Commentaria in Exodum
Let the parents of the New Testament learn here not to stand in the way of their children, even the firstborn, if they wish to enter Religion and consecrate themselves to God; for in the old law all parents were bound by God’s law to offer their firstborn to God, even if they were to be only-begotten. If the Jews did this at God’s command, why should not Christians do the same at God’s counsel and call? Willingly do parents offer their firstborn to kings and princes, to serve them in their courts: why not more willingly offer them to the King of kings and Lord of lords, to be fellow-citizens of the Saints, members of the household, nay courtiers of God? Let them imitate Blessed Anna, who so willingly offered her Samuel to God, and therefore received from God the rewarder five children for one Samuel.
Allegorically, Christ, the firstborn of every creature, was sanctified and consecrated to God.
Tropologically, we give the firstborn to God when we offer to Him the first beginnings of our works, that they may redound to His praise and honour, and be prospered and blessed by Him; which wise and pious men indeed do not only in the morning but often through the day at the beginning of each work: so Rabanus. Again, our firstborn is the heart, because it is formed first in the embryo before the other members. The heart of the birds which they prey on is wont to be given to hawks. Christ from the cross preyed upon our heart: let us therefore offer it to Him: He will render it to us pure, holy, quiet, glad and blessed. When many were offering to Socrates (says Seneca, book 1 On Benefits, chap. 7) many things, each according to his means, Æschines, a poor hearer, said: “I find nothing worthy of thee that I can give thee, and in this I feel myself poor. Therefore I give thee what alone I have, myself: this gift, such as it is, I beg thee to take in good part, and consider that others, though they gave thee much, left more for themselves.” To whom Socrates: “Why, thou hast given a great gift, unless perhaps thou thinkest meanly of thyself: I will take care, then, to render thee to thyself better than I received thee.” So Seneca. But do thou, Æschines, imitate: not to Socrates, but to God give thyself wholly. If thou hast given thyself, He will render thee to thyself much better.
AMONG THE CHILDREN,—among the sons. Secondly, the letter beth is put for ben, that is, between.
FOR THEY ARE ALL MINE,—not only by the title of creation and dominion, which I have and possess over all things created by me; but also, and chiefly, by the title of deliverance and redemption, in which, protecting your firstborn from the destroyer, I as it were redeemed them from death, and led them out together with you from the Egyptian servitude: hence thirdly, they are mine, by the title of this just precept, by which I most justly exact them from you, nay demand them back.
3. YOU CAME FORTH,—go forth: it is an enallage of tense, and suited to this place; for we can remember only things past.
WITH A STRONG HAND,—afflicting Pharao with his plagues with great strength and power, and so powerfully compelling him to let you go; by this powerful vengeance of His, therefore, God led you out.
4. THIS DAY YOU GO FORTH IN THE MONTH OF NEW CORN.—So the Hebrew, Chaldee and Septuagint; whence it is strange that Pagninus renders, this day you go forth in the month of July. For the pasch, on which the Jews went out, was celebrated not in July but always in Nisan, that is, March. Pagninus was misled by taking abib as ab elsewhere: for these, though akin in sound, differ greatly in thing and signification. Ab signifies a definite month, namely July; but abib is not the proper name of a month, but an appellative noun, signifying green, whether it be the stalk or the ear. For so our Interpreter elsewhere renders it, as is plain from Exodus 9, 31. Abib extends also to crops ripening into grain, yet not wholly ripe, as is plain from Leviticus 2, 14. For a sheaf of these was offered on the second day of unleavened bread, the grains first parched, then ground into flour, and it is called abib: whence abib was further transferred to signify the month in which these first barley fruits were produced and offered to God: which was the month of the pasch, or Nisan; for which reason the Septuagint commonly call it “the month of new things,” and our Translator “the month of new corn,” or, because it contained the vernal equinox, Deuteronomy
5. AND WHEN THE LORD SHALL HAVE BROUGHT THEE INTO THE LAND OF THE CHANANITE.—Hence it is plain that this law of eating the phase and unleavened bread, like the preceding one concerning the offering of the firstborn, did not oblige the Hebrews during the whole 40 years in which they wandered in the desert unsettled, and with all things unarranged: the same is to be said of the sacrifices prescribed in Leviticus. The same is plain from Deuteronomy chap. 12, verses 1 and 9, where also God gives the reason of this, saying: “For hitherto you are not come to rest, and to the possession which the Lord your God will give you.”
“the first of the vernal season,”
of this year, in which they had gone out of Egypt, God requires from them the firstborn.
I answer that this is a new precept, and different from this one, which nevertheless took occasion and origin from this. Hence there was also a new form of the offering of the firstborn there: for there, verse 43, Moses by the Lord’s command numbered the firstborn of the children of Israel, and found them to be in number twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy-three; in whose place God took to Himself and to His worship all the Levites, who were found to be almost as many, namely twenty-two thousand; the remaining 273 firstborn, who were left over in the people and exceeded the number of the Levites, God commanded to be dismissed on payment of five shekels for each head; but the firstborn of the cattle God willed to be given to the Levites, who were now His own and devoted to His worship. There, therefore, an offering is not properly prescribed, but only a numbering of the firstborn of Israel, and that to the end that in their stead the Levites should be substituted, who were as many, to serve God in the tabernacle.
Then, therefore, this law was first fulfilled and commuted into the Levites: but afterwards each firstborn had to be offered to God and redeemed for five shekels
9. AND IT SHALL BE AS A SIGN IN THY HAND, AND AS A MEMORIAL BEFORE THINE EYES.—Correct it with the Roman, Hebrew and Chaldee Bibles, between thine eyes; the Septuagint, however, render before thine eyes; but the matter comes to the same.
The Jews take this grossly, and to satisfy this precept of God they fasten the law of the decalogue, written on small pieces of parchment, to the arm, the forehead, the fringes, or the doors of the house; and these are the phylacteries and fringes which the Pharisees enlarged, and which Christ censures, Matthew 23, 5. For God did not will this here, nor does He speak of the law of the decalogue, but of the pasch and the unleavened bread. By this phrase, therefore, God commanded the Hebrews only to keep a perpetual memory of the benefit and of the law already spoken, that, like a thing hanging between the eyes, it might be ever before them, and that for this end, that by looking on and considering it they might be kindled to reverence, love and gratitude toward God: this sense the word “as” signifies when it says: “It shall be as a sign, and as a memorial.” Whence St. Jerome on Matthew 23 explains thus: “The precepts shall be in thy hand, that they may be fulfilled; they shall be before thine eyes, that day and night thou mayest meditate on them.”
for a year, as if to say: by a certain and continuous series of years. For the Hebrew yamim, that is, days in the plural, signifies a year.
11. CHANANITE,—Under this he understands the other nations dwelling in the promised land; for the father of all these was Chanaan, Genesis 10, 15.
that is, thou shalt make to pass over, to the Lord namely, that is, thou shalt offer to the Lord all that openeth the womb, both in men and in beasts of burden.
AND THAT WHICH IS FIRSTBORN OF THY CATTLE.—Jumenta (beasts of burden) are properly animals that carry, which bear men or burdens, as horses, asses, camels; pecora (cattle) are those that furnish pasture and food, such as sheep, oxen, goats.