The Migration of the Soul

He will be glorified.

I think that in this way the saints are taken captive with the peoples and into Babylon and Assyria, so that by imparting their own virtue they might show themselves to be ears of grain and offspring of saving seeds. This will be consistent with the remembering of the Lord by those who had drifted away from him through sins and impiety. Especially these promises fit those who have believed from the nations. For it has been said concerning them in the 121st and 1st Psalm: 'All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him, for the kingdom is the Lord's and he is the ruler of the nations.' For how could he not rule and be the master of those remembered who have turned to him, as to worship and glorify the one who holds them as a benefactor?

What will follow for those remembering the All-King, or that it might happen in a non-literal sense regarding 'the city of the living God,' being heavenly, according to what was said: 'You who are far off, remember the Lord, and let Jerusalem ascend to your heart.' Those having been benefited by their own Savior, being as it were servants and many-children by spiritual upbringing, will rear their own children, imparting intellectual food, as it is announced concerning each one according to the writing of the divine Proverbs: 'A righteous father brings up his children well.'

This can be understood toward spiritual upbringing, and also according to history; for being a righteous father, Zechariah reared well John the Baptist, who was his child, just as Abraham reared Isaac, and Isaac reared Jacob; and he himself, Paul the divine, reared profitably and praiseworthily those whom he had begotten through the gospel. For it is possible to hear him writing to the Corinthians: 'I gave you milk.' Similarly Peter writes to the faithful in the dispersion: 'Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible through the word of the living and abiding God, as newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk, so that in it you may grow unto salvation.' In this same way also the evangelist John, having begotten the disciples through him by a way of instruction, writes to the whole Church: 'Children, keep yourselves from idols.' Toward the rearing...

They will find their own children, those who have become fathers, and they will turn them back with divine exhortations and instructions, so that they may no longer be with evildoers in ungodly lands, this being granted by God, as He Himself said: 'I will bring them back from Egypt, and from the Assyrians I will receive them' (Exodus 20:22; Jeremiah 31:8), so that they may no longer be subdued by the spiritual tyrant of Egypt, nor be held by the ruler of the Assyrians, called 'the great mind' because of the cunning and absurdity of thoughts, which the common people do not refute, but only those speaking God-wisely say: 'For we do not ignore his thoughts.'

It is possible to call the same tyrant the ruler of the Egyptians and the Assyrians through another energy; and even if different evil powers were signified by various names, it does not grieve, for such a thing is not impossible, with many being 'rulers and powers of this darkness, but also cosmic rulers and spiritual wickedness' (Ephesians 6:12).

The provider of great gifts, having freed from Egypt and Assyria those who are well-rearing their children and those who begot them, promises to bring them into Gilead and Lebanon, with no evil king still bothering them. And see if he brings into Gilead those who strive to have the migration of martyrdom, the movement from wickedness into virtue; for the one repenting from sin into righteousness, from ungodliness into godliness, is being migrated, as the righteous are being migrated in a different way from the introduction of instruction into the following progress, and from that into the succeeding one, until that very end, with which nothing other good exists, being the final object of desire.

In this way, concerning those being migrated, the hymnist says: 'They shall go from strength to strength' (Psalm 84:7). And they are also migrated from the shadow of the law into its truth, those having ascended above the killing letter (2 Corinthians 3:6) and becoming in the life-giving Spirit. It must be supervised whether even a partial knowing and prophesying undergoes migration; but the witness of the migration or sojourning shall be, acting contrary to itself, possessing the proof. Those brought in by God into Gilead are being brought into Lebanon.