События в седьмом столетии третьего тысячелетия

Salah, having lived 130 years, gave birth to Eber, as well as other sons and daughters. This name Eber means “transitioning” or “transition” in the interpretation. For what reason was Sala’s son named this way? This is described as follows. Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the father of the Cainans and the grandfather of Sala, formerly lived with his brothers in Armenia, where Noah’s Ark stopped on Mount Ararat, and then wished to move to the land of the Chaldeans, in which no one had yet lived. He gathered with his entire household, parted with his brothers, crossed the Tigris River and was the first to begin living in Chaldea. During the actual crossing of the river, his grandson Sala had a son. Arphaxad named the baby, his great-grandson, Eber, which means “transition,” since he was born during the transition. From this Eber the Jews descended, as will later become clear. In these same years, the leader of all evil, Nevrod, was born from the Hamov tribe. His son Hama Hus gave birth to him. Nevrod grew in both body and anger. In terms of physique, he was a giant, similar to those ancient giants who lived before the flood, as Scripture says about him: “This giant began to be on earth; this is a giant” (Gen. 10:8–9). His malice exceeded his physical age, and he filled the whole earth with it. His face was black, which is why they call him an Ethiopian; the soul is even blacker, for it has darkened from opposition to God. But we will talk about it further ahead. Two famous people in heaven were born in this century: Eber and Nevrod. But they were not the same in character. Both of them are famous, since Eber was the ancestor of the Jewish people, and Nevrod became the first king among people. Both of them were men of great honor among the people, but their morals differed as much from each other as darkness differs from light, for Eber was good, and Nevrod was evil. He shone like light with his good Deeds, but this one himself became darkened like darkness, and obscured others with evil deeds. Eber was a teacher of pleasing God, but Nevrod was the leader of God’s wrath, for he prompted people to do an unpleasing deed, which Eber did not deign to do, and prompted them to build a tower to heaven, as we will later tell about this in the historical part of our story. What is surprising to us is why the numerous humanity that increased after the flood at that time did not follow the good man Eber, but followed in the footsteps of the evil man Nevrod? Why did it not listen to the teachings of the godly Eber, but heeded the god-wrathful advice of Nevrodov, why did it reject the man of God and join the satanic slave? What is the reason for this? Truly, we think, it is not any other than that human nature after the sin of Adam, having lost the former grace of God, became more and more easily inclined to evil than to good deeds. Before transgressing the commandments of God, man, being innocent, not evil, sinless, abiding in the grace of God, like a son in the love and mercy of his father, did not have an evil will or evil desire in himself and did not know what evil was; he did not desire any sin and did not even know what sin was. There was no pride in him, and he did not demand greater honor for himself than that which was given to him from God, he did not seek glory and did not envy the more honest angelic nature. There was no partiality in him, he did not collect estates, neither gold, nor silver, nor precious stones or anything else that people nowadays collect with an insatiable desire. There was no rage in him; he was not angry, did not malice, did not envy, did not offend, and was righteous and holy; he did not know carnal voluptuousness, he was not accustomed to gluttony, he did not think about the commanded fruit in order to taste it, and he himself would never have transgressed the commandments of God if he had not been seduced by the enemy. When he was seduced and angered the Creator by transgressing His commandments, he lost his former grace; Then he knew evil and became very inclined to it. Then every sinful desire entered into human nature: pride, addiction, delicacy, rage, anger, envy and carnal desires. People who multiplied from Adam began to be proud and exalted in front of each other, to collect possessions, to envy each other, to be angry, to rage, to offend each other and to disorderly spend their lives in gluttony and lust, “walking (as the Apostle says) through the age of this world, in the lusts of their flesh, doing the will of the flesh and thoughts, and being by nature a child of wrath.” (Eph. 2:2-3), by nature, for the sinful habit in them seemed to be transformed into nature. Just as it is impossible to change natural needs and requirements, it is also inconvenient for someone who has become accustomed to it to renounce any sin for a long time. At the time in which Eber and Nevrod lived, all kinds of evil had already multiplied among people, and every sin took hold in them, becoming, as it were, a natural phenomenon. Therefore, people more easily inclined not to the good advice of Eber, but to the evil advice of Nevrod, as to a natural thing, “which, according to the Apostle, was the nature of the child of wrath.” Eber gave them good advice - to please God, and not to anger Him, but this pleasing to God seemed to them some kind of strange thing, for they had no skill in good deeds. Nevrod gave them the opposite advice, which was not pleasing to God, and they seized on it as if it were something familiar to them, for they were confirmed in the wrath of God, which had become common to them. So the righteous Eber was barely able to convince his clan and lead it away from an unpleasing deed, and Nevrod easily carried away all the other clans with him. From here we can see, firstly, that an unpleasing person would rather listen to evil advice than good, and secondly, that one who is accustomed to some mortal sins will not be afraid to commit many other mortal and God-wrathful deeds. An evil person would rather listen to an evil person than to a good person, for evil is in greater alliance with evil than with good. The good in its disposition is as different from the evil as the east is from the west, and the evil is as friendly to its own evil as darkness is to gloom and a swamp is to feces. Therefore, an evil person would rather listen to an evil person than to a good person. Saint John Climacus is surprised that we sinners, having the omnipotent God as our helper and the holy angels as His accomplices, are not easily inclined to do good deeds, and we can easily be seduced into doing some evil deed by one crafty demon. Why is this so? Climacus refuses to investigate the reason for this. “I,” he says, “can’t talk about this and don’t want to” (Ladder. Homily 26, ch. 133). It seems to us that the reason for this is not any other than the above, namely, that for human nature, corrupted by ancestral sin and deprived of the first good, evil became, as it were, natural, for in it a person is both conceived and born: “In iniquities,” they say, “I was conceived, and in sins did my mother give birth to me” (Ps. 50:7). And what a person is born in, that is what he desires from childhood, and that is what he thinks about, as Scripture testifies, saying: “A man’s mind is set on evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21). That is why we are not inclined towards virtues, we do not listen to good admonitions, and we are very quick to do evil. How much good advice and useful admonitions instructing us in virtue we have in the prophetic, apostolic and patristic books, how much we hear from spiritual teachers, and few of us are obedient, few are corrected, few are saved! Evil deeds do not require many teachers: if one demon approaches and whispers, then the sinner immediately obeys him. But even the most sinful nature easily attracts everyone to its desires, and friendship with the evil, what evil does it not teach a person? In most cases, it happens that one serves as a demon for the other, teaching and seducing each other into evil. In addition to what has been said above regarding people’s obedience to Nevrod’s advice, we can also see that if someone enters into a sinful custom, he no longer fears God and is not afraid to commit any ungodly deeds. Those people had become accustomed to evil deeds, and they were not afraid to resist God by building a tower. For us, let there be a warning here - not to get used to sins, but to quickly rise from the fall. If someone once falls into some mortal sin and does not quickly rise from it with repentance, he will easily fall into the same sin a second time and a third time; for it is terrible to sin only the first time, but he who has sinned once will not be afraid to sin both a second and a third time, and repeating the same sin many times, he will decide to commit more serious sins. The reason for this fearlessness and boldness in repeated sins is that after his first fall man did not immediately rise up with repentance. There is a question: if Adam, after his fall in paradise, immediately and at that same hour repented and asked with humility and heartfelt contrition for forgiveness from God, would God forgive him his sin? I answer: undoubtedly, I would forgive, for it is not characteristic of God’s compassion not to have mercy on a truly repentant sinner. Saint Dorotheus says that the Lord God deliberately asked Adam: “Where are you?”, giving him a reason for repentance (that is, arousing him to repentance), so that he would say: “Forgive me!” so that he could have mercy (Sermon on the Rejection of the World). Another question: if God had then forgiven Adam his sin, would Adam have decided to sin again in the same way and anger his God a second time? No way, for, having learned from his first fall how great the evil of sin is, he would not return to the same evil after forgiveness; It is more consistent to think that no other sins would have penetrated into the human race that descended from Adam. But since Adam did not immediately repent then, he became the cause of all the sins that had multiplied in the human race. From his first sin, not cleansed by quick repentance, like stinking streams from an unclean source, all other sins flowed out and flooded the whole world. Similar things are currently happening among us. If people, after their first fall, immediately rose up with true repentance, then they would not easily decide to fall a second time. But since everyone, having fallen once, does not immediately rise up, therefore he continues to do the same without fear and decides to do other evil deeds, as the Tributary says: “When the wicked comes into the depths of evil, he is negligent” Proverbs. 18:3), that is, if a sinner reaches such a state that sin becomes a common occurrence for him (what St. Chrysostom calls the depth of evil), he will at the same time begin to neglect his salvation, not having the fear of God. It is like one falling from high mountain rapids: falling down with great swiftness, one cannot grab hold of anything and keep from falling, but will reach the very depths and break there. Likewise, a sinner, having fallen from his former virtuous and godly life, if he does not immediately restrain himself by repentance but begins to move from sin to sin, it will not be easy for him (I am not saying that it is impossible) to restrain himself, since the sinful habit is transformed in him, as it were, into a natural need and forcibly carries him away, and in an unrestrained desire he will reach the depths of his destruction. So, do not hesitate, O man who has fallen into sin, so that you do not reach the depths of evil and perish! You might be interested in: