Revisions, 3, placed at the beginning of this work.
74 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees bible studies, they pour down something like showers of truth on people of good understanding.
But this was not yet the case before the soul sinned, that is, before the greenery of the field was upon the earth. For God had not yet rained upon the earth, nor was there a man to work on it (Gn 2:5). A man working on the land, after all, needs the showers from the clouds, and about these enough has already been said. But after his sin the man began to work on the land, and to have those necessary clouds. Before he sinned, however, when God had made the greenery of the field and the fodder, which we have said mean the invisible creature, he was watering this creature from an inner spring, speaking directly to its under standing, so that it would not have to take in words from outside, like rain from the aforementioned clouds, but would be drenched from its own spring, that is, from the truth welling up from its innermost being.
The spring coming upfrom the earth, Genesis 2:6
5, 6. For a spring, he says, was coming upfrom the earth and watering the whole face of the earth (Gn 2:6)—from the earth, that is from the land about which it says: lt is you that are my hope, my portion in the land of the living (Ps
142:5). When the soul was being watered by such a spring as that, it had not yet "cast out its innards" through pride. The beginning, you see, of man 's pride is to apostatize from God (Sir 10:12); and since his swelling out through pride to exterior things has put a stop to his being watered from that interior spring, he is very properly jeered at by these words of the prophet, and told: What has earth and ashes to be proud of, since in its lifetime it has cast out its innards? (Sir
10:9).8 What else is pride, after all, but leaving the inner sanctum of conscience and wishing to be seen outwardly as what in fact one isn't? And that is why, as the soul toils away now on the land, it stands in need of rain from the clouds, that is, of teaching by human words, so that even by such means, from being parched and withered like that, it may grow green and flourish again, and once more become the greenery of the field.
But if only it were willing and happy to catch the rain of truth, at least from these very clouds! lt was on its account, after all, that our Lord agreed to assume our cloudy flesh and shed upon us that most abundant of all showers, the gospel itself, and then went on to promise that anyone who drank of its water would come back to that innermost spring and no longer need to look for rain from outside. He says, you see: // will become in him a spring ofwater welling up into eternal life (Jn 4:14). It was this spring, in my opinion, that before sin was coming up from the earth and watering all the face of the earth, because it was an
8. See the comment on thus treating the words of Sirach as those of a prophet, in the passage from Revisions, 3, placed at the beginning of this work.