Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
the aid of this extended metaphor? And yet somehow I find it tastes sweeter to imagine the saints, picturing them as the teeth of the Church biting converts off from their errors and ingesting them into the body of the Church, breaking down and softening up their hardness [of heart] as if by chomping down and chewing. Also it is with great, great joy that I look upon these new converts as shorn sheep who have put aside worldly cares as if shedding fleece, and ascended up from the washing, that is, the baptismal font, and I see every one of them giving birth to twins, that is, the dual commandments of love, that there is not one of them barren of that holy fruit.39
(6.8) But why all this tastes sweeter to me than if no analogies were drawn from the Sacred Books, even though the content and the understanding are exactly the same—why that is is hard to say and is another question. No one, however, is uncertain now that all sorts of things are learned more willingly through the use of analogies, and that we discover meaning with much more delight when we have experienced some trouble in searching for it. Those who do not find what they are searching for suffer from starvation, while those who do not bother even to search because they think they have it in easy reach often wither away from disdain. In both cases, we must be on guard against a dangerous drowsiness. The Holy Spirit has thus wonderfully—and for our good health—planned the Holy Scriptures in such a way that in the more open passages He relieves our hunger and that in the more obscure ones He drives away our distaste. Practically nothing is dug out from those obscurities which is not found plainly said somewhere else.40
Number Symbolism
Book 2 discusses various "obscure literal signs." Augustine notes, for example, the need to know the etymological meaning of names, both of people (Adam, Eve, Abraham, Moses) and of places (Jerusalem, Zion, Jericho, etc.). In his sermons, he often elucidates what he took to be the hidden meanings of such names. One other "obscure literal sign" that drew his attention (and that of other ancient interpreters) was the Bible's number symbolism. From On Christian Teaching, Book 2:
(16.25) Unfamiliarity with numbers is the reason why many things expressed metaphorically and mystically in the Scriptures are not understood.
39. See en. Ps. 3.7 (CCL 38:10–11). 40. Doc. Chr. 2.6.7–6.8 (Green, 60–62); my trans. Cf. en. Ps. 10.8 (CCL 38:80), where he grapples with the very odd locution in the Vetus Latina's rendering of Ps 10 ("His eyelids question the sons of men"). On the broader issue, see Roland J. Teske, "Criteria for Figurative Interpretation in St. Augustine," and J. Patout Burns, "Delighting the Spirit: Augustine's Practice of Figurative Interpretation," in Arnold and Bright, De doctrina: A Classic, 109–22, 182–90.