Moses and the Rule of God

Let us look at the first of his great works. When our forefathers had decided to leave Egypt and return to the land of their fathers, it was he who took charge of those many tens of thousands and brought them safely out of many hopeless difficulties. They had to travel across a waterless land full of sand, overcome their enemies, and, while fighting, protect their children, their wives and their plunder all at once. In all of this he proved an excellent general, a most sagacious counselor and the truest guardian of them all. He brought the whole multitude to depend on him; and though he had them obedient in everything, he used this for no gain of his own. At the very time when leaders most often seize great power and tyranny for themselves, and accustom the people to live in great lawlessness, he, standing in that place of authority, thought on the contrary that he ought to live piously and show great goodwill to the people. In this way, he believed, he would best display his own virtue and give the most secure safety to those who had made him their leader. Since his noble purpose and his great deeds met with success, he rightly believed that he had God as his leader and counselor. Having first convinced himself that everything he did and planned was in keeping with God's will, he thought he ought above all to instill this belief in the people; for those who believe that God watches over their lives will not allow themselves any sin. Such, then, is our lawgiver: no sorcerer and no deceiver, as his revilers unjustly say, but such a man as the Greeks boast that Minos was, and the other lawgivers after him. Some of them attribute their laws to Zeus, and Minos used to refer the oracles of his laws to Apollo and his oracle at Delphi — either because they thought this was the truth, or because they supposed they would more easily persuade the people. Which of them made the best laws, and which arrived at the most just faith concerning God, one may judge by comparing the laws themselves; for it is time now to speak of them. [a]

The differences in customs and laws among all mankind, taken one by one, are countless; but one may sum them up this way. Some peoples have entrusted the power of their governments to monarchies, others to the rule of a few, and others to the people at large. Our lawgiver had regard to none of these. He made our government what one might call — straining the language — a "theocracy," placing all rule and power in the hands of God. He persuaded everyone to look to God as the cause of all the good things that belong to all men in common, and of all that they themselves had obtained by praying to him in their times of helplessness; and he taught them that nothing can escape God's knowledge, neither anything we do nor anything a man thinks within himself. He declared God to be one, uncreated and unchangeable for all eternity, surpassing every mortal form in beauty, known to us by his power, but unknown to us as he is in his essence. That the wisest of the Greeks learned to think this way about God from principles he first supplied, I pass over for now. But they have borne strong witness that these ideas are good and befit the nature and majesty of God. Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, the Stoic philosophers after him and nearly all the rest plainly held these views about the nature of God. But they philosophized for a few, and did not dare to carry the truth of their doctrine to the masses, whose minds were already taken over by other opinions. Our lawgiver, because he made his deeds agree with his words, not only persuaded the men of his own time, but planted in all their descendants, for all time to come, a faith concerning God that cannot be moved.

The reason is that in the very manner of his lawgiving he always far surpassed the rest in usefulness to all. He did not make piety a part of virtue; he made the other virtues parts of piety — I mean righteousness, moderation, endurance, and the agreement of the citizens with one another in all things. All our actions, our occupations and our words have a bearing on our piety toward God; he left none of these unexamined or undefined. There are two ways of all education and moral training: one teaches by word, the other by the practice of conduct. The other lawgivers were divided in their opinions; each chose the way he preferred and neglected the other. The Spartans and the Cretans, for example, trained by custom, not by words; while the Athenians and nearly all the other Greeks laid down by law what one must do or not do, but took little care to train people in it by practice.

Our lawgiver, with great care, joined both methods together. He neither left the practice of conduct mute nor let the word of the law go without practice. Beginning from the very first nurture and the daily life of each household, he left nothing, not even the smallest thing, to the free choice and will of those who would live under it. About foods — which we must abstain from and which we may eat — about the people who may share our daily life, and about the strain of work and, in turn, rest, he himself set the law as our boundary and rule, so that living under it as under a father and master we might sin in nothing, neither willingly nor through ignorance. He left no room for the plea of ignorance. He showed the law to be the finest and most necessary instruction of all, and commanded the people to hear it not once, nor twice, nor a number of times, but every week to leave their other work and assemble to hear the law and learn it exactly — something all the other lawgivers seem to have neglected. [g]

Most men are so far from living by their own laws that they hardly know them; only when they have done wrong do they learn from others that they have broken the law. Even those who hold the highest and most powerful offices among them admit their ignorance, for they appoint men who claim to be expert in the laws to sit beside them as supervisors in the management of affairs. But if anyone were to ask any one of us about the laws, he would recite them all more easily than his own name. Because we learn them from the moment we first become aware of anything, we have them, as it were, engraved on our souls. Those who break them are rare, and no one can beg himself off from the punishment. This, above all, has created our wonderful harmony. To hold one and the same belief about God, and to differ from one another in nothing in our life and customs, produces the finest agreement in human character. Among us alone will one hear no contradictory statements about God, such as are common among others — said not only by ordinary men as each one's feelings take him, but boldly put forward even by some of the philosophers. Some of these have tried by their arguments to do away with the nature of God altogether; others take away his providence over mankind. Nor will one see any difference among us in the conduct of life. Our works are common to all, and we have one word about God, in harmony with the law, which says that he watches over all things. And as for the conduct of life, that everything else must have piety as its end — this one may hear even from our women and our household servants.

This, indeed, is the source of the charge some bring against us, that we have not produced men who invented new works or new ideas. Others think it a fine thing to hold fast to nothing they inherited from their fathers, and they credit those who dare to break with tradition with the height of cleverness. We, on the contrary, hold that the one wisdom and the one virtue is to do nothing and think nothing at all contrary to the laws laid down at the beginning. This may fairly be taken as proof that our law was excellently framed; for laws not so framed are shown by experience to need correction. For us, who were persuaded from the beginning that the law was laid down according to the will of God, it would not even be pious not to keep it. What could anyone change in it? What better could he find, or what could he bring over from other peoples' laws as an improvement? Would someone change the whole form of our government? What could be finer or more just than one that has made God the ruler of all things, entrusts the priests in common with the administration of the greatest matters, and in turn has given the high priest the leadership of the other priests? These men the lawgiver did not raise to that honor at the outset for their wealth or for any other chance advantages. Rather, those among his companions who excelled the others in persuasiveness and moderation were the ones to whom he entrusted, above all, the service of God. That service included the exact care of the law and of the other ways of life; for the priests were appointed supervisors of all, judges of disputes and punishers of the condemned.

What rule, then, could be holier than this? What honor could better befit God, where the whole people is prepared for piety, the priests are entrusted with special care, and the whole state is run like a sacred rite? What others cannot keep up for more than a handful of days, though they call these things mysteries and initiations, we keep with joy and unchanging resolve all our lives. What, then, are our commands and prohibitions? They are simple and familiar. The first and foremost concerns God, and says: God holds all things; he is perfect and blessed, sufficient to himself and to all; he is the beginning, the middle and the end of all things. He is plain to see in his works and his gifts, more evident than anything else; but in his form and greatness he is beyond words to us. All material, however costly, is without honor for an image of him; all art is artless for conceiving a likeness of him. We have seen nothing like him, we can imagine nothing like him, and it is unholy to make a likeness of him. We see his works: light, heaven, earth, sun, waters, the generations of living creatures, the springing up of crops. These God made, not with hands, not with toil, not needing anyone to work with him; he willed them, and at once they were made, and made well. Him we must serve by practicing virtue; for this is the holiest way of serving God. [h]