Of the worse kind of rising we have an example in the description of him who wished to curse one who was praised by God. For he too is represented as dwelling at the “rising,” and this rising though it bears the same name as the other is in direct conflict with it. “Balak,” we read, “sent for me from Mesopotamia from the mountains from the rising saying, ‘Come hither, curse for me him whom God does not curse’ ” (Num. 23:7, 8). Now Balak is by interpretation “foolish,” and the interpretation is most true. For surely it were the pitch of folly to hope that the Existent should be deceived, and that His surest purpose should be upset by the devices of men? And this is the reason why Balaam also dwells in “Mid-river-land,” for his understanding is submerged in the midmost depths of a river, unable to swim its way upward and lift its head above the surface. This condition is the rising of folly and the setting of reasonableness. Now these makers of a music whose harmony is disharmony, moved, we are told, “from the rising.” Is it the rising of virtue that is meant, or the rising of vice? If the former, the movement suggested is one of complete severance. But if it is the latter, it is what we may call an united movement, as when we move our hands, not apart or in isolation, but in connexion and accordance with the whole body. For the place where vice is located serves as the initial starting-point to the fool for those activities which defy nature. Now all who have wandered away from virtue and accepted the starting-points of folly, find and dwell in a most suitable place, a place which in the Hebrew tongue is called Shinar and in our own “shaking out.” For all the life of the fools is torn and hustled and shaken, ever in chaos and disturbance, and keeping no trace of genuine good treasured within it. For just as things which are shaken off all fall out, if not held fast through being part of a unified body, so too I think, when a man has conspired for wrongdoing, his soul is subject to a “shaking out,” for it casts away every form of good so that no shadow or semblance of it can be seen at all.
On the Confusion of Tongues 15
Tap any verse to see what it echoes — and start a chain or echo from it.