[1] The former treatise dealt with the birth and nurture of Moses; also with his education and career as a ruler, in which capacity his conduct was not merely blameless but highly praiseworthy; also with the works which he performed in Egypt and during the journeys both at the Red Sea and in the wilderness—works which no words can adequately describe; further, with the troubles which he successfully surmounted, and with his partial distribution of territories to the combatants. The present treatise is concerned with matters allied and consequent to these.
[2] For it has been said, not without good reason, that states can only make progress in well-being if either kings are philosophers or philosophers are kings. But Moses will be found to have displayed, and more than displayed, combined in his single person, not only these two faculties—the kingly and the philosophical—but also three others, one of which is concerned with law-giving, the second with the high priest’s office, and the last with prophecy.
[3] On these three I have now elected to write, being forced to the conviction that it is fitting that they should be combined in the same person. For Moses, through God’s providence, became king and lawgiver and high priest and prophet; and in each function he won the highest place. But why it is fitting that they should all be combined in the same person needs explanation.
[4] It is a king’s duty to command what is right and forbid what is wrong. But to command what should be done and to forbid what should not be done is the peculiar function of law; so that it follows at once that the king is a living law, and the law a just king.
[5] But a king and lawgiver ought to have under his purview not only human but divine things; for, without God’s directing care, the affairs of kings and subjects cannot go aright. And therefore such as he needs the chief priest-hood, so that, fortified with perfect rites and the perfect knowledge of the service of God, he may ask that he and those whom he rules may receive prevention of evil and participation in good from the gracious Being Who assents to prayers. For surely that Being will grant fulfilment to prayers, seeing that He is kindly by nature and deems worthy of His special favour those who give Him genuine service.
[6] But, since to this king, lawgiver and high priest who, though possessed of so generous a heritage of fortune’s gifts, is after all but a mortal creature, countless things both human and divine are wrapped in obscurity, Moses necessarily obtained prophecy also, in order that through the providence of God he might discover what by reasoning he could not grasp. For prophecy 7 finds its way to what the mind fails to reach.
[7] Beautiful and all-harmonious is the union of these four faculties; for, intertwined and clinging to each other, they move in rhythmic concord, mutually receiving and repaying benefits, and thus imitate the virgin Graces whom an immutable law of nature forbids to be separated. And of them it may be justly said, what is often said of the virtues, that to have one is to have all.