Sidenote: Gen. xlvi. 34. 1. YOU tell me that you have felt a difficulty in the text _We shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God_. But you had the means of solving it, for it is written in the book of Genesis, that _a shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians_, and this not on account of the shepherd himself, but of his flocks. For the Egyptians were tillers of the ground, but Abraham and Jacob, and afterwards Moses and David, were shepherds, and in this function exercised a certain kingly discipline. 2. The Egyptians then hated sacrifices which were duly offered; the pursuit of virtue, that is, which is perfect and replete with discipline. But that which these evil men hated is in the sight of the good sincere and pious. The licentious man hates the works of virtue, the glutton shrinks from them. And so the Egyptian’s body, loving the charms of pleasure, has an aversion to the virtues of the soul, hates its rule, and shrinks from the discipline of virtue, and all such like works. 3. But what the Egyptian shrinks from――he who is an Egyptian rather than a man,――that do thou, who hast the knowledge of what befits man, embrace and follow: and shun those things which they pursue and choose; for these two things cannot agree together, wisdom and folly. Thus as wisdom and continence remove themselves from those who are, as it were, in the ranks of unwisdom and intemperance, so no foolish and ♦incontinent man has any part in what belongs to the goods and heritage of the wise and continent man. Sidenote: Gen. xxxi. 14, 15. 4. Again, those women who were sanctified by their marriage, Leah and Rachel, (the one meaning ‘wearied,’ the other ‘strong breath’[157]) from aversion not to the ties of kindred but to their differing manners, and informed by the much tried Jacob, that he desired to depart in order to shun the envy and sloth of Laban and his sons, made answer thus: _Is there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house? Are we not counted of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and hath quite devoured also all our money?_ Observe first that the slothful and envious man alienates from himself one who labours and keeps strict discipline; he flies from her and seeks to separate himself. Finding that they will be burthensome to him he thinks he has gained by their removal, and esteems this to be his reward, and this the point of his pleasure. Sidenote: Ib. v. 16.