The Vision of the Flying Sickle

The oil of the lamp; therefore, he asks a second time concerning two branches of the olive trees. It has been made clear in the previous discourses that the divine study is called olive, because of their fruit increasing and nourishing the light. Since it is not possible to perceive through all the trunks and the shoots of the plants in question the one 'knowing and prophesying in part' (1 Cor 13:9), he approaches a second inquiry concerning two branches of olives;nly through these is it possible to have a knowledge that imposes the truth 'through a mirror and an enigma' (1 Cor 13:12), so that, having been benefited from the partial, he might at last be able to know what the olives actually are. 1.338 And since one interpretation of what those who explained the text took as the two olives was the discourse concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit, see if the branches of these olives would grasp what is attainable to the one knowing in part. For while there is the olive of Christ, the becoming of the Word into flesh would be a branch; and of the Holy Spirit, his introductory contemplation, which is called his 'earnest money' (2 Cor 1:22). 1.339 Having asked a second time about these, the one receiving God heard from the angel who initiates into the mysteries: 'Do you not know what these are?' To which the one hearing replied: 'No, Lord.' 'These,' he says, 'are the two sons of fatness; they shall present to the Lord all the earth' (Ps 65:16). 1.340 For just as, by way of the discourse concerning the Father, which is the lamp above the lamp, as has been interpreted a little earlier, so the discourse concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit is being matched to the contemplation of the Father's fatness, being its sons, as it is possible for one still in the body to know. 1.341 According to another interpretation, the mystical understanding of the God-breathed Scriptures is the fatness of the house of God, according to that which is said in the thirty-fifth Psalm to the Lord God: 'They shall be intoxicated from the fatness of your house' (Ps 65:5); and it is clear that 'those who hope in the wings of God' (Ps 91:4) are sons of men, being two sons: the one having come by circumcision, and the other according to the Gospel of Christ. 1.342 Understand, if you are able, to take two sons of fatness having been presented to the Lord, those seen in glory with Jesus on the mountain, Moses and Elijah (Matt 17:2-3), making manifest the Law and the Prophets. For just as the spiritual law becomes a son of the

Just as there is a certain quality of firmness, so too is the word of the prophet who has been opened. He read in a secret book that Enoch and Elijah are the two sons of firmness, as it is fitting because they resemble others. For Enoch was translated so as not to see death, and Elijah was taken up, being carried by a chariot of fire and a horse 'as into heaven' (2 Kings 2:11). Considering these things as being by power like our own, though brief, we set forth the following of the prophet, desiring also to understand them, if the one who enlightens the prophet through revelations should 'give a word by the opening of our mouths' (Zechariah 10:2).

And I turned and lifted up my eyes; and I saw, and behold, a flying sickle. And he said to me, 'What do you see?' And I said, 'I see a flying sickle, twenty cubits in length and ten cubits in width.' And he said to me, 'This is the curse going out over the face of the whole earth; because every thief from this shall be judged until death, and every one who swears falsely by this shall be judged until death. And I will execute it,' says the Lord of all (Zechariah 5:4), 'and it shall enter the house of the thief and the house of the one swearing falsely by my name, and it shall destroy in the midst of his house, and it shall consume him and his wood and his stones.'

Turning from the passing vision, I lifted up my eyes of the mind. And I see a flying sickle, having a length of twenty cubits and a width of ten cubits. This is the sickle which, he says, shows the vision concerning it: this is the curse, that is to say, the punishment, being brought upon all the earth, to cut and consume the thief and the perjurer. And behold the greatness of the instruction occurring through revelation, making manifest from the visible things the things not visible, and from the sensible things the things understood.

For when the just Judge is examining the righteous and the impious upon the ballot, giving to each according to his practice and his works, the things brought against the unrighteous and impious men for punishment, where he names a sword and arrows, and elsewhere an axe and a sickle. When, therefore, 'the wicked and sorcerous men' and with them the predatory demons, being hostile and seditious because of the violence they possess, happen to be...