Exodus 4
ECFExodus 4:2
Augustine of Hippo: Let me try to explain, as far as the Lord enables me to, what these signs mean. The rod stands for the kingdom, the snake for mortality; it was by the snake that man was given death to drink. The Lord was prepared to take this death to himself. So when the rod came down to earth it had the form of a snake, because the kingdom of God, which is Jesus Christ, came down to earth. He put on mortality, which he also nailed to the cross. Your holinesses know that when that proud and stiff-necked people grumbled against God in the desert, they began to be bitten by serpents and to die of the bites. In his mercy God provided a remedy, a remedy that restored health at the time but also foretold the wisdom that was to come in the future. — SERMON 6.7
Caesarius of Arles: That staff, dearly beloved, prefigured the mystery of the cross. Just as through the staff Egypt was struck by ten plagues, so also the whole world was humiliated and conquered by the cross. Just as Pharaoh and his people were afflicted by the power of the staff, with the result that he released the Jewish people to serve God, so the devil and his angels are wearied and oppressed by the mystery of the cross to such an extent that they cannot recall the Christian people from God’s service. — SERMON 95.5
Tertullian: But we know that prophecy expressed itself by things no less than by words. By words and also by deeds is the resurrection foretold. When Moses puts his hand into his bosom and then draws it out again dead, and again puts his hand into his bosom and plucks it out living, does not this apply as an anticipation of the resurrection to all humankind?—inasmuch as those three signs denoted the threefold power of God: when it shall, first, in the appointed order, subdue to man the old serpent, the devil, however formidable; then, second, draw forth the flesh from the bosom of death; and then, at last, shall pursue all blood [shed] in judgment. — ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH 28.1-2
Exodus 4:6
Ambrose of Milan: Again, another sign which Moses gave points to our Lord Jesus Christ. He put his hand into his bosom and drew it out again, and his hand had become as snow. A second time he put it in and drew it out, and it was again like the appearance of human flesh. This signified first the original glory of the Godhead of the Lord Jesus and then the assumption of our flesh, in which truth all nations and peoples must believe. So he put in his hand, for Christ is the right hand of God; and whosoever does not believe in his Godhead and incarnation is punished as a sinner; like that king who, while not believing open and plain signs, yet afterwards, when punished, prayed that he might find mercy. — On the Duties of the Clergy 3.15.95
Cassiodorus: Just as Moses was allowed to perform miracles with a rod, so he was ordered to thrust his hand into his bosom, and when it was brought out again it was found to be leprous; then he was ordered to insert it again, and it was at once healed. This indicates that the Jewish people was to become impure by abandoning the Lord Christ but that it would recover its former health by returning to him. — EXPOSITION OF THE Psalms 73:11
Origen of Alexandria: It is difficult to see what this sign can symbolize for us. But since we must not stop seeking and must deliver to the reader what occurs to us as an interpretation, we will say that in many passages the hand is a symbol of deeds. Now the bosom of Moses has two meanings. The first, in accordance with the sense of the letter, makes the deed of the doer like snow, as it says in the Hebrew, and leprous. The second, however, in accordance with the spiritual law, shows that the conduct is pure and that it is restored to the will of the nature of the Word. — COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF John 32.268
Exodus 4:10
Augustine of Hippo: [Moses] believes that by God’s will he can suddenly become eloquent when he says, “or since the time you began to speak to your servant.” He shows that it could happen that one who was not eloquent the day before, or the day before that, could suddenly become eloquent, from the time when the Lord began to speak to him. — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 7
Clement of Rome: Let us be imitators also of those who in goat-skins and sheep-skins [Hebrews 11:37] went about proclaiming the coming of Christ; I mean Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel among the prophets, with those others to whom a like testimony is borne [in Scripture]. Abraham was specially honoured, and was called the friend of God; yet he, earnestly regarding the glory of God, humbly declared, “I am but dust and ashes.” [Genesis 18:27] Moreover, it is thus written of Job, “Job was a righteous man, and blameless, truthful, God-fearing, and one that kept himself from all evil.” [Job 1:1] But bringing an accusation against himself, he said, “No man is free from defilement, even if his life be but of one day.” [Job 14:4-5] Moses was called faithful in all God’s house; and through his instrumentality, God punished Egypt with plagues and tortures. Yet he, though thus greatly honoured, did not adopt lofty language, but said, when the divine oracle came to him out of the bush, “Who am I, that You send me? I am a man of a feeble voice and a slow tongue.” [Exodus 4:10] And again he said, “I am but as the smoke of a pot.” — Clement’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 17
Origen of Alexandria: Moses himself once said: “I am alogos”(“wordless”). The Latin version uses a different expression, but we can translate the word alogos exactly as “without words and reason.” After he said this, he received reason and speech, which he admitted that he did not have before. When the people of Israel were in Egypt, before they had received the law, they too were without words and reason and thus in a sense mute. Then they received the Word; Moses was the image of it. So these people do not admit now what Moses had once admitted—that they are mute and wordless—but show by signs and silence that they have neither words nor reason. Do you not realize that the Jews are confessing their folly when none of them can give a reasonable explanation of the precepts of their law and of the predictions of their prophets? — HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF Luke 5:3
Origen of Alexandria: But I shall also bring forth still another passage for you which you cannot contradict. In Exodus where we have written in the codices of the church Moses responding to the Lord and saying, “Provide, Lord, another whom you will send. For I am feeble in voice and slow in tongue,” you have in the Hebrew copies, “But I am uncircumcised in lips.” Behold, you have a circumcision of lips according to your copies, which you say to be more accurate. If therefore according to you Moses still says that he is unworthy because he has not been circumcised in his lips, he certainly indicates this, that he would be worthier and holier who is circumcised in his lips. Therefore apply the pruning hook also to your lips and cut off the covering of your mouth since indeed such an understanding pleases you in the divine letters. But if you refer circumcision of lips to allegory and say no less that circumcision of ears is allegorical and figurative, why do you not also inquire after allegory in circumcision of the foreskin? — HOMILIES ON Genesis 3:5
Exodus 4:11
Augustine of Hippo: There are some who bring false charges against God, or rather against the Scriptures of the Old Testament, because God said that he himself makes a man blind or mute. So what do they say about Christ the Lord, who says openly in the Gospel, “I have come so that those who are blind may see and those who see might be made blind”? Who besides a fool would believe that something can happen to a man in regard to corporeal defects that God did not will? No one doubts that God wills all things justly. — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 8
Cyprian: Just as in Exodus God speaks to Moses, when he delays and fears to go to the people, saying, “Who gave a mouth to man and who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Did not I the Lord God? Go now, and I shall open your mouth, and I will teach you what you shall speak.” It is not difficult for God to open the mouth of a man devoted to him and to inspire constancy and confidence in speaking in one who confesses him, who in the book of Numbers made even a female ass speak against Balaam the prophet. Therefore let no one consider in persecutions what danger the devil brings, but rather let him bear in mind what assistance God affords. Let not the disturbances of men weaken the mind, but let divine protection strengthen the faith, since each one according to the Lord’s promises and the merits of his faith receives so much of God’s help as he thinks he receives, and since there is nothing which the Almighty cannot grant, except if the frail faith of the recipient be deficient. — Treatise XI. Exhortation to Martyrdom 10
Exodus 4:12
Ambrose of Milan: The Lord also said to the Apostles, opening their mouths, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whereby He declared that He is the same Who said to Moses, I will open thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say. Wherefore this wisdom, divine, unspeakable, unadulterated and incorruptible, pours her grace into the minds of her saints, and discloses to them knowledge that they may behold her glory. — Letter 65.4
Augustine of Hippo: It is clear that not only the instruction that comes from his mouth but also its being opened pertains to the will and grace of God. For God does not say, “You open your mouth, and I will instruct you,” but promised both: “I shall open, and I shall instruct.” Elsewhere he says in a psalm, “Open your mouth, and I shall fill it.” There it signifies the will in man to receive what God gives to one who is willing, so that “open your mouth” pertains to the initiative of the will and “I shall fill it” to the grace of God. But here the sense is “I shall both open your mouth and instruct you.” — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 9
Exodus 4:14
Augustine of Hippo: How can the anger of God be understood, since God is not gripped by any irrational disturbance, as man is? Where Scripture says something like this, we should have a consistent explanation to avoid repeating the same account too often. But one can rightly ask why God says here that he is angry with Moses about his brother Aaron, because he would speak to the people for Moses. For it means that God had not given Moses the fullest ability that he was going to give, because he was diffident. God wished the deed to be carried out by two men. He could also have done it through one, if that man had believed. But all these words, when they are considered more diligently, do not mean that the Lord in his anger had handed over Aaron for punishment. For he says this: “Behold, is your brother Aaron not a Levite? I know that when he speaks, he will speak eloquently.” These words show that God rather reproached Moses, who feared to go because he was less suitable, since he had a brother through whom he could say to the people what he wanted, because Moses himself had a weak voice and a slow tongue. Still, he should have put all his hope in God. Then he says the same things that he had promised shortly before and afterward grown angry. For he had said, “I shall open your mouth and instruct you.” But now he says, “I shall open your mouth and his mouth, and I shall teach you what to do.” But since he added, “And he will speak for you to the people,” the opening of the mouth seems to be provided, because Moses says he is slow of tongue. But the Lord did not will to supply [vocal strength] for the weakness of his voice but added the help of his brother Aaron. Moses could use Aaron’s voice, which was sufficient to teach the people. So when he says, “and you will put my words in his mouth,” he shows that he was going to provide him with words. For if he were only given things to hear for the people, God would have said, “into his ears.” Then it says a little later, “and he will speak for you to the people,” he shows clearly enough that the leading role was for Moses, the subordinate role for Aaron. What he says thereafter, “You will be to him as God,” perhaps this great mystery is to be examined closely. The figure suggests that Moses was the mediator between God and Aaron, and Aaron the mediator between Moses and the people. — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 10
Exodus 4:16
Augustine of Hippo: One should notice that when Moses is sent to the people, God does not say to him, “Behold, I gave you as a god to the people, and your brother will be your prophet,” but he says, “[Your brother] will speak to the people for you.” For Scripture had said, “He will be your mouth, and you will be to him as God.” It did not say, “You are god to him.” But to Pharaoh Moses is said to be given as god, and according to analogy, Aaron is a prophet of Moses, but to Pharaoh. Here it is suggested to us that prophets of God say what they hear from him. A prophet of God is nothing but one who speaks the words of God to men—those who either cannot hear God or do not deserve to. — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 17
Exodus 4:20
Augustine of Hippo: What was said above, that Moses placed his wife and his children on carts so that he might go with them into Egypt, but afterwards his father-in-law Jethro met him with them [in his company], after Moses had led the people out of Egypt, one can ask how both assertions can be true. One should realize that after the killing of Moses or of the child that the angel was going to carry out, his wife returned with the children. For some interpreters thought that the angel threatened them to keep a woman from accompanying Moses and thus forming an obstacle to the ministry that God had imposed on him. — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 12
Exodus 4:21
Augustine of Hippo: And you must not deny free will to Pharaoh just because God says in a number of places, “I have hardened Pharaoh” or “I will harden the heart of Pharaoh,” for it does not thereby follow that it was not Pharaoh himself that hardened his own heart. Furthermore, we read that this happened to Pharaoh after the plague of flies had been removed from the Egyptians, as the Scripture testifies: “And Pharaoh’s heart was hardened so that neither this time would he let the people go.” Thus it was that both God and Pharaoh caused this hardening of the heart: God, by his just judgments, Pharaoh, by his free will. — ON GRACE AND FREE WILL 23
Caesarius of Arles: Now let no one along with pagans or Manichaeans dare to censure or blame the justice of God. It is to be believed as most certain that not the violence of God but his own repeated wickedness and indomitable pride in opposition to God’s commands caused Pharaoh to become hardened. What does that mean which God said, “I will make him obstinate,” except that when my grace is withdrawn from him his own iniquity will harden him? In order that this may be known more clearly, we propose to your charity a comparison with visible things. As often as water is contracted by excessive cold, if the heat of the sun comes upon it, it becomes melted; when the same sun departs the water again becomes hard. Similarly the charity of many men freezes because of the excessive coldness of their sins, and they become as hard as ice; however, when the warmth of divine mercy comes upon them again, they are melted. — SERMON 101.4
Origen of Alexandria: Now many have been troubled by the story of Pharaoh, in dealing with whom God says several times, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.” For if he is hardened by God and through being hardened sins, he is not himself responsible for the sin; and if this is so, Pharaoh has no free will. And someone will say that in the same way those who are lost have no free will and will not be lost on their own account. Also the saying in Ezekiel, “I will take away their stony hearts and will put in them hearts of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my judgments,” might lead one to suppose that it was God who gave the power to walk in the commandments and to keep the judgments, by his removing the hindrance, the stony heart, and implanting something better, the heart of flesh. — ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 3.1.7
Richard Challoner: I shall harden: Not by being the efficient cause of his sin; but by withdrawing from him, for his just punishment, the dew of grace that might have softened his heart; and so suffering him to grow harder and harder.
Exodus 4:22
Cyril of Jerusalem: When you hear “firstborn,” do not think of this in human fashion; for among humans the firstborn have other brothers; and it is somewhere written, “Israel is my son, my firstborn.” But like Reuben, Israel was a rejected firstborn; for Reuben went up to his father’s bed, and Israel cast the Son of the Father out of the vineyard and crucified him. To others also Scripture says, “You are children of the Lord your God” and elsewhere, “I said, you are gods; all of you sons of the Most High.” Note “I said,” not “I begot.” They, from the fact that God said it, received adoption which they did not have, but he was not begotten to be other than he was before. Rather he was begotten Son from the beginning, Son of the Father, like in all things to his Genitor, begotten Life of Life, Light of Light, Truth of Truth, Wisdom of Wisdom, King of King, God of God, Power of Power. — Catechetical Lecture 11.4
Origen of Alexandria: Why too does he blame Pharaoh, saying, “You will not let my people go; behold, I will smite all the firstborn in Egypt, even your firstborn,” and all the rest that is recorded as being said by God through Moses to Pharaoh? It is incumbent on him who believes that the Scriptures are true and that God is just, if he is a thoughtful man, to take pains to show how God, in using such expressions as these, can be clearly conceived to be just. — ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 3.1.9
Origen of Alexandria: And is there anything more profound to say of Israel, not of nature but of grace, of whom it was written, “Israel is my firstborn son,” when Israel was in dispersion? You yourself will also understand that these are the scattered children of God for whom Jesus was to die in order to gather them together into one. — COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF John 28.185
Exodus 4:24
Augustine of Hippo: We ask first, whom did the angel wish to kill? Was it Moses, because Scripture says, “The angel approached him and sought to kill him”? For whom will he be thought to have approached except him who was in charge of his entire people and by whom the others were led? Or did the angel seek to kill the boy, whom his mother aided by circumcising him? Then one would understand that the reason why God wished to kill the child was that he was not circumcised and thus sanctioned the precept of circumcision by the severity of the punishment. If this is the case, it is unclear of whom it was said previously, “he sought to kill him,” because we do not know who it was until we discover it from what follows. It is a remarkable and unusual expression to say “he approached him and sought to kill him” about someone who had not been mentioned before. But there is such a usage in a psalm: “Its foundations are on the holy mountains; the Lord loves the gates of Zion.” For the psalm begins at that point and had not said anything about the Lord or about that city whose foundations were meant to be understood when the psalm said, “Its foundations are on the holy mountains.” But because of what follows, “the Lord loves the gates of Zion,” the foundations, either those of the Lord or of Zion—“of Zion” yields the better sense—are understood as the foundation of a city. But the gender of this pronoun, “its,” is ambiguous, for it can be masculine, feminine or neuter. In Greek, however, the feminine is autēs, whereas the masculine and neuter are autou, and the Greek text has autou, so we must understand that the foundations are those not of Zion but of the Lord. That is, [they are] the foundations that the Lord constitutes, of which Scripture has said, “the Lord building Jerusalem.” But when the psalm said, “Its foundations are on the holy mountains,” it had not previously mentioned either Zion or the Lord. Here too it is said, “He met him and sought to kill him,” although the child had not yet been named, so that we do not know of whom he was speaking in the words that follow. But still, if someone wants to hold that Moses is meant, he should not be strongly opposed. We should rather understand what follows, if we can, what it means when the text says that the angel refrained from killing any of them because the woman said, “The blood of the infant’s circumcision has stopped flowing.” She does not say that “he drew back from him” because she circumcised the infant but that “the blood of circumcision stopped.” Not that it flowed but that it stopped—in a great mystery, if I am not wrong. — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 11
Origen of Alexandria: We must also inquire who that being was of whom it is said in Exodus that he wished to kill Moses because he was setting out for Egypt. And afterwards, who is it that is called the “destroying angel,” and who also is he who in Leviticus is described as Apopompeus, that is, the Averter, of whom the Scripture speaks thus: “One lot for the Lord, and one lot for Apopompeus”? — ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 3.2.1
Richard Challoner: The Lord met him, and would have killed him: This was an angel representing the Lord, who treated Moses in this manner, for having neglected the circumcision of his younger son; which his wife understanding, circumcised her child upon the spot, upon which the angel let Moses go.
Exodus 4:25
Augustine of Hippo: If I had been a Jew in the times of the ancient people, when there was nothing better to be, I would surely have accepted circumcision. That “seal of the justice of the faith” had so much power at that time, before it was rendered void by the coming of the Lord, that the angel would have strangled the infant son of Moses if his mother had not taken up a stone and circumcised the child and thus by this sacrament warded off his imminent destruction. This sacrament even tamed the river Jordan and reduced it to a brook. The Lord himself received this sacrament after birth, although on the cross he made it void. — LETTER 23
Augustine of Hippo: And this was made manifest by the message of an angel in the case of Moses’ son, for when he was carried by his mother, being yet uncircumcised, it was required, by manifest present peril, that he should be circumcised. And when this was done, the danger of death was removed. As therefore in Abraham the justification of faith came first and circumcision was added afterwards as the seal of faith, so in Cornelius the spiritual sanctification came first in the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the sacrament of regeneration was added afterward in the laver of baptism. — ON BAPTISM 4.24.32
Augustine of Hippo: Christ was the rock whence was formed the stony blade for the circumcision, and the flesh of the foreskin was the body of sin. — ON THE GRACE OF CHRIST AND ORIGINAL SIN 2.31.36
Ephrem the Syrian: At the place where they were spending the night, the Lord came upon Moses and wanted to kill him, because he had discontinued circumcision in Midian for one of his sons who had not been circumcised. From the day [the Lord] spoke with him on Horeb, he had not been united to his wife, who was distressed; and she was under judgment because she had not put full faith in his word. [Moses] blamed her for keeping his son from being circumcised. They spent the night [preoccupied] with these thoughts. Suddenly an angel appeared for both of these reasons, while seeming to appear only because of circumcision.[The angel] appeared to Moses in anger so that his departure [from Midian] would not be ridiculed because he had discontinued circumcision without necessity, while the Hebrews had not interrupted it in spite of the death of their children. Now whom should he have feared, God, who prescribed circumcision, or his wife, who had stood in the way of circumcision? When Moses’ wife saw that he was about to die because she had stood in the way of circumcision, about which and on account of which he had argued with her that evening, “she took a piece of flint” and, still trembling from the vision of the angel, “circumcised her son,” letting him be spattered with his [own] blood. Then she held the angel’s feet and said, “I have a husband of blood. Do not cause suffering on the day of the celebration of circumcision.” Because there was great joy on the day Abraham circumcised Isaac, she said, “I too have a husband of blood. If you do not [refrain from harm] on account of me, who circumcised my son with my own hands, or on account of Moses, refrain on account of the commandment of circumcision itself which has been observed.” — COMMENTARY ON Exodus 4.4.1-3
Jerome: As regards Moses, it is clear that he would have been in peril at the inn, if Zipporah, which is by interpretation “a bird,” had not circumcised her son and cut off the foreskin of marriage with the knife which prefigured the gospel. — AGAINST JOVINIAN 1.20