Tractates on the Books of Holy Scripture (Tractatus Origenis) 7.1–8.4

"Now another king arose in Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his nation: 'See, the nation of the sons of Israel has become great and stronger than we. Come, then, let us subdue them, lest they grow beyond us, and lest, if war should befall us, they side with them and conquer us and drive us out of our land.'" It would be long and very excessive to discuss the necessity and the descent of the people into Egypt. For the history is plain and well known to all. But I must rather labor, dearest brothers, to explain the force, meaning, and mystery of this reading according to the spiritual understanding. For what bears the image of future truth is worthy of discussion, since there is nothing in the divine and sacred writings that does not have a special force of meaning, as they either show things past, or suggest things present, or commend things to come. Egypt, then, was a figure of the world, Pharaoh of the devil; the sons of Israel had put on the image of the first-formed man, from whose origin they were reckoned; and Moses, who was sent to free them, bore the type of Christ. "Joseph died," it says, "and the people began to receive the yoke of the harshest slavery": that is, Adam sinned and all things were corrupted. For just as Israel, when famine came, went down from the land of promise into Egypt, so Adam went down into the world for the sake of food: for he ate of the forbidden tree and was put out of paradise. Hear, then, what it adds: "Pharaoh commanded," it says, that is, the devil; he commanded those on whom he had already laid the yoke of the heaviest slavery. And what did he command? That they make bricks from mud and straw. What could be softer or filthier than mud, what lighter or more worthless than straw? The straw mixed with mud indicates this: that, mixing empty and irrational thoughts, like straw, with the muddy and filthy vices of the body, they were to commit the gravest and filthiest crimes at the urging of the devil's tyranny; for they were then given over to flesh and blood and devoted to the foulness of allurements. So they made bricks, either to build houses or to fortify cities: that is, they pressed together earthly counsels with acts of vice, either to build up their breasts with the wall of unbelief or to enlarge the dwellings of the earthly body with filthy work. For Pharaoh, that is, the devil, thought that the whole people would be so weighed down by these works, and their hearts so shut in by the wall of unbelief, that there would be no one to weaken or conquer his kingdom, no one to bind him, like a strong man defeated, and plunder his goods. But well done, our King, you who broke the bars of adamant and shattered the bolts of untamed iron, and deigned to destroy from the hearts of all those fortifications built, as I said, by the devil's art, and overcame the kingdom of that cruel tyrant by the power of your passion, leading captivity captive and giving gifts to men according to David's prophecy, that you might free all who are yours from his power!

"But Pharaoh commanded the midwives," it says, "that when the Hebrew women began to give birth they should kill the males and keep the females alive." O cruel and dull tyrant, to order the males to be killed and the females kept alive! Herod too did this when he sought Christ among the children. But what is this, that the most savage enemy orders the males to be killed and the females to live? If he wanted to wipe out the nation of the Hebrews, he would have ordered the females to be killed along with the males, since the females who were spared could again bear males who would become his enemies. Why then do you deceive yourself? Why does blind cruelty get the better of you? You rage and you spare, you kill and you indulge. A great cause and a great reason is at work here, dearest brothers. Let us see what the staging of this secret means, which orders the males to be killed and the females to live. The devil was laboring to kill in man the strongest and manly senses of the soul, by which we savor heavenly and divine things, that is, reason, prudence, constancy, innocence, and faith, and to let live in him what was held to be womanish, weak, fragile, and prone to vice, that is, greed, lust, avarice, luxury, madness, and the like, which he wished to live in the people in the figure of the females: that is, that when the virtues were killed the vices might remain. "But the midwives of the Hebrews did not obey Pharaoh. And God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied." As to the spiritual sense, these midwives who did not obey Pharaoh are the souls and minds of the saints, which not only refused to obey Pharaoh the devil but, as midwives delivering from the womb of the heart the males, that is, the virtues of good works, like an offspring of divine seed, brought them forth into the light of thought, so that the strength of faith might prevail. And for this God dealt well with such souls, which served not Pharaoh the devil but the heavenly commands. But so that the divine mysteries might be fulfilled, let us see how Moses, who bore the type of Christ, escaped that deadly edict of Pharaoh. "His mother," it says, "took a basket and smeared it with pitch and bitumen, and put the infant in it, and placed it at the bank of the river. And his sister watched from afar, to see what would become of him. And Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe at the river, and when she saw the basket by the bank, she sent her maid and took it up. And opening it she saw the boy crying in the basket, and spared him, and said, 'This is one of the Hebrews' infants.'" Moses' mother, then, was a figure of the Synagogue of the fathers and prophets, from whose origin Christ was born according to the flesh, whose type Moses then indicated. When he was born, a beautiful infant, he was hidden by his mother for three months. Wonderfully it says "a beautiful infant," because he is more beautiful than all beauty, fairer than all fairness, as it is written of him: "Beautiful in form beyond the sons of men." But let us see what these three months signify. The three months, I say, foretell the mysteries of the divine Trinity, because the Trinity was hidden in Christ from the Synagogue of the fathers, as the apostle says: "The mystery hidden from ancient ages, which none of the rulers knew, which has now been made known to the Gentiles." And the Savior himself says: "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field." This treasure is Christ, who was held hidden in the field of the world by the scriptures of the Old Testament, because there the mysteries of the ancient law were wrapped in certain images in the old records, and the typical mysteries of allegorical riddles still lay concealed and stored away among the very shadows of figures. Moreover these three months make ninety days, forty of them before the passion, in which the Lord is tempted by the devil, and fifty after the resurrection, at the completion of which he sent the Holy Spirit to believers. After these spans of time, then, when the Holy Spirit had been received, as I said, he who was hidden among Israel in the law and the prophets became known to all nations.

The basket in which the infant was put and placed at the river's bank clearly indicated the type of the holy people. For a basket (tibin) is a kind of small vessel like a box, woven of wild twigs. Some have rendered this vessel from the Hebrew language as "chest," others as "little coffer," which we, as I said, more expressly call a "box," because there all the secrets of the law were stored up in Christ. For just as this vessel is called a basket ... for there are two kinds of fire: one from the temptation of the evil one, by which the virtue of our patience is tested in the heat of persecution, since "we must," it says, "enter the kingdom of God through many tribulations"; and the other from the grace of the divine Spirit, as I have often said, by which the minds of the faithful and of those who persevere to the end are enlightened. But come now, let us see why the infant Moses was exposed at the river's bank. This is wonderfully said, because the Lord, whose type Moses had put on, is found by believers nowhere else than at the river of washing and the water of baptism. That the infant was crying signified that Christ wept over the sins of the old man. Hence too he wept at the raising of Lazarus, lamenting the faithlessness of the Jews, because they would not believe such great wonders of God. And the Scripture added, saying: "Then his sister watched from afar to see what would become of him." Who is this sister of his, if not that people from Israel which is to believe under Elijah in the last times? For she from afar, that is, from the end of the age, anxiously looks out in the spirit and watches who they are who will receive Christ, the Son of God, through the washing of saving water. Then he added: "Then," it says, "Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe at the river, and saw the basket, and picked it up, and opened it, and saw the infant, and said: 'This is one of the sons of the Hebrews.'" Let us observe more carefully what this daughter of Pharaoh indicates, or why she picked up the infant. By Pharaoh's daughter I understand nothing other than the Church from the Gentiles, cleansed by the sanctification of the life-giving washing, which picked up and keeps in herself Christ, driven out and exposed by the Synagogue, his mother according to the flesh, as an infant (for he seemed a little one when he was seen in a man), he who would now belong not to that mother who drove him out and exposes him, but to her who picked him up and keeps him. Indeed, when it was said to him, "Behold, your mother and your brothers," he answered: "Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?" And he looked at his disciples and said: "Behold my mother and my brothers. For all who do the precepts of my Father are my mother and brother and sister." So the mother of Christ is no longer the Synagogue, which could not keep him in herself, but the Church coming from the Gentiles, which picked him up by believing from the very time of temptation and raised him, as was fitting for the Son of God, with royal training in the dwelling of her mind, where he was brought to the measure of a mature man and was found king and judge of the living and the dead. Not that the Son of God was ever a little one, but he was seen as a little one when he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and made himself like a mustard seed, which is sown smaller than all herbs in the garden of the heart, but nonetheless becomes greater than all when it is recognized in the kingdom of the age to come.

"But when Pharaoh's daughter wished to nurse him," it says, "his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter: 'Do you want me to call you a nursing woman from the Hebrews, and she will nurse the infant for you?' And Pharaoh's daughter said to her: 'Go.' And she called," it says, "the boy's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her: 'Keep this infant for me, and nurse him for me.'" See what she says: "Keep for me and nurse for me," she says, "this infant." For me, she says, not for you. For he was now necessary to the Church from the Gentiles, not to the Synagogue. But meanwhile, for a time, he was given back to the Synagogue, from which he had been begotten according to the flesh through the law and the prophets, as the apostle says: "Whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ, who is blessed forever." And since it had been divinely ordained that Christ should not be handed over to the Gentiles at once, but should first be given back to his own people to preach the kingdom of God to them, as he himself said, "I was sent only to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel," and "It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs," therefore Pharaoh's daughter, that is, the Church from the Gentiles, did not take him up at once, but he was given back to his mother, because he first had to be nursed according to the ancient law and receive the milk of that law as his drink, as he himself says: "I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it." And he did so, both fulfilling and keeping every bounty of the law. Indeed, when he had cleansed a leper on the sabbath, he ordered him to show himself to the priest and, according to the law, offer him either a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. This, then, is the infant's being given back to his mother to be nursed: Christ, from his birth to his passion, was to be in the Synagogue according to the observance of the law, and then to be given back, now grown, that is, after the resurrection, to Pharaoh's daughter, that is, to the Church from the Gentiles. For Christ, as the evangelist says, had not yet been glorified, because he had not yet suffered. Indeed, immediately after his venerable resurrection he sent the apostles to the Gentiles, saying: "Go to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." When, then, Christ sent the apostles to the nations of the Gentiles, then his mother according to the flesh, the Synagogue, gave him back to Pharaoh's daughter, that is, to the Church from the Gentiles. But perhaps someone may say: "If Pharaoh was a figure of the devil, how is his daughter counted as a type of the Church and said to have taken up the Lord?" Hear the reason. All nations, before they believe and before they are reborn of water and the power from above, are called sons of the devil and children of wrath, and are named a brood of vipers, as the apostle says: "We too were once children of wrath, but now sons of God," and John the Baptist: "Brood of vipers." You see, then, that through repentance for past offenses and the sanctification of the life-giving washing, sons of the devil, children of wrath, and offspring of vipers can become sons of God and be counted in the body of the Church. And so all the nations of the world, whose type Pharaoh's daughter bore in herself, though before faith they are called sons of the devil as of Pharaoh, yet when they believe in God and become his temple, are then called members of Christ and the body of the Church. Let it suffice meanwhile to have said these few things out of many. May God the Father almighty grant me grace in the opening of my mouth and mind to understand the divine mysteries, and grant you the gifts of spiritual graces, so that I may explain with fitting reason everything written in the heavenly treasuries, and you, since the law is spiritual, may grasp spiritually what is spiritually discussed.

"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: Keep in mind the day of the sabbaths, to sanctify it. Six days you shall work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God. You shall do no work on that day, you and your son and your daughter and your maidservant, your ox and your beast of burden and all your cattle,'" and so on. Many precepts of the divine law are gathered in this reading, and to discuss them all in one tractate would be not so much difficult as excessive, not arduous but long-winded. So, deferring the rest, let us for the moment treat only the observance of the sabbath, without which the Jews think every man is a stranger to the hope of eternal life. They would say this truly and rightly, if they first knew what the sabbath is. But men given over to the belly alone and nothing but flesh render everything related in the divine Scriptures, which must be understood spiritually, since the law is spiritual, in a merely bodily sense, since, bound to the workshop of the belly, they know how to cultivate nothing but the flesh. Indeed they received this law of the sabbath together with the cattle, so that, since the law is given in the same form to both men and beasts, it would show beyond doubt that those men are cattle to whom he gave the covenant together with the cattle, when he says: "You shall do no work on that day, nor your ox, nor your beast of burden, nor any of your cattle." So if man's salvation lay in the sabbath, why was the same form of law given to the cattle, unless perhaps they think the glory of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven were promised to cattle? It is truer to believe that this law is likened to cattle, because on the sabbath, while the other members are idle, only the belly is fed. But if the good of man differs from that of a beast, so that the good of man lies in the mind alone and that of the beast in the flesh, and it belongs to the beast to fatten the flesh and to man to nourish the soul with divine reason, why do they observe the sabbath as though it were a sacrament of divine religion, serving only feasts and the table, and are not even idle then, since you see them busy in taking their food? But the Jew may answer: "If the sabbath was not to be observed, why is it written, as Moses says: 'Keep in mind the day of the sabbath, to sanctify it'?" What then? Did Moses himself not keep the sabbath day in mind, he who, fasting forty days, often let sabbath days pass, which he would certainly have profaned by going unfed, if it is not lawful to fast on the sabbath? For if this solemnity must be celebrated only by serving the belly, Moses himself, the lawgiver, as I said, is guilty, who fasting forty days did not keep the sabbath. Elijah too, likewise unfed for forty days and nights, exhausted, wearied, and exercised his belly for so many sabbath days by lack of food: so he certainly acted against the law, if the sacrament of the sabbath is plenty of food and a full belly. The same charge holds Daniel too, who profaned, by their reckoning, not so many sabbath days, but still profaned them: for he fasted three weeks. Zechariah also fasted not only in the fourth, fifth, and tenth months, but also in the seventh, that is, on the sabbath. How were these men found worthy to see so many heavenly visions, if they deserved to be guilty of profaned sabbaths? Or if it is a supreme crime to do anything on the sabbath, how did Joshua son of Nun, Moses' successor, lead out an armed army for eight joined and continuous days, among which there was certainly a sabbath day, and move the camp and the ark of God with the priests and all the districts? He also led the column around the walls of Jericho, and on the eighth day ordered the priests to sound the sacred trumpets. And, if it could be determined, perhaps it was the sabbath day on which the walls of Jericho fell without battle at the noise of the blaring trumpets, and at the shout of the armed people the whole city, having laid aside its terror, fell into the power of the victorious army, and blood was shed, and spoils taken, and plunder carried off from the enemy. Whence, I say, so great and so remarkable a victory over the enemy, if it was not lawful to do anything on the sabbath? Or if this was done by the precept of the law, let the Jews know that the rest of their sabbath, which had been commanded long before, was afterwards broken without crime.

I will add another similar example. There was a certain Shunammite woman in the region who, because she received the prophet Elisha as a guest and cared for him, was found worthy, as the reward of hospitality, to have a son, though she had been childless. While her maternal affections were warm, a hostile illness took this boy from her, still young, and bound him over by the laws of a hastened death while still unripe: suddenly, amid the joys of an unhoped-for happiness, the exultant mother, while promising herself much from her son, received the unexpected wound of bereavement; and since what comes unhoped-for is usually loved the more, the son snatched away, whom unexpected happiness had given her, heaped up her grief. But grief could in no way disturb the judgment of this prudent woman: she lays the lifeless boy on the bed of the prophet, her absent guest. Having done this, she hastens to go to the prophet himself, to seek help against her son's death from the one through whom she had received a son without asking. So she saddles a donkey and prepares with urgent speed what was needed for the journey; she hates and breaks off all delays, rushes everything, hurries to be a mother again. When her husband tried to hold her back because of the new moon and because of the sabbath, the prudent woman, devoting herself wholly to the vows of devotion, and to profit even him who held her back, believed that that would be a sabbath if, her son restored, she obtained rest from the grief in which alone she was laboring. So she sets out, comes to the prophet on the sabbath, and asks him to come. And when he came, he raised her son from the dead. So, if the sabbath had been profaned by the journey, the prophet could not have raised the boy either, because he would have violated the sabbath against the law. I will further add that the army of the Jews was badly treated by the enemy because of its sabbath rest, and was defeated for following the sabbath. Judas Maccabeus, when he had led out his column against the enemy, both laid the foe low and brought the people back from victory not only safe but glorious. One may well exclaim: if a crime against religion is committed by doing something on the sabbath, whence, I ask, this great victory, when the sabbath was profaned by war? Nor will it be credible ... that almighty God, who always works for the care of his man; for whose benefit, bearing a care that foresees, he measured out the parts of the world and tempered the tasks of the elements, poured out the brightness of most welcome light, fitted the night for the boon of rest, sustained the use of cattle, the labors of animals, the services of quadrupeds, and impressed on the earth its fruitfulness and on the springs their abundance for the nourishment and refreshment of human flesh, should give man, for whose care he had provided so much, such precepts in the observance of the law as to forbid again by law the comforts of health and the necessities of the human condition! "But why," you say, "is it written: 'The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall do no work on that day'?" I say what I think: if it is a crime to do anything on the sabbath, then all creation too is guilty. For why does the day rise on the sabbath, if everything must rest in everything? Why the light? Why do the stars rise on the sabbath? Why does the sea move its waves on the very sabbath? Why do the winds blow, clouds darken the day, all things whirl with their storms and tempests? Why do springs boil up, rivers flow, the earth unfold its offspring? And not to be long in running through each thing: why is a Jew often born on the very sabbath, if not because nature is allowed to do its works, and man is not forbidden by divine law to do something on the sabbath day?

But those who do not understand what the sabbath is, or what the rest of the sabbath is, make a mockery of the law itself. For it is agreed that there are two kinds of sabbaths, one temporary, the other eternal; one figurative, the other true; one for testing, the other for salvation; one which the Lord says he hates, the other which he forbids to be profaned. The divine Scripture proves that this temporary sabbath was laid on the people not for salvation but for testing, when the Lord says to Moses: "Tell them," he says, "that I may test them whether they walk in my ways: let them gather manna for six days, but on the seventh day let them rest." They, despising this precept, went out on the seventh day to gather manna, and even gathered wood on the sabbaths, as it is written, so that you may know that the rest of this sabbath was commanded for the people's testing, not for salvation. For God, who knew the minds of the forgetful people, and that, ungrateful for the heavenly benefits, they would not hold within the memory of the fear of God, commanded them the rest of the sabbath, not because nothing should be done, but so that the people might rest from their crimes at least on the one day of the sabbath. And so religion is held out to them, so that by the frequent recurrence of the sabbath they might also remember the law of the Lord, and by the remembrance of the law be restrained from wrongdoing. Otherwise this day would not have been necessary for them, if they had been willing to live after the example of the old patriarchs, so that the fear of God never departed from their minds. Indeed this day would be a sacred one if the precept about the sabbath had also been laid on the earlier fathers. But nothing about the sabbath is commanded to Adam, nothing to righteous Abel, nothing to Seth, nothing to Enoch himself, who was translated, nothing to Noah, who alone was preserved for the conservation of the human race. So if the ground of salvation, as these people think, consists in observing the sabbath, then those earlier men who did not keep sabbaths fell away from salvation; or if they are saved without the sabbath, what use is it to keep the sabbath, since without its observance men are held holy and illustrious before God? But you will say to me: "This day was blessed by God." And I will answer: if this day was blessed because God did nothing on it, much more blessed are those days on which he displayed his divine works. For who does not know that there is more honor not where nothing is done, but where something is provided for human benefit? Who, I say, does not know that there is more grace where something is bestowed by kindness than where a day is barren from idleness, on which blessing was rightly placed by God? For the day which had not been blessed in work would not have been established without reason, if it had remained alone and idle without the fruit of blessing. For the earlier days too received a blessing, having divine works, as the Scripture says: "And God saw all that he had made, and blessed them"; much more does he bless the very days on which the things made were called very good and obtained a blessing from God himself.

But now we must briefly discuss the true sabbath, so as to follow out both its part and its fullness. Sabbath, then, is interpreted in the Latin word as rest or holiday. This is the rest of the sabbath: to abstain from evil and most wicked works, not from good and illustrious ones; not from giving benefits or bestowing comforts, but from all crimes and detestable offenses. Innocence, then, is a daily sabbath, abstinence a daily religion. For when the single days, in continuous order, receive us resting from crime, we nonetheless make all those days one. Otherwise he mocks the sabbath day who thinks that by one day's rest he [atones for] the crimes of the other days; for rest does not make innocent those who will return to their crimes. Therefore this day is not to be reckoned by us according to the flesh, but understood in spirit and truth, of the life ..., so that, while our whole life is carried on to the end without evil work, our whole life too may be rendered a sabbath. To this is added what blessed David says: "A thousand years are like one day before your eyes, O Lord, which has passed." And so there is no doubt that the seven-thousandth year is the seventh day of the Lord, that is, the true sabbath. And this will be the holy sabbath which the Lord commands to be kept and forbids to be profaned, that is, the seven-thousandth year, in which man will do no servile work, that is, no sin, in the kingdom of God, because "he who commits sin," he says, "is the slave of sin." This is the sabbath of sabbaths, in which all things will be holy, devout, peaceful, quiet, secure. These are the tender and delicate sabbaths, where there will be no pain or toil, no sickness, no malice, no sin, but immortal and eternal glory will be granted. For the devil will then be bound in the abyss, so that he may have no power to deceive anyone; and then there will be no malice there, since the owner of malice, that is, the devil, has been removed. Now, then, the rest of the true sabbath is kept in the faith and holiness of the righteous, while they abstain from evil works; but the perfection of the sabbath of sabbaths will be presented to us in the seven-thousandth year, which is the seventh day of the Lord, in the resurrection of the saints and in the kingdom of God. Why then, Jew, do you still pursue from the law the shadow of things to come, when Christ, the end of the law, has already come, in whom not a shadow but the truth, not a figure but the fullness of religion has been rendered? Then all things were done in image, as through riddles; now the truth, made clear, has succeeded. And so then the figure of the future sabbath was commanded to be held in honor through the law, so that when the day of the true sabbath, that is, the holiday from evil works, had come through the faith of the Gospel, then, the image removed, the honor of the true sabbath might be held more illustrious.