[263] Not long after, Moses delivered a second inspired pronouncement concerning the sacred seventh day. That day has held the place of honour in nature, not merely from the time when the world was framed, but even before the heaven and all that sense perceives came into being. Yet men knew it not, perhaps because by reason of the constant and repeated destructions by water and fire the later generations did not receive from the former the memory of the order and sequence of events in the series of years. This hidden truth Moses, under inspiration, revealed in an announcement to which a manifest sign gave testimony.
[264] This sign was as follows: the shower of food from the air was less on the first days, but on a later day was doubled; and on those first days anything left melted and was dissolved till, after turning completely into moisture, it disappeared; but on that later day it admitted no change and remained just as it had been. Moses, when he heard of this and also actually saw it, was awestruck and, guided by what was not so much surmise as God-sent inspiration, made announcement of the sabbath.
[265] I need hardly say that conjectures of this kind are closely akin to prophecies. For the mind could not have made so straight an aim if there was not also the divine spirit guiding it to the truth itself.
[266] Now the greatness of the wonder was shown not only by the double supply of food and its remaining sound contrary to the usual happening, but by the combination of both these occurring on the sixth day, counting from the day on which the food began to be supplied from the air; and that sixth day was to be followed by the dawning of the seventh which is the most sacred of numbers. And therefore consideration will show the inquirer that the food given from heaven followed the analogy of the birth of the world; for both the creating of the world and also the raining of the said food were begun by God on the first day out of six.
[267] The copy reproduces the original very exactly: for, as God called up His most perfect work, the world, out of not being into being, so He called up plenty in the desert, changing round the elements to meet the pressing need of the occasion, so that instead of the earth the air bore food for their nourishment, and that without labour or travail for those who had no chance of resorting to any deliberate process of providing sustenance.
[268] After this, he uttered a third prophetic saying of truly marvellous import. He declared that on the sabbath the air would not yield the accustomed food, and that nothing would come down to earth as it had done before, not even the smallest morsel.
[269] And this proved true in the result, for it was on the day before the sabbath that he prophesied this, but on the morrow some of the weaker-minded set out to gather the food but were disappointed and returned baffled, reproaching themselves for their disbelief and hailing the prophet as a true seer, an interpreter of God, and alone gifted with foreknowledge of the hidden future.