Divine character in Scripture's words: plain majesty, condescension, Hebrew idiom, and sublime simplicity

Further, such notes of divinity as we say inhere in Scripture can be noticed both in things and in words. And first in words, or in the manner of speaking, a certain divine character shines forth through the whole of Scripture. For when it narrates deeds it does so ingenuously, simply, and nakedly, without any paint, without any trappings. Human writers, when they recite great things, are accustomed to give signs of an anxious mind, fearing lest it not be believed. For they try secretly to remove what could more offend, and to render the matter, as much as in them lies, credible. But when something must be said by them concerning themselves, either they boast and display their own deeds, or they are timid and fearful and use certain excuses and prefaces — which certainly arises from a certain weakness, and betrays a mind distrusting itself and not secure enough. But as for the sacred writers, although they treat of things greatest and plainly stupendous, and often done by their ministry, in their narrations nevertheless all things are straight and simple, nor is there anything that savors an anxious and solicitous mind lest faith be denied them. But everywhere they speak as if secure concerning men's judgments, relying on the dignity and truth of the matter: which argues a magnanimity and a certain majesty worthy of God.

In Scripture's precepts, corrections, and exhortations also it is easy to observe a certain divine majesty. With equal authority it addresses kings and commoners, the highest and the lowest, magistrates and private persons. It flatters no one, connives with no one, and its author plainly shows himself impartial (ἀπροσωπόληπτον) — devoid of favor and hatred, of hope and fear, and the same toward all of whatever status and condition they are. Nor yet is the speech fierce, swollen, and proud. But in it there appears a certain wondrous gravity, yet tempered with the highest gentleness and a pious affection toward men.

But when it teaches, it uses a certain condescension (συγκαταβάσει) by which it accommodates itself to the capacity of the rude. Nor does it seek for what it teaches ornaments from art and eloquence, but commends them by their own weight and usefulness. Teachers of human arts and sciences are accustomed to forge peculiar terms for each art, and to cover what they hand down with wrappers of grand words, that they may win dignity for their art and feign some mystery for the crowd to look up to and wonder at. But Scripture explains divine things with human words and phrases drawn from the crowd. When it wants to illustrate something, it does not seek its likenesses and examples far off, but uses obvious examples, as if from the crossroads. Nor are its arguments such as only the learned can perceive: but usually of such a sort that every rustic and unlearned person recognizes their force.

Often indeed there is in Scripture's words and phrases something foreign, and abhorrent from common use. But that is to be assigned to the genius of the Hebrew tongue, to which our ears are not accustomed. For the sacred writers either wrote in the Hebrew tongue, as Moses and the Prophets, or used phrases and idiotisms of the Hebrew tongue even when they wrote in Greek, as the writers of the New Testament.

Finally Scripture everywhere acts candidly and ingenuously. And whereas men are accustomed, whether blaming or praising, threatening or promising, to inflate small and humble things and raise them with magnificent words and sublime metaphors, Scripture on the contrary expresses the greatest things in a style usually thin and common, and with words that sink below the magnitude of the matter. And when it threatens and promises, its promises are indeed magnificent and its threats terrific: yet so that the moment and gravity of the thing itself far surpass the sound and emphasis of the words. And yet from that highest simplicity of Scripture gravity and decorum are never absent. Indeed there is often joined to it a wondrous sublimity of speaking: so much so that Longinus himself, the Gentile rhetor and most hostile enemy of Christians, treating of the sublime (περὶ ὕψους), cites its example from Moses: "As," he says, "the Legislator of the Hebrews said, and they were done" (Genesis 1:3).