unrighteousness. It would be in vain to separate these two facts from each other; United inseparably together, they utterly smash, as we have already said above, subordination, reconciling at the same time all the contradictions of the human heart.

But Abraham was in for a test incomparably greater than the famine that prompted him to move to Egypt: he had to live in the company of a man who did not know from his own experience the power of personal faith in God, who did not understand that he was personally responsible for his actions before God. From the very beginning, Lot seems to have acted in his walk more under the influence and example of Abraham than in his own personal faith. When reading the Holy Scriptures, we are convinced that when the most important upheavals in life come, made by the Spirit of God, many people, believers and unbelievers, join the general movement, not in the least imbued with the power that produces them. These people temporarily follow others either as an unnecessary ballast in the matter of witnessing the truth, or directly slowing down its action. So the Lord called Abraham to leave his relatives ("Go away from your kindred"); but instead of leaving them, Abraham takes them with him; Terah's presence had already delayed him on his way until Terah's death befell him; Lot followed Abraham a little further, until "the deceitfulness of riches and other desires" (Mark 4:19) finally took over and took possession of him.

The same is noted in the great upheaval brought about by the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, as we see from Numbers. 11.4. "A multitude of diverse people went out with them" (Ex. 12:38), having become a stumbling block for them, the cause of their weakness and confusion. "The strangers between them began to show whims; and with them and the children of Israel sat and wept; and said: Who will feed us with meat?" So in the first days of the appearance of the Church on earth, and then in all the movements in the world produced by the Holy Spirit, there were always many people who, due to various side reasons, joined this movement; influence is not of divine, but of human origin, and therefore this influence is unstable, so that these people soon returned to their former position in the world. that it is He who has called us to take the position in which we are, otherwise we will not have the determination or perseverance to maintain it. the way he should go, gives each his own sphere of activity, his certain duties, and we must know what our vocation is and what duties it lays burdens upon us, so that with the help of the grace bestowed upon us daily, we may work profitably for the glory of God. It is not the quantity of our work that matters; it is important that this work be entrusted to us by God. Whether we have “five talents,” whether we have received the “one talent” given to us, we will undoubtedly hear from the Lord the same word: “Good,” as if we had acquired another “five talents” for five talents. This is a very encouraging consolation. The apostles - Paul, Peter, James and John - each received his own measure, his own separate ministry; the same applies to everyone. No one should interfere in the affairs of another. The carpenter has a saw, a plow, a hammer and scissors; and he uses all these instruments in turn, according to which of them he needs at a given moment. Nothing is more harmful than imitation. In the physical world, it is completely absent: every creature fulfills its purpose, lives its own life. If this is true for the physical world, how much more important is it to exclude imitation from the spiritual world. A wide field of action lies before each of us. In every house there are vessels of all possible sizes and shapes; and all of them are needed by the owner of the house. Let us give ourselves an account, dear reader, whether we are under divine or human influence; whether our faith rests on the wisdom of man, or on the power of God; whether we do this or that because others do it, or because we are called to this by the Lord; Are we guided only by the example and influence of those around us, or are we guided by faith, which is our personal property? We have been given the undeniable advantage of having fellowship with one another; but, relying on our brothers, we will inevitably be wrecked; also, by working more than is given to us, we harm our work. It is not difficult to find out whether a person works in his place and according to the given measure; let us always be sincere and truthful. If we are not assigned to do great things, let us be sincere, and if we cannot "Distinguish ourselves, we will remain as we are. He who throws himself into the water without knowing how to swim can easily drown; not equipped with proper sails and an unequipped ship, or should will at the first gust of wind return to the port, or he will perish Lot came out of the "Hurr of the Chaldees", but fell in the valley of Sodom The call of God did not reach the depths of his heart, and his closed eyes did not see the glory of God's heritage.For each of us God outlines a path illuminated by the approval of God and the light of the face of the Lord; to follow this path is our joy God's favor fully satisfies the heart that knows Him We do not always succeed in enlisting the approval of our brothers and using their assistance; often they will not understand us; all this is inevitable for us But "the day" will show all things clearly; the heart faithful to God joyfully looks forward to the coming of this day, because then "to everyone there will be praise from God" (1 Corinthians 3:13-4,5).

It is important to consider in more detail what exactly distracted Lot from following the path of the living testimony of God. In the life of every person there is a decisive moment that reveals what all his walking in the world is based on, indicates all the motives that control his actions, and the objects that attract him. with Lot: he did not die in Haran, but fell in Sodom The apparent cause of his fall was the dissension that arose between the shepherds of his flocks and the shepherds of the flocks of Abraham. But a person whose eye is “not pure” and whose spiritual movements are not sanctified by God, not today, so tomorrow will easily stumble over a stone on the way; and if it does not happen to him today, it will happen to him tomorrow. In fact, the apparent reason that distracts us from direct way, is of little importance; true the reason remains hidden from prying eyes, consisting in the secret hobbies of the heart, where one way or another crept spirit of the world It was not difficult to put out the dispute between the shepherds; neither the interests of Lot, nor the interests of Abraham, spiritually, would have been harmed by it. But in fact, this dispute gave the latter an opportunity to prove the wondrous power of faith and that sublime, heavenly mood into which the faith of a believer brings; and at the same time this controversy revealed all the worldliness that filled the heart of Lot. This dispute between the shepherds did not in the least increase either the worldly heart of Lot, or the faith in the soul of Abraham; he only illuminated in both cases what already really existed in the heart of each of them.

And so it always happens: the strife and divisions that arise in the church also become the cause of the fall of many souls, in one way or another returning them to the world; and then these people refer to strife and divisions and seek justification for their actions in them; in fact, all this was only a means to reveal the real state of their soul and the inclination of their heart. When the world took possession of the heart, the road to the world is open everywhere; and we Prove only the low level of our morality, blaming people and blaming circumstances, while the true root of evil lies in ourselves, however, any bickering and divisions are not pernicious in themselves. It is sad and humiliating to see brothers quarreling in front of the “Canaanites and Pharisees”, when in reality their speech should be this: “Let there be no strife between me and you ... for we are relatives” (vv. 8-9) . But why didn't Abraham choose Sodom for himself? Why didn't this quarrel make him return to the world and cause him to fall? He looked at life's difficulties through the eyes of God. His heart drew him to the beautifully watered valleys of Sodom no less than the heart of Lot; but he did not give his heart the right to choose; he left it to Lot, entrusting God with the care of choosing for himself. Such is the "wisdom from above". Faith always gives God the choice of an inheritance for us, entrusting Him with the care of bringing us into it. She can say: "My lines have passed through beautiful places, and my inheritance is pleasant to me" (Ps. 15:6). It makes no difference to her where the "boundaries" of her passed; the places they went through will always be "beautiful places" to faith, because God led them that way. The man who walks by faith willingly leaves the choice to the man who walks by sight; he says: "If you are to the left, then I am to the right; and if you are to the right, then I am to the left." Here you can feel both disinterestedness and moral generosity, and with all this, such complete security! But however far the desires of the flesh may go, and whatever part it chooses for itself, you can be quite sure that it will never succeed in harming the faith; the latter is looking for treasures in a completely different place, faith keeps its treasures in storehouses, to which the flesh does not even fit, to which it cannot even approach; and even if the flesh could approach them, it would not want to go there. By thus providing the choice of the flesh, faith is in complete security, while at the same time showing its unselfishness.

What was the choice given to Lot? His choice stopped at the place over which the judgment of God was soon to break out. How and why did Lot choose this particular land? Because he judged the earth by its external appearance, not taking into account either its internal character or the future that awaited it. The outstanding feature of Sodom's character was "evil" (v. 13); the fate that awaited him was "judgment," destruction "by fire and brimstone from heaven." But, many will say, Lot did not know this; This is true; but Abraham did not know any of this. God alone knew everything, and, if Lot had given Him the “choice of his inheritance,” God would never have given him, of course, the land, which He Himself was soon going to strike with judgment. But Lot wanted to choose for himself, and found the land of Sodom good for himself; this land was not good in the eyes of God. Lot's gaze rested on the "neighborhood of the Jordan", and his heart was captivated by it. "And pitched his tents to Sodom" (vv. 10-12). That was the choice of the flesh. "Demas left me in love with this world" (2 Tim. 4:10). For the same reason left Abraham and Lot; leaving the place of God's testimony, he passed into the place of judgment.

"And the Lord said to Abraham after Lot separated from him: Lift up your eyes, and from the place where you are now, look to the north, and to the south, and to the east, and to the west. For all the land that you see I will give you and your offspring forever" (vv. 14-15). "Quarrel" and "separation" not only did not cause any damage to the spiritual life of Abraham, but also contributed to the manifestation of the heavenly principles that guided him, and strengthened the life of faith in his soul even more; moreover, they shed light on his path and delivered him from a person with whom communication only slowed down his wandering. Thus, everything worked together for the good of Abraham, became for him a source of God's abundant blessings.

Let us remember - a significant and at the same time comforting truth - that in the end everyone comes, so to speak, to his "level". All those who hastily set off on a path to which they were not sent from above, sooner or later end in a fall and a return to what, according to them, they left once and for all. On the other hand, all who are called by God and make God their support find constant support in His grace. "The path of the righteous is like a luminous luminary, which shines brighter and brighter until full day" (Pr. 4:18). This thought should make us humble and vigilant in prayer. "Whoever thinks he is standing, beware lest he fall" (1 Cor. 10:12), because, of course, "there are the first who will be last, and the last who will be first" (Luke 13:20) . The words "he who endures to the end will be saved" (Matt. 10:22) express high moral truth, in whatever sense we apply it to ourselves. Often we have to see a majestic-looking ship, with taut sails, proudly, with the approving exclamations of the crowd, leaving the harbor; everything, it would seem, portends him a happy voyage; but, alas, storms, waves, sands and pitfalls soon change everything: a voyage begun under the most favorable conditions ends in disaster. When I say this, I mean only service and witness, leaving aside the question of God's salvation of man in Christ; this salvation, thank God, does not depend on us in any way; it depends only on the One who said: "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:28). But it often happens that we see Christians who, not being called by God, take on some important ministry or preaching; after a while they weaken along the way; At the same time, many, after they have proclaimed the truth of God to others, themselves become guilty of the doctrine they preach: they have taken up a task that was not entrusted to them by God, or they have insufficiently weighed in the presence of God all the consequences of their preaching. Such mistakes should be lamented and carefully avoided. Everyone receives both his calling and his ministry from his Lord. Those who are called by Christ to some special service to Him, in Him they will undoubtedly draw strength for this service; for He sends no warrior to war on his own account. But every one who flees, without being sent, will not only convince himself of his folly, but will also prove it to those around him.

This means that someone has the right to be proud, considering himself a representative of this or that kind of ministry, or an example in the matter of witnessing the truth of God. Deliver us from this, Lord! That would be pride, unheard-of madness. The whole work of the teacher consists in presenting the Word of God to people, the work of the minister is in declaring the will of his Master. But even having understood everything that is required of us, let's not forget that it is necessary to pre-calculate the costs and then only proceed to the construction of the tower, then only start the war (Luke 14:28). There would be less embarrassment, less failure among us, if we would pay attention to this truth. God called Abraham to leave Ur for Canaan; and God led him throughout his journey. When Abraham stopped at Haran, God was waiting for him; when he descended into Egypt, God brought him out; when he needed guidance, God directed him; when the moment of quarrel and separation came, God took care of him; thus, Abraham could only repeat: "How many good things you have, which you have in store for those who fear you, and which you have prepared for those who trust in you before the sons of men!" (Ps. 30:20). Through the quarrel, Abraham lost absolutely nothing; as before, so now, he had a tent and an altar. And Abraham moved tent, and went and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and made there altar Lord" (v. 18). Let Lot choose Sodom for himself; Abraham seeks and finds everything in his God. There is no altar in Sodom; all who go towards Sodom are looking, alas, for something completely alien to the altar of God. Not for worship God they go to Sodom; they are attracted there by love of the world. But if they found the object of their longed desires, what end awaits them? Scripture points to it: "He fulfilled their petition, but sent a plague on their souls" ( Ps. 105:15).

Chapter 14

In this chapter we find a description of the indignation of the five kings against Chedorlaomer and the battle that took place on this occasion. The Spirit of God also stops at the actions of "kings" and their armies, when their actions in one way or another concern the people of God. Personally, Abraham did not have to be in danger either from this clash of kings, or from the consequences that accompanied him: his tent and his altar could not give either a reason for war, or the opportunity to experience its cruelty and final outcome. The inheritance of a "heavenly" man can never arouse the envy or vanity of the kings and conquerors of this world.

But if Abraham was not interested in the struggle of the kings, Lot was far from indifferent to it, because by his position he became involved in the uprising of "four kings against five." As long as, by the grace of God, we walk the path of faith, we will not be touched by the calamities that afflict the world; but as soon as we leave the holy title of "heavenly inhabitants" (Phil. 3:20), as soon as we begin to acquire glory, position and inheritance on earth, immediately the surprises and disasters of the world fall upon us. Lot settled in the valleys of Sodom, and therefore the internecine war of the kings could not but affect him. It always happens this way: it is a very bitter and painful thing for a child of God to mingle with the children of this world; he can never do it without hurting his own soul and the evidence he is entrusted with. How could Lot testify of God in Sodom? Very weak at best. The very fact of his settlement there dealt a death blow to his testimony to God. Every word he spoke against Sodom and his wickedness condemned him also; why should he himself settle there? In all likelihood, "spreading his tents to Sodom," Lot in no way set out to testify about God. His decisions and actions were guided only by his personal and family interests; and although, according to the words of the apostle Paul, Lot “was daily tormented in a righteous soul, seeing and hearing lawless deeds,” he, with all his desire, had little opportunity to fight the evil around him.

From a practical point of view, it is important to note that we cannot be guided by two considerations at the same time. I cannot pursue my worldly interests and the interests of the gospel of Christ at the same time. Nothing, of course, prevents me, going about my personal affairs, from preaching the Gospel; but one of these two occupations must necessarily become the task of my life. Preaching the gospel, the apostle Paul also made tents; but the purpose of his life was not to make tents, but to preach the gospel. If my heart is always occupied with my personal interests and affairs, my preaching will be fruitless, and sometimes even serve as a means to cover up my unfaithfulness to God. The heart is deceitful; often, when it comes to achieving our desired goal, it deceives us surprisingly subtly. With the most redeeming arguments it supports our criminal tastes; our spiritual understanding, obscured by our personal interests and our unsanctified will, is unable to unravel the character of the flesh and its arguments. And how many people we meet who do not agree to get out of a situation that they themselves consider false, and justify themselves by the fact that this situation expands the circle of their activities! "Obedience is better than sacrifice, and obedience is better than the fat of rams" (1 Sam. 15:22) - this is God's only answer to all such philosophies. Doesn't the story of Abraham and Lot convince us that the surest, most effective means of serving the world is to completely separate from it and testify against it.

But—remember this—true separation from the world can only come about as a consequence of communion with God. And, separated from the world, we can make our personality the center of our existence, as monks and ancient cynic philosophers often did; separation for God's sake is something entirely different. The first division mortifies and dries a man, the second warms and animates him; the first closes us in ourselves; the second forces us to renounce ourselves and makes us active in love for others; separation of the first kind makes its own "I" and personal interests its center; the second gives God a place due to Him. So in the history of Abraham, the fact of his separation from the world, we see, made him able to render an essential service to one who, due to his frivolous walking in the world, got into a great difficulty. "Abraham, hearing that his relative taken prisoner, armed his servants, born in the house of echo, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued the enemies to Dan ... And he returned, also women and people "(vv. 14-16). Be that as it may, Lot was "kindred ", Abraham's brother, and brotherly love could not help but force Abraham to act. "A friend loves at all times and, like a brother, will appear in times of trouble" (Pr. 17:17). The sight of a brother's misfortune softens the heart and disposes it even to a person from which he had previously been separated. In misfortune, Abraham treats Lot not only as a nephew, but as a brother. This is the divine side of love. While making us always independent, faith, however, never makes us insensitive; it does not allow us to dress in warm clothes, while our brother endures the cold.Faith first of all "purifies the heart" (Acts 15:9), then "works through love" (Gal. 5:6), faith, finally, "conquers the world" (1 John 5:4) All these three attributes of faith are shown in all their beauty in Abraham, whose heart was free from the evil of Sodom. A; he showed true love to his brother Lot, and in the end he won a complete victory over the kings. Such are the fruits of faith, this heavenly principle that glorifies Christ.

But a person who walks by faith is not, however, protected from the attacks of the enemy: temptations often follow immediately after victory. So it is with Abraham. "When he returned from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him (v. 17). different from that which is personified by "Kedorlaomer and the kings who were with him." In the act of the first, there is hidden, so to speak, the hissing of a snake; in the latter one hears the roar of a lion; but with whom Abraham had to deal, with a snake or with a lion, the grace of God was enough for everything, and this grace at the right moment always acted in favor of the servant of the Lord. "And Melchizedek, the king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was the priest of the Most High God. And he blessed him, and said: Blessed is Abraham from the Most High God, Lord of heaven and earth. And blessed is the Most High God, who delivered your enemies into your hands" ( 18-20). It is necessary to note, firstly, the moment of the appearance of Melchizedek, and secondly, to note the double effect of his appearance. Not at the time when Abraham is victoriously pursuing Chedorlaomer, Melchizedek comes out to meet him, but when the king of Sodom is chasing after Abraham. Before entering into a battle incomparably more serious than the previous one, Abraham needed a deeper fellowship with God.

The "bread and wine" of Melchizedek sated the soul of Abraham after his struggle with Chedorlaomer; but his blessings strengthened his heart for the struggle he was to enter into with the king of Sodom. Emboldened by his victory, Abraham prepared for a new struggle; that is why the royal priest strengthens the soul of the conqueror, encourages the heart of the warrior. With quiet joy we observe what idea of God the words of Melchizedek must evoke in Abraham. He calls Him "God Most High, Ruler of heaven and earth"; then he says that Abraham is "blessed" by this God. This was a powerful support for Abraham, preparing him to meet the king of Sodom. A person blessed in the eyes of God had no need for earthly blessings that the enemy could offer him; since “the Lord of heaven and earth filled his thoughts and heart, the “treasures” of Sodom could not attract him. And indeed, as one might expect, when the king of Sodom makes such an offer to Abraham: “Give me the people, and take the estate for yourself ", Abraham answers him: "I raise my hand to the Lord, the Most High God, the Lord of heaven and earth, that I will not even take a thread and a belt from shoes from all yours, so that you do not say: I enriched Abraham." Abraham rejects the generosity of the king Sodomsky How could he otherwise think about the liberation of Lot - from the power of this world, if he himself were entangled in the nets of the world? I can free my neighbor from sin only to the extent that I myself am free from it. to draw another out of him.The path of separation for the sake of the Lord gives us mighty strength, and with it peace and bliss.

The world, in all forms and forms, is the mighty instrument of Satan, through which he strives to weaken the hands and pervert the aspirations of the servant of God; but, thanks be to God, if our heart is sincere before the Lord, He will never be slow to rejoice, encourage and strengthen it at the right moment. "The eyes of the Lord are searching all over the earth to sustain those whose hearts are completely devoted to Him" (2 Chronicles 16:9). Christ will be our strength and our shield; He "teaches our hands to fight and our fingers to fight" (Ps. 143:1). He "will cover the heads of His beloved in the day of battle" (Ps. 139:8). He will eventually "crush Satan under our feet soon" (Rom. 16:20). May the Lord keep our hearts in full sincerity before Him in the midst of all the evil that surrounds us!

Chapter 15

“After these incidents, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, and it was said: “Do not be afraid, Abraham: I am your shield, your reward is very great.” The Lord will not allow His servant to lose or suffer any loss by rejecting the blessings of this world. It was incomparably better for Abraham to hide behind the shield of Jehovah than to win the favor of the king of Sodom, to expect "a very great reward," than to accept the "treasures of Sodom." The position in which, judging by the first verse of this chapter, Abraham is placed, is the soul is brought in by faith in Christ Jehovah was Abraham's "shield", and this was his peace Jehovah was his "reward", and therefore Abraham expected everything from the Lord; and now also the believing soul finds its rest, its peace, its security, everything it needs for his soul in Christ. No enemy's arrow can pierce the shield that protects the weakest disciple of Jesus; as for the future, Christ fills him. The believer's inheritance is infinitely vast; hope never shames; the ancient counsels of God and the redemption accomplished by Christ provide the believer for ever with both an inheritance and this hope. At the present time we already possess them by the power of the Holy Spirit living in us; and therefore it becomes evident that the believer who seeks success in the world or encourages in himself the desires of the flesh, loses the ability to use both the "shield" and the "reward" If the Holy Spirit is offended, He will not allow us to realize the full depth of the inheritance and hope bestowed on the believer . And in this part of the story of Abraham, we see that when, after the end of the war, Abraham, having rejected the offer of the king of Sodom, returned home, God appears to him as "his shield", as his "very great reward." Here lies an abyss of truth, the study of which will undoubtedly benefit our hearts.

The end of the chapter depicts two great advantages that are in connection with the position of the son and with the position of the heir. "Abraham said: Sovereign Lord, what will You give me? I remain childless; the steward in my house is this Eliezer from Damascus. And Abraham said: Behold, You have not given me offspring, and behold, my household heir mine" (vv. 2-3). Abraham desired to have a son, because he knew from the words of God Himself that "his offspring" would inherit that country (ch. 13, 15). The advantages of a son and an heir are inseparably connected in the thoughts of God. " Whoever comes from your body will be your heir" (v. 4). Being the true foundation of the blessings of the Lord, the position of a son is also the result of the higher purposes and actions of God, as we read in James 1:18 He us"; moreover, this position proceeded from the eternal and divine principle of the resurrection. How could it be otherwise? Abraham's body "dead," so that here, as everywhere, the birth of new life could only appear as a consequence of the power of the resurrection. Neither dead flesh could not conceive nor bear anything for God. The inheritance in all its fullness, in all its splendor, caressed the eyes of Abraham; but where was the heir himself? Abraham's body, like that of Sarah's womb, "dead"; is the God of resurrection; therefore it is on a dead body that He can manifest His strength and action. If the flesh were not dead, God would have to put it to death before He could fully exercise His power on it; the presence of death, excluding the existence of the vain and arrogant intentions of man, is the best field action for the living God. That is why Jehovah says to Abraham: "Look at the sky, and count the stars, if you can count them. And he said to him: So many descendants will you have." The soul, looking at the God of resurrection, becomes a container of the boundless blessings of God, because nothing is impossible for Him Who can turn death into life.

"Abraham believed the Lord, and He reckoned it to him for righteousness." This imputation of righteousness to Abraham is based on Abraham's faith in a God who can revive the dead. This is how God shows himself in a world where death reigns; the soul of the one who believes in Him as the Renewer of life, is pleasing to Him and righteous in His eyes. It is not given to man to be a worker together with God in the work of justification - what can a man do in the midst of the dominion of death? Will he raise the dead? Will he open the doors of the coffin? Will he be able, having escaped death, in the fullness of life and freedom to go beyond the limits of his miserable earthly existence? Certainly not, and therefore he can never achieve righteousness, or the position of a son. "God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living" (Mark 12:27). That is why until a person is freed from the power of death and the dominion of sin, both the position of a son and the conditions of righteousness before God remain alien to him. God alone can destroy all the obstacles that hinder the adoption of a person to righteousness; and both these facts are the consequence of faith in God as the One who raised Christ from the dead.

This is exactly what the Apostle Paul presents to us in Rom. 4 Abraham's faith, saying, "Nevertheless, it is not written in relation to him alone that what was imputed to him, but in relation to us, it will be imputed also to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead. The God of the Resurrection also constitutes for us an object of faith, and our faith is the foundation of our righteousness. If, raising his eyes to the sky dotted with countless stars, Abraham then stopped them on himself, on his "dead body", he would never have been able to believe that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars of heaven. But Abraham took no account of his own body; he conformed only to the power of the resurrecting God, and since this power was to become the source of the promised seed, the stars of heaven and the sand covering the shores of the sea served only as weak examples of the great and wonderful works of God.

Likewise, a sinner who heard the glad tidings of the Gospel, saw with the eyes of faith the whole light of the presence of God, and then explored the immeasurable depths of his own sinful nature, would certainly exclaim: "Do I dare to stand before the face of God? Can I think of dwelling in the unapproachable light of the presence of the Lord?" But, blessed be His name, in itself completely untenable, the sinner finds complete satisfaction in the Son given to him by God, who came from the bowels of the Father, ascended to the cross, laid in a tomb, then seated on the throne at the right hand of the Father; in the Son of God, who filled all the gaps, all the distance between two starting points with His whole being and redemptive deed. Nothing is higher than the bowels of the Father, the eternal dwelling of the Son, nothing lower than the cross and the tomb; but we find Christ (oh wondrous truth!) both in the bowels of God and in the tomb, He gave Himself up to death, so that behind Himself, in the dust of the grave, to leave all the oppression of the sin and iniquities of His people; With His tomb He put an end to every human beginning, the end of sin, the final limit to the power of the devil. The tomb of Christ put an end to everything. The Resurrection of Christ takes us beyond the boundaries of this limit, makes us an incorruptible foundation of the glory of God and the blessedness of man. Only the eyes of faith contemplate the Risen Christ; in Him they find a solemn answer regarding the question of sin, judgment, death, and the tomb. He who won the divine victory over all this rose from the dead, sat at the right hand of the majesty of God in heaven; and, what is incomparably more, the Spirit of the Risen and Glorified One makes everyone who believes in Him a child of God. The believer comes out of the tomb of Christ renewed, as it is written: us all sins (Col 2:13).

So we see that the title of son, being based on the resurrection, is closely related to justification, righteousness, and complete deliverance from everything that was in any way against us. God could not admit us into His presence while sin possessed us. He could not allow any stain to lie on His sons or daughters The father of the prodigal son could not allow a son to his table dressed in sackcloth purchased in a foreign country. Although the son was in rags, this did not prevent the father from going towards him, throwing himself on his neck and embracing him - this was the work of the grace of the father, especially emphasizing this grace; but the father could not allow his son, dressed in rags, to his meal. Grace, prompting the father to come out to meet prodigal son, manifested itself in the fair attitude of the father to his son and returned the latter to his father's house. Grace did not allow the father to wait until the son took care of acquiring decent clothes for himself; justice did not allow, on the other hand, to bring him into the house in the clothes of a foreign land; but when the father comes out to meet his son and throws himself on his neck, grace and truth appear here in all their splendor, in all their greatness, characteristic of each of them, however, without giving the son the right to take a place at the father’s meal until he has been clothed by the father in clothing appropriate to his lofty and blessed position, God in Christ descended to the lowest moral level of man, in order to raise man by His humiliation to the highest degree of blessedness, to bring him into communion with Himself. From all this it becomes obvious that our adoption, all the glory and advantages , connected with him, do not depend on ourselves in the least. We have just as little significance in this matter, as the mortification of the body of Abraham and the womb of Sarah meant little in the issue of the emergence of a numerous seed, like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea. Everything comes exclusively from God alone. God the Father has ordained; God the Son laid the foundation; God the Holy Spirit erected a building bearing the inscription: "By faith apart from the works of the law"(Rom. 3:28).

The chapter we are now studying outlines another fact of great importance: heritage. The question of adoption and the justice of God has already been decided irrevocably and definitively. Then the Lord says to Abraham: "I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees to give you the land to own" (v. 7). Here the question arises and is discussed about the inheritance and about the special path along which the chosen heirs of God have to go in order to achieve the promised inheritance. "If (we) are children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him" (Romans 8:17). The path that leads to the promised land is full of suffering, grief, and calamity of every kind; but by faith we can, thank God, say: "The current temporary suffering are worth nothing in comparison with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:18). And again: "Short-term mild suffering ours produces eternal glory in immeasurable excess"; (2 Cor. 4:17). and finally: "We boast and sorrow, knowing that patience comes from tribulation, experience from patience, hope from experience" (Rom. 5:3-4). our inheritance, this is our great happiness and our obvious advantage.As the Heir Himself, and all His co-heirs reach the inheritance of this by the paths of suffering.

Let us remember, however, that the suffering that falls to the lot of the co-heirs of Christ is of a punitive nature. It is not suffering at the hands of infinite justice due to sin; all this was fully met on the cross, when the divine sacrifice bowed its sacred head under the blows of the justice of God. "Because Christ ... once suffered for sins" (1 Peter 3:18), and this "once" happened on the cross, and nowhere else. He never suffered for our sins before, never again will He suffer for them. "He one day, towards the end of the ages, he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Heb. 9:26). "Christ once offered himself as a sacrifice" (Heb. 9:28).

Christ suffering appears to us in two ways: first, Christ, stricken by the wrath of Jehovah; then Christ, rejected by the people. The first suffering was inflicted on Him alone; we have been given the privilege and honor of being partakers of His second kind of suffering. Struck by the wrath of Jehovah for the sin of the world, Christ suffers completely alone, because who could share the suffering for sin with Him? He alone bore upon Himself all the wrath of God, He alone descended "into the wild valley, which is neither developed nor sown" (Deut. 21:4); there He put an end to the question of our sins once and for all. To this part of the sufferings of Christ we are forever indebted to Him in everything, without taking any part in bearing them. And he fought, and Christ alone won the victory, but He shares His prey with us. He was alone "in a terrible ditch and muddy swamp" (Ps. 39:3), but as soon as He stood on the "rock" of resurrection, He immediately united us with Himself. He was Alone when, in his breath, He "cried out on the cross with a loud voice" (Mark 15:37), but with us he sings "a new song" (Ps. 39:4).

Now the whole question is whether we will refuse to suffer with Him from people after He for us suffered from God? That this question exists is evident from the fact that the Holy Spirit always uses the word "if" when it comes to this subject. "If we suffer with Him" (Rom. 8:17); "If we endure, then we will also reign" (2 Tim. 2:12). When it came to adoption, there were no conditions; We received the high title of son not by suffering, but by the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit according to the eternal plans of God, based on the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Nothing can shake this position. Members families we are not made through suffering; The apostle Paul does not say to the Thessalonians, "That you may be deemed worthy to become members of families of God for which you suffer" (2 Thessalonians 1:5). The Thessalonians were already included in the family of God, but they had to become heirs of the Kingdom, which can only be achieved through suffering; the degree of this suffering depended on the degree of their devotion to the King and their likeness to the King. The more we become like him, the more we suffer with him; the deeper our fellowship with him in his sufferings, the closer will be our fellowship with him and in his glory. There is a great difference between the house of the Father and the kingdom of the Son "In the first is the question of ability, and in the second, of the appointed position. All my children may sit with me at the table; but how much they will take advantage of my company and conversation with me depends on their personal abilities. One of my sons will sit on my knees, rejoicing at my closeness, but not being able to understand a single word of mine; the other will perhaps show rare intelligence in conversation, but will not, however, be any happier for this than a child sitting by me I'm on my knees. But how each of my sons relates to the performance of his duties towards me, how much each of them is like or not like me, is a completely different question. The comparison I have made is only a faint picture of ability in the Father's house and assigned position in the Son's kingdom.

Let us not forget, however, that suffering with Christ does not result from our slavish dependence, but is our advantage and serves as an expression of our voluntary devotion to God; it is not the iron bonds of the law, but the gift of grace. "It has been given to you for Christ's sake not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him" (Phil. 1:29). There is no doubt that the true source of Christ's suffering lies in the focus of our love on Him. The more we love Christ, the more we will draw near to Him; the closer we draw near to Him, the more faithfully we will imitate Him; the more faithfully we imitate him, the more we will suffer with him. So everything flows out of love for Christ; the words "we love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19) express the basic truth. In this matter, as in all others, let us beware of falling into the spirit of subordination; because one should not imagine that a person, having the yoke of underlaws around his neck, suffers for Christ. Alas, we must rather fear that such a person does not know Christ, does not know the blessedness of adoption and is not established in grace: he rather seeks to reach the family by the works of the law than to reach the Kingdom through suffering.

On the other hand, let us also not put aside the cup and the baptism of our Teacher. Let us not use all the fruits given to us by His cross, while refusing to deny ourselves, as the cross of Christ requires of us. Let us be sure that the path leading to the Kingdom is not illuminated by the light of the good will of the world, not strewn with the roses of worldly happiness. A Christian who is successful in this world can rightly be apprehensive about whether he is walking in fellowship with Christ. "Whoever serves me, let him follow me; and where I am, there my servant will be" (John 12:26). What was the purpose of Christ's entire earthly life? Did He try to acquire power on earth, did He seek influence and a high position in the world? No; on the cross, between two condemned thieves, He found a place for Himself. "But," some will say, "that was the work of God and the work of the right hand of the Lord." This, of course, is true, but the person also participated in all this. And on the basis of this truth, if we follow Christ, we will certainly be rejected by the world. Our union with Christ opens heaven to us and at the same time casts us out of the world; if, considering ourselves heavenly, we do not bear the reproach of the world, this serves only as proof that something is not right. If Christ were on earth today, what path would He take, where would this path lead, and where would it end? Will we be willing to walk this path with Him? May the Lord grant us, in the light of His Word, to answer these questions, because the Word is sharper than a two-edged sword and reveals the hidden secrets of our soul before the gaze of the Almighty; and may the Holy Spirit make us faithful disciples of our absent Master, crucified and rejected. He who lives according to the Spirit is filled with the spirit of Christ; but having been filled with the spirit of Christ, man is no longer occupied with his personal sufferings, but is absorbed in the interests of the One for whose sake he suffers. If the gaze is fixed on Christ, our temporary sufferings lose all their strength in comparison with real spiritual joy and future glory.

The heritage item made me spread more than I thought; but I do not regret it, because it is a matter of paramount importance. Let us now take a quick look at the momentous vision of Abraham recorded in the last verses of this chapter: "When the sun goes down a sound sleep attacked Abraham; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. And the Lord said to Abraham: “Know that yours will be strangers in a land not their own, and will enslave them, and will oppress them for four hundred years. When the sun went down and darkness set in, behold, the smoke, as it were from a furnace, and the flame of fire passed between the dissected animals.

In these two images of "smoke from the furnace" and "flame" one can say that the whole history of Israel is contained. The first one represents various eras trials and sufferings of Israel: their long slavery in Egypt, the time of the dominion of the kings of Canaan over them, the years of their Babylonian captivity and, finally, the time of their real dispersion on earth. During all these different periods of time, the Israelites seemed to be passing through "smoke from the furnace" (see Deut. 4:20; 1 Sam. 8:51; Isaiah 18:10).

The "flame of fire", on the contrary, is a prototype of those phases in the history of Israel, in which Jehovah gave him special mercy and His help; such is his deliverance from the yoke of Egypt by the hand of Moses; liberation from the power of the kings of Canaan with the help of the judges of Israel; the return from Babylon at the command of Cyrus and, finally, the final liberation of the people of God, when Christ appears in His glory. The path to the heritage goes without fail through clouds of smoke, and the thicker the "smoke from the furnace", the brighter the "flame of fire" will be, the brighter the "lamp" of God's salvation.

This rule applies not only to the people of God taken in their entirety; it also applies to each individual member that is part of it. The path of every believer, who occupies a more or less prominent position in the ranks of the servants of God, inevitably passes through the clouds of "smoke from the furnace" and only subsequently leads to the "flame" of fire or to the peaceful radiance of the "lamp" "Horror and darkness" seized Abraham; Jacob had to endure twenty years of hard work in Laban's house; Joseph passed through the smoking furnace of grief in the prison of Egypt; Moses spent forty years in the wilderness. It must be so with all the servants of God. They must be first "tested" and then they are already allowed to serve if they are "blameless" (1 Tim. 3:10). The principles of God concerning those who serve Him are expressed in the words of St. Paul "should not be one of the new converts, lest he be lifted up and fall into condemnation with the devil" (1 Tim. 3:6). Be child of God and be servant of Christ not the same, but the same. If I leave my child to take care of my garden, he will probably only cause trouble there, without doing anything good. Why? Is it because he is my beloved child? No, but because he is an inexperienced gardener. That's the difference. Filial relations and ministry are completely different things. None of the Queen's children are capable of being her first minister at the present time. This does not mean that every child of God should not do the work assigned to him, learn to suffer; but what public service and complete enslavement of the flesh to the spirit are closely connected in the thought of God - this is an indisputable fact. Anyone who wants to openly testify about God before the world must be distinguished by special humility, have a sound judgment and a submissive spirit; must bear in himself the "mortality of Jesus", break his personal will, clothe himself with kindness in dealing with everyone, because this shows his inner surrender to God. There is no doubt that all those who continue to act in the service of God and more or less do not possess the moral qualities we have renamed, sooner or later will inevitably fall.

Hold, Lord Jesus, directly close to You and in Your hand Your weak servants!

14 Abram, hearing that his kinsman was taken captive, armed his servants, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued [enemies] to Dan;

15 and dividing himself [attacked] them by night, himself and his servants, and smote them, and pursued them to Hoba, which left side Damascus;

16 and brought back all the property, and Lot his kinsman, and his property he restored, also the women and the people.

17 When he was returning after the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the valley of Shave, which is [now] the valley of the king;

18 and Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine, he was the priest of the Most High God,

19 and blessed him, and said: Blessed be Abram from the Most High God, Lord of heaven and earth;

20 and blessed be the Most High God, who delivered your enemies into your hands. [Abram] gave him a tenth of everything.

21 And the king of Sodom said to Abram, Give me the people, and take the possessions for yourself.

22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, I lift up my hand to the Lord God Most High, Lord of heaven and earth,

23 that I will not even take a thread and a shoe-lace from all yours, so that you do not say: I enriched Abram;

24 besides what the youths ate, and besides the share belonging to the people who went with me; Let Aner, Eshkol and Mamri take their share.

1 After these incidents, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, and it was said: Do not be afraid, Abram; I am your shield your reward is very great.

2 Abram said: Sovereign Lord! what will you give me? I remain childless; the steward of my house is this Eliezer from Damascus.

3 And Abram said, Behold, You have not given me offspring, and behold, my household is my heir.

4 And the word of the Lord came to him, and it was said: He will not be your heir, but he who comes out of your loins will be your heir.

5 And he took him out and said: look at the sky and count the stars, if you can count them. And he said to him: so many offspring will you have.

6 Abram believed the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness.

7 And he said to him: I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land for your possession.

8 He said: Lord God! how should I know that I will own it?

9 [The Lord] said to him: Take me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young dove.

10 He took them all, cut them in half, and laid one part against the other; only he did not cut the birds.

11 And birds of prey flew into the corpses; but Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him.

13 And [the Lord] said to Abram: Know that your descendants will be strangers in a land not their own, and will enslave them, and will oppress them for four hundred years,

14 but I will execute judgment on the people to whom they will be in bondage; After this they will go out with much property,

15 and you will go to your fathers in peace [and] be buried in a good old age;

16 in the fourth generation they will return here: for the [measure] of the iniquities of the Amorites has not yet been filled.

17 When the sun had set and darkness set in, behold, smoke [as if from] a furnace and a flame of fire passed between the dissected [animals].

18 On this day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates:

19 Kenev, Keneziev, Kedmoneev,

20 Khetteev, Ferezeev, Refaimov,

21 Amorites, Canaanites, Gergesites and Jebusites.

1 But Sarah, Abram's wife, did not give birth to him. She had an Egyptian maid named Hagar.

2 And Sarah said to Abram, Behold, the Lord has shut up my womb, that I might not bear; come in to my maid: perhaps I will have children by her. Abram listened to Sarah's words.

3 And Sarah, Abram's wife, took her maid, Hagar the Egyptian, after ten years of Abram's sojourn in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband to wife.

4 He went in to Hagar, and she conceived. When she saw that she had conceived, she began to despise her mistress.

5 And Sarai said to Abram, Thou art guilty of my offence; I gave my maidservant into your bosom; and she, seeing that she had conceived, began to despise me; Let the Lord be the judge between me and between you.

6 Abram said to Sarah, Behold, your maid is in your hands; do with her what you please. And Sarah began to oppress her, and she fled from her.

7 And the Angel of the Lord found her at a source of water in the desert, at a source on the road to Sur.

8 And he said to her: Hagar, Sarin's maid! where did you come from and where are you going? She said: I am running from the face of Sarah my mistress.

9 The angel of the Lord said to her: Return to your mistress and submit to her.

10 And the Angel of the Lord said to her: By multiplying I will multiply your offspring, so that it will not be possible to count them from the multitude.

11 And the Angel of the Lord also said to her: behold, you are pregnant, and you will give birth to a son, and you will name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard your suffering;

12 he will be [between] people, [like] a wild donkey; his hands on all, and the hands of all on him; he will live in the presence of all his brothers.

13 And [Hagar] called the Lord, who spoke to her, [by this] name: You are the God who sees me. For she said: it is as if I saw here in the footsteps of him who sees me.

14 Therefore, the source [that] is called: Beer-lahai-roi. It is between Kadesh and between Bared.

15 Hagar bore a son to Abram; and called [Abram] the name of his son, born of Hagar: Ishmael.

16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Abram Ishmael.

1 Abram was ninety-nine years old, and the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him: I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless;

2 and I will establish my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.

3 And Abram fell on his face. God continued to speak to him and said:

4 I am my covenant with you: you will be the father of many nations,

5 and you will no longer be called Abram, but your name will be: Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations;

6 and I will multiply you exceedingly, and I will make nations out of you, and kings will come out of you;

7 And I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and between your descendants after you throughout their generations, an everlasting covenant, that I will be the God of yours and of your descendants after you;

8 and I will give you and your descendants after you the land in which you wander, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

9 And God said to Abraham: You keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations.

10 This is my covenant, which you [must] keep between me and between you and between your descendants after you: let all the male sex be circumcised among you;

11 circumcise your foreskin: and this will be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

12 Eight days from birth, let every male [child] born in a house and bought with money from some foreigner who is not of your seed be circumcised among you in your generations.

13 Let him who is born in your house and bought with your money be circumcised without fail, and my covenant on your body be an everlasting covenant.

14 The uncircumcised male who does not circumcise his foreskin, that soul will be cut off from his people, [for] he has broken my covenant.

15 And God said to Abraham: Do not call your wife Sarah Sarah, but let her name be Sarah;

Commentary on the book

Section comment

1-2 There are two interpretations of this passage. According to the book of Enoch (apocrypha, works of the 2nd century BC), "sons of God" are spiritual beings (cf. 2 Peter 2:4 and prim to Gen 1:26). They entered into a criminal alliance with the women of the earth and taught them magic and spells. From this "great wickedness appeared" (Enoch 7-8). This interpretation was accepted by Philo and many Fathers of the Church (eg Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Ambrose). Since marriage in the Bible often means union with God, i.e. faith ( Hos 2:16; Eph 5:22-33), in the marriage of spirits and people, one can see a symbol of emerging paganism, with its veneration of demons, pagan gods, magic and sorcery: a person tries to penetrate the secrets of the world, regardless of the will of the Creator. Starting from the 4th century, the concept of "angel" became more spiritual, and St. The Fathers saw in the "sons of God" the descendants of the righteous Seth, and in the "daughters of men" - the women of Cain's tribe.

3 Letters: "do not rebel" (fight, resent) " My Spirit in man forever", i.e. the spirit that the Lord put into a person will henceforth leave the body sooner than before, namely after 120 years. Since then, this number has meant maximum longevity.

4-5 "Giants" - probably the heroes of one of the ancient legends about the invasion of tall people from the north. The priest connects their appearance with the general depravity of mankind before the flood: due to the multiplication of the number of pagans, a period of religions could come. crisis and immorality.

6 "Repented" is an anthropomorphism, the purpose of which is to convey God's sorrow for the corrupt world. 1 Samuel 15:29 excludes letters, interpretation. This figurative expression does not point to a change in God, but to the manifestation of love in time, either as justice (purifying punishment), or as mercy (most often, "God's repentance" means: God has mercy). Since man - the crown of creation - finally fell away from God, the world, as it were, returns to a state of primary chaos.

9 Noah (Heb - comforted; " noah"- to rest). Enoch and Noah are two "oases" of peace amid rampant passions and violence (cf. approx. Gen 5:24).

10 The offspring of Noah are the forefathers of the peoples of the Mediterranean; Semites (Babylonians, Assyrians, Canaanites, Syrians, Jews, Arabs), Hamites (Egyptians, Libyans, Kushites) and Japhetids (Iranians, Indo-Aryans, Hellenes), etc. This may mean that the flood affected only the areas where these peoples lived.

17 "Spirit of life" (Heb breath) - the movement of air or a breath of wind ( Ex 10:13; Job 21:18), human or animal breathing ( Gen 7:15, Gen 7:22 etc.); life force person and the thoughts, feelings, passions in which it manifests itself ( Gen 41:8; Gen 45:27; 1 Samuel 1:15; 1 Kings 21:5 etc.); God's gift to man Gen 6:3; Numbers 16:22; Job 27:3; Ps 103:29; Ecc 12:7); the power by which God works in the world ( Gen 1:2; Job 33:4; Ps 103:29; Ps 103:30), in human history ( Ex 31:3), and to the greatest extent - through the prophets ( Judgment 3:10; Ezekiel 36:27) and the Messiah ( Isaiah 11:2; cf. Rom 1:9).

18 The second covenant (the first was given in Eden): an obligation that God, in his goodness, takes upon himself in relation to those whom he has chosen. It will be followed by other alliances-covenants: with Abraham ( Gen 15:18), with all the people ( Ex 19).

19-20 The mention of the animal world testifies to the inseparable connection between the created world and man, who appears here as an intermediary between God and the world (cf. Rom 8:19-22). It is obvious that the ship is 150 m long, 25 m wide. and 15 m. height is not enough to accommodate hundreds of thousands of species of living beings. Therefore, if in this case no miracle happened, Noah (among the Sumerians - Ziusudra, among the Babylonians - Utnapishtim) obviously took with him only animals that played a certain role in human life.

In book. Genesis refers to the creation of the universe and the human race by God the Creator and Provider and the beginning of the implementation of his saving plan for humanity. The legend about the creation of the world (six days) goes back to Moses. This figurative description was based on the scheme of the Hebrew week. This image should not be taken literally: “It must not be hidden from you, beloved,” says St. Peter (2 Peter 3:8) — that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (Ps 89:5). In the six days, each generation finds a revelation about the creation of the world, corresponding to the stage of its cultural and moral development. A modern person can find in this image a symbolic image of the long periods of the formation of our earth. The priest contemplates the realities of this world from the simplest to the most complex and perfect, coming from the hands of the Creator according to the rhythm of the Hebrew week: six days of work, i.e. cooperation with creative activity God, and one day of rest - peace in the face of God. In the introductory phrase of the Six Days, all pagan teachings about the creation of the world are rejected, which speak either of two creators (dualism), or of the birth of the world from the bowels of the Divine (pantheism). The world is created by one God out of nothing (2 Mack 7:28). Its creation is the secret of divine love. "Earth and sky" means the universe as a whole. Many interpreters see in the word "heaven" an indication of the spiritual (angelic) world, created simultaneously with the primordial matter.

Titles, divisions and content

The first five books of the Bible form one whole, which in Hebrew is called the Torah, i.e. Law. The first reliable evidence of the use of the word Law (Greek "νομος") in this sense, we meet in the preface of the book. Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach. At the beginning of the Christian era, the name "Law" was already common, as we see it in the NT (Lk 10:26; cf. Lk 24:44). The Jews who spoke Hebrew also called the first part of the Bible "Five-fifths of the Law", which corresponded in Hellenized Jewish circles η πεντατευχος (Sub. "βιβλος" ., i.e. Five volumes). This division into five books is attested even before our era. Greek translation Bible by seventy interpreters (LXX). In that, adopted by the Church, the translation of each of the five books was given a title according to its content or the content of its first chapters:

Book. Genesis (prop. - a book about the origin of the world, the human race and the chosen people); Exodus (begins with a story about the departure of the Jews from Egypt); Leviticus (law for priests from the tribe of Levi); Numbers (the book begins with a description of the census of the people: ch. Numbers 1-4); Deuteronomy (the "second law", reproducing in a more lengthy presentation the Law given at Sinai). The Jews still call every book Heb. Bible by its first significant word.

Book. Genesis is divided into two unequal parts: the description of the origin of the world and man (Gen 1-11) and the history of the forefathers of the people of God (Gen 12-50). The first part is, as it were, propylaea, introducing the story about which the whole Bible tells. It describes the creation of the world and man, the fall and its consequences, the gradual corruption of people and the punishment that befell them. The generation that then descended from Noah spreads over the earth. The genealogical tables are narrowing down and, finally, are limited to the family of Abraham, the father of the chosen people. The history of the forefathers (Genesis 12-50) describes events from the life of great ancestors: Abraham, a man of faith, whose obedience is rewarded: God promises him numerous descendants and the Holy Land, which will become their heritage (Genesis 12 1-25:8); Jacob, distinguished by cunning: impersonating his older brother, Esau, he receives the blessing of his father Isaac and then surpasses his uncle Laban in resourcefulness; but his dexterity would have been in vain if God had not preferred him to Esau, and renewed in his favor the promises made to Abraham and the covenant made with him (Gen. 25:19-36:43). God chooses people not only of a high moral level, for he can heal any person who opens himself to Him, no matter how sinful he may be. Compared to Abraham and Jacob, Isaac looks rather pale. His life is mainly spoken of in connection with his father or son. The twelve sons of Jacob are the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. The last part of the book is devoted to one of them. Genesis: Ch. Gen 37-50 is a biography of Joseph. They describe how the virtue of the wise is rewarded and Divine Providence turns evil into good (Genesis 50:20).

The two main themes of the Exodus, the deliverance from Egypt (Ex 1:1-15:21) and the Covenant-Covenant of Sinai (Ex 19:1-40:38) are linked to a lesser theme, the wanderings in the wilderness (Ex 15:22-18: 27). Moses, having received the revelation of the inexpressible name of Yahweh on Mount Horeb of God, leads there the Israelites freed from slavery. In a majestic theophany, God enters into alliance with the people and gives them His Commandments. As soon as the alliance was concluded, the people broke it by bowing to the golden calf, but God forgives the guilty and renews the alliance. A number of precepts govern worship in the wilderness.

Book. Leviticus is almost exclusively legislative, so that the narrative of events can be said to be interrupted. It contains the sacrificial ritual (Lev. 1-7): the ceremony of ordaining Aaron and his sons to the priesthood (Lev. 8-10); injunctions about clean and unclean (Lev. 11-15), ending with a description of the ritual of the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16); "Law of Holiness" (Lev 17-26), containing the liturgical calendar and ending with blessings and curses (Lev 26). In ch. Lev 27 specifies the conditions for the ransom of people, animals and property dedicated to Yahweh.

In book. Numbers again speaks of wandering in the wilderness. The departure from Sinai is preceded by a census of the people (Numbers 1-4) and rich offerings on the occasion of the consecration of the tabernacle (Numbers 7). After celebrating the Passover for the second time, the Jews leave the holy mountain (Numbers 9-10) and reach Kadesh, where they make an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate Canaan from the south (Numbers 11-14). After a long stay in Kadesh, they go to the plains of Moab adjacent to Jericho (Numbers 20-25). The Midianites are defeated, and the tribes of Gad and Reuben settle in Transjordan (Numbers 31-32). In ch. Number 33 lists stops in the wilderness. Narratives interspersed with prescriptions supplementing Sinai legislation or preparing a settlement in Canaan.

Deuteronomy is distinguished by a special structure: it is a code of civil and religious laws (Deut. 12:26-15:1), included in the great speech of Moses (Deut. 1-4); it is followed by the third speech (Deut. 29-30); finally, the assignment of the mission to Jesus Novinus is spoken of, the song and blessings of Moses are given, brief information about the end of his life (Deut. 31-34).

Deuteronomy partly reproduces the commandments given in the wilderness. Moses recalls in his speeches the great events of the Exodus, the revelation at Sinai and the beginning of the conquest of the Promised Land. They reveal the religious meaning of the events, emphasize the significance of the Law, and contain a call for fidelity to God.

literary composition

The compilation of this extensive collection was attributed to Moses, which is attested in the NT (Jn 1:45; Jn 5:45-47; Rom 10:5). But in older sources there is no assertion that the entire Pentateuch was written by Moses. When it says, though very rarely, "Moses wrote," these words refer only to a certain place. Bible scholars have found in these books differences in style, repetition, and some incoherence in the narratives that make it impossible to consider them as the work of a single author. After a long search, biblical scholars, mainly under the influence of C.G. Count and J. Wellhausen, leaned mainly towards the so-called. documentary theory, which can be schematically formulated as follows: The Pentateuch is a compilation of four documents that arose at different times and in different environments. Initially, there were two narratives: in the first, the author, the so-called. Yahvist, conventionally denoted by the letter "J", uses the name Yahweh, which God revealed to Moses, in the story of the creation of the world; another author, so-called. Elogist (E), calls God by the common name of that time Elohim. According to this theory, Jagvist's narrative was recorded in the 11th century in Judea, while the Elohist wrote a little later in Israel. After the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, both documents were brought together (JE). After the reign of Josiah (640-609), Deuteronomy "D" was added to them, and after the Captivity (JED) a priestly code (P) was added, containing mainly laws and a few narratives. This code formed a kind of backbone and formed the framework of this compilation (JEDP). Such a literary-critical approach is associated with the evolutionary concept of development religious beliefs in Israel.

Already in 1906, the Pontifical Biblical Commission warned exegetes against overestimating this so-called. documentary theory and invited them to consider the authentic authorship of Moses, if we keep in mind the Pentateuch as a whole, and at the same time recognize the possibility of the existence, on the one hand, of oral traditions and written documents that arose before Moses, and on the other hand, changes and additions to a later era. In a letter dated January 16, 1948, addressed to Cardinal Suard, Archbishop of Paris, the Commission acknowledged the existence of sources and gradual additions to the laws of Moses and historical stories, due to the social and religious institutions of later times.

Time has confirmed the correctness of these views of the Biblical Commission, because in our time the classical documentary theory is increasingly being questioned. On the one hand, attempts to systematize it did not give the desired results. On the other hand, experience has shown that focusing on the purely literary problem of dating the final edition of the text is much less important than the historical approach, which puts forward the question of the oral and written sources underlying the “documents” under study. The idea of them has now become less bookish, closer to concrete reality. It turned out that they originated in the distant past. New archeological data and a study of the history of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean have shown that many of the laws and regulations referred to in the Pentateuch are similar to the laws and regulations of epochs older than those to which the compilation of the Pentateuch was attributed, and that many of its narratives reflect the life of an older environment.

Not being able to trace how the Pentateuch was formed and how several traditions merged in it, we, however, have the right to assert that, despite the diversity of the Yavist and Elogistic texts, they essentially deal with the same thing. Both traditions have a common origin. In addition, these traditions do not correspond to the conditions of the era when they were finally recorded in writing, but to the era when the events described took place. Their origin goes back, therefore, to the era of the formation of the people of Israel. The same can be said to a certain extent about the legislative parts of the Pentateuch: we have before us the civil and religious law of Israel; it evolved along with the community whose life it regulated, but in its origin it goes back to the time of the origin of this people. So, the fundamental principle of the Pentateuch, the main elements of the traditions that merged with it, and the core of its legalizations belong to the period of the formation of the Israelite people. This period is dominated by the image of Moses as an organizer, a religious leader and the first legislator. The traditions that ended with him, and the memories of the events that took place under his leadership, became a national epic. The teaching of Moses left an indelible imprint on the faith and life of the people. The Law of Moses became the norm of his behavior. The interpretations of the Law, caused by the course of historical development, were imbued with his spirit and relied on his authority. The fact of the written activity of Moses himself and his entourage, testified in the Bible, is not in doubt, but the question of content is greater value than a matter of writing down the text, which is why it is so important to recognize that the traditions underlying the Pentateuch go back to Moses as the original source.

Narratives and history

From these traditions, which were the living heritage of the people, breathed into it the consciousness of unity and supported its faith, it is impossible to demand that strictly scientific accuracy, which the modern scientist strives for; however, it cannot be argued that these written monuments do not contain the truth.

The eleven first chapters of Genesis require special consideration. They describe the origin of the human race in the style of a folk tale. They set out simply and picturesquely, in accordance with the mental level of an ancient, uncultured people, the main truths underlying the economy of salvation: the creation of the world by God at the dawn of time, the creation of man that followed him, the unity of the human race, the sin of the forefathers and the ensuing exile and trials. These truths, being the subject of faith, are confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripture; at the same time they are facts, and as certain truths they imply the reality of these facts. In this sense, the first chapters of Genesis are historical. The history of the forefathers is a family history. It contains memories of ancestors: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. She is also a popular story. The narrators dwell on the details of their personal lives, on picturesque episodes, not bothering to connect them with common history. Finally, this is a religious story. All its turning points are marked by the personal participation of God, and everything in it is presented in a providential plan. Moreover, the facts are given, explained and grouped in order to prove the religious thesis: there is one God who formed one people and gave them one country. This God is Yahweh, this people is Israel, this country is the Holy Land. But at the same time, these stories are historical in the sense that they tell about real facts and give a correct picture of the origin and migration of the ancestors of Israel, their geographical and ethnic roots, their behavior in terms of moral and religious. Skepticism about these stories has proved untenable in the face of recent discoveries in history and archeology. ancient East.

Omitting a rather long period of history, Exodus and Numbers, and to a certain extent Deuteronomy, set out the events from the birth to the death of Moses: the exodus from Egypt, a stop at Sinai, the way to Kadesh (silence is kept about a long stay there), the passage through Transjordan and temporary settlement in the plains of Moab. If we deny the historical reality of these facts and the personality of Moses, it is impossible to explain the further history of Israel, its loyalty to Yahwism, its attachment to the Law. However, it must be admitted that the significance of these memories for the life of the people and the echo they find in the rites gave these stories the character of victorious songs (for example, about crossing the Red Sea), and sometimes liturgical hymns. It is in this era that Israel becomes a people and enters the arena of world history. And although there is no mention of him in any ancient document (with the exception of a vague indication on the stele of Pharaoh Merneptah), what is said about him in the Bible is consistent in general with what the texts and archeology say about the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos, who in the majority were of Semitic origin, about the Egyptian administration in the Nile Delta, about the political situation in Transjordan.

The task of the modern historian is to compare these Biblical data with the corresponding events in world history. Despite the insufficiency of biblical indications and the lack of certainty of extra-biblical chronology, there is reason to believe that Abraham lived in Canaan approximately 1850 years BC, that the story of the rise of Joseph in Egypt and the arrival of other sons of Jacob to him dates back to the beginning of the 17th century. BC The date of the Exodus can be determined quite precisely from the decisive instruction given in the ancient text Ex 1:11: the people of the children of Israel "built for Pharaoh Pithom and Ramses, cities for stores." Consequently, the Exodus took place under Ramses II, who, as is known, founded the city of Ramses. Grandiose construction work began in the very first years of his reign. Therefore, it is very likely that the departure of the Jews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses took place around the middle of the reign of Ramses (1290-1224), i.e. about 1250 B.C.

Given the biblical tradition that the time of the wandering of the Jews in the desert corresponded to the period of the life of one generation, the settlement in Transjordan can be attributed to 1225 BC. These dates are consistent with historical data about the stay of the pharaohs of the 19th dynasty in the Nile Delta, about the weakening of Egyptian control over Syria and Palestine at the end of the reign of Ramses II, about the unrest that swept the entire Middle East at the end of the 13th century. BC They are also consistent with archaeological data indicating the beginning of the Iron Age during the period of the Israelite invasion of Canaan.

Legislation

In the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch is called "Torah", i.e. Law; indeed, here are collected the prescriptions that regulated the moral, social and religious life of the people of God. What strikes us most about this legislation is its religious character. It is also characteristic of some other codes of the ancient East, but none of them has such an interpenetration of religious and secular elements. In Israel, the Law is given by God Himself, it regulates duties towards Him, its prescriptions are motivated religious principles. This seems quite normal when it comes to the moral prescriptions of the Decalogue (the Commandments of Sinai) or the cult laws of the book. Leviticus, but it is much more significant that in the same code civil and criminal laws are intertwined with religious instructions and that everything is presented as a Charter of Union-Covenant with Yahweh. It naturally follows from this that the presentation of these laws is connected with the narrative of events in the desert, where this Union was concluded.

As you know, laws are written for practical application and they need to be modified over time, taking into account the peculiarities of the environment and the historical situation. This explains that in the totality of the documents under consideration one can find both ancient elements and decrees that testify to the emergence of new problems. On the other hand, Israel was to some extent influenced by its neighbors. Some of the prescriptions of the Book of the Testament and Deuteronomy are remarkably similar to those of the Mesopotamian Codex, the Code of Assyrian Laws, and the Hittite Code. This is not a direct borrowing, but a similarity due to the influence of the legislation of other countries and customary law, which partly became the common property of the entire Near East in ancient times. In addition, in the period after the Exodus, Canaanite influence strongly affected the formulation of laws and forms of worship.

The Decalogue (10 commandments), inscribed on the Sinai tablets, establishes the basis of the moral and religious faith of the Union-Covenant. It is given in two (Ex. 20:2-17 and Deut. 5:6-21) slightly different versions: these two texts go back to the oldest, shorter form and there is no serious evidence to refute its origin from Moses.

The Elogistic Code of the Union-Covenant (Ex. 20:22-23:19) is the right of a shepherd-agricultural society, corresponding to the real situation of Israel, which was formed as a people and began to lead a settled way of life. It differs from the older Mesopotamian codices with which it has common ground by its great simplicity and archaic features. However, it has survived in a form that indicates some evolution: the special attention that is paid in it to draft animals, work in the field and in the vineyards, as well as houses, suggests that it belongs to the period of settled life. On the other hand, the difference in the wording of the decrees - sometimes imperative, sometimes conditional - indicates the heterogeneity of the composition of the code. In its present form, it probably dates back to the period of the Judges.

The Jahwist Code of the Renewal of the Covenant (Ex 34:14-26) is sometimes referred to, though incorrectly, as the second Decalogue or ceremonial Decalogue. It is a collection of religious precepts in an imperative form and belongs to the same time as the book of the Testament, but under the influence of Deuteronomy it was revised. Although the book Leviticus received its finished form only after the captivity, it also contains very ancient elements. Thus, for example, food prohibitions (Lev. 11) or cleanliness (Lev. 13-15) preserve what was bequeathed by the primitive era. In the ritual of the great Day of Atonement (Lev. 16), the texts of the ancient ritual prescriptions are supplemented with more detailed instructions, indicating the existence of a developed idea of sin. Ch. Leviticus 17-26 constitutes a whole which has come to be called the Law of Holiness, and obviously belongs to the last period of the monarchy. The code of Deuteronomy must be attributed to the same era, which contains many ancient elements, but also reflects the evolution of social and religious customs (for example, laws on the unity of the sanctuary, altar, tithe, slaves) and a change in the spirit of the time (calls to the heart and characteristic of many prescriptions persuasive tone).

religious meaning

The religion of both the Old and the New Testament is a historical religion: it is based on the revelation of God to certain people, in certain places, under certain circumstances, and on the special action of God at certain moments of human evolution. The Pentateuch, which sets forth the history of God's original relationship with the world, is the foundation of the religion of Israel, its canonical book par excellence, its Law.

The Israelite finds in it the explanation of his fate. At the beginning of the book of Genesis, he not only received an answer to the questions that every person poses to himself - about the world and life, about suffering and death - but he also received an answer to his personal question: why is Yahweh, the One God, the God of Israel? Why is Israel His people among all the peoples of the earth?

This is because Israel received the promise. The Pentateuch is a book of promises: after the fall, salvation is proclaimed to Adam and Eve in the future, the so-called. Protoevangelium; Noah, after the flood, is promised a new order in the world. Still more characteristic is the promise given to Abraham, and renewed to Isaac and Jacob; it extends to all the people who will come from them. This promise directly refers to the possession of the land where the forefathers lived, the Promised Land, but in fact it contains more: it means that a special, exclusive relationship exists between Israel and the God of their fathers.

Yahweh called Abraham, and the election of Israel is represented in that call. Yahweh himself made it one people. His people, according to His good pleasure, according to the plan of love, which was destined at the creation of the world and which is being carried out, despite the unfaithfulness of people. This promise and this election are guaranteed by the Union. The Pentateuch is also a book of conjunctions. The first, though not yet explicitly stated, was with Adam; the union with Noah, with Abraham, and, ultimately, with the whole people through the agency of Moses, was already clearly expressed. This is not a union between equals, for God does not need it, although the initiative belongs to Him. However, He enters into an alliance and in in a certain sense binds Himself by the promises He has made. But He demands in return that His people be faithful to Him: Israel's refusal, their sin, can break the bond created by the love of God. The conditions of this fidelity are determined by God Himself. God gives His Law to His chosen people. This Law determines what his duties are, how he should conduct himself according to the will of God and, preserving the Covenant-Covenant, prepare the fulfillment of the promise.

The themes of promise, election, union, and law run like a red thread through the entire fabric of the Pentateuch, through the entire OT. The Pentateuch itself does not constitute a complete whole: it speaks of the promise, but not of its fulfillment, for the narrative is interrupted before the entry of Israel into the Promised Land. It must remain open to the future both as a hope and as a principle of restraint: a hope of promise, which the conquest of Canaan seemed to fulfill (Is Joshua 23), but long compromised by sins, and remembered by the exiles in Babylon; the restraining principle of the ever exacting Law, which was in Israel as a witness against them, Deut. 31:26. This continued until the coming of Christ, towards whom the whole history of salvation gravitated; in Him she found her whole meaning. Ap. Paul reveals its meaning mainly in Galatians (Gal 3:15-29). Christ concludes a new Union-Covenant, foreshadowed by ancient treaties, and introduces into it Christians, heirs of Abraham by faith. The law was given to keep the promises, being a tutor to Christ, in whom these promises are fulfilled.

The Christian is no longer under the guidance of a schoolmaster, he is freed from observing the ritual Law of Moses, but not freed from the need to follow his moral and religious teachings. After all, Christ did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). New Testament does not oppose the Old, but continues it. In the great events of the era of the patriarchs and Moses, in the holidays and rites of the desert (the sacrifice of Isaac, the crossing of the Red Sea, the celebration of Easter, etc.), the Church not only recognized the prototypes of the NT (the sacrifice of Christ, baptism and christian easter), but requires from the Christian the same deep approach to them that the instructions and stories of the Pentateuch prescribed to the Israelites. He should realize how the history of Israel (and in it and through it of all mankind) develops when a person leaves God to guide historical events. Moreover: in its path to God, every soul goes through the same stages of detachment, testing, purification through which the chosen people went, and finds edification in the teachings given to them.

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Commentary on the book

Section comment

1 When people began to multiply on earth. The context of the speech shows that here the whole is taken instead of the part - "Cainites" are denoted general concept"people", an analogy to which was found in other places of Holy Scripture ( Jer 32:20; Ps 72:5 and etc.).

Then the sons of God saw the daughters of men. This is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to interpret; his main difficulty lies in determining who is to be understood here by the "sons of God." Some, mainly Jewish rabbis, based on the philological meaning of the root (God), saw here an indication of the sons of nobles and princes, in general, of higher and noble classes, allegedly marrying girls of the lower social strata. Hence, the term "sons of God" in Arabic. the text is translated - filii illustrium, in the Targum of Onkelos - filii principium, in Symmachus - υιοὶ τω̃ν δοναστεύοντων . But this explanation does not positively withstand any criticism, being completely arbitrary and not explaining the further consequences of the indicated fact. Most other Jewish and Christian interpreters of antiquity, together with the rationalists of modern times, understand angels by "sons of God". Being thoroughly developed in the apocryphal books - Enoch and Jubilees and in the writings of Philo, this opinion in the first centuries of the Christian era was so widely known that it was shared even by many of the fathers and teachers of the Church (Justin the Philosopher, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Ambrose and others). Although it is true that under the term "sons of God" Holy Scripture sometimes, mainly in the poetic departments, means "angels" ( Job 1:6; 2:1 ; 38:7 and others), however, both the very context of this narrative and its positive historical character, as well as philological and dogmatic requirements, do not allow one to take the side of this opinion. The only correct one, happily avoiding the shortcomings of the two above opinions and satisfying all philological, textual and historical-dogmatic requirements, we consider the third opinion, according to which the pious “Sephites” should be understood as “sons of God”. On his side stands the majority of the Fathers of the Church, glorified by their exegetical works (John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Blessed Theodoret, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Augustine, etc.) and a number of modern scholarly exegetes (led by Keil). This opinion is fully justified philologically, since the name "sons of God" in the Holy Scriptures of both Testaments ( Deut 14:1; Ps 72:15; Wid 16:26; Luke 3:38; Rom 8:19; Gal 3:26 etc.) is often applied to pious people. This is also favored by the context of the previous narrative, in which, when calculating the offspring of Seth, the name of God is placed at the head of it, which is why all the Sethites are presented as if His children. Even more emphatically the same is indicated by the concluding verse of chapter 4, where ( Art. 26) it is said that in the days of Enos, the Sephites began to solemnly call on the name of the Lord and themselves were called “Jehovists” in honor of Him, which is completely identical in meaning with “sons of God.” Finally, the very nature of the marriages concluded between the sons of God and the daughters of men speaks for this: in the sense of the biblical expression used here, these were not temporary and unnatural ties (which could only be the intercourse of angels with wives), but ordinary, permanent marriages. , legally correct, although morally criminal.

2 They saw the daughters of men, that they are beautiful. If we remember that when describing the Cainites, physical beauty and sensual charm were in the foreground (Ada, Zilla, Noema), then it becomes clear that here the writer of everyday life is talking about Cainites only. With such an understanding of “sons of God” and “daughters of men,” we fully support the opposition given in the text: both of them are representatives of the same primitive humanity; but, being similar in nature, they are opposite in their spiritual and moral mood: the “sons of God” were the spokesmen for everything good, exalted and good; the daughters of men are the personification of earthly sensual interests, the sinful spirit of this world. But this opposition disappears - the sons of God mix with the daughters of men, which blurs the line between good and evil and gives full scope to the dominance of the lower, sensual interests of the flesh to the detriment of the higher interests of the spirit.

3 My Spirit will not forever be neglected by people (them). Obviously, here there is a continuation of the previous narrative: the fact itself was indicated there, here an assessment is given corresponding to it; and if here the actors are clearly called people, then they (and not angels) were also understood above. In particular, the words of the biblical text: “To My Spirit” contain an indication either to the inner, spiritual essence of human nature (with a deaf reference to the history of the creation of man, 2:6 ), or, even more likely, on the Holy Spirit, as the building principle of everyone in general ( Gen 1:2) and religious and ethical life par excellence. Neglect of Him is exactly that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which, according to the Savior, is one of the most serious deadly sins ( Mark 3:29), since it characterizes such a degree of sinful hardening of a person, with which any correction becomes psychologically impossible.

Because they are flesh. This is the reason why people have neglected the divine Spirit and deserved to be punished. Met. Philaret translates the first word of this phrase more accurately: “in his error,” obviously, the biblical author by this again pointed to the unholy intercourse of the Sethites with the Cainites. Since, entering into such marriages, people testified to the decline in their higher, spiritual interests and the dominance of lower, carnal interests, they themselves, as it were, turned into that rough flesh, which in the language of Holy Scripture serves as a synonym for everything base, material and sinful.

May their days be one hundred and twenty years. These words cannot be understood in the sense of reducing human life to the limits of one hundred and twenty years (as Josephus understood. Antiquity Jude I, 3, § 2), since it is reliably known that for a long time and after the flood, mankind lived for more than 120 years, reaching sometimes up to 500, but one should see in them the period appointed by God for repentance and correction of people, during which the righteous Noah prophesied about the flood and made appropriate preparations for it ( 1 Peter 3:20).

4 At that time there were giants on earth. The antediluvian humanity is called "giants", in the original nephilim - "nephilim". Although, indeed, in Scripture this term sometimes serves as a designation for giants or giants ( Numbers 13:33), but the main meaning of this root is “destroy, overthrow”, but in the form of nif. - "to force to fall, to seduce, to corrupt." Hence, it would be much more correct to see in these primitive "nephilim" not so much people who were distinguished by extraordinary physical strength and growth, but rather people who deliberately violated all truth and impudent tyrants. There were similar figures among the Cainites before, probably from the time of Tubal Cain, who invented weapons, and Lamech, who sang a victory hymn to him; since the mixing of the Sethites with the Cainites, these “nephilim” have especially multiplied as a result of the general corruption and the fall of all moral foundations.

They were strong, since ancient times glorious people. Here we are already talking about the fruits of mixed marriages, which, in contrast to "nephilim" in the original, are called "gibborim" (strong). The last name in biblical usage means an outstanding person ( 2 Samuel 17:10; Dan 11:3), selected warrior ( 1 Chronicles 7:8; 2 Samuel 13:6), a person who surpasses others in his strength ( 1 Kings 11:28). From this it is obvious that the descendants of mixed clans (Sephites with Cainites) far surpassed their prototypes, both in physical and moral (more precisely, immoral) properties. Calling these "gibborim" from ancient times "glorious people", the chronicler probably meant here the fact that they, under the name of "heroes of antiquity" received world fame in the universal traditions of mankind ( Var 3:26-28).

6 And the Lord repented... and grieved in His heart. The concept of the nature of repentance attributed to God can be borrowed from the story of Saul, where repentance is attributed to God twice ( 1 Samuel 17:11 and 35) and where, meanwhile, Samuel says of God that He is not a man to repent (29). From this it can be seen that when it is said about Him as a man, it is because, according to Aben Ezra, the law speaks the language of the sons of men, that is, the language of a simple, folk sense (Filaret). In particular, God's "repentance" - as it were, a special way of changing the immutable - is the highest expression of the thought of extreme divine regret, reaching, as it were, to the point that the immutable Being itself seemed ready to change. — And grieved in his heart. Like the previous one, this is the same humanoid expression. " The sorrow of God is the foreknowledge of the impossibility for a person created with free will, who deliberately and stubbornly abuses it, to return to the good path; therefore, where it is said to offend God, as, for example, about cities that have incurred the wrath of God (Matthew 11:20-26; Luke 10:13), there you need to understand that the sentence of the eternal righteousness of God has come true, that this generation, or man, must perish so that evil is not immortalized"(Vlastov).

7 And the Lord said, I will destroy... for I repented that I had created. Here is given a stronger expression of the same thought—of the profound discrepancy between the actions of human freedom and the plans of divine providence and the desires of the Almighty to destroy this disharmony. At the same time, the sad fate of man, according to the verdict of the divine court, was to be shared by the whole world of living beings around him, since between the fate of man and the life of nature, according to the teachings of Scripture, there is the closest, moral connection; hence, the fall and rise of man is reflected accordingly on the rest of creation ( Gen 3:20; 8:17 ; Rome 8:20 and etc.). And this was not, strictly speaking, the extermination of mankind (since the righteous Noah and his family were saved and revived him), but only the eradication of the evil that reigned on earth by washing in the waters of the flood ( 3 Ezra 3:8-9; 1 Peter 3:20-21).

8 Noah found grace. A phrase that is completely similar to the one previously said about Enoch “and please Enoch God” (Slavic, LXX) and has corresponding parallels in other places in the Bible ( Luke 1:30; Acts 7:46 and etc.).

9 Here is the life of Noah. This is the beginning of a new biblical section - the story of the righteous Noah and the global flood (Genesis 6:9-9:29 6:9-9:29).

Noah was a righteous man and blameless in his generations, i.e., he was morally pure and whole (tamim - in Hebrew), standing out from among his vicious contemporaries, whose unsightly moral characterization is given to us by Jesus Christ himself and the apostles ( Matthew 24:37-38 and parallel, sn. 1 Peter 3:20). The very same review of Noah is repeated almost verbatim in a friend. passages of Scripture ( Ezekiel 14:19-20; Sir 44:16; Heb 11:7).

Noah walked with God. The conclusion of Noah's characterization is a feature already familiar to us from the story of Enoch ( 5:24 ). In the sacred language of the Bible, this is a special form in which a completely moral character was usually revealed among sinful contemporaries.

10-14 The four verses that conclude this section are an almost literal repetition of the above in verses. 5:32 ; 6:5-7 . But this should not confuse anyone: since in 9 tbsp. Since this chapter, as we have noted, a new story began - the story of Noah and the flood, which originally constituted a separate and independent narrative, then such a repetition is more than natural; and the surprising coincidence in content is only a new proof of the truth of the very events that serve as the subject of the narratives under consideration.

The end of all flesh has come before the face. Many commentators, not without reason, assume that here we are talking about the end of that one hundred and twenty years period, which was appointed by God for the repentance of people and during which He waited in vain for their correction ( 1 Peter 3:19-20; 2 Peter 3:9-15).

14 Make yourself an ark out of gopher wood. In Heb. In the original, this “ark” is designated by the term teba, which is once again applied in the Bible to the basket in which Moses was saved ( Ex 2:5); whence it is false to think that Noah's colossal ark is a type of such a primitive structure. The gopher wood itself, from which the ark was built, belongs to a species of light, resinous trees, similar to cedar or cypress ( Ex 27:1; 30:1 ; Ezekiel 41:20). In the construction of the wooden ark, where the primitive world, in the person of its representatives, escaped death from the water element, the Fathers of the Church see a symbolic foreshadowing of the wood of the cross and the water of baptism, through which the New Testament humanity finds its salvation.

Make divisions in the ark. Literally from the Hebrew - “nests” ( kinnim) or cages, obviously for birds and animals, which, according to divine command, Noah had to place in the ark.

15 The length of the ark is three hundred cubits; breadth of it. On the basis of these testimonies, we still cannot get an exact idea of the size and capacity of the ark, mainly because the cubit, as a measure of length, was an insufficiently stable metric value and its dimensions allowed strong fluctuations, as can be seen from St. Scriptures ( Numbers 35:4,5; 1 Kings 7:15; 2 Peter 3:15; Ezekiel 40:5; 43:13 ). According to Mr. Philaret, the longitude of the ark inside it was approximately 500 feet, the width - 80 feet and the height - 50 feet, with which the calculations of one French scientist agree quite well, determining the length of the ark at 156 meters, the width of 26 meters and the height of 16 meters. The capacity of such a structure, according to the calculations of specialists (for example, Vice Admiral Thevenard), was quite sufficient for its purpose, i.e., to accommodate Noah's family and the minimum number of all animal genera with a supply of annual food necessary for all.

16 And make a hole in the ark... arrange in it the lower, second and third dwellings. The details of the construction of the ark further convince us that it was by no means like our modern ships, but rather resembled a large chest, or a box, or a huge houseboat, which had an almost flat roof (descent from the top only one foot) and illuminated by a single, more or less significant window at the top of it. In 1609, one Dutch Mennonite, a certain Peter Jansen, built a special vessel, similar to an ark, only on a reduced scale, from which he was experimentally convinced that although such a ship was not well suited for navigation, it was much more spacious than any other ship (almost on whole third) of a different type with the same cubic volume.

17 And behold, I will bring a flood of water on the earth. These words for the first time definitely name the means or instrument of divine punishment over the primitive, corrupt world, which was the Flood ( Isaiah 54:9).

Everything on earth will lose its life. Since the whole earth is corrupted and filled with the iniquities of those who live on it, then all the perpetrators of its defilement perish on it, led by the first and chief among them - people. However, this global flood cannot be considered as something like a personal revenge on the part of God to man: no, it was a necessary consequence of the spiritual death of primitive, morally degenerate humanity. This humanity was an exceptional “flesh”, as if forever losing its soul and representing a decaying corpse, the further preservation of which would not only be useless, but also positively harmful to the spiritual and moral atmosphere of the world. And so, the first world perishes in the waves of the flood in order to wash away the filth lying on it and begin to live on new (reborn) principles.

18 But with you I will establish my covenant. The union of God with man is here for the first time called by its special term "covenant" (berit). Confirming the existence of the covenant that was made by God in the first promise about the seed of a woman ( Gen 3:15), the Lord thus clearly testifies that although He destroys almost all of humanity, He does not destroy His eternal covenants ( Sir 17:10); only the evil seed of the serpent will perish, but the seed of the woman in the face of Noah will triumph in their victory ( Wis 10:4).

And you and your sons will enter, and your wife and your sons' wives with you. Here is a complete list of all the members of Noah's family, who alone were saved from the flood, as St. Peter in two of his epistles ( 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 3:5).

19-20 Enter also into the ark ... of all animals ... of all, a pair will enter you so that they remain alive. For the preservation and subsequent revival of also animal life, God commands Noah to take with him to the ark one pair of each of their main clans. Based on the words of verse 20, one can think that these animals, driven by instinct in view of the impending storm of the flood, themselves approached the ark and sought salvation in it, which greatly facilitated Noah's task. As for the expression, how such a number of animals could fit in one ark, it should be noted about it that, firstly, Noah, from saving space and fodder, could choose only the youngest animals, and secondly, the number of main the tribal groups that had developed by the time of the flood were not yet so large as to create any insurmountable obstacle for Noah to place them in the ark.

22 And Noah did everything... so did. In these words the best praise is given to Noah, as St. Paul, saying: “by faith Noah received the answer, for these, even if not in sight, being afraid, build an ark for the salvation of your house: by it judge (the whole) world, and righteousness, even by faith, be an heir” ( Heb 11:7). « The construction of the ark (of which the narrator speaks so simply, conveying this purely calm, obedient fulfillment of the will of God) was, however, for Noah a deep test of his faith in God. All around was a depraved world and completely calm about its future. (Matthew 24:37-38), the world that reproached Noah and scolded him during many years of building the ark. Therefore, Noah had to be transported with his whole thought and soul into the future, and this faith, which saved him from death, was the highest merit of his spiritual life and prefigured the state of the human soul when it is saved from eternal death by faith, accepting St. baptism"(Vlastov).

Name of books. The first sacred book of our Slavic-Russian Bible is called Genesis. Such its name is a literal translation of the Greek inscription of this book. in text LXX indicating the content of the first holy book(in the strict sense of its first two chapters), which is inscribed in its Hebrew original by the first word of the text of the 1st verse - תי ִ ש ֵ ר ֽ ב bereschith.

Origin and meaning of its name. From what has been said, it is already clear that the key to unraveling the name of the first book of the Bible must be sought in the text of its original. Turning to the latter, we see that each of the first five books of the Bible, which form the so-called Torah (“book of the law”) or the Mosaic Pentateuch, received its name from the first or two first words of it; and since the initial book in the Hebrew original opens with the words תי ִ ש ֵ ר ֽ ב, then these very words were put by the Jews as its title.

The 1st book (or Genesis) in the Hebrew text is called bereschith ("in the beginning"); 2nd (Exodus) - elleh-schemoth ("these names"); 3rd (Levitic) vajigra ("and called"); 4th (Num.) - vajedabber ("and said"; another name is bemidbar - "in the wilderness", cf. Num. 1:1); 5th (Deuteronomy) - elleh-haddebarim.

But although the name of the book. "Genesis" and has an accidental origin, but it surprisingly coincided with its essential content and is full of broad meaning. In the 1st book of Moses, the name totedoth, synonymous with the word "Genesis", is repeatedly found. Under the name תֹוךֽלֹוּת toldoth - “generation, origin, offspring” (from the Hebrew ch. ך ֵ ל ֶ י “to give birth”), the Jews knew their genealogical tables and the historical and biographical records that were with them, from which their very own story. Clear traces of the existence of such "genealogical records", corrected and combined by the hand of their inspired editor Moses, can also be found in the book. Genesis, where at least ten times we meet with the inscription ת ֹ וך ֽ ל ֹ ו ּ ת toledoth, namely “the origin of heaven and earth” (Genesis 2:4), “the genealogy of Adam” (Genesis 5:1), “life Noah" (Genesis 6:9); “generation of the sons of Noah” (Gen 10:1) “generation of Shem” (Gen 11:10), “generation of Terah” (Gen 11:27), “generation of Ishmael” (Gen 25:12), “generation of Isaac” Gen 25 :19), “the genealogy of Esau” (Gen. 36:1), “the life of Jacob” (Gen. 37:1).

From this it is clear that the first book. The Bible is primarily a book of genealogies, so that its Greek and Slavic-Russian titles are the best way to acquaint us with its inner essence, giving us the concept of heaven as the first genealogy of the world and man.

As for the division of the book. Being, then the deepest and most correct should be recognized as dividing it into two far unequal parts: one, embracing its first eleven chapters, contains, as it were, a universal introduction to world history, since it concerns the starting points and initial moments of the primitive history of all mankind; the other, extending to all the remaining thirty-nine chapters, gives the history of one God-chosen Jewish people, and then only in the person of its ancestors - the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

Unity and authenticity of the book. Genesis is proved primarily from the analysis of its content. Delving deeper into the content of this book, we, for all its conciseness, cannot help but notice the amazing harmony and consistency of its narratives, where one follows from the other, where there are no real disagreements and contradictions, and everything stands in complete harmonic unity and expedient plan. The main scheme of this plan is the above-mentioned division into ten “genealogies” (toledoth), which make up the main parts of the book and combine more or less minor ones, depending on the importance of one or another genealogy.

The authenticity of the book. Being has for itself both internal and external grounds. Among the first, in addition to all that has been said above about the content and plan of this sacred book, should include its language, which bears traces of ancient times, and especially the biblical archaisms found in it. To the second we include the agreement of the data of the Bible with the natural-science and ancient-historical news drawn from various external scientific sources. At the head of all of them we put the most ancient legends of the Assyro-Babylonian Semites, known under the name of the "Chaldean genesis", which provide rich and instructive material for comparison with the stories of the biblical genesis. See Comely for more on this. Introduction in libros V. T. II, 1881; Arco. Defense of the Mosaic Pentateuch. Kazan, 1870; Olivet. Analysis of rational objections to the authenticity of the book of Genesis; Viguru. Introduction to Holy Scripture. Old Testament. Transl. priest Vorontsov.

Finally, the importance of the book. Genesis is understandable by itself: being the oldest chronicle of the world and mankind and giving the most authoritative resolution of world questions about the origin of everything that exists, book. Genesis is full of the deepest interest and is of the greatest importance in matters of religion, morality, worship, history, and in general in the interests of truly human life.

Pentateuch

The first five books of the Old Testament, having the same author, Moses, apparently represented one book at first, as can be judged from the testimony of Prince. Deuteronomy, which says, "Take this book of the law and lay it on the right hand of the ark of the covenant" (

Is our modern word The "Pentateuch" is a literal translation of the Greek - πεντάτευκος from πέντε - "five" and τευ̃κος - "volume of the book". This division is quite accurate, since, indeed, each of the five volumes of the Pentateuch has its own differences and corresponds to different periods theocratic law. So, for example, the first volume is, as it were, a historical introduction to it, and the last serves as an obvious repetition of the law; the three intermediate volumes contain the gradual development of the theocracy, timed to one historical fact or another, and the middle of these three books (Leviticus), differing sharply from the previous and subsequent ones (almost complete absence of a historical part), is an excellent line separating them.

All five parts of the Pentateuch are currently given meaning special books and have their own names, which in the Hebrew Bible depend on their initial words, and in Greek, Latin and Slavic-Russian - on the main subject of their content.

The book of Genesis contains a story about the origin of the world and man, a universal introduction to the history of mankind, the election and education of the Jewish people in the person of its patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Book. The Exodus tells at length about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt and the granting of the Sinai legislation. Book. Leviticus is specifically devoted to the exposition of this law in all its particulars, which are closely related to worship and the Levites. Book. Numbers gives the history of wanderings in the desert and the numbers of the Jews that were at that time. Finally, the book Deuteronomy contains a repetition of the law of Moses.

According to the capital importance of the Pentateuch of St. Gregory of Nyssa called it the true "ocean of theology". Indeed, it represents the basic foundation of the entire Old Testament, on which all the rest of its books are based. Serving as the basis of the Old Testament history, the Pentateuch is the basis of the New Testament as well, since it reveals to us the plan of the divine economy of our salvation. That is why Christ himself said that He came to fulfill and not to destroy the law and the prophets ( Matthew 5:17). In the Old Testament, the Pentateuch occupies exactly the same position as the Gospel in the New.

The authenticity and integrity of the Pentateuch is evidenced by a number of external and internal evidence, which we will only briefly mention here.

Moses, first of all, could write the Pentateuch, since he, even according to the most extreme skeptics, had a vast mind and high education; therefore, and regardless of inspiration, Moses was fully qualified to preserve and transmit the very legislation of which he was the mediator.

Another strong argument for the authenticity of the Pentateuch is the universal tradition, which has been continuous, over a number of centuries, since the book of Joshua ( Is Nav 1:7.8; Joshua 8:31; Is Joshua 23:6 etc.), passing through all the other books and ending with the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ himself ( Mark 10:5; Matthew 19:7; Luke 24:27; John 5:45-46), unanimously asserts that the writer of the Pentateuch was the prophet Moses. The evidence of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the ancient Egyptian monuments must also be added here.

Finally, the Pentateuch retains clear traces of its authenticity within itself. Both in terms of ideas and in terms of style, all the pages of the Pentateuch bear the seal of Moses: the unity of plan, the harmony of parts, the majestic simplicity of style, the presence of archaisms, the excellent knowledge of Ancient Egypt - all this speaks so strongly for the belonging of the Pentateuch to Moses that it leaves no room for conscientious doubt. See Viguru for more on this. A Guide to Reading and Studying the Bible. Transl. priest Vl. You. Vorontsov. T. I, p. 277 et seq. Moscow, 1897.

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