Complete Works of Philo Judaeus (Vol. 4)

...among numbers, the tetrad the number four is honored both by other philosophers who have embraced incorporeal and intelligible substances, and especially by Moses, the all-wise, who, honoring the fourth number, says that it is "holy and praiseworthy." Reference to Leviticus 19:24, where the fruit of the fourth year is dedicated to the Lord. The reasons for this have been stated in the previous treatise. The hopeful man is holy and praiseworthy, just as the opposite—the hopeless man—is accursed and blameworthy, using fear as his counselor in all things, which is an evil guide. For they say there is nothing so hostile to another as hope is to fear, and fear to hope. And perhaps this is reasonable. For both are a form of expectation, but one is of good things, and the other, conversely, of evil things; and the natures of these are irreconcilable and incompatible.

§. 3. So much is sufficient to say concerning hope, which nature has established at the gates like a porter for the queenly virtues within, which cannot be encountered without first treating this one with care. Legislators and laws everywhere labor much to fill the souls of free men with good hopes; but the man who becomes hopeful without exhortation, without being commanded, has been educated in this virtue by an unwritten law, yet one that is self-taught, which nature herself has established. The second rank after hope is held by repentance and improvement regarding one's transgressions, whence he next records the one who changed from a worse life to a better one, who is called Enoch among the Hebrews, or as the Greeks would say, "favored" Philo suggests a folk etymology for Enoch implying 'gratitude' or 'favored', concerning whom these things have been said: "How Enoch was well-pleasing to God, and he was not found, because God translated him." original: "ὡς ἄρα εὐηρέστησεν Ἐνώχ τῷ Θεῷ, καὶ οὐχ ηὑρίσκετο, ὅτι μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ Θεός" (Gen. 5:24) For translation signifies turning and change; and the change is toward the better, because it happens by the providence of God. For everything that is with God is in every way good and advantageous,