Why Egypt Is Left but Not Destroyed

But here is the reason why the nation among whom the children of Israel were born was not to be utterly destroyed but only to have its land left behind, while these seven nations were to be completely destroyed. However great the ardor of spirit with which we have entered the desert of the virtues, we cannot possibly free ourselves entirely from the neighborhood of gluttony, or from its service and, so to speak, from daily dealings with it. For the liking for delicacies and dainties will live on in us as something natural and inborn, even though we take pains to cut off all superfluous appetites and desires; and since these cannot be altogether destroyed, they ought to be shunned and avoided. For of these we read, “Take no care for the flesh with its desires.” So while we still keep the feeling for this care, which we are told not to cut off altogether but to keep without its desires, it is clear that we do not destroy the Egyptian nation but in a way separate ourselves from it. We give no thought to luxuries and fine feasts, but, as the apostle says, we are “content with our daily food and clothing.” And this is commanded as a figure in the law, in this way: “You shall not abhor the Egyptian, because you were a stranger in his land.” For necessary food cannot be refused to the body without danger to it and sin in the soul. [a]

But as for those seven troublesome faults, we must in every possible way root out every attachment to them from the inmost recesses of our souls. For of them we read: “Let all bitterness and anger and indignation and clamor and blasphemy be put away from you, with all malice.” And again: “But sexual immorality and all uncleanness and greed, let it not even be named among you, nor obscenity nor foolish talk nor coarse joking.” So we can cut out the roots of these faults, which are grafted onto our nature from outside, while we cannot possibly cut off the occasions of gluttony. For however far we have advanced, we cannot help being what we were born. That this is so we can show not only from the lives of little people like ourselves, but from the lives and customs of all who have reached perfection. Even when they have got rid of the incentives to all the other passions, and are withdrawing into the desert with perfect fervor of spirit and bodily self-denial, they still cannot do without thought for their daily meal and the preparing of their food from year to year.