The Intercession of the Wise and the Fall of Solomon

It is an inheritance and an asylum, which time does not consume and a robber does not take away. For it is incorporeal and without body, trading among incorporeal souls.

You see how even the glorious and the un-songworthy Israelites, being deprived of all things and cast out from the land, were not deprived of or stripped of the title of being called from the God-loving forefather; but even while serving barbarians, they were freed because of the righteousness of the fathers, and while living in the desert, they were nourished because of the good reputation of those born; and though sinning continually and blaspheming many times, and being worthy of the destroying punishment, they were made worthy because of the merciful Abraham, and because of Israel they obtained forgiveness, impudent children being saved by the old age of the fathers.

And you know, O lover of learning, how at first when God called Moses from the shepherdship to the leadership of the peoples, He immediately says these things to the servant: 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob' (Exodus 3:6). And having become a little person of the Word, He adds these: 'Gather the assembly of the sons of Israel and say to them: The Lord, the God of your fathers, appeared to me, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob' (Exodus 3:16).

And thus in preambles, God seals the descendants with the name of the righteous fathers, like a certain sign, knowing it to be good and profitable to be known from them. But after time had passed, when the people turned toward insolence against the Benefactor and despised the Savior, and they applied themselves to the idol-making of the calf and worshiped a lifeless skull, having lost the living and rational intellect,

Moses, not having such things as these to appease the Master on behalf of the disciples, the much-toiling pedagogue flees to the memory of the fathers and with them the entreaty...

It is cast, he says, in this way: having remembered Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the saved ones, before whom you swore to yourself that their seed would multiply like the stars of heaven (Genesis 22:17).

Great is the wrath and the fury, and it is unavoidable; but the wise and resourceful petitioner, having surrounded himself with the countenances of the saints and having cast down to God the cities of the elders through their memory, extinguished the punishment like a flame, healing the wounds with the paternal oil of those who remain.

Leaving the Mosaic book, he moved on to the books of the Kings. For there also he is seen worthy of pity, because he was the offspring of a God-loving father. And this is Solomon, the one of many thrones; who, since as time went on he was not a ruler of sufferings, but rather a slave and more uncontrolled in the flesh, and because of the heedlessness of life, he changed and subverted the ancestral piety, shaping idols that are stumbling blocks to the law.

God says to him: 'I will tear your kingdom apart and give it to your servant; however, in your days I will not do this because of David your father; from the hand of your son I will receive it' (1 Kings 12:9). These things instruct us through history; and the song of the Psalms teaches similar things: 'I was young; and indeed I have grown old, and I have not seen a righteous man left abandoned, nor his seed seeking bread' (Psalm 37:25).

But, as it seems, when once the soul of truth is shattered and it has rushed headlong into innovating instead of living in order, nothing is able to turn it back to the straight and ordered way; but resisting the bridle, just as a stubborn donkey is led toward the pit, overcoming the rider in mind by the impulse toward evil, such is it to see these Eunomians also.

For thus these men love to be called men rather than of Christ, blaspheming God and dishonoring the men of God, but rather...