40. SeeMt 1:17.
66 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees fertile with ideas and fluent speech, as by feeding on seed-bearing plants; partly to provide moral guidance for human life together, as by feeding on the fruit of fruit trees; partly to lend vigor to their faith, hope and charity right up to eternal life, as by feeding on green, that is to say evergreen, plants, which cannot be shriveled up by the summer heat of any tribulations. But spiritual people feed on these foodstuffs in such a way that they come to an understanding of many things, while those who are oftheflesh, that is, little ones in Christ ( 1 Cor 3:1), like God's sheep, do so in such a way that they take many things on faith which they are unable as yet to understand; nonetheless all have the same food.
The seventh age
4 1 . There is a sort of evening of this sixth day—and I hope to goodness it does not overtake us, provided that is it hasn't already begun, because it is the one about which the Lord says: Do you suppose when the Son of Man comes he will findfaith on the earth ? (Lk 1 8:8). After this evening there will be made morning when the Lord himself is going to come in glory. Then those who were told, Be perfect, like your Father who is in heaven (Mt 5:48), will take their rest with
Christ from all their works. Such people, you see, do works that are "very good"; after such works indeed a rest is to be hoped for on the seventh day which has no evening.
There are no words, therefore, that can possibly describe how God made and established heaven and earth and every creature which he set in place there; but this commentary on the order of the days, one by one, presents them as the account of things done, in such a way as to concentrate on them chiefly as predicting things to come in the future.
24, 42. It may, however, worry some people that in these ages of the world we observed the first two being unfolded in ten generations each, while the three following ones are each woven out of fourteen generations,40 and this sixth age is not defined by any particular number of generations at all. But then it can easily be seen in the case of any individual human being that the first two ages, infancy and childhood, cling to the senses of the body; of these there are five: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch; double the number five, because of the two sexes, male and female, from which such generations arise, and you get ten.
But now from adolescence onward, when reason begins in human beings to get the upper hand, the five senses are joined by knowledge and activity, which guide and organize the life we lead. So now we start having the number seven. Double it in the same way because of the two sexes, and it clearly comes out to fourteen generations which the three following ages have, those of the adoles cent, of the youth and of the older person. But just as old age in us is not defined
40. SeeMt 1:17.