De Migratione Abrahami

Philo Judaeus

The works of Philo Judaeus, the contemporary of Josephus, volume 2. Yonge, C. D., translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.

But it very often happens to the followers of virtue, also, to become languid and to weep, either because they are bewailing the calamities of the foolish, on account of their participation in their common [*](Numbers xi. 4. )

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nature, and their natural love for their race, or through excess of joy. And this excess of joy arises whenever on a sudden an abundance of all kinds of good coming together are showered down to overflowing, without having been previously expected; in reference to which kind of joy it is that the poet appears to me to have used the expression—Smiling amid her tears. [*](Homer’s Iliad, vi. 484. )

For exceeding joy, the best of all feelings, falling on the soul when completely unexpected, makes it greater than it was before, so that the body can no longer contain it by reason of its bulk and magnitude; and so, being closely packed and pressed down, it distils drops which it is the fashion to call tears, concerning which it is said in the Psalms, "Thou shalt give me to eat bread steeped in tears;" [*](Psalm LXXX. 5. ) and again, "My tears have been my bread day and night;" [*](Psalm xlii. 3. ) for the food of the mind are tears such as are visible, proceeding from laughter seated internally and excited by virtuous causes, when the divine desire instilled into our hearts changes the song which was merely the lament of the creature into the hymn of the uncreated God.

Some persons then repudiate this mixed and rough multitude, and raise a wall of fortification to keep it from them, rejoicing only in the race which loves God; but some, on the other hand, form associations with it, thinking it desirable to arrange their own lives according to such a system that they can place them on the confines between human and divine virtues, in order that they may touch both those which are virtues in truth and those which are such in appearance.

Now the disposition which concerns itself in the affairs of state adheres to this opinion, which disposition it is usual to call Joseph, with whom, when he is about to bring his father, there go up "all the servants of Pharaoh, and the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the whole family of Joseph, himself, and his brothers, and all his father’s house." [*](Genesis 1. 7. )

You see here that this disposition which is conversant about affairs of state is placed between the house of Pharaoh and his father’s house, in order that it might equally reach the affairs of the body, that is to say, of Egypt; [*](Homer’s Iliad, vi. 484. ) [*](Psalm xlii. 3. ) [*](Psalm LXXX. 5. ) [*](Genesis 1. 7. )

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and those of the soul, which are all laid up in his father’s house as in a treasury; for when he says, "I am of God," [*](Genesis 1. 19. ) and all the other things which are akin to or connected with him abide among the established laws of his father’s house; and when he mounts up into the second chariot of the mind, which appears to bear sovereign sway, namely, Pharaoh, he is again establishing Egyptian pride.