Commentaria in Exodum
WHEN SHE SAW THE BASKET IN THE SEDGES,—that is, in the carectum filled with sedges, rushes and papyri: for in Egypt papyrus grows, as rushes with us, in marshy places or on the margins of rivers. The papyrus is a small tree or shrub growing by the Nile, with an oblique root, triangular sides, ten cubits long, and tapering in slenderness: from the leaves of the papyrus, a thin film separated with a needle, they make paper for writing, which is hence called papyrus; and hence our papers, though made of ground linen rags, because yet they give the same use of writing, are called papyrus: from the wood of the papyrus, moreover, they build ships, whence that of Lucan, book 4:
When the Nile holds all things, the Memphitic boat is put together of the thirsty papyrus.
And Ovid, book 15 Metamorphoses:
And through the seven-flowing streams of papyrus-bearing Nile.
Nay Herodotus, book 2, writes that the Egyptians make their ships of rush. See Pliny, book 13, chap. 11.
6. ONE OF THE CHILDREN OF THE HEBREWS.—This was suggested to the daughter by her father’s cruel edict about destroying the Hebrew infants; but when she saw the boy circumcised, she could not doubt that he was a Hebrew: for the Egyptians had not yet embraced circumcision, which they afterwards accepted, as Jerem. chap. 9, verse 25 teaches, and Theodoret here, and Diodorus Siculus, book 1 Antiquities chap. 2, and Herodotus, book 2.
8. HER MOTHER.—In Hebrew, the mother of the child; but she was the same, her own mother and the mother of the boy her brother, namely Jochabed. She nursed (in Hebrew, gave suck to) Moses.
10. AND SHE ADOPTED HIM FOR A SON.—How did Pharao the father, hostile to the Hebrews, permit this? I answer, the king’s heart is in the hand of God, and was by him inclined to love of so comely a child, says Josephus. Philo adds that Thermutis, being childless, feigned herself pregnant and to have borne Moses, as though Moses were not adopted but her natural son. The Apostle seems to hint the same, Hebr. 11:24, when he says that Moses, grown up, denied himself to be the son of Pharao’s daughter; therefore he was before held to be her genuine son. Why then, on Pharao’s death, did not Moses but another (as I shall say at verse 11) succeed to the kingdom? Perhaps because the mother’s fraud and the adoption of Moses was discovered.
Hence also Moses was brought up in royal fashion in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, says St. Stephen, Acts 7:22. For, as Plato says: “Wisdom is most useful and necessary to power, that in the one indeed the body, in the other the mind of the prince may be established and adorned.” Again, the same Plato: “Such care,” he says, “as is to be taken in planting and forming little trees, such ought there to be in begetting and instructing children; but here is labour, there pleasure. Take care, however, lest we seem lulled to sleep in this, and more than wakeful in that.” The same, when asked, “What inheritance ought to be left to children?” answered: “That which fears neither hail, nor violence, nor even Jove himself.” Hence he himself said often to the young men whom he never ceased to rouse to live happily: “Put labour before leisure, unless you think rust better than splendour.” Again: “Note the contrary nature of virtue and pleasure; for to the momentary sweetness of this are fastened perpetual penitence, grief and torment; to that, on the other hand, after short pains, eternal delights even after death are joined.” Wherefore to a disciple tending his skin rather daintily: “How long, wretch,” he said, “will you go on building yourself a prison?” Elsewhere: “The wise,” he said, “put the mind in the first place, the body in the second, money in the third. So in the Republic let the first place be given to virtue, the second to bodily strength, the third to money, which is the handmaid of virtue and of the body.” For this reason he advised vigils, as friends of wisdom and chastity. Longer sleep, however, he detested, as the parent of evil enticements and offences, and very like death; he forbade also eating twice a day and being sated.
Moreover, the wisdom of the Egyptians was twofold, say Philo and Justin, Quest. 25 to the Orthodox. The first, open and exposed to all, namely Geometry, Arithmetic, Astrology and Music. The second, Hieroglyphic, which through symbols teaches the gravest mysteries of Physics, Theology and Politics; all these, therefore, nay medicine also, says Clement, Moses learned. Hence also the same Clement, book 6 Stromata, says that Moses in his rites and laws sometimes uses the hieroglyphic method of the Egyptians, that is, he delivers them through symbols and enigmas; and this is plain chiefly in the garments of the priests, the Cherubim, the ark and the fabric of the tabernacle. See what was said Can. 97. Marcus Varro in St. Augustine, book 18 On the City, chap. 4, teaches that the Egyptians first learned letters, Isis being their teacher, a little more than two thousand years before his own age. There is no doubt that Jacob, Joseph and the Hebrews dwelling in Egypt for 215 years taught them very many things; hence of Joseph the prince of Egypt it is said, Psalm 104: “To instruct his princes as himself, and to teach his ancients wisdom,” so that it is no wonder that in the doctrines and laws of the Egyptians many things very like the doctrine and law of the Hebrews are found in Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.
Philo adds again that teachers were summoned for Moses from Greece at great rewards, to teach the liberal arts; Chaldeans, the science of the stars, especially that which contains predictions of the future; Assyrians, to teach him their letters, as one destined successor of his grandfather’s throne, and called the younger king: but Moses studied chiefly to subdue the affections of the mind, and followed not the institutions of the Egyptians but the ancestral ones of his forefathers. Where note that Philo here uses a kind of amplification; for Moses was earlier and more ancient not only than all the wise men of Greece but also than all who wrote anything among the Greeks. For Cadmus, from whom the Greeks received letters, was much later than Moses, as Eusebius teaches, book 10 On the Preparation for the Gospel, chap. 3. How then does Philo say that teachers were summoned for Moses from Greece?
Josephus further narrates another thing of Moses, for which let credit rest with him: that Pharao set a diadem on the head of the infant Moses, but Moses took it off to the ground and trampled it with his feet; which when the Egyptians took as an ill omen, as if this infant would be destructive to Egypt, and that divine man who had foretold that such a boy would be born declared that Moses was that very boy and wished to kill him, Thermutis rescued Moses and saved him.
God willed that Moses, the future leader of the people, should be brought up in Pharao’s court, that as the future ruler of the people he might learn and imbibe royal courtesy, elegance of manners, greatness of mind, liberality and the other virtues of a king. Secondly, that afterwards, being God’s ambassador for the people to Pharao, he might be of greater authority with him, especially with so many signs, prodigies and plagues attending him.
AND SHE CALLED HIS NAME MOSES, SAYING: BECAUSE I TOOK HIM OUT OF THE WATER.—Philo, Josephus, Clement of Alexandria book 1 Strom., Procopius and Rabanus think that Moyses is an Egyptian name: for mo in Egyptian signifies water, or, as Josephus says, the Egyptians call water mo, and the saved yses: so that Moses is the same as saved from water. But I say Moses is a Hebrew name, Mose, and signifies drawn or drawn out, namely out of the waters; for its root is Hebrew, namely masa, which signifies to draw, or draw out. The Egyptian mother, adopting him, therefore gave a Hebrew name to the Hebrew infant: this is clear from the Hebrew text, which reads thus: vattikra semo Mose vattomer: ki min hammaim mesitihu, that is, and she called his name Moses, and said: Because out of the waters I drew him: where it is plain that Moses was called from the Hebrew mesitihu, which signifies I drew him out, namely out of the waters.
‸Note first, that it should be said genuinely Moses, but corruptly Moyses: so other proper names of the Hebrews are corrupted among Greeks and Latins; secondly, the Hebrews relate that Moses, reversed by anastrophe, is the same as hasschem, that is the Name itself, namely celebrated, great, powerful and terrible to Pharao and the Egyptians. Again, the name, that is the virtue, efficacy and wonderful power which was given to Moses; thirdly, Clement of Alexandria above relates that Moses, before he was exposed by his parents, was called Joachim, afterwards called Moses by Pharao’s daughter: and that he had a third name also, after he was taken up into heaven, and is called Melchi. Again Aben Ezra and R. Abraham say that Moses was called by the Egyptians Monion. Pererius also thinks that an Egyptian name was given to Moses by Pharao’s daughter, signifying the same as the Hebrew Moses, and that the name of Moses was afterwards imposed on him by the Hebrews. But all these are uncertain: for neither Holy Scripture nor Josephus nor Philo disclose any other name than Moses, whose etymology they give, as if he was so called by Hebrews and Egyptians alike; for in the following chapters Pharao and the Egyptians address him by no other name than Moses; but the historians of the Gentiles also, Tacitus, Trogus, Justin and others, always name him Moses. From the happy event, therefore, of his drawing out of the waters, Moses took his name, and that with auspicious omen and signification, that he himself likewise would draw out of the waters of afflictions and deliver the children of Israel, and lead them through the Red Sea dry-shod. “Fitting,” says St. Augustine, serm. 89 On the Time, “was the divine vengeance, that the parricide (Pharao, by Moses) should be punished by his own affections, and by the provision of his daughter should perish he who had forbidden mothers to give birth.”