Commentaria in Exodum
7. AND HE CALLED THE NAME OF THAT PLACE TEMPTATION.—Verse 7. The Hebrew: he called the name of that place massa umeriba, that is, temptation and contention, or chiding. Of this ingratitude of the Hebrews, and of the place, there is frequent mention in Scripture, showing how much it displeased God, 8, and Psalm 105:14. Furthermore this is not the water of contradiction, of which Num. 20: for that was after the passage of Sinai, in the thirty-third station, at Cades, verse 8.
8. AND AMALEC CAME, AND FOUGHT AGAINST ISRAEL IN RAPHIDIM.—Amalec, that is, the Amalecites, whose king or prince was called Amalec, because he was descended from Amalec son of Eliphaz and grandson of Esau, Genesis 36:16: as the kings of Egypt were called Ptolemies, from the first king Ptolemy, son of Lagus. The region of the Amalecites was in the desert, south of Judea, beyond the city of Petra, says St. Jerome in Hebrew Places. The cause of the war seems to have been the ancient and paternal hatred of Esau and his posterity against Jacob and his posterity, because of the primogeniture snatched from him and his, and the blessing of their father snatched away. For the Amalecites feared for themselves from so great an army of the Jacobeans, and dreaded lest that blessing which Jacob had snatched from his brother Esau, their parent, should now be fulfilled, Genesis 27:29. For they saw the Jacobeans tending with so great a force of armed men to the promised land; they meet them therefore to prevent their passage, and decide the matter by war. Tropologically, Amalec in Hebrew is the same as a licking people: this first meets Israel, because to those who go forth from the flesh and the world to God, the first enemies that meet them are the allurements and blandishments of the flesh; for from these temptations first arise, with which we must fight hand to hand with Josue, that is, with Jesus Christ, by looking to his and the Saints’ abstinence and continence, and by in fact mortifying the flesh with him, by chastisement and mortification of the body; but at a distance we must strive by prayer, which the mountain-man Aaron (Aaron in Hebrew signifies mountainous), that is Christ, and the hero Hur, that is the strength of the Holy Spirit, uphold. So Rupert and St. Gregory on the book of Kings.
11. AND WHEN MOSES LIFTED UP HIS HANDS, ISRAEL OVERCAME: BUT IF HE LET THEM DOWN A LITTLE, AMALEC OVERCAME.—By this symbol God signified that this victory was to be ascribed by the Hebrews not to the unwarlike crowd of his own, but to God dwelling in heaven: for Moses stretched forth his hands to heaven to invoke God the giver of victory. “Moses stood,” says St. Chrysostom, in his homily On Moses (if indeed he is the author of so Latin a sermon), “on the mountain, now very near heaven, now neighbouring the stars. And as much as the loftiness of the mountain had raised him, so much did prayer exhibit him nearer to God. Prayer is directed to the vengeance on the enemy, whose crimes already provoked destruction, etc. For which of the just has not fought by praying? Who has not overcome the enemy by praying? By prayers visions are opened to Daniel, flames are quenched, wild beasts grow dull, enemies fall, foes are conquered. It is lawful to converse with God by praying, lawful to talk with him when you will, lawful to purchase by prayers what you desire. And although you cannot hear his voice, yet while you receive what you ask, he deigns to converse with you, if not in words, yet in benefits.”
Secondly, by this symbol God wished to signify the intensity of Moses’s prayer; for “prayer,” says St. Augustine, “is a defence to him who prays, a sacrifice to God, a scourge to demons.” For the lifting up of the hands adumbrated the intensity of prayer, the letting down of the hands the slackening of prayer. And indeed Moses, vigorous and alert, lifting up his hands, with them likewise lifted up and bent his mind upon God: but when weary and tired he let down his hands, with them likewise he slackened his mind and prayer. Why those who pray lift up their hands, I have assigned seven reasons, on 1 Tim. 2:8. Moses seems however to have lifted and stretched out his hands joined, so that one palm embraced the other, which held the rod; for he could not have held the rod, as being a shepherd’s and a large one, lifted on high with one hand for so long.
This rod signified the cross of Christ: whence the Fathers teach that Moses here bore the posture and type of the cross of Jesus. So Tertullian, book 3 Against Marcion, chap. 18; Cyril in his Collections, chap. 16; Cyprian, book 2 Testimonies, chap. 21; Justin, Against Trypho, after the middle; Prosper, part 1 Predictions, last chap. Finally on this prayer and victory of Moses St. Chrysostom has a beautiful homily, in the sermon On Moses, vol. 1.
St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Bishop of Neocaesarea, followed the example of Moses. For when persecution was raging, he, about to pray for his fellow-citizens and the martyrs contending with the tyrant, went up with a deacon into a mountain, and there they prayed with outstretched hands. The persecutors pursued them, but seeing them did not recognise them: for they thought they saw not two men, but two trees. Nyssen is witness in his Life, who after this adds: “As Moses, when he was far from the battle line of the Amalecites, by prayer put strength into his countrymen against the enemy: so he (Gregory), as though he beheld with the eyes of his mind what was done, invoked divine help for those who were contending in the name of the faith.” He then relates the fruit of prayer, and a notable example of it: “And when,” he says, “he was once praying to God, he was suddenly struck with anguish, and as though a sound reached his ears, seemed to turn his ears to it: and after he had thus remained for a long time erect and motionless, then as if the spectacle set before him had had a good issue, he returned to his former state, and with a clear voice praised God for the victory, saying: Blessed be God, who hath not given us a prey to their teeth. And when his intimates asked what he had seen, he said that in that hour he had seen a great overthrow, the devil having been conquered by a certain noble youth in the contests undertaken for piety. He added also the name, calling him Troadius: and that after many torments, which he had bravely endured, he was crowned with the crown of martyrdom; the deacon, astonished at hearing this, when afterwards he went to the city, found that the thing had come to pass at precisely the same moment and in the same manner as Gregory had related.”
Symbolically, Moses here was a type of the contemplative life, Josue of the active; and that the latter ought to draw from the former, and to derive from it all its strength and energy and victory against the passions and all enemies: for so Josue drew the strength to fight and conquer from the prayer of Moses.