The Abyss, Dragons, and the Creative Word

No one will be able to withstand those who are burned by passions, since their hearts have been kindled like a furnace, like the light of fire, since all are committing adultery and are being burned by lawless desires. To these things, the coming of pain from the storehouses and cold from the heights, as carried in Job, is appropriate.

The provident Word of God, being sent, will melt the snow and those counted with it, but also when He breathes, His spirit will flow (for He says the south wind), turning into these things the ones forenamed of the snow and those near it (Ps 147:7). And it is necessary even spiritually to hear these things: the clarifying Word of God, having been sent with concealment, will melt the mist, the crystal, and the snow, making them like a drink upon the watering place, but by His spirit, the spirit of this God breathing; but also the Word of God, being sent into the heart of those receiving Him, will melt the trials and make them invisible, those who, warming by the spirit, will courageously undergo such trials, will dissolve them.

To the one who has trampled and flapped the rulers and the authorities and the cosmic rulers of this darkness, mystically called Jacob, He sends His word, which is salvific and creative, in order to make all the true doctrines of piety clear to him (Ps 147:8-9). And after the victory having been achieved through insight and Israel having been shown to see by intellect God, His requirements and His judgments, He sent the Word to work all things determined and just. And upon these things, the greatness of the God's gift existing to the mortal, manifesting, He says: He did not do thus to every mortal, but only to Israel He performed the foretold things before the arrival of the Savior; however, the coming of Christ, the High Priest of truly good things, all mortals are filled with the divine Word (Ps 148:7-8). But—

Someone might say regarding this, as the very words show, that calling the multitude of the waters an abyss (for the Lord walked upon it) is as if there were another beginning: 'The gates of death open to you in fear,' and the following. If he says that the dragons were also named appropriately with the abysses, being more terrible than the creeping things upon the earth; and in another psalm, being called waters, it was said that dragons were in them, not other than the abyss named here. For it is also written in the seventy-third Psalm: 'You crushed the heads of the dragons upon the water,' and 'You crushed the head of the dragon.

It must be understood that evil powers are signified by these, as the Word of God crushed them, and through time has descended even unto the abysses. But observe, he says, how very strongly the Word does not command the dragons in the abysses to praise, but simply mentions them; for they are not worthy to praise God. They are called by necessity to obey the hymn being lifted up by all creation to the Lord, King, and God: fire, hail, snow, ice, wind of a storm, which do His Word (Ps 148:8).

All these things, existing around the air, were necessarily mentioned as parts of the whole cosmos and as subsisting through the Divine Word and serving Him. For apart from the creative Word, the whole cosmos would be moving aimlessly and without presiding over its days; neither snow, nor fire, nor ice, nor storm, nor wind would ever subsist, nor would they ever act apart from His will. Thus, these things doing His Word should not be heard as acting independently.

It is also possible to say of kings and rulers and judges, those living loftily and approaching things critically and investigatively, and the lower peoples who have believed.