Commentaria in Exodum
Allegorically Cyril: The mother, he says, who shut her son (Moses) in a basket, is the Synagogue, which set apart Christ born of her as a stranger; but Pharao’s daughter, that is the Church of the Gentiles, received him, and that at the waters of baptism. And Prosper: “When,” he says, “the daughter of Pharao went down to Moses, that is the doctrine of this world to Christ, washed by the spiritual wave, she laid aside pride, and receiving, as a grown woman a little one, by humble grace joined to the Church, she who had been a daughter is made the mother of Christ.” Theodoret adds: The mother again received her son from the Gentile Egyptian woman to be brought up, because Israel will receive the faith of Christ from the Church of the Gentiles in the last times. Moses therefore born in the persecution of Pharao, that is, Christ born in the persecution of Herod and of the devil, who pressed the whole world under his yoke. Moses hidden three months signifies Christ hidden under the old law in a threefold time, namely of Judges, Kings and Pontiffs. Moses cast into the river by his parents signifies Christ plunged by the Jews into the waters of passion and death, whom the Egyptian woman, that is Gentilism, received and treated magnificently and splendidly, seeing his elegance in heavenly wisdom, life and manners.
Tropologically, Hugh of St. Victor in the allegory on Exodus 1: Moses, he says, is whoever is in the river of the present age; the king’s daughter is the grace of God, which adopts us, rescued from the flow of the age, as sons of God; and delivers us, as Hebrews, that is, as passing into heaven, to our mother the Church to be nursed.
11. IN THOSE DAYS (when Moses was in his 40th year, as St. Stephen says, Acts 7:23), AFTER MOSES WAS GROWN UP.—Josephus and very many of his followers narrate that Moses, placed in command by Pharao of the Ethiopian war, defeated the Ethiopians; and took the royal city Saba, which was afterwards called Meroe by Cambyses from his sister’s name, by the surrender of Tharbis, the daughter of the king of the Ethiopians: whom Moses afterwards, according to the compact, took to wife.
Tornielus assigns this war of Moses to the 40th year of Moses, when Amenophis, under whom Moses was born, had long since died, and Orus reigned, if we believe Eusebius. Whatever be the truth of this war, which Theodoret and others call fabulous, there is no doubt that Moses passed over many things about himself out of love of humility, nor in these forty years in which he lived in the court as a prince was he slothful or idle. The author of the Scholastic History and others add that this Tharbis was that Ethiopian woman because of whom Maria and Aaron murmured against Moses, Num. 12. Again, that Moses, victory won, when he wished to return into Egypt and Tharbis would not let him go, as one most skilled in the stars, carved two images in gems, of such virtue and power that one should bring memory, the other oblivion; and having set them in equal rings, he kept one, namely of memory, for himself, and gave the other, of oblivion, to Tharbis: which she putting on soon forgot Moses, and so he could return into Egypt. But these are fables and trifles.
HE WENT OUT TO HIS BRETHREN,—The Hebrews call brethren all those who are of the same family or nation.
AND SAW THEIR AFFLICTION.—Philo adds that Moses often saw his Israelites labouring and afflicted, and consoled them, and admonished the overseers of the works to gentleness; and so the courtiers by degrees began to hold him suspect, and at last reported him to the king as disaffected and plotting novelties, and filled his ears with calumnies. Behold the fortitude of Moses, professing himself an Israelite, and choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of temporal sin, Hebr. 11:25. Moses therefore despised the kingdom of Egypt, confessing himself a Hebrew, and thereby denying that he was the son of Pharao’s daughter. For this, says Ambrose, on Psalm 118, he was made by God the god of Pharao, that is, superior to him and terrible to him. For this also Philo calls Moses a miracle of nature: for to seek, I do not say royal dignity, but friendship, is an ordinary work in nature; but to spurn and indeed detest these is plainly extraordinary, and therefore a miracle, and the more so as he despised them not for his own advantage but for the public good and the sake of his nation. So Philo. This is the true loftiness of mind, to put the kingdom after piety: this the highest dignity, which made him worthier than the dignity of a king. For greater is he who despises dignity than he who looks up to and takes it. For the one is superior in honour, the other inferior; the one is lord of pomp, the other its slave; the latter hungers for glory like a beggar, the former scorns it like a master.
AN EGYPTIAN STRIKING ONE OF THE HEBREWS.—Philo says this Egyptian was one of the overseers, who used to beat so unjustly the Hebrews oppressed with an unjust burden. St. Stephen, Acts 7, says he did him an injury instead of a blow. The Hebrews relate that this Egyptian committed adultery with the wife of this Hebrew, and that therefore a quarrel arising he struck him; but this is a fiction after their manner. It is certain that this striking was grave and enormous, either in itself, or by circumstances, or by what had preceded, as Philo says, so that the striker deserved to be punished with death: otherwise Moses would not have had the power and right, nor the will, to kill him.
12. HE SLEW THE EGYPTIAN, AND HID HIM IN THE SAND.—“Struck,” that is, killed; for he buried and hid him in the sand.
You will ask whether Moses killed him justly and rightly? For Moses, living a private life, seems to have received no authority for this either from God or from man.
First, the Hebrews, even the ancient, as Clement of Alexandria attests, book 1 Stromata, excuse Moses, because he killed the Egyptian not with the sword but by pronouncing against him the tetragrammaton name Jehova, as St. Peter killed Ananias and Sapphira with a word alone: but this is a fiction: for to strike is to smite not with a word but with a sword or other arms. Again, the name Jehova had not yet been revealed to Moses. For God first gave it to himself and reveals it to Moses, Exodus 6:3.
Secondly, St. Augustine, book 22 Against Faustus, chap. 70, blames this deed of Moses, as done outside the order of power and justice; and ascribes it to his zeal, but excessive and uncultivated, which poured forth, he says, signs vicious indeed but of great fertility; for this excessive zeal signified that Moses, when cultivated and having learned to rule and temper this zeal by reason, would be a distinguished and spirited leader of the people. Hence Oecumenius also, on the Epistle of Jude, relates that the devil in his altercation with Michael over the body of Moses said Moses was not worthy of burial, because he had unjustly killed the Egyptian, and had buried him not in a tomb but in sand.
Thirdly, St. Ambrose, book 1 Offices, chap. 36, St. Thomas and Burgensis ascribe this deed of Moses to just defence, by which he was bound out of charity to defend a Hebrew unjustly attacked. “For he who does not defend his companion from injury when he can,” says St. Ambrose, “is as much in fault as he who does it.” For, as Toletus says on Luke 12, annot. 97, there was then no judge who could avert the injury, and the injury was pressing and suffered no delay of time: whence it was then Moses’ part to help.
Cajetan adds that these overseers of the works were public enemies and oppressors of the Hebrews: and therefore it was lawful for the Hebrews to kill them if they could, just as in a just war it is lawful to kill an enemy and invader anywhere.
Fourthly, most plainly and solidly: Moses did this having obtained authority from divine inspiration: for God moved Moses to this slaughter, that he might begin to act as avenger of his people, and kill a public enemy; for this is what St. Stephen says, Acts 7:25: “He avenged him that suffered the injury, striking the Egyptian: and he thought that his brethren understood that God by his hand would save them.” Moses knew therefore, and thought others also commonly knew, that he was already designated by God as leader and avenger of the Hebrews, and that God wished him to prepare himself for this leadership by this slaughter and just vengeance; and so St. Stephen here seems to confirm the history of Josephus, who narrates an oracle given to his father Amram concerning his son Moses as the future avenger and liberator of the Hebrews. So St. Augustine here, Rupert, St. Thomas and others.