Deservedly,
therefore, even while in the flesh, did the Lord show Himself to him, the
colleague of His own fasts, no less than to Elijah. For Elijah withal had,
by this fact primarily, that he had imprecated a famine, already sufficiently
devoted himself to fasts: "The Lord liveth," he said, "before whom I am
standing in His sight, if there shall be dew in these years, and
rain-shower." Subsequently, fleeing from threatening Jezebel, after one
single (meal of) food and drink, which he had found on being awakened by
an angel, he too himself, in a space of forty days and nights, his belly empty,
his mouth dry, arrived at Mount Horeb; where, when he had made a cave his
inn, with how familiar a meeting with God was he received! "What (doest)
thou, Elijah, here? " Much more friendly was this voice than, "Adam,
where art thou? " For the latter voice was uttering a threat to a fed man,
the former soothing a fasting one. Such is the prerogative of circumscribed
food, that it makes God tent-fellow with man-peer, in truth, with peer! For
if the eternal God will not hunger, as He testifies through Isaiah, this will
be the time for man to be made equal with God, when he lives without food.
