Commentaria in Exodum
WHY HAST THOU BROUGHT US INTO THIS DESERT, THAT YOU MIGHT DESTROY US WITH FAMINE?—Why have you cast us, whom you were to lead out, into these straits of the desert, that we may die there of hunger? for Moses could not otherwise kill them with famine. Hence it is plain that active verbs of the Hebrews, such as to kill, do not always signify a physical action.
See here the silence and constant patience of Moses: this virtue exercised and perfected all the Saints: first, Christ, who on the cross prayed for his crucifiers: “Father,” he said, “forgive them, for they know not what they do”; secondly, Job, who, suffering extremities from the devil and the Chaldeans and his wife, said: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord”; thirdly, David, who bore the persecution of Saul, Semei and Absalom most equably; fourthly, St. Stephen, who prayed for those who stoned him, saying: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”; fifthly, St. Paul, who says: “We are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it; we are blasphemed, and we entreat.”
Hear also the Martyrs. Busiris at Ancyra under Julian the Apostate, hung upon the rack, lifted his hands to his head and laid bare his sides, and said to the Governor: “There is no need for the lictors to labour in lifting me on the rack; for without their help I am ready to offer my sides to the tormentors in whatever way thou wilt.” He said it and did it; for when his sides were torn with the claws, he lifted his hands to heaven and gave thanks to God: Sozomen is witness, book 5, chap. 10.
Genseric commanded Christians to be dragged over rocks and thorns, with their feet bound, behind running chariots; and they, bidding one another farewell, said: “Farewell, brother, pray for me, the Lord hath fulfilled our desire; thus is the kingdom of heaven attained.” So Victor, book 1 On the Vandals.
Hear also the Confessors. A demon, unable to bear the magnanimity of the hermit James, threatened to strike him with a rod. Then James said: “If it is permitted thee by God, strike, and I will gladly receive the blow, as one smitten by him. But if it is not permitted thee, thou shalt not strike, though thou rage a thousand times.” Theodoret is witness in the Lives of the Holy Fathers, life 94.
Irene, cast down from the empire by Nicephorus her servant, said: “I ascribe it to God that he raised me, an orphan and unworthy, to the empire; but that he now permits me to be cast down, I ascribe to my sins; and in all things, good and evil, blessed be the name of the Lord.” So Paul the Deacon, book 23.
Alfonso, king of the Aragonese, struck grievously in the eye by a bough of a tree let go by one who went before him on the road, said: “I grieve at nothing, truly, except the pain and fear of the one who struck me.” So Panormitanus, book 4 of his Life.
Tertullian, in his book On Patience, chaps. 9 and 10, says: “If I shall dwell upon patience, I shall not grieve; if I do not grieve, I shall not desire to take vengeance.” And chap. 4: “God is the depositary of patience. If thou lay down an injury with him, he is the avenger; if a loss, he is the restorer; if a pain, he is the physician; if death, he is the raiser to life.”
4. I WILL RAIN BREAD FROM HEAVEN FOR YOU.—“Bread,” that is, manna: for out of it, when bruised, they made cakes of bread, as appears Num. 11:8. But in place of the flesh and pots, for which the Hebrews panted, God gave them manna.
THAT I MAY PROVE THEM WHETHER THEY WALK IN MY LAW.—God speaks after the manner of men: for he tests men by proving them, and their secrets, not to the same end as men: for these test in order to know what they do not know; but God, the searcher of hearts, conscious, nay foreknowing all things, tests not that he himself, but that others may know either themselves or others. Here therefore God tested their obedience and temperance by giving them manna alone; he tested also their hope, while he measured out to them a daily food for each day, and commanded that they should not lay by manna for the following day (for to this law, which immediately preceded, God had chiefly regard in this testing), that they might learn to depend continually and constantly on the providence of God, not anxious about hoarding provisions: in which manner we Christians also are commanded to ask our daily bread day by day of God.
5. BUT THE SIXTH DAY LET THEM PROVIDE FOR TO BRING IN,—namely on Friday: for on the seventh day, namely the sabbath, God commanded them to rest; whence on the sabbath no manna rained. Hence Origen, St. Ambrose, _On Time_, and the Synod of Caesarea, which Bede relates in his epistle On the Celebration of Easter, gather that the day on which manna first rained was the Lord’s day: for from this the sixth day is the parasceve, or Friday; for six whole days then manna rained continually, namely beginning from the Lord’s day up to the sixth day inclusive. By which it was mystically and tacitly signified that the Lord’s day was to be preferred by Christ and Christians to the sabbath, and that on the Lord’s day the heavenly bread in the Eucharist, and the grace of God, would descend upon the faithful.
Note: “Let them provide for to bring in,” as if to say: On Friday let them store a part of the manna in their tents, on which they may feed the following day of the sabbath: for on the sabbath they must cease from the labour of gathering, grinding and cooking manna. Whence Friday is called also parasceve, from the preparation of foods which was made on that day for the sabbath.
Tropologically, in the six days of our life provisions are to be prepared for the seventh day of eternity, that on these we may live in eternal heavenly rest. So Origen, Rupert and Cyril, book 4 on John, chap. 51.
6. IN THE EVENING YOU SHALL KNOW THAT THE LORD HATH BROUGHT YOU FORTH OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT, AND IN THE MORNING YOU SHALL SEE THE GLORY OF THE LORD,—because in the evening God will give you quails, and in the morning manna, as appears from verses 12 and 13, by which you shall acknowledge the glory of God, that is, his glorious power and providence.
7. FOR HE HATH HEARD YOUR MURMURING AGAINST THE LORD,—against himself: for honour’s sake Moses repeats the name of the Lord, and puts the absolute for the reflexive.
Murmuring.—Note here how grave a sin is the murmuring of the people against magistrates; for it is against God, who appointed them: hence God for the most part dissembled other sins in the desert, but almost always punished murmuring forthwith. See St. Gregory, book 12 Register, epistle 34.
[Come before the Lord, that is, before] the pillar of the cloud, by which the presence of God shows itself to you; for the tabernacle was not yet built (on which this pillar afterwards rested), to which those who were to approach the Lord afterwards used to go.
Note: God was wont to speak to Moses, and sometimes to the Hebrews, in three places: First, in the tabernacle within the Holy of holies, after it was made, and that to Moses or Aaron alone, as appears Exodus 25:22.
Secondly, at the door of the tabernacle, near the altar of holocausts, as appears Exodus 29:42.
Thirdly, in the pillar of the cloud, wherever it was, as appears Psalm 98:7; Exodus 33:9.
10. THEY LOOKED TOWARD THE WILDERNESS,—outside the camp.
AND BEHOLD THE GLORY OF THE LORD APPEARED IN A CLOUD.—This glory of the Lord was a splendour and an august radiant brightness, by which the divine majesty, through an angel, exhibited itself as if to be beheld; this splendour was in the cloud, that is, in the pillar of the cloud, which rested in the midst of the camp; but for a just cause it sometimes moved, the angel impelling it, as it did in chap. 14:19, when it placed itself between the camp of the Hebrews and that of the Egyptians. So here the angel in the pillar, as if indignant to abide with a people thus murmuring, fled outside the camp to the wilderness, and thither called and led away Moses, and there spoke with him, saying: “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel,” etc. God did this, or rather the angel in the place of God, to restrain the murmuring people by the terror and splendour of his divinity; and to induce them to believe and obey Moses, seeing him conversing with the majesty of God, and taught and instructed by it. So Lyranus, Abulensis and others.