Commentaria in Exodum
But I say: the genuine sense of this place is this: I God, passing before thee, O Moses, will call and proclaim the name of the Lord, saying: “Ruler, Lord,” and the other epithets of God, but chiefly this: “I will have mercy on whom I will,” that is, I am both clement and merciful, but most freely; for I have mercy on whom I will. For this epithet of clemency is expressed in several words in this passage of God, chap. 34, verse 6, where this voice or calling of God is recounted; for there is fulfilled what is here promised: for God wills above all to be invoked by us under this name of clemency, and that we rely on it, and not on our own merits. For clemency most becomes and adorns a princely, kingly and divine mind. The words, therefore, “I will have mercy on whom I will, and I will be merciful to whom it shall please me,” are to be taken technically or materially: for they depend as it were as the object on the verb I will call.
my back parts.” So Abulensis, Oleaster and Molina, who explain thus: “I will show thee every good,” that is, something most perfect and most excellent. Morally, note here that clemency is something great and divine. “Clemency becomes no one more than a prince,” says Seneca, in the book On Clemency, in whom see many excellent things on this virtue of a prince.
AND I WILL CALL BY THE NAME OF THE LORD.—Some read, and I shall be called, that is, and I will cause myself to be called your God and leader from the miracles which I shall do for you, says Hugh. But the Hebrew, Chaldee, Septuagint and Roman Latin have, and I will call, and this is the true reading, as if to say: “I will call by the name of the Lord,” that is, I will proclaim the name of the Lord; namely, when I shall pass before thee, covered and hidden in the rock, I will proclaim, that thou mayest know that I pass, and look, and see my back parts; I will proclaim, I say, the epithets of the name of God, saying, as is said in chap. 34, verse 6: “Ruler, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, patient and of much compassion and true,” etc., and this that I may teach thee the manner of invoking and entreating me, and of addressing me by these epithets. This is plain from the Septuagint, who render, I the Lord will call before thee; and from chap. 34, verse 6, where the Lord performs for Moses what he here promises him, which is especially clear in the Hebrew, in which in both places the phrase is the same: “I will call, therefore, by the name of the Lord,” that is, I will call and proclaim the epithets already mentioned of the name of the Lord, and by calling them will teach thee and thine to invoke.
I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I WILL,—the Hebrew, Septuagint and Chaldee: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,” that is, I will have mercy on whom I will; and Cicero, book 1 of the Offices: “Nothing,” he says, “is more praiseworthy, nothing more worthy of a great and illustrious man, than placability and clemency.” And Ovid, book 3 Tristia, eleg. 5:
The greater each is, the more placable in anger, and a generous mind admits gentle impulses. It is enough for the magnanimous lion to have laid bodies low: the fight has its end when the foe lies down. But the wolf, and foul bears, press on the dying, and every beast that is lesser in nobility.
Julius Caesar showed such clemency toward enemies and rebels that Marius said more than once: “Caesar, those who dare to speak before thee know not thy greatness; those who dare not, know not thy humanity and clemency.”
Augustus Caesar, calling Cinna, who was plotting his death: “I,” he said, “saved thee when found in the camp of the enemy, I granted thee all thy patrimony, I adorned thee with the priesthood: why hast thou wished to kill me?” Cinna being thrown into confusion, he ended his speech thus: “Life I give thee, Cinna, a second time, before to an enemy, now to a plotter and parricide. From this day let friendship begin between us; let us contend whether I have given thee life in better faith, or thou owest it to me.” And he offered him the consulship. Wouldst thou know the issue? He had Cinna ever after his dearest friend; Cinna alone made him his heir. So Suetonius in the Life of Augustus.
Alexander the Great was as clement a conqueror as he was a keen warrior, says Plutarch.
The Emperor Nero at the beginning of his reign was so clement that when he was required to subscribe the sentence of one condemned to death, he exclaimed: “Would that I knew not letters!”
The Emperor Titus, when his brother Domitian was plotting against him, did not avenge himself, but admonished him in these words: “What need to seek by parricide what will come to thee by my will, nay what thou hast already, being a sharer of the empire?” Does not Claudian say rightly:
Since we are surpassed in every gift, clemency alone makes us equal to the gods?
The Emperor Aurelian, as Vopiscus testifies, when he came to Tyana and found it shut against him, said in anger: “I will not leave a dog in this town.” At this word the soldiers were raised to hope of plunder; but when the city was taken, he answered the soldiers: “Come; I said I would not leave a dog; kill all the dogs,” and so he fulfilled his promise, and treated his enemies clemently.
To the wife of the younger Emperor Gallienus a certain man had sold paste gems for real ones; the thing discovered, the woman demanded vengeance. Caesar ordered the man to be seized, as if to throw him to a lion. Then in the arena, while the impostor and the people were expecting a terrible lion, a he-goat sprang out. All wondering at so ridiculous a thing, he ordered the herald to proclaim: “He practised imposture, and has suffered it.” By the same stroke he refuted the impostor and laughed at his wife. So Trebellius Pollio.
The Emperor Alexander Severus, when his wife Memmia and his mother Mammaea objected to him that “his power grew cheap through too great clemency,” answered: “But it is safer and longer-lasting.” The same made Ovinius Camillus, a senator who rebelled and aspired to tyranny, partner of the empire, and created him Caesar, says Lampridius.
The Emperor Rudolph, when after a change of manners he seemed to his people more clement than was fitting, said: “I have sometimes repented of having been severe and harsh, never of having been gentle and placable.” So Aeneas Sylvius, book 2 of the Commentaries on the deeds of Alfonso.
King Alfonso, as Panormitanus testifies, used to say: “I would rather save many by my clemency than destroy a few by my severity.” And to the more rigid: “Would you have lions and bears reign?” The same: “The wicked,” he said, “are recalled to the way of virtue sooner by kindness than by severity. I,” he said, “by justice am acceptable to the good, but to the wicked by clemency.” Sigismund Caesar, as Aeneas Sylvius testifies in his Life, “used to say that those kings were happy who, casting the proud out of the court, took the meek to themselves.”
20. THOU CANST NOT SEE MY FACE: FOR MAN SHALL NOT SEE ME AND LIVE.—He speaks of the bodily and assumed face (for this Moses asked to see, as I said), by which the majesty and glory of God somewhat represents itself and presents itself to be seen. For that the discourse is of this, and not of the face, that is the essence, of the deity, is plain from what follows: “Thou shalt see my back parts, but my face thou canst not see.” The sense, then, is, as if to say: Thou desirest, O Moses, to see the brightness of my face, that thou mayest see in the face him who speaks with thee, and whose voice thou hearest; but know that this cannot be: for this brightness of my face, though bodily and assumed, yet because it must in some way represent, shadow forth and set before thee the brightness of the essence and majesty, is therefore of such a kind and so great that no mortal eye can bear it, but man would at once be blinded by this brightness, nay, would lose life and die; for this is what he says: “Man shall not see me and live.” So Abulensis.
Symbolically Nyssen: “Man shall not see me and live,” because present knowledge, he says, is finite, but God is infinite.
Tropologically St. Gregory, book 18 of the Morals, chap. 37: No one ever sees God spiritually and lives carnally to the world: for we cannot at once enjoy God and the world. How God is seen by chaste minds in this life, see St. Bernard, sermon 31 on the Canticle, and St. Ambrose, book On the Good of Death, chap. 11.