События в третьем столетии третьего тысячелетия

Righteous Lamech, son of Methuselah and father of Noah, died before his father Methuselah, thirty-five years before the flood began. The death of Lamekhov followed - according to Russian Bibles in 2127, according to chronographs in 2207. All the years of Lamech's life were 753 years. Methuselah, the father of Lamech and the grandfather of Noah, died just before the flood, as Jerome and others say. And the Jews also say that Methuselah died only seven days before the flood. When one hundred and twenty years were coming to an end from the time of God's revelation to Noah about the flood, and when the year of the flood had already approached and the ark was finished, Noah brought into it everything necessary for himself and the dumb animals, which he had to bring with him, as God had commanded him. By that time, all flesh had defiled its path on earth (Gen. 6:12), and God, seeing that the earth was defiled by the vile deeds of sinful people, and no longer tolerating them, decided to destroy them with waters. He commanded Noah to enter the ark with his wife and children and bring with him livestock, animals and birds, clean ones in sevens, and unclean ones in twos; The almighty hand of God gathered them all to Noah and the ark and tamed in them the rage of beasts and the gluttony of carnivorous birds, so that among them the lion was like a lamb, and the hawk like a dove. And Noah entered the ark with them seven days before the flood began. In the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life, on the 27th day of the month of April (some say on the 17th day), a flood came to the earth: suddenly water springs burst out of the earth, rivers overflowed their banks, heavenly abysses opened, and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, until the water covered the face of the entire earth and destroyed all living things. The water rose fifteen cubits higher than the highest mountains. God commanded Noah to take into the ark only two of the unclean animals, male and female, and seven of the clean animals, for God wanted the clean animals to multiply on earth as quickly as possible for man, since they were to become human food. Among the seven clean animals there were three pairs, male and female, and the seventh animal was male, so that it would be sacrificed by Noah after the flood as a sacrifice to God. Seeing this, we will glorify God’s merciful providence for man, since God intended only one animal sacrifice for Himself, and six for man. Let it also be known that in Noah’s ship there were not those animals that are called amphibians and live partly in the water, partly on the earth, such as otters, beavers and so-called amphibians, as well as those animals that are born from earthly moisture and marsh humus, that is, mice, toads, scorpions and other reptiles on the earth, and various worms, beetles and locusts, and also those that are conceived from the dew of heaven: mosquitoes, midges and the like. All these living beings were destroyed by the flood and were born a second time after the flood from the same substances. The flood occurred - according to Russian Bibles in 2163, and according to chronographs in 2243 (according to the Roman reckoning, the flood occurred in 1656). Both Russian chronographs and the great Chetya-Minea say that it was on the 26th day of the month of April (see in the life of St. Stephen of Perm). Enough has been written about the flood and Noah’s Ark in the book of Genesis, and let anyone who wishes to read there. But here we can only think about how the flood was a prototype of the coming Last Judgment of God, which our Lord Christ mentions in the Gospel, saying: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man: I ate and feasted, I trespassed, until that day Noah went into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed everything” (Matt. 24, 37–39; Luke 17, 26–27). And it was truly scary to see the flood! When the water increased and suddenly drowned villages, cities, trees, mountains and tall buildings, people ran to and fro, those getting married and feasting quickly jumped up from the feast with pale faces and looked for somewhere to run away; the bride and groom hastily got up from the bed, ran out of the palace and separated from each other, running here and there, and wanting to avoid the waters; Trembling mothers rushed from corner to corner, holding small babies in their arms and not knowing where to hide. Others climbed tall buildings, houses, pillars and towers; others climbed tall trees, and others rushed hastily to high mountains and highest hills; but in vain, for no one could escape this great flood. Those who had the boats in which they sat also died, but the boats overturned from the terrible waves, and they sank into the water. Everywhere fear, everywhere trembling, everywhere death was before our eyes. Oh, how they regretted then that they did not listen to Noah, who spoke and preached about the flood; and then they laughed and reviled him! But during the flood they said: Oh, Noah, Noah! How wise you are in preparing your ark! Oh, we, the damned! How crazy and foolish we have become, not giving faith to your prophetic preaching! Oh, if only we could now enter your ark! Oh, how much we desire to abide in it at least throughout our entire lives and to be imprisoned in it! We could, but we didn’t want to; and now we want, but we can’t! Saying these and similar words, they ran from the flood death advancing on them, ahead of each other, and crowded together in high places, warming each other. Oh, how great was the fear and trembling when they, standing on the mountains and the highest hills, saw the waters covering the entire earth, overturning everything, swallowing people and livestock, crushing cities and fortifications, covering mountains and hills and thus approaching each of them, and drowning them, rising first to the knees, then to the waist, to the neck... From here, man, you can understand how great the evil is sin, which brought such destruction to the whole world. And if such was the water flood then, then what will be the fiery flood at the Second Coming of Christ! Think how terrible the judging God will be, who is now merciful and forgives everything! At that time, everywhere for the sinner the paths will be narrow: in the heights the Judge will be seen very angry, threatening, from whose face heaven and earth will tremble, and below the terrible abyss of hell will be seen; on the right hand there will be sins that expose you, and on the left there will be a multitude of demons, the very sight of which will be more terrible than any torment; inside the conscience is consuming and burning like fire, and outside the whole world is engulfed and burning in fire: “The heavens are scorched and destroyed, the elements are scorched and melted” (2 Pet. 3:12). You poor sinner! Seized by terrible troubles and great fear everywhere, where can you escape? Do you want to hide? – it will be impossible. Will the face of God appear? - and this will be unbearable from His terrible rage. If you ask who will slander (or accuse) you, then I say that all the elements: when the Creator is angry, then the whole creation is angry at the one who is angry. The water increased on the face of the whole earth for 150 days (Gen. 7:24), and then the waters, at the command of God, began to decrease, for God remembered Noah and everyone who was with him in the ship (Gen. 8:1). On the 27th day of the month of September, the ark stopped on the mountains of Ararat, in Armenia, but the land did not immediately emerge from under the waters, as they subsided little by little until the month of December. Then only the tops of the mountains appeared. Noah waited in the ship for many days until the water on the earth dried up, as it is written about in the Book of Genesis. Having opened the window in the ark, he sent out now a raven, now a dove, wanting to find out if there was already dry land on earth? And he learned that the water had disappeared from the face of the earth when the raven did not return, and the dove flew to him with an olive branch. But Noah was still in the ark, waiting until the earth was completely dry. On the first day of March, he opened the cover of the ark and saw that the water on the face of the earth had dried up; however, even now he did not leave the ark, awaiting God's command. On the 27th day of the month of April, when the earth was completely dry from the waters, Noah was commanded by God to leave the ship with everyone who was in it. Noah, leaving the ship, immediately created an altar to God and brought a sacrifice of clean animals and birds in gratitude for deliverance from the flood, and this sacrifice was pleasing to the Lord. He again received from the Lord the previous blessing, once given to Adam, in order to “grow and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it and all the beasts, and livestock, and birds, and fish, and everything that moves on the earth and in the sea” (Gen. 9:1-2). In addition, he received the blessing of eating meat and fish, which did not happen before the flood in the Noahic tribe coming from Seth (except in the Cain tribe and among the giants, as the Chaldean story tells, if only it contains the truth). Noah was afraid that the flood would come again and destroy all living things again. The Lord God, comforting him, made His covenant with him - not to cause another flood to destroy the whole earth, and as a sign of this covenant he placed a rainbow in the clouds. So the merciful Creator made peace with His creation and blessed the earth to bear fruit, arranging the times and saying: “Sowing and harvest, winter and heat, summer and autumn, day and night will not cease” (Gen. 8:22). God gave a commandment to Noah and to the entire human race that would come from him, so that there would be no bloodshed and murder in humanity, since man was created in the image of God; if anyone dares to kill someone, then that killer must be killed himself. “Shed,” said the Lord, “the blood of man; let his blood be shed in that place” (Gen. 9:6). - And so after the flood the earth began to bear fruit again, and the human race on it and every animal were renewed and multiplied. “God will remember Noah,” says the Scripture (Gen. 8:1), and he says so not because God forgot him at such a terrible time, when he was carried by the flood waters in a ship and was between life and death, but because the hour had already come when the Lord wanted to console His servant and began to reduce the flood waters. For there is no sadness among the righteous that does not turn into joy, just as there is no joy among sinners that does not later turn into sadness. We have already heard how all the joy and joy of the sinners who were before the flood suddenly changed into bitter weeping and final destruction; We now hear about the righteous Noah, who was in great fear, how everything sorrowful turned into joy and joy for him, when, by God’s mercy, having escaped such a terrible worldwide punishment, he came to land with all those who were with him safe and sound. Oh, how then he and his children, and all the animals, beasts and livestock, and birds rejoiced! “God will remember Noah,” whom he never forgot. For how could He forget His saint when in Isaiah’s prophecy He says: “The child will forget his mother, lest he have mercy on the offspring of his womb? Even if the mother forgets her child, I will not forget you” (Is. 49:15)? The raven did not return to the ark, but the dove did. In this we can see the image of a sinful man and the image of a righteous man. Raven is a sinful man who puts off his repentance from morning to morning and does not return to his salvation as to the ark, to the Savior as if to Noah. If the righteous one ever flies out of the ship of his righteousness, having fallen into some sin due to some enemy temptation, he, however, does not hesitate for long, but immediately gets up and returns to God with a groan, like a dove, having an olive branch in his mouth - his confession of sins with the hope of forsaking them, according to the words of the Psalmist: “Reh, let me confess my iniquities Lord, you have also forsaken the wickedness of my heart” (Ps. 31:5). A sinful man is like a raven, for just as a raven feeds on the meat of rotting corpses, so he loves to satiate his soul with his stingy, voluptuous deeds, which are stronger than stinking corpses. A virtuous person is like the dove, despising the corpses of godless deeds and abhorring them, walking around, like olive trees, images of the godly life of righteous men and from them, like from olive branches, collecting benefits for himself. Also, Noah's Ark can serve as a subject for us to study spiritually, arranged in an allegorical or allegorical form. Noah is the image of Christ, the ark is the image of Christ’s Church, and the flood is the persecution of the Church. The flood did not submerge Noah's Ark; The Church of Christ will not be able to overcome persecution either: “The gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). In the ark were Noah's children along with dumb animals; and in the Church of Christ, good Christians and evil ones, the righteous, I say, live together with sinners. And just as in Noah’s Ark, for the sake of people, dumb animals were saved from the flood, so in the Holy Church, for the sake of the righteous, sinners are preserved and saved by God’s mercy. Ravens are heretics, flying out of the church ship, leaving and not returning; the dove is the image of the Holy Spirit, the olive branch in the mouth is the grace and mercy of the Lord, and the end of the flood is the last day of this age. Or in other words: Noah is Christ; the ark is the Most Pure Virgin Mother of God, who received into Herself Christ, who became man in Her; the flood is a universal curse into which the whole world plunged; the dove is the Holy Spirit, who overshadowed the Most Pure Virgin, bringing Her, as it were, an olive branch - the fulfillment of grace; The animals and livestock delivered from the flood by the ark are sinful people saved from hellish drowning by the prayers and intercession of the Most Pure Mother of God. Or another way: the ark is a man; Noah – soul; the flood is a world lying entirely in evil, vain, filled with various temptations; the dumb animals inside the ark are the spiritual and physical passions in man. I call mental passions rage, anger, malice, hatred and the like, and bodily passions are carnal inflammation for sin, sweet eating, drunkenness and other similar things. Crows that feed on corpses are evil thoughts, delving deep into sinful defilements with the delight of the heart and procrastinating in this. The moaning dove is conscience, and the olive is reason, governing everything and taming passions. Coming out of the ark, Noah began to cultivate the land with his sons and invented a way to plow it with a pair of harnessed oxen. Before this, as we said above, people did not know either the plow or the plow, but they cultivated the furrows with their own hands. Noah invented the indicated most convenient method of farming and taught it to others. In the second year after the flood, Shem, being a hundred years old, gave birth to Arphaxad, and then other sons and daughters. In the same way, both Japheth and Ham began to give birth to their children, who, when they came of age, married and gave birth to children, and the human race multiplied from year to year, and the world, which was destroyed by the flood, was renewed again. The stories tell that after the great flood, when many years passed, there were other floods, but not throughout the whole earth, but only in some of its countries, such as in Greece, in which George Kedrinus counts two floods: the first within Attica in the days of King Agigas, and the second in Thessaly during the reign of Deucalion. The Polish chronicler Strykowski estimates a greater number of such floods. Let anyone who wishes read it. In the tenth year after the flood, Noah invented and planted grapes. Having extracted wine from its grapes, he tasted it, saw that this drink was excellent, tasty, healthy and enjoyable, and offered it first of all as a sacrifice to God (as if prophetically foreshadowing the bloodless sacrifice that would be future in the new grace, in which the life-giving Blood of Christ is now taught under the guise of wine). After completing this sacrifice of his, Noah drank a lot of wine, not knowing at first what its strength was, and having drunk he fell asleep, and became sleepy. By chance seeing his nakedness, his middle son, named Ham, the father of Canaan, laughed and went to tell his brothers Shem and Japheth, reproaching his father's nakedness. They, reproaching his madness, took the clothes and, putting them on their shoulders, went backwards and covered the nakedness of their father, having their faces turned in the other direction and not seeing their father’s nakedness. Some historiographers have the following story about the invention of wine. One goat, having left Noah's flock, walked between the mountains and found a vine of wondrous grapes and bunches, after eating which he became drunk. Noisy and strong from wine, he returned to the herd and began to play like a drunk, rushing at other cattle and butting them with his horns until he was exhausted, and then he lay down and fell asleep. After a long sleep, he got up and was as meek as before, and again ran into the mountains to the grapes. When the goat began to do the same thing every day, Noah noticed it and was amazed. He began to look after that goat, wanting to find out where he got this from. When the goat then separated from the herd, Noah followed him from afar and saw him eating bunches of wild vines; He came up, tasted the bunch himself and loved it, for the grapes were pleasant to the taste. He began to collect this wild vine and plant grapes. The replanted vine produced larger and tastier bunches than the first. Noah squeezed the juice out of them into a vessel, drank and got drunk, and thus the preparation of wine began. Others say that Noah was not the first to plant grapes, but from time immemorial wine was created by God for the health and joy of people, just as other medicinal substances were created from the earth by God; for wine is also a medicine that is beneficial for the sake of the stomach (stomach), about which the Apostle writes to Timothy: “Do not drink water, but eat a little wine for your sake, and often for the sake of your ailments” (1 Tim. 5:23). And that before Noah there was wine from time immemorial, this can be guessed from the words of Christ in the Gospel, where about the people who lived before the flood it is said: “Yadyahu, piyahu, marry” (Matthew 24:38; Luke 17:27). If at wedding feasts they drank to the point of joy, then they drank not water, but an intoxicating drink, which is wine, from which carnal lust, according to the apostolic word, is born in the spirits (Eph. 5:18). This is the reasoning about drinking wine, which, they say, appeared before the flood among corrupt people, and most of all among giants. However, the majority says that before the flood people did not eat meat or drink wine, even before Noah left the ark, who received the blessing from God to eat meat, and he was the first to invent wine. Some also tell about the planting of grapes and that Noah, planting a vine, watered its roots with the blood of four animals, slaughtering a lion, a pig, a lamb and a monkey, and that the vine received power from the blood of those animals in order to act with their morals in those who drink wine. And you can see in those who drink wine that some of them are like a lion, fierce, fierce, bold and want to grab hold of someone and fight; others are like pigs, stinking, stingy, wallowing in the swamp like pigs; others are like a lamb, meek, humble, praying to God with tenderness; Still others become like monkeys, blaspheme, laugh, and do many other things without shame. However, all this is considered not the truth, but the fortune-telling of politicians. We will not ignore here the scolder of Ham: he laughed at his father’s nakedness. The Holy Scripture (as St. Chrysostom believes) reproaches his shamelessness when in that story it mentions his son Canaan, saying: “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father” (Gen. 9:22), for not without a mysterious meaning is Canaan, the son of Ham, remembered here, but in denunciation and reproach of Ham himself. What kind of reproof? The following: Ham was so incontinent in carnal voluptuousness, insisting (approaching) carnal copulation (2 Pet. 2:10), “like a horse and a horse” (Ps. 31:9), that even during the terrible flood, being in the ship, when everyone was in great trepidation, he alone, fearless and shameless, did not abstain from his wife and conceived a son, Canaan. Therefore, when the Holy Scripture, narrating how Ham mocked his father, also remembers Canaan, it denounces this shamelessness and intemperance of Ham, as if saying: you revile your father, who in a dream did not feel how he was naked, and the whole universe reviles you for the fact that in such a terrible and trembling time of the flood, when everyone was afraid of the storm of God and saw death before their eyes, and from everything you abstained, you alone were so fearless and intemperate that you were not ashamed to touch your wife. Whose shame is greater, Ham? Was it for Noah, who was naked in a dream, or for you, who committed carnal intercourse during the flood? So that all subsequent generations will know this secret and shamelessness of yours, when you mock your father, you will be called the father of Canaan: “You have seen Ham, the father of Canaan, the nakedness of your father.” This is how Saint Chrysostom reviles Ham when he says about him: “Why, tell me, in this place did Scripture mention the name of Ham’s son? In order for you to recognize the former intemperance of Ham, who enslaved himself to voluptuousness; and with what shamelessness he gave himself up to childbearing during such a great embarrassment of the flood, with the same shamelessness he dared to revile his father” (Discourse 28 on the Book of Genesis, moral teaching 4). – Let us think here about the fact that anyone who reproaches the sins of others will not escape the reproach himself, but will be convicted of his sin before others and will be filled with shame. Noah, having sobered up from the wine, understood everything that had happened and cursed Ham in the person of his son Canaan and in all the race that would come from him, and enslaved him to his brothers, saying: “Cursed be Canaan (the son of Ham), let the servant be his brother” (Gen. 9:25). He blessed Shem and Japheth with the families that would descend from them and prophetically foretold that Shem’s tribe would be priestly, and Japheth’s tribe would be rulers, as interpreters of the Divine Scripture and historiographers understand from the following words of Noah: “May God spread Japheth and let him dwell in the villages of Shem” (Gen. 9:27); that is, may God dwell in Shem’s villages. This is how Theodoret interprets what can be seen even more clearly from the Chaldean translation, which says this: may God spread Japheth, and may the Divinity dwell in the villages of Shem. And truly the Divine shrine took up residence in his villages when, among all the people who had forgotten God, their Creator, there was found in the Shem tribe a Jewish people who knew God, as it is written in the psalms: “God is known in Judah, His great name is in Israel” (Ps. 75:2). Those tribes and peoples that descended from the family of Japheth and Ham all deviated into idolatry, and the Jewish family, starting with Abraham, who came from the tribe of Shem, served the one heavenly God. In this family the priesthood began, the shrine of God was built, the tabernacle called the “Holy of Holies”, the glorious temple of Solomon was created in Jerusalem, and the Son of God, the source of all shrines, deigned to be born in the same tribe, and Noah foresaw all this in spirit and predicted the dwelling of God in the villages of Shem. To extend one's borders is a matter of royal dominion, but to have the Divine shrine within oneself is a matter of priestly honor. Noah seemed to say this to his sons: You, Shem, perform sacred acts, making sacrifices to God and praying; and you, Japheth, rule the nations, spread their freedom and protect them; You, Ham, with your son Canaan, work for both of them. It happened not without a mysterious significance that Noah, after sobering up from wine, uttering an oath against the scolder Ham, first of all his son, cursed his grandson, saying: “Cursed be Canaan and so on. What a mystery there is in this, let us heed: the Jews say, and after them some of our interpreters, that Canaan, the son of Ham, when he was still a small youth (ten years old), he was the first to see the nakedness of his grandfather Noah and announced to Ham his father. The boor also came and saw his father and reviled him. That is why Noah, when he sobered up from wine, realized what had happened and immediately cursed Canaan. We will discuss here how Ham, his father, became the culprit in the curse of Canaan, who did not forbid or punish his son, who informed about Noah’s exposure, but he himself went to see, as if praising the insane sense of this little youth. In that for which the boy was worthy of severe punishment, Ham remained silent in front of him, condoned and allowed him to talk about his father’s nakedness without restraint, and even listened with pleasure. Thus, he subjected his young son Canaan, as well as himself, to his father’s curse. From here, let parents learn to raise their children from their infancy (according to the apostolic advice) “in the discipline and teaching of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), under fear and thunder, and not in caresses, not to give them self-will, not to allow them to commit outrages and foul language or any other absurd deeds, or get used to any evil behavior. For whoever learns anything during his youth, he will barely get away with it in his old age, and whatever teaching he accepts in his youth, good or evil, will remain in him until old age and death. The young boy is like a board prepared for writing an icon on it. Whatever the icon painter writes on it at the beginning, honest or dishonest, holy or sinful, angel or demon, will remain forever. So is a young boy: in what education his parents raise him, what morals they teach him, godly or God-hating, angelic or demonic, in those he will spend his whole life. The portico (clothing) is white, but the color that is first dipped in will never change; and a new vessel, wooden or clay, with which at the beginning it is filled with fat, whether fragrant oil or stinking tar, will never lose that smell: in the same way is the training of the young. Therefore, children in their adolescence should be taught good morals with threat and affection, but not so much with affection as with threat, since it is useful to punish youth with a threat, as Sirach advises: “Do not give your son power in his youth, but crush the ribs of him who is still young; he will not submit to food that is hardened” (Sir. 30: 11-12). Saint Chrysostom likened youth to an unbridled horse and an untamable beast. How does a horse restrain itself, if not by reins, bridle and fatigue? How does an animal (bear) tame, if not with iron and beating? Likewise, youth needs fear and punishment, as in bridles and reins, prohibition and threat, as in iron shackles and chains, and also in the torment of wounds. The above-mentioned Sirach says well: “Loving your son will increase his wounds” (Sir. 30:1). Not only parents themselves should instruct and teach the virtues of their children, but also assign good and kind educators and teachers to them, so that they not only monitor the health and teaching of the child, which is offered to him, but so that they watch all his deeds and words, sitting and standing, walking and standing, as well as his conversation with others, so that they immediately correct with prohibition whatever needs correction, and so that they instruct him in all good manners. Youth is fierce, says Saint Chrysostom, and requires many mentors: teachers, educators, companions, writers. He says the following: “We are looking for a good shepherd for the donkeys and a handler for the hinny; but we do not follow what is most honest for us, so that we entrust our son to someone who can maintain his chastity.” We see here that if dumb animals need a good shepherd, then even more so for children. For those it is necessary so that they are not torn to pieces by beasts or kidnapped by a thief, and for these, so that they are not corrupted by evil people, robbed by soul stealers and demons and are not drawn into eternal destruction. Saint Gregory the Dvoeslov tells a terrible thing in a conversation with Deacon Peter (in the 4th book, chapter XVIII), saying the following: “Many children are blocked from entering the Kingdom of Heaven if they are poorly brought up. In this city (Rome) a certain man, known to everyone, three years ago had a little boy, about five years old, I think; His father according to the flesh, loving his son greatly, raised him without punishment. The boy, who constantly saw only affection, became accustomed to saying nasty and blasphemous words. And when any thought entered his soul, it immediately poured out in slander, to which he was accustomed; and he blasphemed not only people, but, when it happened, he dared (terrible to say!) even against the greatness of God, blaspheming holy things, and his father did not forbid him to say those blasphemous and nasty words. During a pestilence here three years ago, this youth fell mortally ill, and when his father held him in his bosom (as those who were there at the death of this youth testify), unclean demons came to take the cursed soul of the youth. The boy, seeing them, trembled, closed his eyes and began to cry: take me away, father, from them, take me away! So crying out in a terrible voice, he buried his face in his father’s chest, wanting to hide himself. The father, seeing him trembling, asked what he saw. The boy answered, saying: black people have come and want to take me. Having said this, he began to speak blasphemous words and died immediately.” May this story of Saint Gregory frighten parents who raise their children poorly without punishment and allow them to get used to words and deeds that are not pleasing to God! Truly, such parents themselves, together with their children who have not been taught in goodness, will be handed over by the righteous judgment of God into the hands of the black Ethiopians, or demons, for eternal torment. And just as Ham and his son Canaan inherited their father’s unblessing, so they will inherit God’s curse, which He will say to the goats: “Get away from Me, you curse” (Matthew 25:41). You might be interested in: