Commentaria in Exodum
Chapter 11. Synopsis of the Chapter
He foretells and describes the last plague of Egypt, namely the slaughter of the firstborn, before the Hebrews, verse 9, are warned by the Lord to spoil Egypt; this spoiling, however, was done not before (as some will have it) but after the slaughter of the firstborn, as is plain from chap. 12, verse 39, and in this chapter, verses 1 and 2.
1. And the Lord said to Moses: Yet one plague more will I bring upon Pharao and Egypt, and after that he shall let you go, and thrust you out. 2. Therefore thou shalt tell all the people, that every man ask of his friend, and every woman of her neighbour, vessels of silver and of gold. 3. And the Lord will give favour to his people in the sight of the Egyptians. And Moses was a very great man in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharao’s servants, and of all the people. 4. And he said: Thus saith the Lord: At midnight I will enter into Egypt, 5. and every firstborn in the land of the Egyptians shall die, from the firstborn of Pharao who sitteth on his throne, even to the firstborn of the handmaid that is at the mill, and all the firstborn of beasts. 6. And there shall be a great cry in all the land of Egypt, such as neither hath been before, nor shall be hereafter. 7. But with all the children of Israel there shall not a dog move his tongue, from man even to beast: that you may know with how great a miracle the Lord divideth the Egyptians and Israel. 8. And all these thy servants shall come down to me, and shall adore me, saying: Go forth thou, and all the people that is under thee: after that we will go out. 9. And he went out from Pharao exceeding angry. And the Lord said to Moses: Pharao will not hear you, that many signs may be done in the land of Egypt. 10. And Moses and Aaron did all the wonders that are written, before Pharao. And the Lord hardened Pharao’s heart, neither did he let the children of Israel go out of his land.
4. AND HE SAID.—The Lord said this to Moses while Moses was still standing before Pharao at the end of the preceding chapter: for Moses foretold and announced to Pharao himself this last plague of the firstborn, received here from God’s revelation: then he went out from him angry, as is plain here verse 9. But it is plain from the end of the preceding chapter that Moses never again went in to Pharao. Hence it is plain that God said these things to Moses not by a bodily, but an imaginary, or rather intellectual speech, and that He had so often before spoken with him in a like manner, as I said at the beginning of chap. 6; for it was neither worthy nor becoming that God should show Himself to Moses in bodily form before Pharao.
SHALL LET YOU GO.—In Hebrew is added calah, that is, completely, or altogether, as if to say: He will now except nothing, as hitherto he has done, but will fully let go the sheep and all your things with you.
2. LET ASK,—when, namely, after the plague of the firstborn, Pharao shall compel you to go out of Egypt to sacrifice; “let ask” not as a gift, but as a loan, as though to borrow, but never to return, but to keep the loan from my donation: for this loan I give and forgive you.
OF HIS FRIEND;—of his neighbour, near dweller, or companion; for this is the Hebrew rea: hence it is plain that not the Hebrews alone but also Egyptians dwelt in Gessen. Whence also chap. 12 the Hebrews are bidden to tinge their houses with the blood of the lamb, that the destroying angel may distinguish them from the Egyptians. The Hebrews therefore asked these vessels of their neighbours, friends and masters: for many of them were servants and handmaids of the Egyptians.
VESSELS OF SILVER AND OF GOLD,—as though you needed them for the sacrifice you are preparing, and were to receive in them the blood of the victims, the fine flour, salt, fire, incense, and other things belonging to the sacrifice. The Septuagint add from chap. 12, verse 35, “and garments,” as though you were to be adorned with them in so great a solemnity and sacrifice.
3. WILL GIVE FAVOUR,—that the Hebrews asking these vessels and garments of the Egyptians may please them, and seem to ask a thing fair and fitting, which ought to be granted them: for the hearts of men are in the hand of God, so that He makes enemies who before oppressed them now not only suddenly tame and gentle, but even liberal.
AND MOSES WAS A VERY GREAT MAN,—as if to say: Therefore Pharao did not dare to touch or hurt him speaking and threatening so freely; again, therefore the Egyptians the more readily lent their vessels to the Hebrews.
4. AND HE SAID,—Moses, inspired by God, said to Pharao. He returns to what was done at the end of chap. 10, as I said verse 4.
AT MIDNIGHT,—the next night, namely that which followed the fourteenth day of the first month Nisan. For on that fourteenth day toward evening is the pasch, in which, the firstborn being slain by night, the Hebrews went out of Egypt free. Moses then said this on the fourteenth day of Nisan in the morning, before he went out of Pharao’s court. We are warned here, says Rupert, not to sleep, but to be sober and to watch; because in like manner unexpectedly, when we least think, the Lord will come to judgment. For, as is said Matt. 25: “At midnight there was a cry made: Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye forth to meet him.” Accordingly by the mouth of David the Church says: “At midnight I rose to give thanks to thee.”
Nay, that Jesus Christ will come at midnight to the severe judgment to destroy the Egyptians, that is the reprobate, St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Jerome there teach from this figure and from Matt. chap. 25, verse 6, who adds that this is an Apostolic tradition. Others however think Christ will come in the morning. But of this matter we must speak elsewhere.
I WILL ENTER INTO EGYPT,—not changing place, but action: for those whom I have hitherto kept alive I will destroy and slay; I who as avenger was absent from Egypt, will now enter as conqueror, and visit them with my vengeance. For though among them most are innocent little ones, yet they are the children of the guilty, and therefore are as it were a part of their noxious and rebellious fathers, whom I have decreed to strike by the death of their children. For God is lord of the guilty and the innocent, of life and death, so that he does not unjustly take life from the innocent, as lord; and from the guilty most justly takes it also, as avenger of evils.
5. AND EVERY FIRSTBORN SHALL DIE, FROM THE FIRSTBORN OF PHARAO WHO SITTETH ON HIS THRONE,—who reigns together with his father, or after his father is to sit on the throne and reign.
EVEN TO THE FIRSTBORN OF THE HANDMAID THAT IS AT THE MILL,—who turns the mills, namely hand-mills, in the bakehouse, as if to say: This slaughter shall pass through all, and from the noblest to the vilest. Justly are they punished by the slaying of the firstborn, who had oppressed the Hebrews, the firstborn people of God, and had slain their male offspring, says Theodoret.
6. AND THERE SHALL BE A GREAT CRY.—For this plague was general and touched all: for when afterwards Pharao was drowned with his, that plague did not touch all houses, but only those of Pharao’s soldiers: nor did the Egyptians greatly grieve that Pharao was taken away, as through whose fault they had incurred such great slaughters and calamities.
7. BUT WITH ALL THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL THERE SHALL NOT A DOG MOVE HIS TONGUE, FROM MAN EVEN TO BEAST.—It is a Hebrew proverb, as if to say: No man, no beast shall murmur or low, not even a dog, which barks at the least noise; but with all there will be the greatest peace.
But because “from man” in the Hebrew has the dative article, and because a dog is not rightly numbered among men, hence secondly, and genuinely, with the Chaldee and Vatablus, explain thus: Neither at men nor at beasts of the children of Israel shall any dog bark, because among them there shall be no plague of death, and consequently no mourning and lamentation, in which dogs, beyond other beasts, are wont to howl and bark; but the greatest quiet shall be among them.
8. AND ALL THESE THY SERVANTS SHALL COME DOWN,—nay thou also, O Pharao, which however, out of regard to thy honour, I pass over in silence.
This was the tenth plague, namely the slaughter of the firstborn, both of men and of all beasts, inflicted chap. 12, verse 29, and it was the most bitter. First, because firstborn are supremely dear and precious to parents, especially since among these firstborn many were only-begotten, and only heirs of their parents. Secondly, because every family was afflicted by this plague and mourned. Thirdly, because Pharao also by this plague lost his firstborn. Fourthly, because this slaughter happened at midnight; whence this plague moved Pharao to let the Hebrews go absolutely, who that very night, packing their things, went out. Fifthly, together with this plague Apis and the other gods of the Egyptians were overthrown, as is plain chap. 12, verse 12.
Thou wilt ask, whether this slaughter was done by a good angel or an evil one. That it was done by an evil one Lyranus and Abulensis think. They prove it from chap. 12, verse 23, where it is said: “He (the Lord) will not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses and to hurt you”: this destroyer therefore was evil: for he wished to hurt the Hebrews, who were the people of God (which a good angel would not have done); but God did not permit it.
But Pereira and others more probably hold that it was done by a good angel: for by such the other plagues were inflicted, as I said chap. 7, near the end of Quest. 4. To the argument I answer: for “will not suffer” the Hebrew is will not give, as if to say: God, ordering and prescribing all this to the angel, will command him to strike the Egyptians, but to pass over your houses, O Hebrews: and so will not give him power to hurt you; whence it does not follow that this angel wished to hurt the Hebrews, but only that he did not receive from God the ordinance to hurt them.
So Cajetan. Add that among the Hebrews there were some of impure and wicked life, whom the angel could justly have struck and would have wished to strike, if God had permitted.
Note that there was not one angel, but several, who performed this slaughter, as is plain Psalm 77, verse 49. For this slaughter was made at the same instant everywhere in single cities and villages throughout all Egypt: but the same angel could not be at the same instant in so many places, and there work so great a slaughter so discriminately: otherwise in the army of Sennacherib, with whom (as being joined with him) one angel slew in one night 485,000, 4 Kings 19. Hence Pererius thinks it probable that in every city there was one angel who slew the firstborn of the Egyptians.
You will ask, secondly, who are understood here by the firstborn? I answer: all those who were first born of their parents, whether they had sons or not, and whether their parents were living or not; therefore all the heads of families who were firstborn were slain here, and again their parents, and their sons also, if they were firstborn. Hence, since Pharao was not slain here, it is clear that he was not a firstborn, but succeeded to the kingdom when the firstborn was dead or passed over. Abulensis adds that by the firstborn are understood here females as well as males, and whether they were firstborn with respect to both parents or only one. This being granted, it could happen that in one house there were several firstborn; for example, that the father of the family was the firstborn of his parents, and the wife the firstborn of hers, and the son of both a firstborn; and, if that father had several wives and children by each, with respect to each wife there was one firstborn, so that in one family there were five or even more firstborn, all of whom Abulensis thinks were struck down in this plague; and so it could easily come about what Scripture says, chap. 12, verse 30: “For there was not a house wherein there lay not one dead.” Yet God, for these firstborn who were spared in the Hebrew houses, required that only their firstborn males be offered to Him, chap. 13, verse 12.
Hear concerning this slaughter the book of Wisdom, chap. 18: “For while all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, thy almighty word, O Lord, leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne, a fierce conqueror, into the midst of the land of destruction, bearing a sharp sword, thy unfeigned commandment, and standing filled all things with death, and standing on the earth reached even to heaven.” Hence it seems that the angel slew these firstborn not with a plague, but with a sword. But “sword” in Scripture signifies every instrument, every weapon, every kind of death, as I have said elsewhere; nor does an angel need a sword; for he can by himself most easily kill men by breaking the heart, or crushing the vital parts, or suffocating, and in other like ways, just as we press fleas with the finger and kill them.
Tropologically, St. Augustine, in his book On the Agreement of the Ten Commandments with the Ten Plagues of Egypt: Those who commit this slaughter of the firstborn, he says, sin against the tenth commandment: “Thou shalt not covet,” by frauds, robberies, and other injustices; these are punished by the death of their firstborn. First, because the heirs of goods ill-gotten are not left, and not seldom their sons and heirs, even the firstborn, die; for ill-gotten goods are ill squandered, and “in goods ill-gotten the third heir rejoices not.”
Secondly, the firstborn of the Egyptians are the devil and his angels, whom Christ destroyed by His coming. Again, they are the heresiarchs and inventors of false religions, whom the truth of Christ extinguishes together with their authors. So Origen; St. Augustine, sermon 87, On the Season.
Thirdly, Pererius says: The Egyptians are the enemies of the faithful, namely the devil and the world. The firstborn of the devil are sin, especially original sin, says Rupert, and death. For the first parent of sin was Lucifer, the serpent in paradise, and by his envy death entered into the world. Christ slew this when by dying He destroyed our death, and by rising again restored our life. The firstborn of the world are the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life; these Christ’s grace slays by cleanness of flesh and heart, poverty of spirit, and humility of mind. Are not the firstborn of the world riches, honours, pleasures, and vainglory? These Christ struck down by being born in the dead of night. For riches He crushed by the wondrous poverty of the crib, honours by the unheard-of humility of the darkness, pleasures by the very roughness of the stable. Hence poverty now claims for itself the name of riches; riches are called want; disgraces, mockeries, and reproaches borne for Christ’s sake are called honours; the cross, glory; death, life; prison, liberty.
9. AND HE WENT OUT FROM PHARAO IN GREAT ANGER—(before verse 9) ... to the shifting, obstinacy, and rebellion of Pharao.
AND THE LORD SAID TO MOSES.—This is the epilogue and summary of the preceding chapters, as if to say: Now the Lord had said to Moses, namely before the plagues were sent upon the Egyptians, chap. 3, verse 19.
10. NEITHER DID HE LET THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL GO—up to this point, verse 10, namely up to the tenth plague; for in the tenth he will let them go, as we shall see in the following chapter.