"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the Lord your God; ye shall not behave according to the customs of Egypt in which ye dwelt among them, and ye shall not walk in their laws. Ye shall do my judgments, and ye shall not do according to the customs of the land of Canaan, into which I am leading you to dwell there. And ye shall keep my commandments, and ye shall walk in them. I am the Lord your God. And ye shall keep all my commandments and my judgments, and ye shall do them. He that doeth them the same shall live in them. I am the Lord your God: and ye shall keep all my commandments and my judgments." Leviticus xviii. 1.

Therefore, real true life, above everything else, consists in the judgments and commandments of God, so that the customs and practises of the impious must be death: but there are some races which take no note of passions and of wickednesses, from whom the multitudes of impious persons and wickedness are sprung.

Therefore, ten years after our departure to settle in the land of the Canaanites let us marry Hagar, since from the first moment that we become rational beings, we seek for ignorance and a deficiency of knowledge which is pernicious in its own nature; but at a subsequent period, and at a perfect number, namely, the legal number of the decade, we come to feel a desire for that instruction which is able to benefit us.

But the sons of the musicians have accurately and carefully investigated the question respecting the decade; and the most sacred Moses has composed a hymn, with no slight degree of skill, attributing the most excellent things to this number of the decade, such as prayers, first-fruits, the continual and unceasing offerings of the priests, the observance of the passover, the atonement, Leviticus xxiii. 27. the remission of debts, and the return to the ancient allotments of property at the end of every fifty years; Leviticus xxv. 9. the preparation and furnishing of the indissoluble tabernacle, Exodus xxvi. 1. and ten thousand other things which it would take a long time to enumerate. However, we must not pass over the most important points.

In the first place he represents Noah to us (and this man is the first who is specially entitled just, in the holy scriptures), as the tenth in succession from him who was formed out of the earth, not intending by this statement to indicate the number Leviticus xviii. 1. Leviticus xxiii. 27. Leviticus xxv. 9. Exodus xxvi. 1. of years that had elapsed, but rather to show clearly that as the decade is the most perfect boundary and end of the numbers which proceed onwards from the unit, so also just in the soul is the perfection and true end of the actions of human life.