Called to the Divine-like and equal-to-the-angels life, and to increasingly greater and closer communication with God, man should not have been distracted from this most important goal by excessive care about himself. The Creator gave him everything that was necessary for life. He also gave man a commandment: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it" (Gen. 2:16-17).

As in any act of God, this first commandment has several facets. The freedom of the man is fulfilled in reality: he can obey or disobey. There was no guard at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, like the archangel with a fiery sword later on.

Man was to be trained by that commandment, to grow in love for God. Man, like the angels, was created by God for a blissful life, which is obtained by spiritual growth. Man was created for the development of the feeling of love for his Creator and for beings similar to himself — other people and lower creatures.

But love, as a purely theoretical confession, as a simple statement of fact — is fruitless. Moreover, by not developing, it becomes petrified, atrophies. Love demands its expression, and the most direct, natural display of it is the fulfillment of a loved one’s will. Therefore, the commandment "do not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" had the goal of developing and strengthening the love of Adam and Eve for their Creator, as well as strengthening their will and improving their morality.

The Church rejects the idea, prevalent since ancient times, that the trying of the fruit from the tree of knowledge should be understood as the carnal communication of Adam and Eve. This communication was not only not forbidden, on the contrary, it was blessed by God, Who said: Be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28).

The first people were childishly inexperienced, simple and primitive, more unfamiliar with life than modern children, for children, who do not have personal experience, learn from their parents. Such experience was lacking for the first people, who were taught by the blissful communication with God, but were absolutely naïve and untried. Therefore, they needed a simple and understandable commandment. Such was given by God: ""Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it." In this commandment, we recognize one of the simplest, accessible to all people, and most basic, Church commandments, as ancient as the Church itself — the commandment about abstention, i.e. about fasting.

Why is the forbidden tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Because man came out of the hands of God absolutely clean, not knowing any evil. By eating the forbidden fruit, he would come into contact with evil for the first time, and then could distinguish, from experience, between it and the original good put into him by God. God did not want His beloved creation to know evil from his own experience. Just as good parents try to protect their children from acquaintance with the wickedest and most disgusting sides of life as long as possible, God wished the same for His beloved children.

It is absolutely futile to make suppositions about what the destiny of mankind would be, if there would have been no initiator of evil in the world — the fallen spirit, who rejected God and who hates everything, created by Him. Led by pride, and then by hatred, once an angel of light, he became "the old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan" (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). It was he who attempted to sway the new creations of God — people — to the same rebellion against God and disobedience to Him, which he himself performed and towards which he won over a multitude of spirits that fell with him. St. Basil the Great says the following about this: "The devil, seeing that he is excommunicated from the angels, could not watch indifferently, how one Earth-born ascends to angelic merit through successes" (Conversations, 9^th, "About how God is not the cause of evil").

And the serpent said to the wife: "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" The one, who had rebelled against the Truth, the father of lies, cannot speak the truth. He uses slander in the very first words which man hears from him. He knows that God allowed people to eat from any of the trees, but one. Through slander, the devil wishes to represent this commandment about the only tree as God’s ban on all heavenly fruits. Besides this, the slander is so cunningly disguised, that it is not obvious to naïve people. Those who do not read the Bible thoughtfully enough often do not notice where the slander is hidden. In this ancient trick of Satan, we easily recognize the contemporary variants of essentially the same methodology: contemporary anti-religious and anti-Christian forces use it on the government scale, while the same thing happens in complaints at God or in slander at neighbors. This testifies to the lack of creative variety of God’s enemy and of the banality of his methods in tempting people throughout many centuries.

And the woman replied to the serpent: "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

The fact that Eve enters into the conversation with the serpent, in spite of the fact that she had heard slander at God from him, shows that her love for God had not yet had time to develop, that she is not yet spiritually mature. And in her answer, she obviously succumbs to the deceit of the serpent: she somewhat distorts the words of God as well, exaggerating their strictness. God did not say: "Do not touch them." Maybe, if Eve had repeated God’s words with absolute precision and truthfulness, the devil would have run away from her, for he hates only the absolute truth of God’s words. But he tolerates the distorted half-truth and continues his tempting tactics.

"And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

This slander is subtle and very significant. God created people to be God-like and for gradually gaining greater and greater similarity to Him, as St. Basil the Great writes: "We are creatures, but are called to become gods by grace."

Later on, the Son of God will come to the earth in order to make man divine, of which church chants speak many times: "God became man, so that man would become god." Not knowing the Divine plan concerning man, the devil could, nevertheless, guess about it, for God’s plan for him was the same, when he was an angel of light. Therefore, Satan knew that the temptation "ye shall be as gods" would be attractive to man, who was created for that. But instead of becoming similar to God through love for God and through unity with Him, the devil offers Divine similarity through rebellion and disobedience to Him.

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise"

The devil does not know the depths of the human spirit, not yet spoiled by sin, but he understands the spiritual movements on the surface, connected with the physical nature, which can be equally directed towards the good or the evil. And he mobilizes these, as he does everything that he has in his disposal, in this decisive moment of temptation, later repeating his method of tempting millions of millions of times over all human creatures throughout all of the very grievous human history. "The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" — the holy fathers call this the "triple temptation," used by the devil at the dawn of ages in relation to Eve.

"She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" —A cosmic catastrophe happened, but so simply and, on the surface, imperceptibly. There was no thundering, the skies did not quake, the mountains did not stir — nothing outwardly reacted to the terrible catastrophe which upset the entire universe, the entire Divine plan for the world created by Him.

But the downfall of each individual is, in essence, the same catastrophe, the same tragedy, and each one of us knows from personal experience, how outwardly simply and insignificantly these catastrophes happen. If we were in need of confirmation of the Divine truth of each word of the holy Divine Revelation, then the simplicity and outward imperceptibleness of the description of the catastrophe of the first people’s downfall would be one of the most striking proofs that what is in front of us is not a myth.

"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden … and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden."

The poison of the downfall was reflected immediately and quite evidently in the self-sense of Adam and Eve. Up till now, association with God was the main joyful content of their lives. It was the reason for which they were created, it was the source of their bliss, for it included in itself all the subsequent pure delights of man: the artistic delights, for God is the Fullness of Beauty; and the joy which we experience, when we see the triumph of a just matter, for God is the Fullness of Truth and Justice; and the joy of scientific creation, which comes from the comprehension of the laws of nature, the Lawgiver of which is God. So, now, with the appearance of God, Adam and Eve, after the downfall, try to avoid meeting God for the first time. "And Adam and his wife hid themselves." For people, who have dimmed the image of God in themselves, communication with God becomes burdensome.

Simultaneously they also lost their inherent knowledge of God. Before the downfall, they knew God with the inner consciousness of their Godlike soul and through the association of their spirit with the Spirit, a knowledge which was not yet strengthened, was unformed and therefore easily lost. This association was broken by sin: there is no sin in God, but it appeared in man. That was why man ceased to know God. This is already evident from the fact that Adam and Eve forgot about God’s omnipresence and omniscience. They naively tried to hide "amongst the trees" from the All-Seeing Eye. In this obscured notion of God, from the very first moments of the downfall —lies the seed of all the subsequent false teachings — idolatry and heresies, for all of them, in essence, stem from the same mistake: either assigning inappropriate qualities to God, or negating the perfections, which are inherent to Him.

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? The Lord shows the greatest fatherly leniency towards the sinful irrationality of people. He does not rush to expose or punish them. With the most delicate care, He wishes to call them to repentance. He does not discover the childishly naïve shelter of the sinning people, but calls them to fulfill the act of the acceptance of guilt, calls the man by name. Finally, Adam answers: "I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."

The first weak sign in Adam of a unenthusiastic turn towards the better can be seen in the fact that he responded to the Divine call, and did not stay concealed in his shelter. But even this minor improvement of his he spoils immediately by an attempt to deceive God: "and I was afraid, because I was naked."

The Lord waits, but the man does not admit his sin, does not confess it, and does not repent of it. Meanwhile, it would have been so appropriate and necessary! What a deeply human, familiar to us from personal experience and experience with other people, subtle drama is described for us by the Holy Bible in a few words.

Adam does not confess, he does not show repentance. The leniency of God goes further. As a most careful confessor in relation to the clumsily repenting sinner, God Himself pronounces Adam’s fault instead of him, names his sin, leaving to the one, who had sinned, only to say the short, confessionary "Yes!" Farther and farther goes the Child-loving Father towards the prodigal son.

But, adding to the already committed sins of violation of the Divine love in breaking the simple commandment, the attempt to hide from God, and therefore — to deceive Him, Adam commits one more sin, not only against God, but now against the wretched accomplice of his crime, the wife one in essence with him: "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."

Piling up crime upon crime, Adam breaks the connection of love with these words — the guarantee of one essence between him and Eve, and makes more profound the rebellion against the Creator, striving to shift part of the guilt for his crime onto Him: "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me…"

The Lord then turns from Adam, so as not to multiply his sins, and addresses Eve. Until that moment He had not addressed her, because she, connected by nature with Adam, was one being with him. But by the shifting of his fault onto Eve, Adam breaks his unity with her.

Waiting for repentance at least from Eve, God says to her: "What is this that thou hast done?" But she, too, continues with the persistent self-justification, saying: "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."

The Lord does not ask anything of the serpent — the ancient dragon, called the Devil, the slanderer, who deceives the entire universe (Rev. 12:9). He does not waste a single word in vain with the conscious slanderer, for whose repentance there is no hope. Asking him nothing, the Lord lays a curse on him, which ends with the promise that is terrible for the devil but reassuring to grave, but not hopeless, sinners: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel," or in the more expressive Slavonic variant, translated from the Greek by the 70 interpreters (the Septuagint): "It shall wipe off your head."

This promise, with which God reassured the sinful people, the Church called the First Gospel — the first good news.

"Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken."

God exiling the people who had sinned is, as many other Divine acts, many-faceted. The Bible points out one of the reasons directly: "Lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." Living in heaven is connected with the eating from the tree of life, which made people immortal. Meanwhile, for sinful people with a corrupt nature, such an eternal life in a lasting sinful state and in an ever-deepening moral decomposition would truly be an infernal existence, a source of hopeless tortures and despair. They had to be removed from heaven, so that, as St. Gregory the Theologian says, evil would not become immortal.

The heavenly state was bound to Divine association. Meanwhile, by spiritual law, which we observe in guilty children, association with God, which used to be the source of supreme bliss, became the source of sufferings for our forefathers from the moment of the downfall. As the child, who feels his fault before his parents, no longer wants to be in the same room with them, guilty people tried to hide from God in the same way.

Moreover: we know from the example of children who are at fault before their parents, how harmful it is to let their lack of repentance become entrenched, for they become even more impudent, insolent and shameless. In a similar way, the Lord, in order to prevent their further downfall, casts them out of heaven, for they did not show any signs of repentance.

Before casting them out of heaven, the Lord orders Adam to work. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken." This commandment of God, as the majority of the acts of God, is many-sided: for together with the punishment for sin the medicine for it is also given.

In heaven, people were free from hard labors connected with their physical nature, for the nature they headed obediently fulfilled all the work, concerning their nourishment and service. And such freedom from labors and material worries was morally necessary for man while he remained righteous, in order to have the opportunity to be in continuous association with God.

But as soon as man fell away from God, nature rose up against him. Having violated his calling, he disrupted the whole system of the physical world, having stopped being the connection between it and God. Both plants and animals lost their master and intercessor before the Creator: his rebellion caused "rebellion" on their part.

The time which man could earlier use for his spiritual growth and association with God, he now had to spend on hard labor in order to maintain his physical existence. But if time were not filled this way, life, deprived of the association with God, would become unbearable. When our soul is tormented, then labor is the only balm. For this reason, the Lord commands man to work when He casts him from heaven.

The fifth chapter of the book of Genesis opens with a brief repetition of the history of the creation of man (and here again the word "bara" is used — creation from nothing), as the group oneness in multiplicity, in image and likeness a group oneness in the Three-in-One God.

"In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; Male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created." Then Adam’s age in years is given, and the description of the birth of Adam and Eve’s righteous son— Seth: "Begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth."

The Lord created Adam and Eve in His image, after His likeness, and preserving this image and likeness (though harmed by sin), Adam passes them on to his progeny. "And he begat sons and daughters."

If in the previous chapter we noted the exceptional loving attention of the holy fathers to every word of the Bible, then here we shall note, how blind the most recent and little believing critics and researchers of the Holy Scripture are.

In the book of Genesis, in verse 4 of chapter 5, it is clearly written that Adam begat sons and daughters, but contemporary critics are bewildered: how does the Bible represent the multiplication of mankind, if Adam and Eve are said to have only three sons? Whom did they marry? Surely, their sisters, without falling into criminal incest, for such marriages then were dictated purely by necessity, and not in any way by perversion. Besides, mankind was young and fresh then, and marriages between the closest relatives could not introduce the elements of degradation in them, which accompany the incestual relations of later times and present days.

The exceptional longevity of the people of that time can be explained by the same freshness of forces in young mankind. Originally created for eternal life, people of the first human generations did not give into the unnatural, for people, winnowing of death longer. Adam lived for 930 years, Methuselah lived even longer, 969 years.

From among the names of the ten descendents of Adam before the Great Flood, let us focus on Enoch, the seventh after Adam. Enoch means "dedication." "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."

Righteous Enoch is mentioned in the Book of Sirach: "Enoch pleased God, and was translated into paradise, that he may give repentance to the nations" (Sirach 44:15). The Apostle Paul says about him: "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him (took him alive to heaven; Hebr. 11:5). And the Apostle Jude even kept the words of righteous Enoch for us, witnessing in his epistle: "And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him"(Jude 1:14-15).

Blessed Theodorite says that the Lord freed righteous Enoch from death, in order to testify to even ancient, primitive mankind that "the determination of death is temporary and is subject to extermination." Blessed Theodorite ends his interpretation about Enoch with the words, which are appropriate to be quoted: "So, we know he was translated alive, and that he lives now—we know, but where and how —is unknown, for the Scripture does not say anything about that."

A church legend is connected with the name of righteous Enoch, which blessed Ieronim and Augustine describe in the most detail (translation Ep. Ad Marcellam; Aug. De gen. Ad Litt. 11:6) The blessed Righteous Enoch did not taste death. Meanwhile, by Divine determination: "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," all people have to pass through the gates of death, and we know that even the More Honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare More Glorious than the Seraphim, the Mother of God, passed over the threshold of death, to be resurrected by Her Son and God. The Holy Scripture says that only two people did not face death: righteous Enoch and the Prophet Elijah. About one can say of both of them, using the words of bless Theodorite: "They are still living, but it is unknown — where and how."

When, in the last days, lawlessness will increase, love will dry up, so that faith will become depleted, then there will appear "two witnesses…the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth" (Rev. 11:4), which will testify to the Divine truth among corrupt mankind. By God’s permission, these two candlesticks will be killed by the Antichrist and will rise on the third day. The Church teaching says that these two candlesticks, these witnesses, will be Sts. Enoch and Elijah — those righteous men of the Old Testament who did not face death, precisely in order to perform the work of God at the end of ages, when the spiritual forces of mankind will be depleted.

The very sermon of the righteous Enoch, as blessed Theodorite says, applies more to the last days than to those preceding the flood: "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all."

The problem of Biblical chronology is connected with the 5^th chapter of the book of Genesis. It is well known that in Byzantium and pre-Peter the Great Russia, they counted years "from the creation of the world," not from the Nativity of Christ. Such chronology is found in contemporary church calendars, though it is more and more subject to criticism, for it is known that our earth appeared several billions of years ago.

We can provide two answers for solving this problem. First: precisely what should we understand as the date of "the creation of the world"? According to the words of the prophet Moses, the Apostle Peter and the greatest church interpreter of the Holy Scripture, St. Basil the Great, the epoch of the days of the world’s creation should be understood as very prolonged periods of time, because the 7^th day, which ended the course of the six days of creation, the Church calls the entire present, on-going period, till the end of the world, when the infinite night-less 8^th day will take the place of the 7th.

Consequently, when did the 6^th day end and the 7^th day begin? According to the sense of the corresponding narration of the book of Genesis we can say: at the time, when the creation of man in the present spirit-bearing state was completed. But precisely when this moment took part in the historical process, we do not know. And it is important to note that none of the historical testimonies about the religious life of man, such as written testimonies, step beyond the limits of what is mentioned in the Bible.

Secondly: the unchangeable word of God, the holy Bible, does not give us any chronological tables. It gives only the ages of the Patriarchs — the descendents of Adam before the Flood and then after the Flood to Abraham. Adding up these years, one pious monk of the Middle Ages, Dionysius Exiguus (the same one, who calculated the year of the Nativity of Christ), calculated the years from the Creation of the World, and this calculation, exclusively by reason of its convenience, was accepted in Byzantium, and borrowed from Byzantium by Russia.

But, if we look attentively at the Biblical text, we see that it does not give a precise chronology. In reality, what does the Bible say? "And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years." And the same method is applied to every descendant of Adam: the years of their lives are given, before the birth of the mentioned children and after it.

But in fact, the Biblical expression "X the son of Y" and "Y begat X" do not always mean that this X was his immediate son. In the Old Testament, we see that it is said about almost all the kings of Judea "he did as David, his father," or "he did not do as David, his father." And in the New Testament, Christ the Savior is called the Son of David, the Son of Abraham and the Son of Adam. In the genealogy of the Lord, given by the Apostle Matthew, we see that when the Evangelist says: "And Ozias begat Joatham," he omits 4 generations (compare Matt. 1:9 and 4 Kings chap. 11 and 15, and 1 Kings 3:10).

Consequently, when the Bible says that Y has son X, we should understand that X is the direct descendant of Y, but how many generations are between them —cannot be asserted. Ozias begat Joatham, but between them are four generations! Christ the Savior is the son of David, but between them there are over 30 generations, Christ the Savior is the son of Abraham, but they have almost 50 generations between them, Christ the Savior is the Son of Adam, but between them is a huge, impossible to even approximately count, multitude of generations. But one thing we know for certain is immutable: if someone in the Holy Bible is called the son of X, then he is his direct descendant. Christ the Savior is the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Son of Adam, for He is their direct descendant. This is what is asserted and emphasized by the Holy Scripture, because it is exactly what we need to know in order to see in Christ the authentic Savior of the world, proclaimed to the first people by God.

Thus, chronological calculations are not part of the Bible’s goal. This, like all scientific or historical research, the Lord leaves to people, who feel called to do such laborious, but non-essential for salvation, occupations.

In order to understand why such a method of numbering the years was convenient for Byzantium, one needs to recall that Byzantium was a cultural and political heiress of both Rome and eastern monarchies, and a difficult task lay before the Byzantium chronologists: for their historical labors, they needed to combine extremely different methods of chronology: the Roman — from the foundation of Rome, the Greek — calculating the Olympiads, as well as the Hellenic-Syrian Era of Seleucids (since 312 AD, look, chap. 1, Mac.) and the most complex calendar systems — the Alexandrian and Babylonian.

The religious motives even then dictated the preference of the era of the Nativity of Christ. According to the church understanding, from the time of the Coming of Christ into the world, He Alone really, in the full meaning of the word, reigns and rules, and the terrestrial kings only rule temporarily. "One King and Lord," church chants say about the Savior. "Christ is our King" — exclaimed holy martyrs, refusing to submit to the terrestrial kings-tormentors. That was why it was so natural for the Christian consciousness in countries, where historically the chronology was measured by the number of years of rule of this or that leader, to adopt the chronology according to the years of rule of Christ the Lord — from the day of His Nativity.

But in practice, the era of the Nativity of Christ was not convenient for the Byzantine historians, for the Nativity of Christ was too recent a date at the time. When telling the story of Alexander of Macedonia, Ancient Rome, Pompeii, Caesar, one had to give a year before the Nativity of Christ. This inconvenience can be felt by us, but for us it is rather diminished by the fact that the date of the Nativity of Christ is far enough in the past for us, and this inconvenience becomes inconvenient only while narrating the history of the centuries close to it.

Due to all these reasons, the era calculated by Dionysius Exiguus from the creation of the world was willingly accepted by Byzantine historians, and from them adapted by the Byzantine state. However, very often we find both dates in Byzantine documents: from the creation of the world, and from the Nativity of Christ.

These lines of the Bible have been bewildering since ancient times: who are these "sons of God"— "bne Elogim," who took the human daughters as wives? In the Pre-Christian epoch, in the ancient targums, the Hebrew Scribes interpreted this extract of the Holy Scripture, as the joining of angels and women (the Targum of Oncelos). But, certainly, such an understanding does not at all coincide with our Christian teaching about angels as incorporeal spirits with no physical traits; it also does not coincide with the belief of our faith, that mankind evolved solely from Adam and Eve. At a time when the ancient pagan legends assigned a Divine or semi-Divine origin to their kings and heroes, the Holy Scriptures from the most ancient times categorically assert the unified descent of all people from common antecedents. That is why even the early fathers of our Church did not accept the rabbinical interpretations of this extract (St. Justin, St. Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Lactancius and Commodian), but taught that "the sons of God" must be understood as the righteous part of mankind.

Truly, the righteous are referred to as of the sons of God even in the Old Testament. For example, in the Wisdom of Solomon: "How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints!" (5:5), "But thy sons not the very teeth of venomous dragons overcame" (16:10). And the Lord Himself says: "But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world… are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection" (Luke 20:36). St. John the Theologian testifies: "What manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." And St. John Chrysostom, explaining these words of the Apostle, teaches: "Anytime, when we do the good, we are born from God, for His seed abides in us" (Discussion about 1 John, 3:9)

And St. Basil the Great writes: "Many in the Scriptures are called the sons of God by the words: "I have nourished and brought up children" (Commentary on Isaiah).

So, in full concordance with the testimony of the Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Lord Himself and holy fathers, we should understand the first lines of chapter 6 of the book of Genesis to be the narration about how righteous men, seeing the daughters of the unrighteous, were tempted by them.

Taking into consideration that, at the time, mankind consisted of two branches: the descendents of Cain, the first murderer, and the progeny of the righteous Seth, who were the ones who began to appeal to the Lord, we, without any ticklish fantasies, shall understand what this excerpt is talking about: men from the progeny of the righteous Seth began to be fascinated by the women of Cain’s descendants and became corrupt because of it.

Why does the Bible continue to call these people, in spite of their downfall, "the sons of God"? — The words of the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, cited above, explain this: "Thy sons (i.e. God’s)…by whom the uncorrupt light of the law was to be given unto the world" (18:4). The progeny of Seth — are the sons of God not only because they are righteous themselves, but mostly because, after many centuries would pass, the unfading light of the Divine Law would be given through them to the world, and the Only Perfect Son of God — Jesus Christ — will appear to people.

And the Lord said: "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh." We can imagine the picture of the internal state of antediluvian mankind thanks to the analogy with the contemporary one, because now we basically see the same thing: people are becoming more and more carnal, they are interested only in the material, while spiritual good freezes in them and even their emotions become dull, and because the corporeal is powerless by itself, the power of evil spirits acts more and more aggressively in ever-increasingly corporeal mankind.

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

Like angels, the Lord created man so that he could attain a blissful eternal life, as we have said before: "being Himself Ever-Blissful and Ever-Joyful, He wanted the other creatures to have this joy of life, joy of existence."

But mankind sinned, and by that fell away from its calling: instead of blissful immortal life, it gained disastrous and mortal life. But the downfall of mankind was temporary and not hopeless. Adam and Eve repented. Seth was righteous, with Enos they started to call the name of the Lord. Enoch pleased God to the highest degree. In the spiritual depths of mankind, the precious process of the spiritual ripening is occurring, thanks to which the moment approaches when the Son of God — the Savior — will be able to come to people, join them and again make them the heirs of the Kingdom of God.

This process occurs in the best currents of the righteous branch of mankind. This process is precious to the Lord, for His human-loving, salutary goals. But even for its sake, He does not at all deprive man of free will, of free choice. The process of spiritual ripening occurs in mankind while people, by their own free will, strive to it.

And so, this process in mankind in the antediluvian epoch halts. The sons of God — the descendants of righteous Seth, Enos and Enoch, being righteous (even if comparatively) grew close to the daughters of the cruel and dissolute branch of mankind, the descendants of Cain, and began to be tempted by them. The process of spiritual ripening of the human spirit stops. People became corporeal, without a shadow of spiritual movement, and evil penetrates them without hindrance, all their thoughts and contemplations became evil at all times.

But if the process of spiritual ripening in the souls of people ceases forever, the existence of mankind would become senseless. Truly, for a spirit-bearing creature to be born into the world in order to feel pleasant physical feelings for a number of years, and then, dying, descend into hell without hope of ever being free from this place of agony and tortures — what can be more terrible and senseless than such a prospect? What can be further from the Divine plan for man, as the co-heir of the reign of God, called to eternal joy and bliss? Antediluvian mankind firmly and irrevocably stepped onto the path of moral degeneracy.

But, by that time, there remained only one bright exception in all of mankind: "Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."

Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. In them was concentrated all the hope for the possibility of moral restoration of mankind, and consequently — for the possibility of its moral salvation, its return to God, to Divine eternal bliss.

But if Noah and his children were left among dissolute mankind, they would inevitably become corrupt, would become infected with the common depravity, if not Noah himself and his children, then his grandsons and great-grand-sons would yield to the common corruption, for under the influence of the sinful downfall of the forefathers, human nature became more inclined to evil.

And then the Lord, the Ever-Merciful and Human-Loving Lord, decides on an extreme measure: to exterminate the greater part of mankind, which had lost any meaning in life, in order to preserve the only branch of people which had not yet lost this meaning, and which is capable of spiritual perfection.

And the Lord said: "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth." So, the Lord decides to exterminate mankind by a flood of waters.

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." The Lord sets a time period for people to repent: "Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."

To save Noah and his family, the Lord commands him: "Make thee an ark of gopher wood (probably, cypress)… and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh…But with thee will I establish My covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee."

Let us consider the questions, connected with the narration of the Scripture about the Flood, in detail. This narration is subjected to criticism more often than others.

As one of the testimonies of the immutable truth of this narration let us note the exceptional universality of the legends about it. The French scientist, the very non-religious writer-archeologist François Lenorman, brilliantly testifies to that: "The flood is not a myth, but a historical fact, for at least three independent racial branches of the ancient civilized world preserved comparable legends about it."

The flood was for all people, but not for all territories. Neither Africa, nor southwest Asia, nor Australia, nor America were covered by Flood’s waters. The Universal Flood means the death of all mankind and all the living creatures in the places of their inhabitance, but not throughout the planet Earth. One must remember the reason the Lord created the Flood: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth… And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth." Consequently, we can fully imagine the Flood in the form of flooding, which covered only the "ecumeni," i.e. only the space of the earth, inhabited by people, and how large this territory was — we do not know.

At the same time, we should not be troubled by the fact that the Holy Bible speaks about the Flood several times, as spread "upon the earth." The Bible and all religious works, concerned only with the care of human souls and not the problems of geography, often call land and universe only the regions, inhabited by people, and sometimes only the region of some definite human culture — the one, which had matured enough to be influenced by the Holy Scripture. Byzantium, brought up on the Bible, called the Mediterranean Sea Basin the Universe, therefore it called its emperors "the rulers of the universe," and gave the Patriarch of Constantinople the title "universal."

We do not know that. In our previous discussion, we spoke of the impossibility of constructing a chronology on the basis of narration of the book of Genesis. In any case, the flood must refer to a very distant epoch in human history, and the very dispersed legends about it prove that.

The one who writes these lines (to me, personally, by the way, very debatably) considers that the Flood should most likely be assigned to the time period known in science as the boundary between the epoch Mustier and the epoch Orignac, the boundary between the upper and lower Paleolith, when, suddenly and unexpectedly, the previously numerous race of Neanderthal man disappeared from the face of the planet, some traits of which (the absolute absence of burials, consequently, one can presume, the absence of faith in life after death, the absence of any artistic drawings, i.e. contempt towards the feeling of beauty, etc.) correspond to the primary indications of the negative branch of primitive man: "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh," i.e. without any signs of spiritual life.

The narration about the flood is very important for all times, in the light of Christ’s warning to all of us: "And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man: They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:26).

We have already said that the Universal Flood, which destroyed ancient, fallen into deprivation, mankind, in spite of the seeming cruelty of this measure, was an expression of Divine care for mankind. In order to save the last branch of mankind, capable of spiritual revival and perfection, in order to some day, maybe even far away in the future, to become able to inherit heavenly life, in order to save that branch, it was necessary to destroy the rest of corrupted mankind, so that it would not infect the last healthy branch by its moral corruption.

But having destroyed this corrupt majority of mankind by the waters of the Flood, did God forgot about it, did He totally reject those sinners who had turned away from Him? — No, the Merciful and Human-Loving Lord many centuries later recalled His lost sheep! When the appearance of the Son of God to the world and His atonement of mankind occurred, then, as Apostle Peter testifies, the Lord stretched His saving hand into hell to those souls, destroyed by the Flood. "By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing" (1 Pet. 3:19-20).

Blessed Theothilactus, interpreting these words, says that this means all primitive mankind from the times of Adam. Naturally, here also belongs that generation, which was washed away by the waters of the Flood.

St. Gregory the Theologian reminds us besides (Word 45) that "Christ, appearing to those found in hell, does not save everyone, but those who believed in Him." And though it is hidden from us, who of the common people will be saved and who will perish, we can guess with hope, that a great number of those, miserable, God-forgetting souls destroyed by the Flood, having experienced the torture of hell, made use of the Good News of the Conqueror of Death, and having believed in Him, followed Him into the Reign of His eternal joy.

It is delightful for us, Russians, to pause on these lines, in which for the first time, on the pages of the Bible, an area is mentioned, which later on was destined to be a part of the Russian state.

This is an important region in other aspects. Here, later on, appeared a powerful state, which the Bible calls the land of Ararat (4 Kings 19:37, Ex. 7:38, Jer. 51:27), and contemporary science — the state of Urartu. This state performed a great service to mankind in the field of culture: here for the first time in the 11-12^th centuries BC the method of extracting iron out of ore was discovered, and the Iron Age began, with the mass production of objects made of iron. [Till that time mankind used only rare meteorite, chemically more or less pure iron, and to the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians iron was more precious than gold].

The state of Urartu fulfilled another, more spiritual service. With the appearance and wide expansion of the militant Assyrian kingdom, Urartu took the strongest blows of the Assyrians onto itself, and it turned out to be the only state bordering on Assyria, which did not submit to the cruel conquerors. Throughout consecutive numbers of ages, Urartu fought with Assyria, that way diverting the attention and powers of this predatory state onto itself and thus saving other nations from terrible Assyrian slavery. Does this not remind us of the role, which many-many centuries later our Russia played, saving the Christian world from Asiatic conquerors?

Thus, we have reason to say that the Ararat land is blessed.

"And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark… Also he sent forth a dove from him… But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot… And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth." Ever since then, the image of a dove with an olive leaf in its beak became the symbol of Divine goodness and peace with God.

We may guess that the Holy Spirit, appearing at the Baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ "as a dove," thus reminded people about the hour of Divine mercy after the Flood. Thus, outwardly differently, but inwardly similarly, the Lord in both cases "drowns sin with water" and in both events a dove appears.

And what an onerous blasphemy we feel, that nowadays this holy symbol has become the symbol of the disgusting caricature of peace, the symbol of mendacious propaganda of the enemies of God.

"In the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry… And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and offered burnt offerings on the altar."

This first offering of mankind rose to God on the blessed land of Ararat, after the punitive anger — the hour of mercy and Divine blessing had come.

It is interesting to compare this short Biblical description of Noah’s offering after the Flood with the description, though the nearest one to the Biblical, but still a heathen narration, about the same event in the Babylonian myth.

Babylonian Noah — Utnapishtim tells: [The modern semantologists bring both the names to one: Napishtim and Noepishtim, which means "The Savior of Life," Noah-Noe is simply "a savior"]:

We will not pause on the repulsive image of gods, as flies, gathering above the altar. We understand that the Babylonians did not imagine their gods as flies, as we do not imagine the Holy Spirit as a dove. These are images. But what an attractive image is the one, and how repulsive is the other.

But in the very description of the offering of Utnapishtim our attention is drawn to the difference from the Biblical story. How many unnecessary details we see in the Babylonian story. They do not exist in the Biblical narration. Maybe, it happened the way Utnapishtim tells it historically: he put down reeds, cedar branches and brushwood. But all these details do not serve the aim of the Bible to foster human souls. And in this example, we can see how under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the hand of Moses, recording the history of mankind, cleansed the ancient legends, eliminating everything secondary and superfluous from them. When it is necessary, even for a limited historical period, the Bible is able to present the most minute details in its narrative, as, for example, further on, when recording the rules of Old Testament offerings. When this is not necessary, the Bible, passing over meaningless details, relates only the essence.

From this example, it is clearly seen what we mean when we say that one cannot search for anything extraneous to its goals: neither naturalistic, nor geographical or ethnographical details, if they are superfluous.

In this same example of the two narrations, close in their natural origin (let us remember that Abraham, an antecedent of Moses and the whole Chosen nation, traced his ancestry from Ur of the Chaldees, i.e. Babylon) we see the difference between a narration which had passed through the oven of inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and a narration which is purely human, i.e. natural. We clearly see both their similarity and difference.

"And the LORD said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake… While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

Again, the Lord repeats the commandment given to people in heaven. But now he adds something different. The Lord says: "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth." In heaven it was only said: "Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Here, because of the changed relations between man — the crown of creation, who because of his sin did not fulfill his designation — and the other creatures, which arose against him because of that, man is given the weapon of fear instead of the former friendly superiority.

And the Lord adds: "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you." Here the blessing to eat meat is given. This was not originally part of God’s plan for man. According to the Divine plan, plants, not animals, were to be food for man. Animals were to serve man as his subjects and helpers. Man, through sin, violated his calling, and because of that, broke his connection with the animal world and the amicable cooperation of animals. Instead of submitting to man and cooperating with him, the stronger animals started attacking people, and the smaller ones began hiding from man, or harming him secretly. The man became imbued with fear of animals, with hostility towards them, entered into battle with the animal world.

Instead of the bright friendly and disinterested relations with animals that predominated in heaven, new relationships with the animal world are introduced after the flood, built upon the lowered moral state of people: mankind starts to see animals as sources of nourishment.

One can only guess that man started to eat meat much earlier, in the antediluvian period of his existence. At least, this is what pre-historic archeological data suggests, testifying that the most ancient people ate meat. But then, it was by the self-will of people who did not know God, and now Divine permission was given to people to do so. We know that later on, the Lord miraculously sent His prophet as food "bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening" (3 Kings 17:6). And the very Son of God ate "a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb" (Luke, 24:42). And the Holy Apostolic Rule 51 prescribes: "If someone… refrains from eating meat not for the exploit of abstention, but by reason of disdain, let him reform, or be excommunicated." The Church, Which esteems fasting so highly, does not approve of vegetarianism as a philosophy.

The difference between the willful meat-eating of primitive man and the God–permitted nourishment of man with meat, is striking, if one delves into its essence. An embittered struggle existed between man and beasts: the terror of predators and merciless unconditional extermination of the herbivorous. Now, maybe in the covetous, but caring looking after the animal world, the domestication and care for animals became possible.

All the bright, kind relations between man and animals: friendship with a dog, the attachment of horses, the care of a shepherd for mules, sheep and goats, the protection of the animal world, which is so highly developed nowadays, but which existed much earlier as well — all this has its roots not so much in the commandment of God, given to people in heaven, but in His new blessing to post-flood mankind.

"And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you…neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood…This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you…I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth."

Is it possible that there had never before been a rainbow? — a skeptical critic would ask. Without a doubt, there was. The Lord does not create it anew. This would contradict the Biblical definition of the seventh day, existing then and lasting till now, as the day when the Lord rested from all his work. But until that time, a rainbow was a simple physical phenomenon, which did not mean anything, such as fata morgana, northern lights, etc. But from that moment, it gained the meaning of a reminder about the covenant between God and people and the whole world. And blessed are the people, who observe this beautiful natural phenomenon with a blissful and joyful feeling.

"And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent."

The English theologian and priest T.C.Chain, a professor at Oxford University, speaking about this extract from the Bible, seriously expresses the opinion that apparently there are two narrations in the Bible about two different Noahs, for the Bible testified that "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God," and therefore the proof given here that Noah drank wine are incompatible. We can only smile at that typically Anglo-Saxon naïve idea, to which indecency is a worse crime than sin. There was no sin there: Noah did not yet know the intoxicating properties of wine. And the fact that a righteous man could drink "an intoxicating beverage," which shocks the English theologian the most, is absolutely funny to anyone even slightly acquainted with the nations of the Mediterranean culture, for whom wine, often weak, is not a luxury, not an excess, but a daily necessity. Not for nothing does the Lord establish His Holiest Sacrament under the appearance of bread and wine as the most natural products for man. Not for nothing does the righteous Father John of Kronstadt say that the Lord chose the most accessible substances for man for this Holy Sacrament — bread and wine.

"And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness."

The selection of mankind had just been performed, it had just been cleansed from corruption by the waters of the Flood, and only the best things were preserved in it for further history. And now, in the very first generation of the best people saved by God, a new, disgusting type of sin is born — disrespect: the mockery of a son at his father, the inferior at the superior, the impudent scorn towards any authority.

Noah, upon awakening, and hearing what had happened, cursed Ham in his posterity, and blessed Shem and Japheth. The first racial division of mankind is associated with this event.

The names of three righteous men: the Patriarch Abraham, God-Seeing Moses and the Prophet Elijah — mark the stages of mankind’s spiritual ripening in the Old Testament.

St. Basil the Great says that he cannot look at the depiction of Abraham, sacrificing Isaac, without tears. Really, if one ponders the moral image of righteous Abraham in this matter, our soul cannot but be filled with the most ardent admiration.

Obeying the Divine word, Abraham leaves his native city Ur of the Chaldees, which was flourishing culturally, with conveniences for living, everything attractive for life, and goes to a far-away country, which the Lord promises to give to his descendents to rule over: "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 12:3).

After that migration, many years passed. Abraham, already old, but still childless, asks God: "LORD God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?... Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir" (Gen.15:2-3).

But with what ardent love this powerful and great in his righteousness patriarch is inflamed, when, finally, in his old age, his long-waited for son Isaac is born! This love is all-embracing: in it, there is the natural attachment of a father to his son, and the joyfully triumphant contemplation of the beginning of the fulfillment of the Divine promises, which were to be fulfilled through this son. Therefore, in the love of Abraham for Isaac, one can see the generation of the elements of perfect love, which will be revealed two thousands years after Abraham through his blessed Grand-daughter in Her relationship to Her Son and God.

And then Abraham takes this beloved son, at the word of God, to slay him, ready to sacrifice him to the Lord God, Whom he loves more than his own life. In addition, the decisiveness to sacrifice his son at God’s command — is not a brief elevation of feelings, not simply an ardent burst. For three days Abraham and Isaac walk towards the place of sacrifice, the torturing agony of the sacrificing father, his readiness for this terrible offering, lasts for 72 hours. Really, there can be no human heart so hard that it would not tremble from anxiety while carefully reading this Biblical narration (Gen. 22)

Abraham receives the highest honor which is accessible to man in this exploit of his. According to the church’s view, he becomes the prototype of Almighty God Himself— God the Father, Who for the sake of mankind’s salvation sacrifices His Only-Begotten Son. And meek Isaac, carrying the wood for the burnt offering, on which he had to lie down as a sacrifice, humbly questioning the father and being bound by him without complaint — becomes the prototype of Christ the Savior.

The first people sinned through disobedience. Through the exploit of the righteous Abraham and Isaac, their disobedience is conquered with the greatest power and vividness. Human nature ascends to the highest stage of obedience, dictated by the purest love for God — the quality which the Lord wanted to develop in man as the ruling one, in giving him the original commandment. For He created man for the augmentation of submission and love — the Divine-like qualities, which the Son of God later showed in abundance on Earth.

Truly, the Lord brings us to salvation not without our participation, but He chooses from our medium those faithful to Him, whom He makes His co-participants.

But we have the right to ask: why then, if Abraham was brought to such a spiritual height through his exploit, why did he remain only a prototype of the Lord, but did not take part in the real salvation of mankind? Why did not the Lord hurry to descend onto the Mount of Moria, where this tremendous sacrifice was about to be carried out, the way He later descended to the room in Nazareth and the Bethlehem cave? Why did He linger for more than two thousand years to come to people?

In order to answer that question, we should grievously turn our attention from the shining peaks of holiness, which Abraham had attained, to those testimonies of slipping up and infirmities, into which the same great patriarch fell.

We see that, before the birth of Isaac, fearing the Egyptians and Abimelech, Abraham hid behind his wife Sarah and was ready to sacrifice her — the co-participant of his holiest exploits, out of faint-hearted cowardice, and lead a whole nation to Divine punishment (Gen. 12:11, 12). We see Abraham, after the death of his wife Sarah, getting consolation from a handmaiden, Keturah.

Let not any pen, any tongue, judge the greatest and holiest of the Old Testament patriarchs. But, seeing such slips, these human infirmities, we understand that the Lord could not descend to him for the closest unity, could not make him, the way he was, the participant of the Divine life: we see that human nature in Abraham did not yet ripen to accept God. But Abraham participated, like none other, in the process of the preparation of mankind to accept the Lord, in the process of ripening of the opportunity for the Divine-Human life. "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day: and he saw it, and was glad — said the Lord — the son of David, the son of Abraham" (John 8:56 and Math. 1:1).

With Abraham, the Lord talked to him in visions at night (Gen. 15:1) or appeared before him in the image of Three Wanderers. Meanwhile, before the downfall, people talked with God face to face, knew Him as a Figure, for they were created to know God in love and obedience to Him. And it was necessary that, even before the Coming of the Lord, people would be given back the possibility to know God, see Him, and recognize Him.

For this, the Lord calls upon one of the descendants of Abraham — the righteous Moses, filled with love for his brothers, the co-heirs of the promise, to such an extent, that he abandons his brilliant (by earthly standards) state as the adopted son of a princess, Pharaoh’s daughter, as something contemptible and not deserving attention, comes to the defense of an offended countryman-Israelite, and runs from Egypt. If, in Abraham, we see the peak of the Old-Testament love for God, then in Moses, in addition to love for God, which is not less than that of the righteous Abraham, we see the incarnation of the second half of the basic Divine law: the peak of love for others, as for oneself.

The Lord greatly elevates Moses among the elect. Among storm and thunder, He gives him His law on Mount Sinai. He talks with Moses face to face, and for the first time after the downfall, the only time before the pre-Golgotha hours, the Lord proclaims a person, in the face of Moses, as His friend: "If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make Myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold" (Numb. 12:6-8) and "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Ex.33:11).

Abraham is also called the friend of God in the Old Testament (Is. 41:8), but not during his lifetime, only many centuries after his death.

Using his friendship with God for the realization of his strong love for others as for himself, in the terrible hour of Divine anger for the sin of the Israeli nation, Moses turns to God with a most daring prayer: "Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written" (Ex. 32:32).

Moses is the tool of a great Divine act: through him, the Divine law, of which people were deprived after having sinned in Eden, is returned to them; they are given back the possibility of Divine Services, partial communication with God; the earth stops being absolutely alien to heaven. Incompletely, imperfectly, in shades, in images and conjectures, but still, into the terrestrial life comes the uninterrupted process of the preparation of people for the acceptance of the Son of God, through Moses, in the God-given Divine Service. Therefore the Church, in special measure, sees, in Moses, the prototype of Christ, and often in the festal divine services sings chants, which relate to him and to Christ the Lord, comparing them: "The shadow of the law has passed now that grace has come, for as the Bush in flames was not consumed, so as a Virgin You bore a Child and remained a Virgin; instead of a pillar of fire the Sun of righteousness has dawned, instead of Moses — Christ, the salvation of our souls" (Dogmaticon 2^nd Tone).

But the Lord could not descend even to Moses in the closest union.

In the hour of his selection, we see him negotiating with the Lord, evoking Divine anger by his persistent unwillingness to follow the Divine call: "O my LORD, send, I pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send" (Ex. 4:13, and chap.3 and 4 of Ex.); we see Moses sinning before God by the waters of Meribah in Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin (Num. 20:12 и 27 and Deut. 1:37 и 32:51).

The Lord said to Moses: "Yet thou shalt see the (promised) land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel" (Deut.32:52). The Promised Land was not only a real earthly phenomenon, but it was the prototype of the Kingdom of God, and God’s words to Moses are related to both meanings of the Promised Land: the great holy righteous God-Seeing Moses was given the chance to see the Divine-Human life — the tabernacle of God and men, but he was not permitted to enter it.

The third great spiritual figure of Old-Testament mankind is holy prophet Elijah.

Unusual power and love for God penetrate all the activity of this greatest of righteous men. In the days of the unrighteous King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, who became the symbol of everything vicious and wicked, a powerful prophet arises, burning with great zeal for the Lord. By Divine will, he seals the heavens with a single word, as a result of which not a single drop of rain falls onto the whole land of Israel for more than 3 years— as a punishment for idolatry. In his zeal for God, Elijah calls fire down from heaven on a sacrifice to God, so that Israel would cease "floundering," so that the nation would admit who is the true God: the wicked Baal or the righteous Lord. In the unrestrained, but righteous rage against the tempters and corruptors of the people of God, St. Elijah with the own hand slew the prophets of Baal and Astarte – 450 people! (3 Kings, chap.18).

Righteous Elijah cannot be reproached for anything. His devotion to God is not less than the devotion of Abraham, his forefather. In addition, he had no slip ups, similar to those of Abraham. He is able to communicate with God no less than Moses: the Lord appears to him, as he did to Moses, on the Mount of Horeb, and in the New Testament only these two — Moses and Elijah—from all of Old Testament mankind, were found to be called to see the Tabor light, emanated by the Incarnated Son of God on the day of Transfiguration.

Possibly, one can reproach the Prophet Elijah for the fear of death, when he runs from Jezebel, pursuing him: "And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life" (3 Kings. 19:3). But this fear — is an absolutely natural feeling, typical of every man, and the Lord does not reproach His prophet for this fear, because Elijah does nothing unrighteous, opposing the Divine will, under the influence of his fear, even on the scale of the self-initiated blows of Moses upon the rock by the water of Meribah. He only runs from the pursuing Jezebel after he fully completes God’s mission.

But Elijah also cannot become the vessel of the Divine incarnation due to the spontaneous unrestrained character of his anger, his all-embracing fiery zeal for the Lord God. This rage, this zeal, differ in spirit in comparison with the Spirit of the One, Who is meek and subdued in His heart. That is why, when the Disciples of Christ, James and John, want to "command fire to come down from heaven, even as Elias did," Christ prohibits them, saying: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them" (Luke 9:55,56).

The Lord speaks of this with love and delicacy to the Prophet Elijah as well, when He appears to him on the Mount Horeb: "What doest thou here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away. And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice" (3 Kings 19:9-12).

Elijah was "a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD," but not a still small voice. The Lord waited for this still small voice, which was not in Elijah, or in mankind, for many more centuries. The Lord, carrying out the salvation of those created by Him in His image, after His likeness, and, consequently, spiritually autocratic creatures, could not come down to men without this still small voice, without their participation, for He is not in the wind or fire, but in the breath of a calm breeze.

This breath of quiet wind appeared in mankind, when "in the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth… To a Virgin… and the Virgin's name was Mary" (Luke 1:26-27), and when in answer to the Annunciation, which was more amazing than the one to Abraham, more crucial than the one to Moses, and infinitely much more blissful than the one to Elijah, a quiet voice sounded: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word" (Luke 1:38). This was the moment when the Son of God’s descent to man could occur, and it occurred at that same moment, for the Omnipotent Lord, long-sufferingly awaiting many centuries for this moment, did not wait an iota longer, but immediately joined with the human nature created by Him, torn away from Him by sin, but not forgotten by His love, recreating it in the womb of the Ever-Virgin.

Still, Abraham, Moses and Elijah were not left without participation in this matter. The Holy Virgin — was the descendant of Abraham in soul and body. For the sake of Her appearance, he left the flourishing culture and conveniences of his native Ur of the Chaldees. From him, Her forefather, She inherited Her highest flight of sacrificial love for God, shown by Abraham on the mount of Moria in sacrificing his son. This flight of sacrificial love is revealed by Her in an even more elevated way, through Her participation in the salutary sufferings of the Lord on the Mount of Golgotha.

The Virgin Mary grew and was brought up in the Law, given by God through Moses on the holy Mount Sinai, brought up in the temple, built by Divine will through Moses, and She corrected his imperfectness, which caused God’s rage by the Bush that Never Burns (Ex.3:2, where the burning bush was a prototype of Virgin Mary), for She did not doubt at all, did not oppose God, Who had chosen Her, but with the humble answer: ""Behold the handmaid of the Lord" she effaced the inappropriate lethargy of Moses, who said to God: "Send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send" (Ex. 4:13).

By the stirring of a quiet wind, with a still small voice, She rights the scorching storm of Elias’s zeal, and Her relative, coming after Her, takes part in this exploit of Hers, the great prophet, who appeared in the spirit and strength of Elijah, i.e. in no way inferior to Elijah in Divine zeal. The Prophet John the Baptist, this new Elijah, was not frightened by his contemporary Jezebel, but accepted a martyr’s death from her on the border of the Old and New Testaments, in order to become the Forerunner of Jesus Christ even in hell.

The Prophet Elijah was taken to heaven alive, but the church teaching tells us that when, in the last days, the violations of the law will increase and the love of many will fade so, that the manifestation of people’s zeal for God will be depleted, then two witnesses will appear, two olives, two candlesticks (Rev. 11:3-4), which will testify to the Divine Truth among the grown-fainthearted mankind, putting fresh heart into the small flock of those who stayed faithful up to the end, embarrassing and exposing the multitudinal, impudently celebrating enemies of God. By Divine permission they — these two candlesticks — will be killed by the Antichrist and will be resurrected on the third day. The church teaching says that these two candlesticks-witnesses will be the saints Enoch and Elijah, those righteous men of the Old Testament who did not taste death, precisely in order to fulfill the act of God at the end of ages, when human forces will be exhausted.

We clearly and painfully feel this terrible depletion of human moral forces now as never before. Does it mean that the hour of the coming of the prophet Elijah and righteous Enoch, as the forerunners of the Second Coming of Christ, is close — we cannot say, and without a doubt believe that sooner or later this will happen, and the earth will still hear the formidable voice, saying: "As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand… How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him" (3 Kings 18:15-21). And many, many of the signs of modern days testify that there is little time left until the days when this voice will be heard, and maybe our generation will meet face to face on this earth, in the modern concrete surroundings, with the formidable, fire-breathing Divine prophet, who is called in the church chants "the second Forerunner of the coming of Christ, glorious Elijah."

Among many extremely dramatic personalities, commemorated in the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament, one of the most dramatic is Manasseh — one of the last kings of the southern Hebrew kingdom.

In his time the northern Hebrew kingdom — that of Israel, was already destroyed and conquered by the bloodthirsty Assyria