These words have a most obscure sense, and are most difficult to explain: it must therefore be striven and effected that we bring some light to this passage. And this first it is fitting to know: that those words, 'And he placed before Paradise,' the Seventy Interpreters in their translation of this passage joined with what preceded, 'And he cast out Adam,' wishing them to be understood of Adam — whom, although God had cast out of Paradise, he yet willed to dwell over against Paradise: namely, that by the frequent sight of Paradise, and by the continual recollection of the felicity he had lost, he might be more vehemently pained in the inmost senses of his mind, and pursue with greater hatred the devil, who had been to him the author of so many evils, and pursue his own sin as the cause of so great unhappiness; and, repenting from his heart of the crime committed, might earn pardon from God. And the Fathers, following this reading of the Seventy Interpreters, and interpreting it, magnify and exaggerate this providence of God, and proclaim it as a great benefit bestowed on man. But the reading of the Seventy Interpreters, if you render it word for word into Latin, has thus in this place: 'And he cast out Adam, and placed him over against the Paradise of pleasure, and set the Cherubim, and a flaming turning sword, to guard the way of the tree of life.' But the Hebrew scripture [וישכן מקדם לגן עדן את הכרבים ואת להט החרב המתהפכת לשמר את דרך עץ החיים], likewise the Chaldaic Paraphrase, and our Latin version, join that phrase, 'And he placed before Paradise,' with the Cherubim and the flaming turning sword: which being placed before Paradise by God, the approach for man to the tree of life is altogether shut off.²