enlarge

God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.

When the LORD thy God shall enlarge thy border, as he hath promised thee, and thou shalt say, I will eat flesh, because thy soul longeth to eat flesh; thou mayest eat flesh, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after.

And if the LORD thy God enlarge thy coast, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, and give thee all the land which he promised to give unto thy fathers;

And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.

I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.

Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes;

Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their border:

Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle; for they are gone into captivity from thee.

But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

God shall enlarge Japheth, and God shall dwell in the dwelling of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.'

And Philip, having looked round upon the multitudes, said: O you who have come up out of the dead from Hades, and the swallowing up of the abyss — and the luminous cross led you up on high, through the goodness of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost — He being God became man, having been made flesh out of the Virgin Mary, immortal, abiding in flesh; and having died, He raised the dead, having had pity on mankind, having taken away the sting of sin. He was great, and became small for our sake, until He should enlarge the small, and bring them into His greatness. And He it is who has sweetness; and they spat upon Him, giving Him gall to drink, in order that He might make those who were bitter against Him to taste of His sweetness. Cleave then to Him, and do not forsake Him, for He is our life to everlasting.

I might enlarge here in praise of their virtues, they, the men with the Mother, dying on this day we celebrate for the love of moral beauty and goodness, but rather would I felicitate them on the honours they have attained.

For man and his portion (lie) before Thee in the balance; He cannot add to, so as to enlarge, what has been prescribed by Thee. O God,

And when the people saw that it was not the will of Elchana to take the leadership over them, they prayed again unto the Lord saying: O Lord God of Israel, wherefore hast thou forsaken thy people in the victory of the enemy and neglected thine heritage in the time of trouble? Behold even he that was taken by the lot hath not accomplished thy commandment; but only this hath come about, that the lot leapt out upon him, and we believed that we had a prince. And lo, he also contendeth against the lot. Whom shall we yet require, or unto whom shall we flee, and where is the place of our rest? For if the ordinances are true which thou madest with our fathers, saying: I will enlarge your seed, and they shall know of this, then it were better that thou saidst to us, I will cut off your seed, than that thou shouldest have no regard to our root.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Amaziah, Jeroboam the son of Joash reigned over Israel in Samaria forty years. This king was guilty of contumely against God, and became very wicked in worshipping of idols, and in many undertakings that were absurd and foreign. He was also the cause of ten thousand misfortunes to the people of Israel. Now one Jonah, a prophet, foretold to him that he should make war with the Syrians, and conquer their army, and enlarge the bounds of his kingdom on the northern parts to the city Hamath, and on the southern to the lake Asphaltitis; for the bounds of the Canaanites originally were these, as Joshua their general had determined them. So Jeroboam made an expedition against the Syrians, and overran all their country, as Jonah had foretold.

Upon this, Vespasian, when he saw the Romans distressed by these sallies, [though they were ashamed to be made to run away by the Jews; and when at any time they made the Jews run away, their heavy armor would not let them pursue them far; while the Jews, when they had performed any action, and before they could be hurt themselves, still retired into the city,] ordered his armed men to avoid their onset, and not fight it out with men under desperation, while nothing is more courageous than despair; but that their violence would be quenched when they saw they failed of their purposes, as fire is quenched when it wants fuel; and that it was proper for the Romans to gain their victories as cheap as they could, since they are not forced to fight, but only to enlarge their own dominions. So he repelled the Jews in great measure by the Arabian archers, and the Syrian slingers, and by those that threw stones at them, nor was there any intermission of the great number of their offensive engines. Now the Jews suffered greatly by these engines, without being able to escape from them; and when these engines threw their stones or javelins a great way, and the Jews were within their reach, they pressed hard upon the Romans, and fought desperately, without sparing either soul or body, one part succoring another by turns, when it was tired down.

Now this Apion was unacquainted with almost all the kings of those Macedonians whom he pretends to have been his progenitors, who were yet very well affected towards us; for the third of those Ptolemies, who was called Euergetes, when he had gotten possession of all Syria by force, did not offer his thank-offerings to the Egyptian gods for his victory, but came to Jerusalem, and according to our own laws offered many sacrifices to God, and dedicated to him such gifts as were suitable to such a victory: and as for Ptolemy Philometer and his wife Cleopatra, they committed their whole kingdom to the Jews, when Onias and Dositheus, both Jews, whose names are laughed at by Apion, were the generals of their whole army. But certainly, instead of reproaching them, he ought to admire their actions, and return them thanks for saving Alexandria, whose citizen he pretends to be; for when these Alexandrians were making war with Cleopatra the queen, and were in danger of being utterly ruined, these Jews brought them to terms of agreement, and freed them from the miseries of a civil war. "But then [says Apion] Onias brought a small army afterward upon the city at the time when Thorruns the Roman ambassador was there present." Yes, do I venture to say, and that he did rightly and very justly in so doing; for that Ptolemy who was called Physco, upon the death of his brother Philometer, came from Cyrene, and would have ejected Cleopatra as well as her sons out of their kingdom, that he might obtain it for himself unjustly. For this cause then it was that Onias undertook a war against him on Cleopatra's account; nor would he desert that trust the royal family had reposed in him in their distress. Accordingly, God gave a remarkable attestation to his righteous procedure; for when Ptolemy Physco had the presumption to fight against Onias's army, and had caught all the Jews that were in the city [Alexandria], with their children and wives, and exposed them naked and in bonds to his elephants, that they might be trodden upon and destroyed, and when he had made those elephants drunk for that purpose, the event proved contrary to his preparations; for these elephants left the Jews who were exposed to them, and fell violently upon Physco's friends, and slew a great number of them; nay, after this Ptolemy saw a terrible ghost, which prohibited his hurting those men; his very concubine, whom he loved so well, [some call her Ithaca, and others Irene,] making supplication to him, that he would not perpetrate so great a wickedness. So he complied with her request, and repented of what he either had already done, or was about to do; whence it is well known that the Alexandrian Jews do with good reason celebrate this day, on the account that they had thereon been vouchsafed such an evident deliverance from God. However, Apion, the common calumniator of men, hath the presumption to accuse the Jews for making this war against Physco, when he ought to have commended them for the same. This man also makes mention of Cleopatra, the last queen of Alexandria, and abuses us, because she was ungrateful to us; whereas he ought to have reproved her, who indulged herself in all kinds of injustice and wicked practices, both with regard to her nearest relations and husbands who had loved her, and, indeed, in general with regard to all the Romans, and those emperors that were her benefactors; who also had her sister Arsinoe slain in a temple, when she had done her no harm: moreover, she had her brother slain by private treachery, and she destroyed the gods of her country and the sepulchers of her progenitors; and while she had received her kingdom from the first Caesar, she had the impudence to rebel against his son: and successor; nay, she corrupted Antony with her love-tricks, and rendered him an enemy to his country, and made him treacherous to his friends, and [by his means] despoiled some of their royal authority, and forced others in her madness to act wickedly. But what need I enlarge upon this head any further, when she left Antony in his fight at sea, though he were her husband, and the father of their common children, and compelled him to resign up his government, with the army, and to follow her [into Egypt]? nay, when last of all Caesar had taken Alexandria, she came to that pitch of cruelty, that she declared she had some hope of preserving her affairs still, in case she could kill the Jews, though it were with her own hand; to such a degree of barbarity and perfidiousness had she arrived. And doth any one think that we cannot boast ourselves of any thing, if, as Apion says, this queen did not at a time of famine distribute wheat among us? However, she at length met with the punishment she deserved. As for us Jews, we appeal to the great Caesar what assistance we brought him, and what fidelity we showed to him against the Egyptians; as also to the senate and its decrees, and the epistles of Augustus Caesar, whereby our merits [to the Romans] are justified. Apion ought to have looked upon those epistles, and in particular to have examined the testimonies given on our behalf, under Alexander and all the Ptolemies, and the decrees of the senate and of the greatest Roman emperors. And if Germanicus was not able to make a distribution of corn to all the inhabitants of Alexandria, that only shows what a barren time it was, and how great a want there was then of corn, but tends nothing to the accusation of the Jews; for what all the emperors have thought of the Alexandrian Jews is well known, for this distribution of wheat was no otherwise omitted with regard to the Jews, than it was with regard to the other inhabitants of Alexandria. But they still were desirous to preserve what the kings had formerly intrusted to their care, I mean the custody of the river; nor did those kings think them unworthy of having the entire custody thereof, upon all occasions.

Reader, remember me in your prayers, that we too may deserve to be made emulators of the spirit. The two former books on The Principles I translated not only at your instance, but even under pressure from you during the days of Lent; but as you, my devout brother Macarius, were not only living near me during that time, but had more leisure at your command than now, so I also worked the harder; whereas I have been longer in explaining these two latter books, seeing you came less frequently from a distant extremity of the city to urge on my labour. Now if you remember what I warned you of in my former preface,—that certain persons would be indignant, if they did not hear that we spoke some evil of Origen,—that, I imagine, you have forthwith experienced, has come to pass. But if those demons who excite the tongues of men to slander were so infuriated by that work, in which he had not as yet fully unveiled their secret proceedings, what, think you, will be the case in this, in which he will expose all those dark and hidden ways, by which they creep into the hearts of men, and deceive weak and unstable souls? You will immediately see all things thrown into confusion, seditions stirred up, clamours raised throughout the whole city, and that individual summoned to receive sentence of condemnation who endeavoured to dispel the diabolical darkness of ignorance by means of the light of the gospel lamp. Let such things, however, be lightly esteemed by him who is desirous of being trained in divine learning, while retaining in its integrity the rule of the Catholic faith. I think it necessary, however, to remind you that the principle observed in the former books has been observed also in these, viz. not to translate what appeared contrary to Origen’s other opinions, and to our own belief, but to pass by such passages as being interpolated and forged by others. But if he has appeared to give expression to any novelties regarding rational creatures (on which subject the essence of our faith does not depend), for the sake of discussion and of adding to our knowledge, when perhaps it was necessary for us to answer in such an order some heretical opinions, I have not omitted to mention these either in the present or preceding books, unless when he wished to repeat in the following books what he had already stated in the previous ones, when I have thought it convenient, for the sake of brevity, to curtail some of these repetitions. Should any one, however, peruse these passages from a desire to enlarge his knowledge, and not to raise captious objections, he will do better to have them expounded by persons of skill. For it is an absurdity to have the fictions of poetry and the ridiculous plays of comedy interpreted by grammarians, and to suppose that without a master and an interpreter any one is able to learn those things which are spoken either of God or of the heavenly virtues, and of the whole universe of things, in which some deplorable error either of pagan philosophers or of heretics is confuted; and the result of which is, that men would rather rashly and ignorantly condemn things that are difficult and obscure, than ascertain their meaning by diligence and study.

It was stated: Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel says, the Siloam was giving water like an as. They said, let us enlarge it to increase its flow. They enlarged it and its flow was diminished. They fenced it in again and it returned to its prior state.

MISHNAH: A person may not open windows into the common courtyard. If he bought a house in another courtyard he may not open it into the common courtyard. If he built a second floor on top of his house he may not open it into the common courtyard but he may build a room inside his house or a second floor on top of his house on condition that the access to it be from within his house. In a common courtyard a person may not open a door opposite a door, a window opposite a window. If it was small, he may not enlarge it. If it was one, he may not make it double. But he may open into the public domain a door opposite a door and a window opposite a window. If it was small, he may enlarge it. If it was one, he may make it double.

MISHNAH: A person may not open windows into the common courtyard. If he bought a house in another courtyard he may not open it into the common courtyard. If he built a second floor on top of his house he may not open it into the common courtyard but he may build a room inside his house or a second floor on top of his house on condition that the access to it be from within his house. In a common courtyard a person may not open a door opposite a door, a window opposite a window. If it was small, he may not enlarge it. If it was one, he may not make it double. But he may open into the public domain a door opposite a door and a window opposite a window. If it was small, he may enlarge it. If it was one, he may make it double.

R. Eleazar used to add at the conclusion of his prayer : May it be Thy will, O Lord our God, to cause love and brotherhood, peace and comradeship, to abide in our lot, to enlarge our border with disciples, to prosper our goal with a [happy] end and with hope, to set our portion in the Garden of Eden, and fortify us with good companionship and the good impulse in Thy universe, so that we rise up and find the longing of our heart to fear Thy name ; and may the satisfaction of our soul come before Thee for good.

(The body; The body ; Essence; Restore; Enlarge — mnemonic.)

Three things restore a man's [tranquillity of] mind : melodious sound, sight and smell. Three things enlarge a man's mind: a beautiful home, a beautiful woman and beautiful utensils.

Shimon b. Gamaliel says that books [of the scripture] also are permitted to be written only in Greek. Abbahu said in the name of R. Yohanan: The halakhah follows R. Shimon b. Gamaliel. R. Yohanan further said: What is the reason of R. Shimon b. Gamaliel? Scripture says, “God will enlarge Yapheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem” (Genesis 9:26); [this means] that the words of Yapheth shall be in the tents of Shem.

But why not say [the words of] Gomer and Magog? R. Hiyya b. Abba replied: he reason is because it is written, “Let God enlarge [yaft] Yapheth”: let the beauty of Yapheth be in the tents of Shem.