Homilies on Exodus 2.1–2.4

This king who did not know Joseph contrives many things against the people of God and is always seeking new arts of harm. But now his cunning exceeds all measure, when he tries to extinguish the offspring of the race through the ministry of midwives, by whose art life is usually preserved. For what does he say? “And the king of the Egyptians,” it says, “said to the midwives of the Hebrews, one of whom was named Sephora and the other Phua, and said: When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and they are near delivery, if it is a male, kill him; if a female, keep her alive.” But to this is added next: “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded them, and they kept the males alive.” If what is written were to be taken according to the narration of the literal account, what Scripture says here, that the midwives did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded them, seems unable to stand. For the midwives are not found to have failed to keep alive the females whom the king of Egypt commanded to be kept alive. For he says thus: “If it is a male, kill him; if a female, keep her alive.” And if the midwives did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded, then surely, just as they kept the males alive against the king's command, they ought to have killed the females, so that this too would be against the king's command. For to keep the females alive was to do according to Pharaoh's command. These things, meanwhile, for the sake of those who are friends of the letter and do not think that the law is spiritual and to be understood spiritually. But we, who have learned that all that is written was written not as narratives of antiquities but for our instruction and benefit, find that the things that are read are happening even now, not only in this world, which is figuratively called Egypt, but in each one of us. Let us ask, then, how the king of Egypt, who is the prince of this world, does not want the males kept alive but wants the females. If you remember, we have often shown in our discussions that in women the flesh and the affections of the flesh are signified, while the man is the rational sense and the intellectual spirit. The rational sense, which can savour heavenly things, which can understand God and seek the things that are above: this Pharaoh, king and prince of Egypt, hates; this he desires to be killed and destroyed. But he desires whatever belongs to the flesh to live, and the things that pertain to bodily matter he desires not only to live but to be increased and cultivated. For he wants all to savour carnal things, to desire temporal things, to seek the things that are upon the earth; he wants no one to lift his eyes to heaven, no one to ask whence he came here, no one to remember paradise, his homeland. When, therefore, you see people spending their life in pleasures and delights, floating in luxury, giving their attention to feasts, wine, banquets, beds, and indecencies, know that in these the king of Egypt is killing the males and keeping the females alive. But if you see some rare person, one in a thousand, turning to the Lord, lifting his eyes upward, seeking what is perpetual and eternal, contemplating not the things that are seen but the things that are not seen, hating delights, loving continence, fleeing luxury, cultivating the virtues: Pharaoh desires that one, as a male, as a man, to be killed; he pursues him, hounds him, fights against him with a thousand engines. He hates such people and does not allow them to live in Egypt. This, then, is why in this world the servants of God and all who seek God are held in disdain and contempt; this is why they are exposed to insults, why they are filled with reproaches, why hatreds and persecutions are stirred up against them: because Pharaoh hates them; he who loves the females hates males of this kind. He also sets about corrupting the midwives and fulfilling his desire through them, whose very names are indicated to us by the providence of the Holy Spirit, who willed these things to be written. One, it says, was Sephora, which is interpreted “sparrow”; and Phua, which among us can be rendered “blushing” or “modest.” Through these, then, he seeks to have the males killed and only the females kept alive.

But what does Scripture say? “And the midwives,” it says, “feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them.” Some before us have said that these midwives represent the form of rational learning. For midwives are a kind of physicians, and they tend both the males and the females who are born. This common learning of rational knowledge, then, reaches almost every mind; it instructs all and tends all. If anyone in it is of a manly mind and wishes to seek heavenly things and pursue divine things, being, as it were, treated and tended by learning of this kind, he will come better prepared to the understanding of divine things. For one of them is like the sparrow, which teaches loftier things and summons minds to fly on high on the rational wings of doctrine. The other, which is “blushing” or “modest,” is moral: it orders conduct, teaches modesty, establishes uprightness. To me, however, since Scripture says of them that they feared God and did not carry out the commands of the king of Egypt, these two midwives seem to preserve a figure of the two Testaments: Sephora, which is interpreted “sparrow,” can be compared to the law, which is spiritual; and Phua, which is “blushing” or “modest,” indicates the Gospels, which blush with the blood of Christ and glow red throughout the whole world with the blood of his passion. By these, then, as by midwives, the souls born in the Church are treated, since from the reading of the Scriptures every medicine of learning is applied to them. Yet Pharaoh tries through these to kill the males of the Church, when he suggests heretical ideas and perverse doctrines to those who are eager in the divine Scriptures. But the firm foundation of God stands immovable. For the midwives fear God, that is, they teach the fear of God, because “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In this way, I think, what is written further on can also be applied more fittingly, where it says: “Because the midwives feared God, they made houses for themselves.” This saying can have no logical sequence according to the letter. For what order is there in saying, “Because the midwives feared God, they made houses for themselves”? As though a house came to be because God is feared! If this is taken as it is written, it will seem not only to have no sequence but also a great deal of emptiness. But if you see how the Scriptures of the New and Old Testaments, by teaching the fear of God, make houses of the Church, so as to fill the whole world with houses of prayer, then what is written will be seen to have been written reasonably. So these midwives, because they fear God and teach the fear of God, do not carry out the command of the king of Egypt but keep their males alive; and yet it is not said that they obeyed the command of the king of Egypt so as to keep the females alive. I confidently dare to say, according to the sense of Scripture: these midwives do not keep the females alive. For vices are not taught in the churches, nor is luxury preached, nor are sins nourished (for this is what Pharaoh wants when he orders the females to be kept alive); virtue alone is cultivated, and it alone is nourished. But let us apply these things to each one of us. You too, if you fear God, do not carry out the command of the king of Egypt. For he commands you to live in delights, to love the present age, to desire present things. If you fear God and perform the office of midwife for your soul, if you desire to bring it salvation, you do not do these things, but keep alive the male that is in you; you treat and tend your inner man, and by good deeds and good understanding you win eternal life for it.

But after this, when Pharaoh saw that he could not kill the males of Israel through the midwives, “he commanded,” it says, “all his people, saying: Every male that is born to the Hebrews, throw into the river, and keep every female alive.” See what the prince of this world commands his own: to seize our infants and throw them into the river; lying in wait for our very first birth, so that as soon as they have touched the breasts of the Church, they may rush upon them, tear them away, pursue them, and swallow them up in the waves and billows of this age. See what you are hearing; the wisdom of God says through Solomon: “Understand with understanding what is set before you.” See what threatens you as soon as you are born, or rather reborn. This is what you read in the Gospel, that Jesus, as soon as he came up from baptism, was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. This, then, is what Pharaoh in this passage too commanded his people: to attack the Hebrew infants as soon as they are born, tear them away, and drown them in the waters. Perhaps this is what is said through the prophet: “For the waters have come in even to my soul. I am stuck fast in the mire of the deep, and there is no substance.” But Christ overcame and conquered precisely in order to open for you the way of conquering. He conquered by fasting so that you too might know that this kind of demon is to be overcome by fasting and prayer. He despised all the kingdoms of the world and their glory when they were offered to him, so that you too, despising the glory of the world, may be able to overcome the tempter. The Egyptians, to whom Pharaoh gave his commands, keep only the females alive and hate the males; for they hate virtues and nourish only vices and pleasures. So even now the Egyptians lie in wait, in case some male is born to the Hebrews, to pursue and kill him at once, unless they take care, unless they keep watch and hide the male offspring. Scripture relates, accordingly, that a woman of the tribe of Levi bore a male and, seeing that the infant was beautiful, hid him for three months. See whether this is not why we are commanded not to do our good deeds in public, not to do our righteousness before men, but to pray to the Father in secret with the door shut, and not to let our left hand know what our right hand does. For unless it is done in secret, it will be torn away by the Egyptians, attacked, thrown into the river, and drowned by waves and billows. So if I give alms, since it is a work of God, I beget a male. But if I do it so that it becomes known to men, and seek praise from men and do not hide it, my almsgiving has been seized by the Egyptians and sunk in the river, and with all that labour and effort I have begotten a male for the Egyptians. Therefore, you people of God who hear these things, do not think, as we have often said already, that old tales are being recited to you; rather, you are being taught through them to recognize the order of life, the principles of conduct, and the contests of faith and virtue.

These people of the tribe of Levi, then, seeing that the infant was beautiful, hid him for three months. “And when they could hide him no longer,” it says, “his mother took a basket and smeared it with bitumen, and put the infant in it, and placed it in the marsh beside the river; and his sister watched from afar to see what would happen to him. And Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe in the river, and heard the infant crying, and sent,” it says, “and took him up; and Pharaoh's daughter said: This is one of the Hebrews' infants.” After this it is related how his sister said that she would call the boy's mother to nurse him. “And Pharaoh's daughter,” it says, “said to her: Keep this infant for me and nurse him for me, and I will give you wages. And when she had nursed him and he had grown stronger, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son, and she named him Moses, saying: Because I took him from the water.” Each of these details is filled with immense mysteries and demands a great deal of time; even if we spent the space of a whole day on them, it would perhaps scarcely suffice. Briefly, however, for the building up of the Church, some things … has an impious and wicked father, yet it is said to her through the prophet: “Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house, for the king has desired your beauty.” This, then, is she who went out of her father's house and came to the waters, to be washed of the sins she had contracted in her father's house. Accordingly she at once takes on a heart of mercy and pities the infant. This Church, then, coming from the Gentiles, finds Moses lying in the marsh, cast out by his own and exposed; she gives him to a nurse, and he is nursed among his own and spends his infancy there. But when he has grown stronger, he is brought to her and adopted as a son. That Moses is called the law has already been discussed often, in many places. The Church, then, coming to the waters of baptism, also received the law; yet the law was shut up within a basket, smeared with pitch and bitumen. A basket is a kind of covering, woven from twigs or papyrus or even made from the bark of trees, inside which the infant was placed and seemed exposed. The law, then, lay shut up within coverings of this kind, smeared with pitch and bitumen, fenced about and soiled by the base and earthly understanding of the Jews, until the Church should come from the Gentiles and take it up from the muddy and marshy places and receive it within the halls of wisdom and the royal dwellings. Yet this law spends its infancy among its own. For among those who do not know how to understand it spiritually it is little and an infant, and has the food of sucklings. But when Moses comes to the Church, when he enters the house of the Church, he is stronger and more vigorous. For once the veil of the letter has been taken away, the food in its reading is found to be perfect and solid. What, then, does it mean that she also receives the wages of nursing from Pharaoh's daughter, she among whom the law was both born and nursed? What is it that the Synagogue receives from the Church? I think it can be understood as what the same Moses writes, saying: “I will provoke you to jealousy with what is no nation; with a foolish nation I will stir you to anger.” So the Synagogue receives this as wages from the Church, that it no longer worships idols. For seeing those who are from the Gentiles so converted to God that they no longer know idols and worship no one but the one God, it is itself ashamed to worship idols any longer. This, then, is the benefit the Synagogue receives from the Church, because it is seen to have nursed the law when it was small. But we too, even if we had Pharaoh for a father, even if the prince of this world begot us in evil works, when we come to the waters, let us take up the law of God, and let not the base and obscure covering of its letter seem squalid to us; let us give up what is small in it and for sucklings, take up what is perfect and strong, and place these within the royal dwellings of our heart. Let us hold Moses to be great and strong; let us think nothing small, nothing lowly of him, but hold him wholly magnificent, wholly excellent, wholly beautiful. For whatever is spiritual, whatever belongs to a lofty understanding, is wholly great. And let us pray the Lord Jesus Christ that he himself may reveal and show us how great Moses is and how lofty. For he reveals it, to whom he wills, through the Holy Spirit. To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.