Commentaria in Exodum
We lately knew in Belgium a chief courtier who for many years had been most intimate with a neighbouring prince and in the highest delights: afterwards, for a slight cause, he fell from all his favour. Retiring from the court he began to philosophize more deeply and to give himself to God and his soul, and then he used to say repeatedly: I have learned by experience how great a difference there is between services rendered to a prince and services rendered to God; again, how great a difference between the favour of princes and the favour of God. For I have learned and seen that great and many services rendered to a prince are quickly given to oblivion and little rewarded; but if you offend a prince even lightly, I have seen that it remains laid up in a deep mind and is severely avenged: but services rendered to God, even small ones, I have learned are kept in his eternal memory and rewarded by him with great and eternal rewards; while offences against him, even grave ones, are so blotted out by slight penance that he at once forgets all injury and of his own accord remits the penalty. This is what the Comic poet says:
If you do any good, thanks is lighter than a feather: if any sin be done, they bear anger heavy as lead.
Rightly therefore St. Bernard exclaims, epist. 107: “O wicked age, which are wont so to bless only your own friends as to make them enemies of God! Aman found grace with king Assuerus; this grace brought him a cross; Achitophel found grace with Absalom; this brought him a halter.” You will ask secondly, why did God permit the Hebrews to be oppressed in Egypt by so hard and lasting a servitude? Rupert answers that they were justly afflicted and shut up in that prison into which they had sent their brother Joseph; but that was the sin of the fathers, not of their sons. I answer therefore first, that some of them had imbibed the impious customs and idolatry of the Egyptians; for that the Hebrews worshipped Apis and idols in Egypt Ezechiel teaches, chap. 20, verse 7; and St. Jerome and Theodoret expressly teach the same there. Hence, a little after, they made a calf at Sinai, as if it were the Egyptian Apis: hence also Moses so often forbids and condemns idolatry in the Pentateuch. So Aben Ezra. This servitude was therefore a punishment of sin. Secondly, by this servitude as by a goad God wished to rouse them to turn away from Egypt and the Egyptians and to press on to Chanaan, destined for them by himself. Thirdly, that by this servitude the Hebrews might have an occasion and just title for despoiling Egypt, and so enriching themselves. Fourthly, that by it occasion might be given for working very many and very great prodigies, namely the 10 plagues of Egypt, by which God wished to make known to the whole world his power and vengeance upon the impious Egyptians, and his clemency and paternal care for his Hebrews. Fifthly, that by it he might purge, perfect and make illustrious the Hebrews; for the more they were oppressed, the more they increased. Sixthly, that by this gall, as it were, he might make insipid the honey and delights of Egypt to the Hebrews, who panted after them, so that having gone out they might never desire to return into Egypt; for how the Hebrews loved the pots of Egypt and wished to go back to them is plain from Num. 11:5, and chap. 14:3.
LEST PERHAPS THEY MULTIPLY, AND IF ANY WAR RISE AGAINST US, THEY JOIN WITH OUR ENEMIES, AND HAVING OVERCOME US, DEPART OUT OF THE LAND.—Note here three causes moving the Egyptians to the oppression of the Hebrews, namely fear, envy and hatred. First, fear, lest, war coming on, they should join the enemies of the Egyptians, and, these being conquered and despoiled, go out into the land promised to them by God, namely Chanaan. For this the Hebrews boasted of as promised by God to Abraham and to themselves, and therefore the Egyptians feared them. Secondly, envy, because they saw themselves surpassed by the foreign Hebrews, who were furnished and excelled with numerous, beautiful, robust and clever offspring and other gifts of mind and body. Thirdly, hatred conceived from diversity of religion, character and manners: for the Egyptians worshipped their Apis or ox and other animals, the Hebrews the one true God: hence the Hebrews sacrificed and ate oxen and sheep, which the Egyptians abominated. So Josephus, who adds a fourth cause of hatred, namely that certain seers had foretold to the Egyptians that there would shortly be born of the Hebrews one who, if he grew up, would overthrow the empire of the Egyptians, but would wonderfully increase and prosper the affairs of the Hebrews: this was Moses.
11. HE SET OVER THEM MASTERS OF THE WORKS.—Verse 14, [Hebrew] sare missim, that is, masters of tributes, not of money but of bricks, that is, that each should render his daily task of work. Rightly therefore our Interpreter renders masters of the works: whence the Septuagint also rendered “overseers of the works.” For these were not, says Philo, like architects directing a building, but like imperious exactors urging on the work, and that to enervate the strength of the Hebrews and to exhaust and exterminate, by excessive labour, their power of begetting and propagating themselves: namely that, pressed by hardships, when it is weariness to live, conjugal pleasure should not please. Behold how Pharao, himself the enemy of the faithful, and the demon, know that this is true:
Take away leisure, and Cupid’s bows have perished.
How truly that young man in St. Jerome, epistle to Rusticus, tempted by lust and day after day accused falsely of a crime of fornication committed (the Abbot secretly contriving it for the victory over the temptation), said: “To live is not permitted: shall it please me to fornicate?” Hear Philo, book 1 On the Life of Moses, describing this bitter servitude of the Hebrews: “The king,” he says, “compelled to servile works men not only freeborn but strangers. Secondly, he commanded them more than they could bear, heaping labours upon labours. Thirdly, if anyone withdrew from labour through infirmity, it was judged a capital offence. Fourthly, the works were presided over by the most pitiless and cruel men, whom accordingly they called exactors.” Fifthly, from excessive labour and heat very many were seized and died of plague: whom the Egyptians cast out unburied, says Philo.
Sixthly, Eupolemus adds in Eusebius, book 9 On the Preparation for the Gospel, that the king commanded the Hebrews to be clothed in a different dress from the Egyptians, that he might thus expose them to the mockery and vexation of all, and that this king was therefore punished by God and perished tormented by the disease of elephantiasis.
WORKS.—What works were these that were imposed on the Hebrews by the Egyptians? I answer: The first work was to form clay into bricks, plain from verse 14. The second, to build the cities Phithom and Ramesses, as is said here. The third, to lead the Nile off into many ditches, to irrigate the fields and meadows of individuals, and to surround the ditches with embankments. So Josephus, who fourthly ascribes to the Hebrews the vast foundations of the pyramids. Finally, verse 14, Scripture says they served in all service in the works of the earth.
Morally, St. Bernard in the Sentences: “The masters,” he says, “of Pharao’s works are three: the foul heat of burning luxury, the anxious fury of raging avarice, the noxious appetite of empty glory.”
AND THEY BUILT CITIES OF TABERNACLES.—So Aquila also rendered, says Procopius; the Chaldee renders “cities of treasures,” so that the Hebrew sachan, whence miskenot, is by metathesis the same as the Latin censere and census. The Septuagint render “fortified cities”; Oleaster, “shut-up cities,” or cities for shutting in, namely arms or something else. The Hebrew miskenot properly signifies granaries, storehouses, repositories, as Vatablus and others render.
These cities were therefore like granaries (whence our Interpreter renders tabernacles) of the kingdom, in which the public grain, oil, wine, etc., were stored: for these were the wealth and treasures of the Egyptians; and therefore these cities were fortified and shut up, as the Septuagint and others render.
PHARAO.—Note: all the kings of Egypt are called Pharaos, as all the Roman Emperors are called Caesars. You will ask, whence? First, some think Pharaos are so called from Pharos, an island of Egypt; secondly, others say: Pharao in Hebrew is the same as free, laid bare, unencumbered (from the root para, that is, he laid bare, set free), and hence the Latin Baro seems to be derived; kings therefore were called Pharaos as if Barons, that is, free princes and rulers. But Pharao is an Egyptian name, not a Hebrew one. Thirdly, others think the kings of Egypt were called Pharaos from their first king Pharao, as afterwards the same were called Ptolemies from the first Ptolemy, son of Lagus, to whom Alexander the Great assigned Egypt. But since we nowhere read of a first king who was called Pharao by his proper name, fourthly it seems truer that Pharao is a name of dignity, as among us Augustus is a name. So Eusebius in the Chronicle, and Josephus, who expressly teaches, book 8 of the Antiquities, chap. 6, that Pharao in Egyptian signifies king: “Pharao therefore,” says Josephus, “is a name of honour and principality, by which all the kings of Egypt were called, from that Minos who founded Memphis and who preceded Abraham by many years, down to the time of Solomon, for thirteen hundred years: for after Solomon’s father-in-law Pharao, none of the kings of the Egyptians was any longer called by this name.” So far Josephus, who in this last saying is mistaken; for it is plain from the books of Kings, Ezechiel and Jeremias that after Solomon’s time there was Pharao Nechao, who slew Josias, and Pharao Ephree, and other kings of Egypt are everywhere called Pharaos down to the Babylonian captivity.