[168] So holy is this unleavened bake-meat, that the oracles ordain that twelve unleavened loaves, corresponding to the number of the tribes, be set forth on the golden table in the inmost shrine, and these are called the loaves of setting forth (Ex. 25:29).
[169] And further it is forbidden by law to bring any leaven or any honey to the altar (Lev. 2:11). For it is a hard matter to consecrate as holy the sweet flavours of bodily pleasures or the risings of the soul in their leaven-like thinness and sponginess, so profane and unholy are they by their very nature.
[170] Is it not, then, with legitimate pride that the prophet-word called Moses says, as we shall find, “Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee in the wilderness, that He might afflict thee and prove thee and the thoughts in thy heart might be tested, whether thou wilt keep His commandments or not, and He afflicted thee and made thee weak by famine and fed thee with manna which thy fathers knew not, that He might proclaim to thee that not alone on bread shall man live, but on every word that goeth forth through the mouth of God” (Deut. 8:2).
[171] Who then is so impious as to suppose that God is an afflictor, or evil-entreater, and that He sends famine, death in its most miserable form, on those who cannot live without food? For God is good and the cause of what is good, the benefactor, the saviour, the nourisher, the enricher, the bountiful giver, and He has expelled evil-mindedness from the holy boundaries. For so He banished those cumberers of the earth, both Adam and Eve, from Paradise.
[172] Let us not, then, be misled by the actual words, but look at the allegorical meaning that lies beneath them, and say that “afflicted” is equivalent to “disciplined and admonished and chastened,” and that “subjected to famine” does not mean that He brought about a dearth of food and drink, but a dearth of pleasures and desires and fears and grief and wrongdoings, and in general all the works of the vices or the passions.
[173] And this is confirmed by the words that follow, “He fed thee with the manna.” He who provided the food that costs no toil or suffering, the food which without the cares and pains of men came not from the earth in the common way, but was sent, a wonder and a marvel from heaven for the benefit of those who should use it—can we rightly speak of Him as the author of famine and affliction? Should we not on the contrary call Him the author of thriving and prosperity and secure and ordered living?
[174] But the multitude, the common herd, who have never tasted of wisdom, the one true food of us all, think that those who feed on the divine words live in misery and suffering, and little know that their days are spent in continued well-being and gladness.