of childhood, and stretches up to Abraham in ten more generations.32 And it can
62 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees
Our ordinary way of talking is full of the same sort of thing; as when we talk about a cheerful day because it makes us cheerful and sluggish cold weather because it makes us sluggish, and a blind ditch because we do not see it, and a polished tongue because it produces polished words; and finally we talk about the times being at rest from all troubles, times in which it is we ourselves who are at rest from all troubles.30
But God was said to have rested from all his works, which he had made very good, because it is in him that we rest from all our works, if we have made our works good; because, too, our good works themselves are to be attributed to him who calls us, who instructs us, who shows us the way of truth, who entices us also to choose it for ourselves, and furnishes us with the strength to fulfill his commands.
The six days ofcreation represent the six ages of the world
23, 35. But I reckon that more thorough consideration is called for of why God's resting is assigned to the seventh day. For what 1 see throughout the whole tapestry of the divine scriptures is some six working ages, distinguished from each other by definite border posts, so to say, pointing in hope to rest on a seventh age; and l see these six ages as being like those six days in which the things were made which scripture describes God as making.
The first age
The very beginnings of the human race, you see, in which it began to enjoy this light, can be suitably compared to the first day, on which God made light. This age is to be counted as a sort of infancy of the total age of the world, which we ought to think of, in comparison with its vast extent, as one adult human being; every human being, after all, when first born and seeing the light of day, lives through the first age of infancy. This age stretches from Adam up to Noah in ten generations.31 A kind of evening of this day is made by the flood, because our infancy too is sort of blotted out by a flood of oblivion.
The second age
36. And the morning of the second age starts from the days of Noah as a kind of childhood, and stretches up to Abraham in ten more generations.32 And it can be suitably compared to the second day, on which the solid structure was made between water and water, because the ark which had Noah and his family in it
30. We do not say most ofthese things in English; but we can no doubt think of similar things we do say—for example, instead of blind ditches we talk of blind corners. 31. SeeGn5. 32. See Gn 11:10-27.