Friend of God
For, since God judged him worthy to appear as a partner of His own possessions, He gave into his hands the whole world as a portion well fitted for His heir. Therefore, each element obeyed him as its master, changed its natural properties and submitted to his command, and this perhaps is no wonder. For if, as the proverb says, what belongs to friends is common, and the prophet is called the friend of God, it would follow that he shares also God’s possessions, so far as it is serviceable.
The joy of his partnership with the Father and Maker of all was magnified also by the honour of being deemed worthy to bear the same title. For he was named god and king of the whole nation, and entered, we are told, into the darkness where God was, that is into the unseen, invisible, incorporeal and archetypal essence of existing things. Thus he beheld what is hidden from the sight of mortal nature, and, in himself and his life displayed for all to see, he has set before us, like some well-wrought picture, a piece of work beautiful and godlike, a model for those who are willing to copy it. Happy are they who imprint, or strive to imprint, that image in their souls.
Since he was destined to be a legislator, the providence of God … caused him … to be the reasonable and living impersonation of law.
Prophesying
Moses, when he heard these words, pardoned them, but remembered the divine messages, and, using his mind and speech simultaneously for different purposes, with the former silently interceded with God to save them from their desperate afflictions, with the latter encouraged and comforted the loud-voiced malcontents.
“Do not lose heart,” he said, “God’s way of defence is not as that of men. Why are you quick to trust in the specious and plausible and that only ? When God gives help He needs no armament. It is His special property to find a way where no way is. What is impossible to all created being is possible to Him only, ready to His hand.” Thus he discoursed, still calm and composed; but, after a little, he became possessed, and, filled with the spirit which was wont to visit him, uttered these oracular words of prophecy: “The host which you see armed to the teeth you shall see no more arrayed against you. It shall all fall in utter ruin and disappear in the depths, so that no remnant may be seen above the earth. And this shall be at no distant time, but in the coming night.”
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