Êxodo 4
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Êxodo 4:2-3
Let me try to explain, as far as the Lord enables me to, what these signs mean. The rod stands for the kingdom, the snake for mortality; it was by the snake that man was given death to drink. The Lord was prepared to take this death to himself. So when the rod came down to earth it had the form of a snake, because the kingdom of God, which is Jesus Christ, came down to earth. He put on mortality, which he also nailed to the cross. Your holinesses know that when that proud and stiff-necked people grumbled against God in the desert, they began to be bitten by serpents and to die of the bites. In his mercy God provided a remedy, a remedy that restored health at the time but also foretold the wisdom that was to come in the future. — SERMON 6.7
Êxodo 4:10
[Moses] believes that by God's will he can suddenly become eloquent when he says, "or since the time you began to speak to your servant." He shows that it could happen that one who was not eloquent the day before, or the day before that, could suddenly become eloquent, from the time when the Lord began to speak to him. — QUESTIONS ON EXODUS 7
Êxodo 4:11
There are some who bring false charges against God, or rather against the Scriptures of the Old Testament, because God said that he himself makes a man blind or mute. So what do they say about Christ the Lord, who says openly in the Gospel, "I have come so that those who are blind may see and those who see might be made blind"? Who besides a fool would believe that something can happen to a man in regard to corporeal defects that God did not will? No one doubts that God wills all things justly. — QUESTIONS ON EXODUS 8
Êxodo 4:12
It is clear that not only the instruction that comes from his mouth but also its being opened pertains to the will and grace of God. For God does not say, "You open your mouth, and I will instruct you," but promised both: "I shall open, and I shall instruct." Elsewhere he says in a psalm, "Open your mouth, and I shall fill it." There it signifies the will in man to receive what God gives to one who is willing, so that "open your mouth" pertains to the initiative of the will and "I shall fill it" to the grace of God. But here the sense is "I shall both open your mouth and instruct you." — QUESTIONS ON EXODUS 9
Êxodo 4:14
How can the anger of God be understood, since God is not gripped by any irrational disturbance, as man is? Where Scripture says something like this, we should have a consistent explanation to avoid repeating the same account too often. But one can rightly ask why God says here that he is angry with Moses about his brother Aaron, because he would speak to the people for Moses. For it means that God had not given Moses the fullest ability that he was going to give, because he was diffident. God wished the deed to be carried out by two men. He could also have done it through one, if that man had believed. But all these words, when they are considered more diligently, do not mean that the Lord in his anger had handed over Aaron for punishment. For he says this: "Behold, is your brother Aaron not a Levite? I know that when he speaks, he will speak eloquently." These words show that God rather reproached Moses, who feared to go because he was less suitable, since he had a brother through whom he could say to the people what he wanted, because Moses himself had a weak voice and a slow tongue. Still, he should have put all his hope in God. Then he says the same things that he had promised shortly before and afterward grown angry. For he had said, "I shall open your mouth and instruct you." But now he says, "I shall open your mouth and his mouth, and I shall teach you what to do." But since he added, "And he will speak for you to the people," the opening of the mouth seems to be provided, because Moses says he is slow of tongue. But the Lord did not will to supply [vocal strength] for the weakness of his voice but added the help of his brother Aaron. Moses could use Aaron's voice, which was sufficient to teach the people. So when he says, "and you will put my words in his mouth," he shows that he was going to provide him with words. For if he were only given things to hear for the people, God would have said, "into his ears." Then it says a little later, "and he will speak for you to the people," he shows clearly enough that the leading role was for Moses, the subordinate role for Aaron. What he says thereafter, "You will be to him as God," perhaps this great mystery is to be examined closely. The figure suggests that Moses was the mediator between God and Aaron, and Aaron the mediator between Moses and the people. — QUESTIONS ON EXODUS 10
Êxodo 4:16
One should notice that when Moses is sent to the people, God does not say to him, "Behold, I gave you as a god to the people, and your brother will be your prophet," but he says, "[Your brother] will speak to the people for you." For Scripture had said, "He will be your mouth, and you will be to him as God." It did not say, "You are god to him." But to Pharaoh Moses is said to be given as god, and according to analogy, Aaron is a prophet of Moses, but to Pharaoh. Here it is suggested to us that prophets of God say what they hear from him. A prophet of God is nothing but one who speaks the words of God to men—those who either cannot hear God or do not deserve to. — QUESTIONS ON EXODUS 17
Êxodo 4:20
What was said above, that Moses placed his wife and his children on carts so that he might go with them into Egypt, but afterwards his father-in-law Jethro met him with them [in his company], after Moses had led the people out of Egypt, one can ask how both assertions can be true. One should realize that after the killing of Moses or of the child that the angel was going to carry out, his wife returned with the children. For some interpreters thought that the angel threatened them to keep a woman from accompanying Moses and thus forming an obstacle to the ministry that God had imposed on him. — QUESTIONS ON EXODUS 12
Êxodo 4:21
And you must not deny free will to Pharaoh just because God says in a number of places, "I have hardened Pharaoh" or "I will harden the heart of Pharaoh," for it does not thereby follow that it was not Pharaoh himself that hardened his own heart. Furthermore, we read that this happened to Pharaoh after the plague of flies had been removed from the Egyptians, as the Scripture testifies: "And Pharaoh's heart was hardened so that neither this time would he let the people go." Thus it was that both God and Pharaoh caused this hardening of the heart: God, by his just judgments, Pharaoh, by his free will. — ON GRACE AND FREE WILL 23
Êxodo 4:24
We ask first, whom did the angel wish to kill? Was it Moses, because Scripture says, "The angel approached him and sought to kill him"? For whom will he be thought to have approached except him who was in charge of his entire people and by whom the others were led? Or did the angel seek to kill the boy, whom his mother aided by circumcising him? Then one would understand that the reason why God wished to kill the child was that he was not circumcised and thus sanctioned the precept of circumcision by the severity of the punishment. If this is the case, it is unclear of whom it was said previously, "he sought to kill him," because we do not know who it was until we discover it from what follows. It is a remarkable and unusual expression to say "he approached him and sought to kill him" about someone who had not been mentioned before. But there is such a usage in a psalm: "Its foundations are on the holy mountains; the Lord loves the gates of Zion." For the psalm begins at that point and had not said anything about the Lord or about that city whose foundations were meant to be understood when the psalm said, "Its foundations are on the holy mountains." But because of what follows, "the Lord loves the gates of Zion," the foundations, either those of the Lord or of Zion—"of Zion" yields the better sense—are understood as the foundation of a city. But the gender of this pronoun, "its," is ambiguous, for it can be masculine, feminine or neuter. In Greek, however, the feminine is autēs, whereas the masculine and neuter are autou, and the Greek text has autou, so we must understand that the foundations are those not of Zion but of the Lord. That is, [they are] the foundations that the Lord constitutes, of which Scripture has said, "the Lord building Jerusalem." But when the psalm said, "Its foundations are on the holy mountains," it had not previously mentioned either Zion or the Lord. Here too it is said, "He met him and sought to kill him," although the child had not yet been named, so that we do not know of whom he was speaking in the words that follow. But still, if someone wants to hold that Moses is meant, he should not be strongly opposed. We should rather understand what follows, if we can, what it means when the text says that the angel refrained from killing any of them because the woman said, "The blood of the infant's circumcision has stopped flowing." She does not say that "he drew back from him" because she circumcised the infant but that "the blood of circumcision stopped." Not that it flowed but that it stopped—in a great mystery, if I am not wrong. — QUESTIONS ON EXODUS 11
Êxodo 4:25
And this was made manifest by the message of an angel in the case of Moses' son, for when he was carried by his mother, being yet uncircumcised, it was required, by manifest present peril, that he should be circumcised. And when this was done, the danger of death was removed. As therefore in Abraham the justification of faith came first and circumcision was added afterwards as the seal of faith, so in Cornelius the spiritual sanctification came first in the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the sacrament of regeneration was added afterward in the laver of baptism. — ON BAPTISM 4.24.32
Êxodo 4:25
If I had been a Jew in the times of the ancient people, when there was nothing better to be, I would surely have accepted circumcision. That "seal of the justice of the faith" had so much power at that time, before it was rendered void by the coming of the Lord, that the angel would have strangled the infant son of Moses if his mother had not taken up a stone and circumcised the child and thus by this sacrament warded off his imminent destruction. This sacrament even tamed the river Jordan and reduced it to a brook. The Lord himself received this sacrament after birth, although on the cross he made it void. — LETTER 23
Êxodo 4:25
Christ was the rock whence was formed the stony blade for the circumcision, and the flesh of the foreskin was the body of sin. — ON THE GRACE OF CHRIST AND ORIGINAL SIN 2.31.36