Bede : But what is added: When the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and a great and dark dread fell upon him, signifies the great distress and tribulation of the faithful that will occur near the end of this age. About which the Lord says in the Gospel: For then there will be great tribulation such as has not been since the beginning (Matthew 24:21). — Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron) Didymus the Blind : As he contemplated the wonderful things of God, Abraham was struck with fear, the fear that belongs to the perfect. It will be noted … that the ecstasy came upon him "toward sunset." The text suggests by this a progression, because the day of the present state has gone by for Abraham so that further progress might follow. Thus the blessing was extended to Abraham which says, "I will fill you with length of days,"a blessing that by no means promised him longevity but, as is quite clear, further advances in illumination.An ecstasy then fell upon him, not the ecstasy that resembles a loss of reason but that of wonder, the thrill of passing from visible to invisible things. The apostle even says, "Indeed, if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you." By this he means not "we are out of our minds for God" but "even if we are transported through contemplation beyond the realm of human things, we do this for God." David likewise declares, "I said in my ecstasy: every man is a liar." It was indeed because he was transported out of himself to participate in the divine that he said of people that they are liars, because he was no longer merely a man, by reason of his communion with the Holy Spirit. He was quite different from those of whom it is said, "While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving like ordinary men?" When Abraham then had been transported out of himself, a "dark fear" fell upon him, dark not by participation in darkness but in the sense of obscurity, of something whose meaning is not immediately evident. Being a "great" fear, it is not the kind that happens to the mediocre. Remember "darkness" is often used for "obscurity," as according to this saying: "He made darkness around him his canopy." It is indeed true that the contemplation and grasp of supernatural truths produce, even among great people, a divine vertigo and fear, and it is with some trepidation that they apply themselves to such things. — ON Genesis 230 Jerome : (Verse 12) But when the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. The word for deep sleep in Hebrew is Thardema (), which means a descending, and we translated it as a deep sleep. — Hebrew Questions on Genesis Augustine of Hippo : ON THE TROUBLE OF ABRAHAM. — The text of the Scripture reads: And about sunset a trance fell upon Abram, and, behold a great dark terror fell upon him . It is a question to be addressed, because there are some who claim that the soul of the wise man is distant to these frights. We can ask ourselves if it is true what counts A. Gellius in his books of the Attic Nights (A. Ulo Gellio, Noct. Att. 19, 1.). He was a philosopher who had lost his calm, found himself in a ship during a great storm at sea, and was rebuked by a dissolute young man, who insulted him, after having passed the danger, by the fact that the aforementioned philosopher would have lost his calm so soon-while he had neither feared nor faded. The philosopher replied that the young man had not lost his calm precisely because he had nothing to fear for his perverted soul, for he was not even worthy of fearing anything. The others, worried that they had been with him on the ship, and awaiting a reply, presented them with a book of the stoic Epictetus, in which it was said that it had not pleased the Stoics to assert that no such disturbance affects the soul of the wise man, as if nothing similar were found in their feelings. For they say that there is a disturbance when reason yields to such sensations. When it does not yield, there is no need to be called a disturbance. But we must take into account how A. Gellius says this and discuss the question with caution. [ — QUESTIONS ON GENESIS, Q. 29 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)