Commentaria in Exodum
1. Moses answered and said: They will not believe me, nor hear my voice, but they will say: The Lord hath not appeared to thee. 2. Then he said to him: What is that thou holdest in thy hand? He answered: A rod. 3. And the Lord said: Cast it down on the ground. He cast it down, and it was turned into a serpent, so that Moses fled from it. 4. And the Lord said: Put forth thy hand, and take it by the tail. He put forth his hand, and took hold of it, and it was turned into a rod. 5. That they may believe, saith he, that the Lord God of their fathers hath appeared to thee, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 6. And the Lord said again: Put thy hand into thy bosom. And when he had put it into his bosom, he brought it forth leprous as snow. 7. Draw it back, saith he, into thy bosom. He drew it back, and brought it out again, and it was like the other flesh. 8. If they will not believe thee, saith he, nor hear the voice of the former sign, they will believe the word of the latter sign. 9. But if they will not believe even these two signs, nor hear thy voice: take of the water of the river, and pour it out upon the dry land, and whatsoever thou drawest out of the river shall be turned into blood. 10. Moses said: I beseech thee, Lord, I am not eloquent from yesterday and the day before: and since thou hast spoken to thy servant, I have more impediment and slowness of tongue. 11. The Lord said to him: Who made man’s mouth? or who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? did not I? 12. Go therefore, and I will be in thy mouth: and I will teach thee what thou shalt speak. 13. But he said: I beseech thee, Lord, send whom thou wilt send. 14. The Lord being angry at Moses, said: Aaron the Levite is thy brother, I know that he is eloquent: behold he cometh out to meet thee, and seeing thee, shall be glad at heart. 15. Speak to him, and put my words in his mouth: and I will be in thy mouth, and in his mouth, and will shew you what you must do. 16. He shall speak in thy stead to the people, and shall be thy mouth: but thou shalt be to him in those things that pertain to God. 17. And take this rod in thy hand, wherewith thou shalt do the signs. 18. Moses went away, and returned to Jethro his father in law, and said to him: I will go and return to my brethren into Egypt, that I may see if they be yet alive. And Jethro said to him: Go in peace. 19. The Lord therefore said to Moses in Madian: Go, and return into Egypt: for they are all dead that sought thy life. 20. Moses therefore took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and returned into Egypt, carrying the rod of God in his hand. 21. And the Lord said to him as he was returning into Egypt: See that thou do all the wonders before Pharao, which I have put in thy hand: I shall harden his heart, and he will not let the people go. 22. And thou shalt say to him: Thus saith the Lord: Israel is my firstborn. 23. I have said to thee: Let my son go, that he may serve me, and thou wouldst not let him go: behold I will kill thy firstborn. 24. And when he was in his journey, in the inn, the Lord met him, and would have killed him. 25. Immediately Sephora took a very sharp stone, and circumcised the foreskin of her son, and touched his feet, and said: A bloody spouse art thou to me. 26. And he let him go after she had said: A bloody spouse of the circumcision. 27. And the Lord said to Aaron: Go into the desert to meet Moses. And he went forth to meet him in the mountain of God, and kissed him. 28. And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord, by which he had sent him, and the signs that he had commanded. 29. And they came together, and assembled all the ancients of the children of Israel. 30. And Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had said to Moses: and he wrought the signs before the people, 31. And the people believed. And they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction: and falling down they adored.
1. THEY WILL NOT BELIEVE,—the people and common sort of the Hebrews: because among them many are stiff-necked. For concerning the ancients God had foretold, chap. 3, verse 18, that they would believe, and Moses without doubt had faith in this. This is the third excuse of Moses on account of the incredulity of the people: hence God descends to signs.
2. WHAT IS THAT THOU HOLDEST IN THY HAND?—God asks Moses not as ignorant, but to give him occasion to answer what he wished to hear from him.
AND HE ANSWERED: A ROD—a shepherd’s rod, with which he ruled the sheep. In the Hebrew there is a pretty paronomasia: God had asked mazze, “what is this?” Moses answers: matte, “a rod.”
You will ask, what does this rod signify literally? R. Abraham answers: The rod is Pharao, who in the time of Joseph was toward the Hebrews like a soft rod, flexible at Joseph’s nod; but Joseph being dead, was turned into a serpent, lying in wait for the Hebrews and plotting their destruction; but in the end was again made like a rod, when, tamed by the plagues of Moses, he permitted, nay compelled, the Hebrews to go out of Egypt.
But I say: By this rod and its metamorphosis were signified the vicissitudes of the Hebrews, or their three states in Egypt. For the Hebrews held the rod, that is the sceptre and principality, while Joseph lived and ruled; he being dead this rod was cast to the earth and turned into a serpent, because the Hebrews, formerly dear, after the death of Joseph were hateful to the Egyptians, as if they were serpents, who plotted snares and death against the Egyptians; again this serpent returned to a rod in the hand of Moses, as the Hebrew has it, because Moses brought back to his people sceptre, liberty and dominion. So Lyranus, Abulensis, Pererius.
Symbolically, by this rod was signified the leadership and supreme power which God was soon to give Moses, with which he struck and punished the Egyptians, and protected, led and governed the Hebrews; for this rod, which was to Moses as a sceptre, was formidable and hateful to the Egyptians like a serpent, but lovable to the Hebrews like a rod and shepherd’s staff. Moses is sent by God armed not with a lance but with a staff, a true wonder-worker, and with it he vanquishes Egypt. This is a type of Christ sending the Apostles with a staff, and arming them with power of working miracles by which they might subdue the world to him, Mark last chap., verse 17. Whence St. Bernard: “The saving trumpet sounds, miracles flash, and the world believes: what is said is quickly persuaded, when what is wondered at is shown.” A part of this Mosaic rod was found in the year of Christ 1008, and to it from Gaul, Italy and other provinces very many flocked, Baronius narrates from Glaber in the year just mentioned.
Allegorically, the rod is the wooden cross of Christ, which is turned into a serpent for the Jews and the impious: for these shrink from the cross as the punishment of malefactors; but by the tail, that is at the end of the world, they will lay hold of it, and know that it is not a serpent but a rod, that is, the power and wisdom of God. So St. Cyril, Origen, hom. 4; St. Augustine, serm. 86 On the Time.
Again Cyril in the Collections on Exodus: Secondly, he says, the rod is human nature, which was created upright by God and placed in paradise, where it was in the hand of Moses, that is in the care and protection of God; through sin this rod was cast to the earth, when it was turned into a serpent, because it believed the tempting serpent, consented and clung to him; and, as the serpent has poison innate, so we contract original sin from Adam by natural propagation, through which as serpents we creep on the ground and savour only earthly things: Christ took hold of this serpent not by the head where it has its poison, but by the tail, because he assumed human nature without sin. Again, by the tail, that is in the last age of the world, he assumed human nature, and so united it to himself and to God, nay made it more beautiful and august. So Pererius.
Anagogically, the same Cyril, book On the Incarnation, chap. 14: The rod, he says, is Christ, who is the power of the Father, and who holds the rod or sceptre of the kingdom and equity. This is turned into a serpent in the incarnation; for human nature through the sin of Adam was made malignant as a serpent: Christ however put on the nature and likeness of the sinner; hence the serpent exalted in the desert signified Christ exalted on the cross, as is said John 3:14. This serpent by the resurrection is again made a rod, that is lord, king, judge, triumpher, and prince of heaven and earth. In like manner Cyril in the same place, chap. 15, following the sign of the leprosy of Moses, interprets it of Christ born, suffering and rising again.
Tropologically, the rod is discipline, correction and chastisement, which at first seems horrid as a serpent to boys, the imperfect and the unmortified; but in the end, when they experience its fruit, they acknowledge it to be a fatherly and pastoral rod: for, as the Apostle says, Hebr. 12:11: “Now all chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring with it joy, but sorrow: but afterwards it will yield to them that are exercised by it, the most peaceable fruit of justice.”