Commentaria in Exodum
Tropologically, the putting off of shoes signified first that the future leader and teacher of the people of God must cast away entirely all earthly cares, thoughts, affections and anxieties, and those cleaving to mortal life: for God wills nothing mortal in them, says St. Ambrose. For this reason angels also are painted barefoot, and unshod: “For this signifies that they are free, absolved and unencumbered, and from all stain of exterior abjection pure, and that they tend to the likeness of divine simplicity to the best of their powers,” says St. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy chap. 15. Wherefore Nyssen relates that Moses, after he here put off his shoes, never put them on again. “After,” he says, “he once by divine command loosed his feet from the corpse-like covering of skins, at which time he was walking on holy ground, he is related never afterwards to have girded his feet with shoes.”
Secondly, that he who approaches the divine mysteries and the contemplation of God must put off shoes, that is, passions and affections, together with human and earthly reasonings; hence Christ also before the Eucharist washed the feet of the disciples, that by this act he might signify that for those about to communicate the affections of the mind must be purified, and secular desires and cares cast away. Finally Nyssen: “Moses,” he says, “approaching God, loosed his shoes in the bush, that he might learn that of those things which are grasped either by sense or by mind nothing truly subsists beside the supreme essence, which is the cause of all, and on which all depend.”
6. I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB,—as if to say: I am the God whom Abraham, Isaac and Jacob formerly worshipped, and now also worship; to whom therefore, desiring the salvation of their posterity, and praying assiduously for it in limbo, I will now make good the faith which I once gave concerning your liberation.
From this place Christ, Matth. 22:32, proves against the Sadducees the immortality of the soul, and consequently the resurrection of the dead; for these are connected both by the opinion of the Sadducees, whom Christ there opposes, and naturally on the part of the thing. For the Sadducees, as also most others, denied the resurrection on this ground, that they denied the immortality of the soul, as is plain from Josephus, book 2 On the War, chap. 8, and Acts 23:8. Hence Christ says to them: “He is not the God of the dead,” whom namely the dead worship, or who glories in the dead; “but of the living;” these three patriarchs therefore still live with God, who keeps their souls alive, and will shortly clothe them with a body restored to life.
You will ask, why God here, and henceforth often, calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, rather than of Abel, Noe and others? I answer first, because these three were the nearest parents and founders of the Hebrew people, of which Moses was to be leader, and to which the whole Old Testament refers.
Secondly, because Abraham was the father of believers and of the faithful people, with whom God made covenant, to whom Isaac and Jacob succeeded Abraham.
Thirdly, because Chanaan was promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, into which God willed through Moses to bring the Hebrews.
Fourthly, because to these three God had been familiar and wonderfully beneficent, and had promised that he would do good to their posterity.
Fifthly, because in these three virtues shone eminently—in Abraham faith and obedience, in Isaac purity of mind and innocence, in Jacob patience and constancy in labours and hardships; whence Moses in Genesis narrates almost only the deeds of these three. Hence the Hebrews in affliction were wont to invoke God, and to ask pardon and grace for themselves by the merits of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as is plain Daniel 3. The names of these three, therefore, as also their virtues, as most pleasing and agreeable to himself, God sets before their posterity, that they themselves may imitate them: for a domestic example of virtue has a wonderful force to rouse the minds of others to the same. Plutarch tells of Themistocles that as a youth he gave himself to banquets and harlots; but as soon as he heard of Miltiades’ victory at Marathon, leaving these things he began to think of quite other things. To those wondering at the change he said: “The trophy of Miltiades does not let me sleep or be slothful.” Hence Christ to the Jews boasting: “We are the sons of Abraham:” “If,” he says, “you are the sons of Abraham, do the works of Abraham.”
You will ask secondly, why here thrice, that is for each singly, is the name of God repeated, saying: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?” I answer first, that God may show how great care he has of each, namely that he is God of each, that is provider and benefactor. Secondly, to show his intimate friendship and beneficence toward these three patriarchs, and how much he makes of each of them: namely that he is the God of each, that is, is wholly of each; for as when I say, this field is Peter’s, I signify the whole field to be Peter’s: so here, when God says he is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, he signifies that he is wholly of each, says Origen, hom. 22 on Matthew: he is not thus the God of others; whence verse 18 he calls himself the God of the Hebrews in general, but not the God of Aaron, the God of Caleb, the God of Josue in particular.
Thirdly, there is signified here the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, or the triad in the monad, says St. Basil and Severian in the Catena. For the name “God” thrice repeated signifies the unity of essence in three persons. Again Abraham represents God the Father, Isaac the Son, Jacob the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from Abraham through Isaac, that is, from the Father through the Son.
MOSES HID HIS FACE: FOR HE DURST NOT LOOK AT GOD.—Hence it is plain that Moses, from reverence of the divine majesty present and speaking to him from the bush, hid his face.
7. I HAVE SEEN.—In Hebrew, seeing I have seen, that is, wholly and most certainly I have seen, though I have hitherto kept silence.
8. I AM COME DOWN TO DELIVER THEM.—God speaks anthropopathically, or in human manner. For if the business were of a man placed in heaven, wishing to succour someone on earth, he would certainly descend. “I am come down,” therefore, not by change of place, who am everywhere, but by operation, and by the preparation of a speedy liberation of the Hebrews.
AND TO BRING THEM OUT OF THAT LAND INTO A GOOD AND SPACIOUS LAND.—St. Jerome to Dardanus asserts that Judea is small, and contains only 160 miles in length from Dan to Bersabee, in breadth only 46 miles from Joppe to Bethlehem; Judea is therefore smaller than our Belgium; it is called spacious, however, not absolutely but with respect to narrow Gessen, from which God led out the Hebrews, as he himself says here. Secondly, it was spacious with respect to the nation of the Hebrews, for this land at this time was smaller. Thirdly, it was spacious with respect to the fertility of the soil; for, as Hecataeus of Abdera says in Josephus, book 1 Against Apion: “The Jews are known to possess almost three million jugera of the best and most fertile land of the province. For Judea is of this extent.” A jugerum is as much land as a yoke of oxen can plough in a day; whence the length of a jugerum is 240 feet, the breadth 120; Judea therefore, though small, yet by fertility conveniently fed an innumerable multitude of men.
A LAND THAT FLOWETH WITH MILK AND HONEY.—It is a Hebrew hyperbole , signifying a land fertile in milk and honey, and abounding in all the best crops, fruits and delights. So Virgil, eclogue 3:
Let honey flow for them, and the rough bramble bear amomum.
And eclogue 4: And the hard oaks shall sweat dewy honey.
Rivers now of milk, now rivers of nectar flowed, and golden honey dripped from the green holm-oak.
This fertility of the promised land was partly from the gift of God, and his beneficence to the Hebrews, as is plain from what precedes, partly natural to it, as is plain Deut. 8:7, and this Pererius shows at length from Hecataeus, Josephus and Borchard, disp. 14.
9. THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL IS COME UNTO ME.—The word “therefore” does not give a cause, nor is it rational, but is an expletive and continuative of the speech. Hence the Theologians teach that the oppression of orphans and of the poor is a sin crying to heaven.
See here what extreme affliction and calamity do, namely compel one to invoke God, who, invoked, is at hand and succours. Plutarch relates that Themistocles said: “We had perished, had we not perished;” truly to perish is for many a salvation: for many had perished ill, unless they had perished well by God, well lost. So the Martyrs perished well in this age, that they might not perish in the age to come. Let us therefore also well perish here for God, lest we perish in Orcus: let affliction here destroy us, lest gehenna destroy us.
God here raises up Moses, struck down by the reverence and fear of the deity appearing in the bush, inviting him to himself by a more familiar and nearer converse. Thus he, who was veiling his face before God, was lifted up as he now conversed with God.