Commentaria in Exodum
Superstitious also were those Christians who, placing the flesh of a lamb near the altar at the Pasch, consecrated it with their own blessing, and on the day of Easter ate of the flesh of the lamb before other foods, as Walafrid Strabo relates, On Ecclesiastical Matters, chap. 17; for, as he himself says, Christ our Pasch is sacrificed: hence Paul would have us feast not with the old leaven, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
transverse, because it stands to those entering as it were obliquely.
LET NONE OF YOU GO OUT TILL MORNING,—or at least until it be certain that the destroying angel has passed: for Moses warned this, that they should beware of going out, lest they should fall in with this destroyer; and so after the Egyptians had testified by their lamentation to the stroke and slaughter made by him, and urged the Hebrews to depart, they themselves presently went out on the same night, as is plain from verse 31, namely after midnight, before morning.
23. AND NOT SUFFER THE DESTROYER.—Hence some think that this destroying angel was evil: for it is said that God “will not suffer,” as if this angel would wish to slay the Hebrews also, if God should suffer it; but this was foreign to a good angel: for such a one loved and protected the people of God. Hence Rupert: “Rightly are they handed over to the destroyer, an evil angel, after they refused to be subject to God Himself who corrected them (correcting them), and by ten plagues invited them to penance.” But it is equally probable, or more probable, that this plague, like the preceding ones, was inflicted by good angels. Hence for “will not suffer,” the Hebrew is, will not give, namely order, or ordinance, God will not order, will not prescribe to him to strike the Hebrews, but only the Egyptians. See what was said in chap. 7, at the end of Question 4. Tropologically, he who is signed with the blood of the lamb, that is, baptized in the blood of Christ, and wishes to celebrate the pasch, that is, to worship Christ and receive Him in the Eucharist, that he may press on toward the promised land in heaven: ought for seven days, that is, the ages of his life (which are infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, manhood, old age
26. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS SERVICE?—In Hebrew, what is this worship? to what end, why do you celebrate this pasch?
29. AND IT CAME TO PASS AT MIDNIGHT, THE LORD SLEW EVERY FIRSTBORN,—For at midnight even the dead silences terrify, and therefore this punishment was the more terrible; such will be also the coming of Christ to judgment, as I said chap. 11, verse 5.
EVERY FIRSTBORN,—that which was first born, even if it be an only child, even if it be advanced in years; hence in one house several were slain at once, namely grandfather, father, son, wife, if all were firstborn: the same I say of servants and beasts. See chap. 11, verse 8.
FROM THE FIRSTBORN OF PHARAO.—Pharao is punished here in his son, but he himself was reserved for greater sorrow and vengeance, to be drowned with all his in the Red Sea.
UNTO THE FIRSTBORN OF THE CAPTIVE,—the handmaid of the captive condemned to the mill, as is plain from chap. 11, verse 5.
30. AND PHARAO AROSE, etc., AND CALLING MOSES AND AARON IN THE NIGHT, SAID: ARISE AND GO FORTH.—It is likely that Pharao himself, smitten by so great a slaughter, and fearing worse, arose to go to Moses; whom finding quietly resting in his house, he roused by calling, and said: Arise, go forth; the Hebrew signifies this more clearly.
32. BLESS ME,—pray for me, as the Chaldee renders.
Morally, learn here that hard and obstinate hearts are broken and softened not by flatteries, not by threats, not by scourges, but by death and disasters: as the diamond does not soften except in the blood of a goat, so by the slaughter of all the firstborn Pharao and all the Egyptians were broken and bent. So proud Nabuchodonosor bowed his neck when he was smitten into a beast. So Saul, prostrate on the earth, became Paul, and said: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” So Magdalen, possessed by seven devils, sought Christ the physician.
A wonderful example among the Gentiles Plutarch relates, in his book On the Delay of Divine Vengeance, near the end:
Thespesius, he says, was a man of wicked and deplorable life; the oracle was consulted about him, whether there was any hope of his amendment? It answered: “He will be better after he has been dead.” Shortly after, Thespesius, struck by a heavy fall and mishap, lay lifeless: on the third day coming to himself, and being asked where he had been, how he had returned, he said that in this fall his soul was led out of the body, and saw and perceived all else, and that therefore he was presently made wholly another man, just as if someone should fall from a ship into the sea, he perceives and judges altogether other things; and so he said that he had seen the happiness of the good; the punishments of the wicked, as of Nero, and even of his own parent (in which vision, however, fables of the Gentiles are mingled, either by the demon, author of the vision, or by Thespesius himself), and that one of his kinsmen who had died came to him and saluted him: “Hail, Thespesius”; to whom he said: “I am not called Thespesius, but Aridæus”; presently the soul of his kinsman answered: “Aridæus thou hast been hitherto; but henceforth thou shalt be Thespesius,” which word in Greek signifies divine; and so it came to pass: for he who before was impious, lustful, a drunkard, etc., by this fall and rapture became pious, chaste, sober, just, and a mirror of virtues. Thus for a hard knot a hard wedge must be sought, and the obstinate habit of an evil mind must be broken by sharp punishment.
33. AND THE EGYPTIANS PRESSED THE PEOPLE TO GO OUT OF THE LAND SPEEDILY,—through fear, namely, being struck by so great a slaughter of their own. Hence you may see the fables and calumnies of the Gentiles, as of Cornelius Tacitus, book 5, and of Trogus Pompeius, or rather Justin, book 36, asserting that the Hebrews were driven out of Egypt by the Egyptians on account of scab and itch, at the warning of an oracle.
Like to this is what Manetho, Cheremon and Lysimachus, Egyptian historians, relate in Josephus, book 1 Against Apion, namely that Moses carried off the idols of the Egyptians, and that therefore the Egyptians pursued him, but were compelled by storms to return home: whereas on the contrary Holy Scripture teaches us that all to a man were swallowed up in the Red Sea.
Such also is that of Tacitus, that the Jews are called as it were Idæans, Jedeans, because they descended from Mount Ida in Crete; secondly, that the Jews abstain from swine because, like swine, they are liable to scab; thirdly, that asses showed the way to the Jews going out of Egypt, and that therefore they worship asses.
Such also is that of Justin, that Joseph was a magician, and that Moses was his son; that the kings of the Jews were Joseph, Moses and Israel, who divided the ancestral kingdom into ten. Whence you may see how hostile and unjust the Gentiles were to the Jews, or how ignorant and unskilled in Jewish affairs.
34. THE PEOPLE THEREFORE TOOK DOUGH, kneaded with great labour by hands or feet, namely a mass, or paste, as the Hebrew has it presently, because, namely, they had not time to leaven it and to bake it, about to bake it at the first opportunity.
AND TYING IT IN THEIR CLOAKS,—the Chaldee and Septuagint, in garments. The Hebrew simlah properly signifies a wrapper, or a mantle, in which something is covered or wrapped, as the pallium is, according to Ulpian and Cicero, a common kind of garment. “Dionysius,” says Cicero, book 3 On the Nature of the Gods, “took from Jupiter his golden mantle, and gave him a woollen pallium.” Nay, that pallium properly signifies also a linen sheet, or cloth, Lazarus Bayfius teaches, in his book On Clothing, from Juvenal, satire 6, where he speaks thus of a woman:
She calls in Archigenes, and throws off her burdensome cloaks.
So these cloaks of the Hebrews also seem to have been linen sheets or cloths; for in these dough is wont to be wrapped: otherwise the pallium of the Greeks was properly a longer outer garment, as the toga was of the Romans.
36. AND THE LORD GAVE FAVOUR TO THE PEOPLE IN THE SIGHT OF THE EGYPTIANS.—The Egyptians therefore lent their goods to the Hebrews, not so much from fear, with which they were smitten on account of the slaughter of the firstborn, as because God gave them favour in the sight of the Egyptians. So St. Augustine, Pererius and others. This favour, says Tostatus, either was a certain quality produced by God in the Hebrews, shining wondrously in the countenance and whole body, and in their words and manners, which made the Hebrews lovable, pleasant and gracious to the Egyptians: for such grace and singular beauty God gave to Judith, chap. 10. For this reason Plato admonished Xenocrates his disciple, who carried a sad and severe countenance, “to sacrifice to the Graces,” signifying this, that as much as defect of nature, rudeness and harshness took away from graciousness, so much the pleasing elegance of courtesy, partly asked and obtained from God, partly gained by his own effort and exercise, should add toward winning men to himself. The same warned Dion of Syracuse, a most learned man but rather harsh, to form himself to be more courteous and gracious, saying: “Hardness and obstinacy are the companions not of cities but of woods and solitude.” So Xenophon, fellow-disciple of Plato, who wrote the Cyropædia, was wondrously gracious and sweet: and was therefore called “the Attic Muse.” Laertius and others bear witness, in the Life of Plato and Xenophon.