מי יורש קנייני אלוה מ״בWho is the Heir of Divine Things 42
א׳
1[201] I marvel too when I read of that sacred Word, which ran in impetuous breathless haste “to stand between the living and the dead.” For at once, says Moses, “the breaking was abated” (Num. 16:47, 48). And indeed how could all that shatters and crushes and ruptures our soul fail to be abated and lightened, when the God-beloved separates and walls off the consecrated thoughts, which veritably live, from the unholy which are truly dead?
ב׳
2[202] For often proximity to the sick brings to the very healthiest the infection of their sickness and sure death in its train. But this fate was no longer possible to the consecrated, hedged in by the mightiest of pales, fixed in the midst to repel from the better sort the onslaught and inroads of the worse.
ג׳
3[203] Still more am I lost in admiration, when I listen to the oracles and learn how the cloud entered in the midst between the hosts of Egypt and Israel (Ex. 14:20). For the further pursuit of the sober and God-beloved race by the passion-loving and godless was forbidden by that cloud, which was a weapon of shelter and salvation to its friends, and of offence and chastisement to its enemies.
ד׳
4[204] For on minds of rich soil that cloud sends in gentle showers the drops of wisdom, whose very nature exempts it from all harm, but on the sour of soil, that are barren of knowledge, it pours the blizzards of vengeance, flooding them with a deluge of destruction most miserable.
ה׳
5[205] To His Word, His chief messenger, highest in age and honour, the Father of all has given the special prerogative, to stand on the border and separate the creature from the Creator. This same Word both pleads with the immortal as suppliant for afflicted mortality and acts as ambassador of the ruler to the subject.
ו׳
6[206] He glories in this prerogative and proudly describes it in these words ‘and I stood between the Lord and you’ (Deut. 5:5), that is neither uncreated as God, nor created as you, but midway between the two extremes, a surety to both sides; to the parent, pledging the creature that it should never altogether rebel against the rein and choose disorder rather than order; to the child, warranting his hopes that the merciful God will never forget His own work. For I am the harbinger of peace to creation from that God whose will is to bring wars to an end, who is ever the guardian of peace.”
