That I will not take from a thread even to a shoe thong, and that I will not take anything that is yours, lest you should say, I have made Abram rich:
All Commentaries on Genesis 14:23 Go To Genesis 14
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
It is characteristic of the perfect mind not to take for itself any earthly thing, anything prone to bodily seduction. This is why Abraham says, “I will take nothing of what is yours.” He avoids intemperance like the plague. He flees from sensual bodily temptations as from filth. He rejects worldly pleasures to seek those that are above the world. This is what it means to raise one’s hands to the Lord. The hand that does good is the virtue of the soul. He puts forth his hand not to the fruit of the earthly tree but to the Lord, “who,” Scripture says, “made heaven and earth,” that is to say, both intelligible and visible substance. In fact, the invisible ousia, or substance, is heaven, while the earth is the visible and sensible substance. The passage then means that Abraham raises the virtue of his mind to heavenly things. From that intelligible substance he might reach the heights of the contemplative life, looking not to the things that are seen but to those that are not seen; not to earthly things, not to bodily things; not to things present but to things that are immaterial, eternal, heavenly. But from that other substance, the visible, he extracts the benefit of a discipline related to the practical order and to civil life. .
