Concerning these words this alone seems here to be noted: because Moses said above, in the last words of the fifth chapter, that Noah was five hundred years old when he begot these three sons, and because after their generation Noah is not read to have begotten any other son in the remaining hundred years up to the Flood, from this the blessed Chrysostom gathers that Noah abstained from marriage until the five-hundredth year of his age and led a celibate life. For if he had married before, he would also before have be-…²

…gotten sons. But as he began late to give himself to the begetting of sons, so, as soon as he had begotten them, he left off bestowing care on children for those hundred years that remained up to the Flood. Wherefore Chrysostom greatly marvels and extols with the highest praises so great a continence of that man — especially in that first age of the world, in which age to use marriage and to serve the begetting of sons was reckoned not only honorable and praiseworthy, but nearly necessary; and he could even be incited to it by the example of those who among his forefathers had been most holy and most dear to God, Seth, I mean, and Henoch, since they had wives and begot sons before their hundredth year, or a little more. The continence of Noah is shown to be still more admirable by comparison with the rest of the men of that age, who, the reins of their desires loosed, rushed headlong to every kind of lust and obscenity.³

But let the reader hear Chrysostom; for he, explaining the aforesaid words, ‘Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth’: ‘Not without cause,’ he says, ‘did divine Scripture designate to us both the time and the number of the sons of this just man; namely, it wished latently to intimate his excellent and manifold virtue. For above, saying that Noah was five hundred years old when he begot these three sons, it taught us sufficiently that the highest magnitude of his continence existed then, when all the men of his time were given to such great intemperance, and all ages rushed to evil with such great wantonness. For you have heard Scripture saying: When the Lord saw that the wickednesses upon the earth were full, and that there was none who did not diligently devise evil in his heart from his youth — where it plainly declares that the young outdid the elder in years, and that the old raged no less than the young, and that even the age inexperienced in evils was inclined to evil with great proneness. That we may therefore learn how, while all the rest displayed so great a madness and frenzy of lust, that just man alone remained, strenuously keeping the virtue of continence until he reached the five-hundredth year, Scripture therefore said that Noah, when he was five hundred years old, begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Consider how great a thing of virtue it was, for so great a length of time, to bridle the frenzy of concupiscence and to enter on a way far different from others, and not only to restrain himself from unlawful intercourse, but even from the lawful and blameless.’ Thus Chrysostom.⁴

It was, then, a signal example of the chastity of Noah (on account of which, perhaps, he so greatly pleased God): first, that he began so late to beget, namely when he was five hundred years old; then, that so quickly he left off the use of marriage and the begetting of sons, for he is not read to have begotten more than these three sons. Let the heretic now go and shamelessly cry out that it is impossible for a man to lead a celibate life — as though we had few examples of such continence, not only in the time of the evangelical law, but even in the time of the Mosaic law, indeed even before the law of Moses. Certainly this one example of Noah ought to be enough to convict the shamelessness of those men. For if Noah could live chastely for five hundred years, why now too, for a hundred years (how great…⁵

…at most, is the life of man) can someone not live chastely?⁶

Although this too could here be said with sufficient probability: that Noah, before the five-hundredth year of his life, both had a wife and begot sons, but that they are nevertheless passed over in silence in the sacred writings because they were all carried off before the Flood by either a natural or a violent death, and that these three alone survived the Flood, and through them the whole race of men was propagated and multiplied. But why, someone will say, is neither Noah himself nor any of his sons recorded to have begotten any son in those hundred years that remained after the generation of those three sons up to the Flood? For my part I think the cause of this is undiscovered by mortals — unless perhaps, as if by divining, it helps to say that it was done by divine counsel, because God knew that, if Noah had begotten more sons, they would, by the example of the rest of men, have been impious and wicked, and on that account would have perished in the Flood, which would surely have been a cause of the greatest grief and sorrow to Noah; or because, with Noah’s progeny increasing and multiplying immensely, the throng of men who were to be saved from the Flood by the ark would have been greater than was fitting. But concerning the order of time in which these three sons of Noah were begotten — that is, which was born first, which second or last — it will be disputed in another place.⁷