Commentaria in Exodum
You will say: This lie proceeded from charity. I answer: Charity never dictates that evil be done, and consequently that a lie be told, in order to profit a neighbour; for charity and truth are sisters: this lie therefore proceeded not from true charity, but from the midwives’ inordinate love or fear.
You will say secondly: God rewarded this lie of theirs by building them houses. St. Augustine answers, book Against Lying, chap. 19 ff., that this reward was given them “not because they lied, but because they were merciful to the people of God; therefore what was rewarded in them was not deceit but benevolence, the kindness of the mind, not the iniquity of the one who lied; and for that good God also pardoned this evil.” I say the same of Rahab, Josue 2, verse 5. St. Gregory teaches the same, book 18 Moral., chap. 3, where he adds that on account of this lie their eternal reward was changed into a temporal one. But this is little probable: for a venial sin, such as was this officious lie, cannot invert an act of charity and the merit of eternal life.
Calvin therefore errs, nay blasphemes, when he hence teaches that God holds virtues, though stained with some mixture of filth, in esteem, and adorns them with reward, as if they were pure; which he deduces from another principle of his, no less impious, that no work is so holy and perfect that some stain does not cleave to it: for God neither approved nor rewarded here the vicious act of lying, which it is blasphemous to think; nay it is also wholly impossible, and against the nature of things, that virtue stained with vice should be, or be judged and held virtue by that most clear eye of God. God rewarded therefore not the lie, but other acts of piety, mercy and fear of God, as Moses expressly says in verse 20, which were plainly distinct from the former act of lying; for these midwives elicited many acts in this guardianship of infants, some good, some evil.
You will urge: What then ought these midwives to have done; what should they have answered to Pharao pressing them? I answer: Either they should have fled from his face and hidden; or the truth should have been covered by some artifice, not denied; or certainly, as St. Augustine says, chap. 17, book Against Lying, “they should have refused most freely, and died rather for the most innocent truth.”
21. HE BUILT THEM HOUSES.—So the Hebrew, Chaldee and Latin, and also the Septuagint: for they have “he made for them houses” (so it seems should be read, not “for themselves”). Wrongly therefore was it formerly read “they made,” as Augustine reads, rendering “they made for themselves houses,” fortified ones, namely, in which they might defend themselves from the attack of the Egyptians, whose commands they had despised: for it is not probable that they did this. “He built,” therefore, not Pharao, but God whom they feared, “for them,” not for the Hebrews, as Calvin will have it, but for the midwives, who feared God: for this the sequence of the speech requires, which is occupied in describing the midwives’ reward, and the Septuagint, who render “for themselves,” and the Chaldee, who renders lehen, feminine; for although in the Hebrew there is the masculine pronoun lahem, yet by enallage, familiar to the Hebrews, it is put for the feminine lahen, as is done also in chap. 15:20, and elsewhere: so vice versa, the feminine is put for the masculine, Ruth 1:13, and 2 Kings 4:6. Moses here uses the masculine for the feminine, because women and families take their name from men, says Vatablus. What houses were these? The Hebrews, as I said at verse 15, think that Mary married Caleb and received the royal house, and Jochabed the priestly house, but foolishly. For Josephus says that Mary married not Caleb but Hur, and the house of David was of the family which did not descend from Caleb but from elsewhere. Secondly, R. Kimchi: “He made them houses,” that is, he says, he hid them from Pharao and placed them in safety. Thirdly, Lyranus: “He made them houses,” that is, he joined them in marriage to chief Hebrews, and among them gave them illustrious offspring and families. But this is said gratuitously and by conjecture: for Scripture does not say that God made them houses of the Hebrews or among the Hebrews, but absolutely houses. Fourthly, Rupert and St. Jerome on Isaias 65 take houses to mean mansions in heaven, of which Christ says, John 14: “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” These Fathers therefore hold that these midwives merited the reward of eternal life: St. Thomas holds the same, 2–2, Q. 110, last article. For they had a true act of the fear of God, by which they reverenced God and for God exposed themselves to the danger of death; but this act of fear is supernatural and meritorious of eternal life. This is true, but irrelevant to this place; for “to build houses” in Scripture does not signify to give the reward of eternal life. Fifthly, St. Augustine and Theodoret more probably explain thus: “He built them houses,” that is, increased their household estate, gave them wealth and abundance of temporal things; for so Jacob says to Laban, Genes. 30: “It is just that I should provide at some time for my own house,” for which the Hebrew has: When shall I also make a house for myself?
Sixthly and best: “He built them houses,” that is, he gave them numerous offspring and progeny, rich, honoured, distinguished, long-lived and lasting. For these five things most ennoble offspring; for in Hebrew a son is called ben, from the root bana, that is, he built, because a son is as it were the fabric and house of the father, and because sons by themselves, and by their own sons whom they beget, build up the father’s family as a house. See what was said at verse 1. Note: This reward was fitting, that those who had saved the offspring of the Hebrews should be blessed with offspring.
Again, these midwives merited also eternal life, as I said; but in the Old Testament God is not wont to express that heavenly reward, because to the rude and carnal Jews he proposes almost only temporal rewards, and those five. First, length of life; secondly, ample and famous posterity; thirdly, opulence; fourthly, power and dominion; fifthly, victory over enemies. For the express promise of the heavenly kingdom and eternal life is proper to the New Testament and the Gospel of Christ, says St. Jerome to Dardanus.
22. PHARAO THEREFORE CHARGED ALL HIS PEOPLE.—This command of infanticide, verse 22, was laid only on the males. Cajetan’s is the view that it was extended to the Egyptians also. This was the third step of the tyranny, now publicly raging against the Hebrews. It is likely that the Egyptians shrank from this so inhuman edict, and therefore that it was scarcely received into use, and a little after was neglected and abolished. Tornielus thinks it was revoked immediately after the death of Amenophis, who had decreed it; which with Eusebius he assigns to the fourth year of Moses. See St. Augustine, serm. 84 On the Time: “Our soul,” he says, “is either ruled by a lawful king or ravaged by a tyrant.” The Pharao who cherished Joseph and the Israelites designates the king; the Pharao who knew not Joseph and who afflicted the Hebrews in the works of brick and clay designates the tyrant. “For if, with God’s help, we think of piety, patience, penance, etc.: though we are still in Egypt, that is in the flesh, yet we are governed by Christ the king; and he rules us in clay and brick, but does not consume us, nor wear us out and afflict us with earthly cares or excessive anxieties. But if our soul begins to decline from God and follow dishonourable things, then it submits its neck to the tyrant (the demon), who addresses his people, that is the pleasures of the body, that they kill the males of the Hebrews and keep the females. For the devil wishes to extinguish in us the rational sense that sees God, and to keep what pertains to the concupiscence of the flesh. This Pharao therefore compels you to his works, to serve not justice but iniquity: he will make you work brick and clay for him; he, under appointed masters and taskmasters, will drive you with blows and scourges to earthly and luxurious works; he makes you run to and fro through the world, to be troubled by the elements of sea and land for greed; he is the king of Egypt who makes you beat the forum with lawsuits and weary your relatives with quarrels for a small clod of earth; he persuades you to lie in wait with luxury for chastity, to deceive innocence; to commit in your house what is foul, abroad what is cruel, within your conscience what is shameful. If therefore you see your acts to be such, know that you serve in the army of the king of Egypt, that is, you are driven not by the spirit of Christ but of the devil.”
Allegorically, of the holy Innocents slain by Herod, from whom, like precious grains, when sown and dead, a great harvest of the Church arose, Prosper has it, On the Promises and Predictions of God, part 1, chap. 32.
Finally anagogically, Rupert says: By the standard and tribulation of the Cross we are stronger than the demon, we are joined to the angels, we go out from the earth, because heaven awaits us.