Commentaria in Exodum
Fifthly, in the time of Moses, about the 35th year of Moses, says Tornielus, the first king in Attica was Cecrops, who founded Athens, after whom almost all things happened that the Greeks narrate of their heroes, gods, wars and other memorable things. So Eusebius in the Chronicle, and Cyril, book 1 Against Julian. Finally, Moses was born at the time when Atlas, the most celebrated astrologer, flourished, whom therefore they feigned to sustain heaven on his shoulders, who was brother of Prometheus the natural philosopher, who they feign changed stones into men; and this Atlas was maternal grandfather of Mercury the elder, whose grandson was Mercury the younger, surnamed Trismegistus. So Eusebius in the Chronicle, and St. Augustine, book 18 On the City of God, chap. 8. Moses was therefore far older than Trismegistus: wherefore both Trismegistus and Plato and the rest of the wise men of the Gentiles drew their wisdom from Moses and the Hebrews, as Eusebius and others teach. See Genesis, chap. 41, verse 40.
2. AND SEEING HIM A GOODLY CHILD, HID HIM THREE MONTHS.—This infant, says Josephus, was so beautiful that he drew the eyes of the beholders to himself and held them fixed. St. Stephen, Acts chap. 7, 20, for “goodly,” renders, he was pleasing to God. Whence it is plain that this beauty was more than natural, and bestowed by God, and signified that he pleased God, that he was dear and a care to him; and so by this beauty of Moses, not so much human as divine, in the oracle which they had received concerning Moses, and by his faith, the parents were confirmed and encouraged to hide him; nor did they doubt that by this means he would escape unharmed from the waters, God being his guardian; and this is what the Apostle says, Hebr. 11:23: “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they saw it was a comely child, and they feared not the king’s edict.” See what was said there. St. Ephrem, in the oration On the Transfiguration of Christ, holds that Moses was sanctified in his mother’s womb: for this the elegance of his body, flowing from the elegance of his soul, seems to indicate. But this conjecture is too slight to be able to establish this privilege and an exemption from the common law of original sin, in which we are all born, especially since no one else has asserted it.
Marsilius Ficinus, in the Symposium of Plato, shrewdly called beauty the flower of goodness, and Pacatus in the Panegyric of Theodosius: “Every most august,” he says, “form is believed to draw most from heaven. Your virtue deserved empire, but beauty added its suffrage to virtue: the one effected that you ought to become prince, the other that it should become you.” Theophylact adds on Hebr. 11:23, that the parents wished to expose Moses when he was born, but the child smiled sweetly, and for that reason was preserved. So much, he says, was divine in him.
3. AND WHEN SHE COULD HIDE HIM NO LONGER,—the inquiry and infanticide raging again.
For that many infants escaped, the tyranny relaxing, is plain from Aaron and his coevals.
SHE TOOK A BASKET MADE OF BULRUSHES.—that is, a little ark of rushes, or woven of rushes as of osiers, and daubed on the outside with pitch and bitumen to keep out the water; in which, having placed the infant, the mother exposed him in the rushes or sedges, where the uncertain event gave a surer hope of life than at home, where certain death was to be inflicted by the constant searchers: a hard thing indeed, but necessary, and done with a compassion trusting in the providence of God. Wrongly therefore does Calvin accuse these parents of Moses of cowardice and savage cruelty on account of this exposure of their offspring: for they could not otherwise preserve the life of Moses than by exposing him. They exposed him, however, as safely as they could, namely in a well-secured ark and in a safe place, and they gave him also a guardian in his sister, to help him as she could. Whence the Apostle praises the faith and courage of these parents. The parents seem therefore to have received the oracle which Josephus narrates concerning the birth and safety of Moses, and therefore to have exposed him not from fear but from sure trust in God.
Allegorically, Moses in his cradle outlined Christ: both therefore exposed, the one at the caprice of fortune, the other for the salvation of men; the one in a basket of bulrushes, the other in a wicker cradle and a manger; the one in the sedges of a river, the other in a cave by a public way; the one received and nursed by an Egyptian woman as her son, the other adored by the Gentiles through the Magi and declared by divine and royal gifts to be God and King of all.
HE LAID HIM IN THE SEDGES.—Pagninus, in a place of rushes. A carectum is a place where sedges grow; the sedge is a tall plant, shaped like a sword and sharpened toward the end. Hence it is plain that Moses was exposed in a marshy place, stagnant from the waters of the Nile, yet fenced by thick rushes and sedges, so that he could not be carried away by the current. Josephus therefore errs when he narrates that this ark of Moses was cast into the middle of the river and carried off by the waters, and that the king’s daughter sent swimmers and ordered the ark to be drawn out of the waters and brought to her.
Moreover, God willed that Moses should suffer this, that he might learn to pity his fellow-tribesmen suffering the same, and might free them from this misery and lead them out. Learn here a moral: God has made us miserable in order that from our misery we may learn how to pity our neighbour. For, as St. Bernard says, On the Degrees of Humility: “The sick man with the sick, and the fasting with the fasting, the nearer they are, the more familiarly they sympathize; for as pure truth is seen only by a pure heart, so a brother’s misery is more truly felt by a miserable heart; but that you may have a miserable heart for another’s misery, you must first acknowledge your own, and you will find your neighbour’s mind in yours, that from yourself you may know how to help him. By the example, namely, of our Saviour, who willed to suffer that he might know how to compassionate, and learn mercy from what he suffered.”
Allegorically, Moses here, an exile from his house and exposed in a basket and in the sedges, was a type of the child Christ: first, laid down by his mother in a manger, because there was no room for him in the inn; secondly, exposed to the fury of Herod, and fleeing him into Egypt. Whence St. Paulinus teaches that Christ suffered in Moses and in all the Saints; for writing to Aper, who, despising the world, was equally despised by it, he says thus, epist. 1: “Rightly do you glory and say in exultation, that hence you believe yourself to be a Christian, because they have begun to hate you who loved you, and to despise you who feared you. From the beginning of the ages Christ suffers and triumphs in all his own. In Abel slain by his brother, in Noe mocked by his son, in Abraham a pilgrim, in Isaac offered, in Jacob a servant, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed, in the Prophets stoned and sawn asunder, in the Apostles tossed on land and sea, and frequently slain in the crosses of many blessed Martyrs. He himself suffers reproaches in you, and the world hates him in you.”
The same St. Cyprian teaches, book On the Praise of Martyrdom: “Though,” he says, “to those who endure, the claw rebounding from the ribs returns to the wound, and the lashes going, with a part of the body torn away, the thong is drawn back, he stands unmoved, stronger than his pains, revolving this alone within himself, that in that cruelty of the executioners Christ, for whom he suffers, suffers more than he himself;” and, as he says below, “adorned as if with the blood of Christ his companion.”
4. HIS SISTER STANDING AFAR OFF.—Mary, a girl well grown, 10 or 14 years old, sent by her mother, says Josephus. The mother had instructed her what to do, what to say, namely that if some Egyptian passing by should happen to be touched with pity for the exposed boy, as she hoped, and should seek a way of saving the child, she should offer to him as nurse his own mother, as she is plain to have done from what follows.
5. THE DAUGHTER OF PHARAO,—Thermut by name, says Josephus, and from him others everywhere: Philo adds that she was Pharao’s only heir, and without children, though she had long been married.
TO WASH HERSELF IN THE RIVER,—near the palace, in a place fenced and secret, or, as Philo says, situated amid the shady and thick growth of rushes and reeds; for it is not credible that a royal woman wished to wash in public.
BY THE BRINK OF THE RIVER,—by the bank of the river; the Hebrew is “at the hand,” that is, at the side of the river.