Egypt, the Nation Already Left Behind

Everyone is fully agreed that there are eight principal faults that affect a monk. And the reason they are not all included in the figure of the nations is this. In Deuteronomy, Moses, or rather the Lord through him, was speaking to those who had already gone out of Egypt and been set free from one very powerful nation, I mean that of the Egyptians. We find that this figure holds good in our case too. When we have got clear of the snares of this world, we are found to be free from gluttony, that is, the sin of the belly and the palate. And like them we have a conflict against these seven remaining nations, without taking any account at all of the one that has already been overcome. The land of this nation was not given to Israel to possess; instead the Lord’s command ordered them to leave it at once and go out from it. And for this reason our fasts ought to be kept moderate, so that there may be no need for us, through excessive abstinence and the weakness and infirmity of the flesh that go with it, to go back again to the land of Egypt, that is, to our former greed and fleshly lust, which we left behind when we made our renunciation of this world. This has happened as a figure in those who, after going out into the desert of virtue, hanker again after the pots of meat they sat beside in Egypt. [a]