Loss, Tears, and Figurative Speech About God

'Verily there are men who have both the inward affection and the outward tears. But he who is thus, will be a Jeremiah. In weeping, God measureth more the sorrow than the tears.'

Then said John: 'O master, how doth man lose in weeping over things other than sin?'

Jesus answered: 'If Herod should give thee a mantle to keep for him, and afterwards should take it away from thee, wouldest thou have reason to weep?'

'No,' said John. Then said Jesus: 'Now hath man less reason to weep when he loseth aught, or hath not that which he would; for all cometh from the hand of God. Accordingly, shall not God have power to dispose at his pleasure of his own things, O foolish man? For thou hast of thine own, sin alone; and for that oughest thou to weep, and not for aught else.'

Said Matthew: 'O master, thou hast confessed before all Judaea that God hath no similitude like man, and now thou hast said that man receiveth from the hand of God; accordingly, since God hath hands he hath a similitude with man.'

Jesus answered: 'Thou art in error, O Matthew, and many have so erred, not knowing the sense of the words. For man ought to consider not the outward [form] of the words, but the sense; seeing that human speech is as it were an interpreter between us and God. Now know ye not, that when God willed to speak to our fathers on mount Sinai, our fathers cried out: "Speak thou to us, O Moses, and let not God speak to us, lest we die"? And what said God by Isaiah the prophet, but that, so far as the heaven is distant from the earth, even so are the ways of God distant from the ways of men, and the thoughts of God from the thoughts of men?'