The Spoils of Egypt

“But,” they say, “God hardened the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants.” Well, the people who raise difficulties like that have not read the passage in the Gospel where the Lord answered the disciples when they asked him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” “Because it has been given to you to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, but to them I speak in parables — so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not hear, and understanding they may not understand; so that the prophecy of Isaiah about them may be fulfilled, which says: Make the heart of this people gross, and make their ears dull, and blind their eyes. But blessed are your eyes, because they see what you see, and your ears, because they hear what you hear.” For it is one and the same God who blesses some and lays blindness on others — on those who do not believe him but treat him as nothing. He does it as the sun does, which is a thing he made: people whose eyes are too weak cannot bear to look at its light, while to those who believe him and follow him he gives a fuller and greater lighting of the mind. That is why the apostle says in the second letter to the Corinthians: “In their case God has blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world, so that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should not shine on them.” And again, in the letter to the Romans: “And since they did not think it worth their while to keep God in their knowledge, God handed them over to a mind that fails every test, to do what is not fitting.” Speaking of the antichrist, too, he says plainly in the second letter to the Thessalonians: “And for this reason God will send them the working of error, so that they should believe the lie — so that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but gave their consent to wrongdoing.” [a]

So if in our own time as well God has given people over to unbelief — knowing the number of those who will not believe, since he knows everything beforehand — and has turned his face away from people of that kind and left them in the darkness they chose for themselves, what is surprising if at that time he also gave Pharaoh over to his unbelief, along with the men who were with him, seeing that Pharaoh would never have believed? As the Word said to Moses out of the bush: “And I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go, except by a mighty hand.” And for the same reason that the Lord spoke in parables and brought blindness on Israel, so that seeing they might not see — because he knew the unbelief in them — for that same reason he hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh was to see that it was the finger of God leading the people out and still not believe, but be flung headlong into a sea of unbelief, settling into the notion that these Israelites had got away by magic, and that it was not God at work when the Red Sea gave the people a way through, but that the thing simply happened the way nature works.

Then there are those who carp and find fault because, on the eve of their departure, the people took vessels of every kind and clothing from the Egyptians at God’s command, and went off with them — and out of that plunder the tabernacle in the wilderness was made. Such people show that they know nothing of God’s righteous dealings and nothing of his arrangements. The elder made the same point. If God had not granted this in the exodus that was a type, no one could be saved in our true exodus — that is, in the faith in which we have been set firm, and by which we have been brought out from among the nations. For property follows us — a little of it in some cases, a good deal in others — which we got out of the mammon of unrighteousness. Where do we get the houses we live in, the clothes we wear, the vessels we use, and everything else that serves our daily life, if not from what we picked up out of greed while we still belonged to the nations, or received from parents, relatives, or friends among the nations who came by it unjustly? — to say nothing of what we acquire even now, while we are in the faith. For who sells anything and does not want to make a profit from the buyer? Who buys and does not want good value from the seller? Who carries on a trade and does not do it to make a living by it? And the believers who are in the imperial household — do they not get the things they use out of property belonging to Caesar? And does not each of them give to those who have nothing, according to what he can? The Egyptians were in debt to the people — not only for property, but for their very lives, because of the kindness of the patriarch Joseph long before. In what way are the nations in debt to us, from whom we take both gain and profit? Whatever they pile up by hard work, we make use of without the work, even though we are in the faith. [h]

Up to that time the people had served the Egyptians in the most degrading slavery, as the Scripture says: “And the Egyptians used their power harshly on the sons of Israel, and made their lives bitter with hard labor — with mortar and brick and every kind of work in the fields, in all the work in which they crushed them harshly.” With immense labor the people built them fortified cities, increasing these men’s wealth over a long course of years and through every form of slavery; and their masters were not only ungrateful, but had it in mind to wipe them out altogether. How, then, did the Israelites act unjustly, if out of many things they took a few? They could have owned a great deal if they had not been slaves to them, and could have gone out rich; as it was, they took a very small payment for their heavy service and went away poor. Suppose some free man were carried off by force by another, served him for many years, and increased his wealth; and then at last got some means of support and held a small part of his master’s property — going off, in fact, with only a little to show for his own great labors, out of the vast holdings that had been built up. And suppose someone made that a charge against him, as though he had not acted properly. The accuser will look more like an unjust judge, ruling against a man who was carried off by force into slavery. That is the kind of men these are. They lay blame on the people for taking a few things out of many, but bring no charge against the men who never paid back what was owed for their fathers’ services — who instead ground them down into the most galling slavery and made the largest profit out of them. They say the Israelites acted dishonestly, if you please, because they carried off as payment for their labors, as I have said, unstamped gold and silver in a few vessels. And they say that they themselves act honestly — let the truth be spoken, however ridiculous some may find it — when they carry off in their money belts, out of other men’s labor, minted gold and silver and bronze with Caesar’s inscription and image on it.

If a comparison is made between us and them, which side will look to have come by its goods the more fairly? The people, who took from Egyptians who were their debtors on every count? Or we, who receive property from the Romans and the other nations, who are under no such obligation to us? What is more, it is through them that the world is at peace, and we walk the highways without fear and sail wherever we like. So against men of this sort the word of the Lord applies: “You hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to pull the speck out of your brother’s eye.” If the man who lays these charges against you and boasts of his own wisdom has cut himself off from the company of the nations and owns nothing that came out of other people’s goods — if he is literally naked and barefoot and lives homeless in the mountains like the animals that feed on grass — then he can be excused for talking that way, since he does not know what our way of living requires. But if he does take his share of what everyone counts other men’s property, and at the same time runs down the pattern of it, he shows himself thoroughly unjust and turns this kind of charge back on himself. He will be found carrying about property that is not his own, and craving goods that do not belong to him. That is why the Lord said: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged; for by the judgment you judge with, you will be judged.” He certainly does not mean that we should not find fault with sinners, or that we should go along with people who act wickedly. He means that we should not pass an unfair judgment on God’s arrangements, since he has himself seen to it that everything turns out for good, and in a way consistent with justice. Because he knew we would put to good use the property we would come to have by receiving it from someone else, he says: “Let the man who has two coats share with the man who has none, and let the man who has food do the same.” And: “For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was naked and you clothed me.” And: “When you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” And we are shown to be righteous by everything else we do well, buying our property back, as it were, out of strange hands. But when I say “out of strange hands” I do not mean that the world is not God’s own. I mean that we have gifts of this kind and receive them from other people, in the same way as those men received them from Egyptians who did not know God; and by means of these same things we build up in ourselves the tabernacle of God. For God lives in those who act uprightly, as the Lord says: “Make friends for yourselves out of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when you are put to flight they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.” Whatever we came by unrighteously while we still belonged to the nations, we are shown to be righteous, once we have become believers, by turning it to the Lord’s advantage.

So naturally these things were done beforehand as a type, and the tabernacle of God was built out of them. Those people justly received them, as I have shown, and in them we were marked out in advance — we who were to serve God later by means of things belonging to others. For the whole exodus of the people out of Egypt, which took place under God’s guidance, was a type and image of the exodus of the church which was to take place out of the nations. And for that reason he leads the church out at the last from this world into his own inheritance — the inheritance Moses the servant of God did not give, but which Jesus the Son of God will give. And if anyone will pay close attention to what the prophets say about the end, and to what John the disciple of the Lord saw in the Revelation, he will find that the nations are to receive the same plagues, spread over the whole world, that Egypt received in one country.

When he went over matters of this kind about the men of old, the elder used to instruct us like this: “As for the misdeeds the Scriptures themselves blame the patriarchs and prophets for, we ought not to rail at them, nor become like Ham, who laughed at his father’s shame and fell under a curse for it. We should rather give thanks to God on their behalf, since their sins have been forgiven them through the coming of our Lord; for he said that they gave thanks and gloried in our salvation. And as for the actions on which the Scriptures pass no censure, but simply set down as having happened, we ought not to turn accuser against the men who did them. We are not more exact than God, and we cannot be above our Master. We should look for a type in them instead. For not one of the things set down in Scripture without being condemned is without meaning.” There is an example of this in Lot, who brought his daughters out of Sodom — and they then conceived by their own father — and who left his wife behind inside the borders of the land, where she remains a pillar of salt to this day. Lot was not acting on any impulse of his own will, nor at the prompting of a craving of the flesh, and he had no knowledge or thought of anything of the kind; and yet what he did worked out a type of things to come. As the Scripture says: “And that night the elder daughter went in and lay with her father; and Lot did not know it when she lay down or when she got up.” And the same thing happened with the younger: “And he did not know it,” it says, “when she slept with him or when she got up.” Since, then, Lot did not know what he was doing and was no slave to lust in it, the arrangement God had designed was carried out. By it the two daughters — that is, the two churches — were pointed out, who bore children begotten by one and the same father, apart from any craving of the flesh. For there was no other person, as they supposed, who could give them life-giving seed and the means of bearing children, as it is written: “And the elder said to the younger: There is no man on the earth to come in to us, as all the earth does. Come, let us make our father drunk with wine and lie with him, and raise up offspring from our father.” [v]

It was out of their simplicity and innocence that Lot’s daughters spoke this way, imagining that the whole human race had perished as the men of Sodom had, and that God’s anger had come down on the whole earth. That is also why they are to be held excusable: they supposed that they alone were left, along with their father, to keep the human race alive, and that is why they deceived him. And by the very words they used this was pointed out — that there is no one else who can give the elder church and the younger the power of bearing children, except our Father. Now the father of the human race is the Word of God, as Moses points out when he says: “Is he not your father, who got you and formed you and made you?” At what time, then, did he pour out the life-giving seed on the human race — that is, the Spirit who brings the forgiveness of sins, through whom we are made alive? Was it not when he was eating with people and drinking wine on the earth? For it is said, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking.” And when he had lain down he fell asleep and took his rest, as he says himself in David: “I slept and took my rest.” And because this is how he used to act while he lived and stayed among us, he says again: “And my sleep became sweet to me.” This whole matter, then, was indicated through Lot: that the seed of the Father of all — that is, of the Spirit of God, by whom everything was made — was mingled and united with flesh, that is, with his own handiwork. By that mingling and union the two synagogues, that is, the two churches, brought forth from their own father living sons to the living God.

And while all this was going on, Lot’s wife stayed behind in the territory of Sodom — no longer corruptible flesh, but a pillar of salt that lasts forever. By the natural functions that belong to the human race she shows that the church too, which is the salt of the earth, has been left behind within the borders of the earth and is subject to what human beings suffer. And though whole limbs are often taken away from it, the pillar of salt still stands — a type of the foundation of the faith, the faith that makes strong and sends children forward to their Father.