The Mystical Thousand and the Sabbath Rest

To touch the Word of life. Therefore, all who are ever disciples of the gospel, when they possess their senses incorruptible, both the external and the internal, they become ten virgins reigning under Christ; but if ever some, through laziness, leave the internal senses of the man to act only through the mortal ones, they will become five foolish virgins, returning only to the perceptible things, as if their own light were not being nourished, which will be an extinguishing and a remnant of oil.

According to the spoken manner, ten men are found traveling with the true Jew from all languages and nations, having kept both kinds of senses pure and incorruptible, according to what was said by the Apostle: 'Grace' and peace shall be 'with those loving our Lord Christ in incorruption.' It is probable that the lovers of the letter are ten men who have converted the Decalogue ministered by the great Hierophant into works; but also Christians having the name of Jesus beginning from the tenth element among both Greeks and Hebrews; for the tenth is in the elements not only of the Greeks but also of the Hebrews.

And so that the scientific theory of numbers may appear unforced and according to the inspired Scripture, there are many things to derive; but for the present it is sufficient to use the words of Paul the Apostle and John the disciple beloved by Jesus. For to the Romans he writes that God has said: 'I have left myself seven thousand men who did not bend the knee to Baal' (Romans 11:3), but that 'to fall upon the Lamb,' that is, the Savior, is 'one hundred and forty-four thousand virgins, with women not defiled' (Revelation 14:4).

For it is not possible to take these things through history; for how, leaving such a multitude of God-fearing men, did the great prophet Elijah not know, as to say: 'I alone am left, and they seek my soul to take it' (1 Kings 19:10)? And how is it also possible to take such thousands of virgins, especially men, in a word, especially when the Ascension of the Savior had not happened long before, as John is the perfection in men? But truly each of these has happened, not necessarily taking the numbers upon the sense...

remaining. For indeed, seven times a thousand men, without bending the knee to Baal, happen to be mystically subject to the Sabbath rest set aside for the people of God, having a kinship with the thousand and the seven composed from it. For often it is possible to see the number thousand being mentioned in a God-befitting manner, just as it is also announced concerning God thus: 'He remembered for an eternity the covenant of his word, which he commanded to Abraham for a thousand generations' (Ps 105:8). For among none of the things signified shall there be a thousand generations until the completion of the world, as has been more decisively demonstrated previously in other matters.

3.69 From this therefore mystical thousand, a seven is composed, according to which the truly God-fearing ones alone bend the knee to the Cause of all things. 3.70 But also the virgins who followed, with women, unpolluted, are subject to the number of the thousand-folds of one hundred and forty-four. 3.71 Moreover, the most improbable part of the history is made manifest from the orderly fulfillment of twelve thousand virgins and men from each tribe of Israel; perhaps not even from all of humanity could such a number be fulfilled through those loving Christ, while John is still rubbing about on the earth. 3.72 Since therefore the literal sense of the word cannot hold, we say there are such thousands of those living unloosened and without blemish because of the virtue pertaining to the number; for it is a square, of which every side is twelve thousands, and there is a great privilege of this number, as it will be clear to the one who has examined the Scripture.

3.73 And irrefutable clarity regarding these things has occurred in the commentaries of the Apocalypse of John and of the epistle of Paul to the Romans, which the one who reads will see the divine theorems regarding the numbers scattered in the Scripture, both that before the arrival of the Savior—this is the one called the Old Testament—and that after the coming of Christ, which is called the New. 3.74 In the land of Sedrak and Damascus, a word of the Lord (Zech 9:10), because the Lord surveys men and all the tribes of Israel, and Hemath within its borders. 3.75 The saints, being ministers of the divine word, receive it as God giving it, just as being God-taken, according to the one speaking in Christ, to preach the word of the...