Philonis Judaei Opera Omnia (Vol. 3)

10 PHIL. IUD. ON THE HEIR OF DIVINE THINGS §. 6. 7.

What did I become, that you should share your word with me, that you should agree to a reward, a good more perfect than grace and gift? Am I not an exile from my country? Am I not driven from my kin? Am I not alienated from my father's house? Do not all call me an outcast and a fugitive, destitute and dishonored? But you, Master, are my country, you are my kin, you are my father's hearth, you are my dignity, my frank speech, my great and famous and inalienable wealth. Why, then, shall I not be bold to say what I think? Why shall I not inquire, deigning to learn something more? But in saying that I am bold, I confess again that I am fearful and struck with awe, and that I do not possess the conflict within me that is unmixed—fear and boldness—as someone might perhaps assume, but the mingled harmony. Therefore, I feast insatiably on the mixture, which has persuaded me neither to speak freely without reverence, nor to be reverent without speaking freely. For I have learned to measure my own nothingness, and to gaze upon the extremes of your benefits in their transcendence; and whenever I perceive myself as "earth and ashes," original: "γῆν καὶ τέφραν" (Gen. 18:27) or whatever else is more discarded, at that moment I am bold to approach you, having become humble, cast down into the dust, in so far as I am reconstituted to the point of seeming not even to exist.

§. 7. And this passion of my soul was inscribed in my memory by the overseer Abraham. For he says, "Having drawn near, Abraham said, 'Now I have begun to speak to the Lord, and I am earth and ashes,'" original: "Ἐγγίσας γὰρ, Ἀβραὰμ εἶπε, νῦν ἠρξάμην λαλεῖν πρὸς κύριον, ἐγὼ δέ εἰμι γῆ καὶ σποδός" (Gen. 18:27) because it is then the time for created beings to approach the One who made them, when it has known its own nothingness. And the "What will you give me?" is a sound not of one in doubt, but of one giving thanks for the multitude and magnitude of the goods he has enjoyed.