On Fugitives (41-45)

but while we appear only to have proceeded so far as to wash off the things which defile our life, we have arrived at the vestibule of God’s service, we departed again more quickly than we approached, not being able to endure the austere way of living dictated by that service, nor the sleepless desire to please God, nor the continual and unwearied labour;

flee, therefore, at this present time from what is best and from what is worst. What is worst are the fabulous inventions, the unmetrical and inharmonious poems, the conceptions and persuasions which from ignorance are hard and stubborn, of which Esau is the namesake. What

for to dwell with what is evil is most pernicious, and to dwell with perfect good is most dangerous. Accordingly Jacob both flees from Esau, and also dwells apart from his parents; for being fond of practising virtue and still labouring at it, he flees from wickedness, and yet is unable to live in company with perfect virtue so as to have no need of an instructor.

On which account we read, "He will depart to Laban," not to him as the Syrian, but as the brother of his mother; that is to say, he will go to the brilliancies of life; for Laban, being interpreted, means "white." And when he has arrived there he will not hold his head too high, from being puffed up with the happy events of fortune; for the word Syrian, being translated, means "sublime." But now he does not recollect the Syrian Laban, but the brother of Rebekkah;

for the means of life being given to a bad man, inflate and raise up to a great height the mind which is devoid of wisdom, which is called the Syrian; but if they are bestowed on a lover of instruction, then they make the mind inclined to abide by the steady and solid doctrines of virtue and excellence. This is the brother of Rebekkah, that is to say, of perseverance, and he dwells in Charran, which name, being interpreted, means "holes," a symbol of the external senses; for he who is still moving about in mortal life has need of the organs of the external senses.