Homilies on Exodus 8.1–8.5

Everyone who has learned to despise the present age, which is figuratively called Egypt, and through the word of God, to speak in the words of Scripture, “has been translated and is not found,” because he hastens and strives toward the age to come: of such a soul the Lord says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” These things, then, are not said only to those who set out from Egypt, but much more to you who now hear them; if only you set out from Egypt and no longer serve the Egyptians, God says these things to you: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” See whether worldly business and the deeds of the flesh are not the house of slavery, just as, on the contrary, to leave worldly things and live according to God is the house of freedom, as the Lord too says in the Gospel: “If you remain in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” So Egypt is the house of slavery, but Judea and Jerusalem are the house of freedom. Hear the Apostle too declaring about these things, according to the wisdom given him in his ministry: “But the Jerusalem that is above,” he says, “is free, which is the mother of us all.” So just as Egypt, that earthly province, is called the house of slavery for the sons of Israel in comparison with Judea and Jerusalem, which becomes the house of freedom for them, so, in comparison with the heavenly Jerusalem, which is, so to speak, the mother of freedom, this whole world and all that is in this world is the house of slavery. And since it was from the paradise of freedom that we had come to slavery of this kind as the punishment of sin, therefore the first word of the Decalogue, that is, the first utterance of God's commandments, is spoken about freedom, saying: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” You could not hear this voice while placed in Egypt, even if you were enjoined to keep the Passover, even if you girded your loins and put sandals on your feet, even if you held a staff in your hand and ate unleavened bread with bitterness. And why do I say that you could not hear these things while placed in Egypt? Even when you had set out from there, you could not hear them at once at the first station, nor at the second, nor at the third, nor when you crossed the Red Sea; even if you came to Marah and the bitterness there was turned into sweetness, even if you came to Elim, to the twelve springs of water and the seventy palm trees, even if you passed Rephidim and went up through the other stages, you are not yet judged fit for words of this kind, but only when you have reached Mount Sinai. So, only after many labours have been completed, after many hardships and temptations have been overcome, will you at last be worthy to receive the commandments of freedom and to hear from the Lord: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Yet this word is not yet the word of a commandment; it shows who it is that commands. Now, then, let us see what the beginning of the ten commandments of the law is; and if we cannot get to all of them, let us at least explain the beginnings, as the Lord grants.

The first commandment, then, is: “You shall have no other gods besides me.” And after this follows: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor any likeness of whatever is in heaven above, and whatever is on the earth beneath, and whatever is in the waters under the earth; and you shall not worship them nor serve them. For I am the Lord your God, a jealous God, who repay the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, and show mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Some think that all these together are one commandment. But if it is thought so, the number of ten commandments will not be completed. And where then will the truth of the Decalogue be? But if it is divided in the way we too distinguished it in the recitation above, the full number of ten commandments will appear. So the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods besides me”; and the second, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor any likeness,” and so on. Let us begin, then, with the first commandment. But I too need the help of the God who gave these commands in order to speak, and you need more purified ears in order to hear. If any of you, then, has ears to hear, let him hear how it is said: “You shall have no other gods besides me.” If he had said, “There are no gods besides me,” the statement would seem more absolute. But now, because he says, “You shall have no other gods besides me,” he did not deny that they exist, but forbade that they should belong to the one to whom all these commands are given. From this, I think, the apostle Paul took what he wrote to the Corinthians, saying: “For even if there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth.” And he added: “And as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we through him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” And in many other places of Scripture you will find gods named, as it says elsewhere: “For the Lord most high is terrible, a great king over all gods”; and, “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken”; and, “In the midst he judges between gods.” Of lords the Apostle says: “Whether thrones or dominions or powers, all things were created through him and in him.” Dominions are nothing other than a certain order and multitude of lords. In this, as it seems to me, the apostle Paul made the sense of the law clearer. For what he says amounts to this: although there are many lords who rule other nations, and many gods who are worshipped by others, yet for us there is one God, one Lord. But what is meant by many gods or many lords Scripture itself can teach us, if you listen attentively and patiently. For the same Moses says in the song of Deuteronomy: “When the Most High divided the nations and scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and his people Jacob became the Lord's portion, Israel the cord of his inheritance.” It is clear, then, that the angels to whom the Most High entrusted the governing of the nations are called both gods and lords: gods as given by God, and lords as having received their power by lot from the Lord. Hence the Lord also said to the angels who did not keep their own dominion: “I said: You are gods, and all sons of the Most High. But you will die like men, and fall like one of the princes,” imitating, that is, the devil, who became the prince of all for ruin. So it was transgression, not nature, that made them accursed. To you, then, O my people Israel, who have become the portion of God, the cord of his inheritance, “there shall be,” he says, “no other gods besides me,” because truly God alone is God, and truly the Lord alone is Lord. To the others, who were created by him, he granted this name not by nature but by grace. But do not suppose that these things are said only to that Israel which was born according to the flesh. Much more are they said to you, who have become Israel by seeing God with the mind, and are circumcised in heart, not in flesh. For even if in the flesh we are Gentiles, in spirit we are Israel, because of him who said, “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession,” and because of him who said again, “Father, all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them”: if only you act so as to be worthy to be the portion of God and to be measured in the cord of his inheritance. Otherwise, if you act unworthily, let those be an example to you who had been called to be the portion of God and by their sins deserved to be scattered among all the nations. And those who had earlier been brought out of the house of slavery now again (for “whoever sins is a slave of sin”) serve not the Egyptians alone but all the nations. So it is said to you too, who through Jesus Christ have gone out of Egypt and been brought out of the house of slavery: “You shall have no other gods besides me.”

After this let us see what the second commandment seems to contain. “You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor any likeness of the things that are in heaven, or on the earth, or in the waters, and under the earth.” Idols are one thing and gods another, as the Apostle himself likewise teaches us. For of gods he said, “As there are many gods and many lords”; but of idols he says that “an idol is nothing in the world.” Hence it seems to me that he did not read cursorily what the law says. For he saw the difference between gods and idols, and again the difference between idols and likenesses. For he who said of idols that they are not did not add that likenesses are not. But here it says: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything.” So it is one thing to make an idol, another to make a likeness. And if the Lord deigns to enlighten us for what must be said, I think it should be taken thus: if, for example, someone in any metal, gold or silver, or in wood or stone, makes the form of some four-footed animal, or of a serpent or a bird, and sets it up to be worshipped, he has made not an idol but a likeness. Or even if he sets up a painting for this very purpose, he must likewise be said to have made a likeness. But he makes an idol who, according to the Apostle's saying that an idol is nothing, makes what does not exist. And what is it that does not exist? A form which the eye has not seen, but which the mind fashions for itself: for example, if someone forms the head of a dog or a ram on human limbs, or again fashions two faces on a single human figure, or joins the hind parts of a horse or a fish to a human chest. Whoever makes these and things like them makes not a likeness but an idol. For he makes what does not exist and has nothing like itself. And therefore, knowing this, the Apostle says that an idol is nothing in the world. For its form is not taken from any existing thing; it is what the idle and curious mind has itself invented. But it is a likeness when something is formed from the things that are in heaven or on earth or in the waters, as we said above. Yet it is not as easy to pronounce about heavenly things as it is about likenesses of things on earth or in the sea, unless someone thinks this can be said of the sun and the moon and the stars; for the Gentiles do customarily depict their forms. But because Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, he wished to forbid also the things that were practised among them in hidden and secret rites: for example, to use their own names, Hecate, as they call her, and other forms of their demons, which Scripture perhaps calls “heavenly”; for it is perhaps of these that it says, “My sword has become drunk in heaven.” For it is the custom of those who care for such things to invoke demons by these forms and likenesses, either to ward off evils or even to bring them on; and the word of God, embracing all these together, now renounces and rejects them all, and forbids not only the making of an idol but also of a likeness of all things that are on earth and in the waters and in heaven.

“… nor serve them.” To serve is one thing, to worship another. Someone may sometimes worship even unwillingly, as some, flattering kings, when they see them given to pursuits of this kind, pretend to worship idols, though it is certain in their heart that an idol is nothing. But to serve is to be enslaved to them with complete affection and devotion. The divine word cuts off both, then, so that you neither serve them with affection nor worship them in outward show. Yet it must be understood that when you have resolved to keep this commandment, to repudiate all other gods and lords, and to have no one as God or Lord except the one God and Lord, this is to have declared a war without truce on all the others. When, then, we come to the grace of baptism, renouncing all other gods and lords, we confess only God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But in confessing this, unless we love the Lord our God with all our heart and cling to him with all our soul and all our strength, we have not become the Lord's portion; but, placed as it were on a kind of borderland, we both suffer the hostility of those we have fled and fail to make propitious the Lord to whom we have fled, since we do not love him with a whole and undivided heart. And therefore the prophet mourns over us, whom he sees tossed about by inconstancy of this kind, and says: “Woe to the double in heart and mind.” And again: “How long will you limp on both your knees?” And the apostle James too says: “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” We, then, who follow our God with a faith that is neither whole nor perfect, and have withdrawn from foreign gods, are placed as it were in a middle borderland: we are cut down by the foreign gods as deserters, and we are not defended by our own Lord, as unstable and wavering. Is this not what the prophets imagine spiritually of the lovers of Jerusalem, when they say, “Your lovers themselves have become your enemies”? Understand, then, that your soul too had many lovers, who delighted in its beauty, with whom it played the harlot. Of them it also said: “I will go after my lovers, who give me my wine and my oil,” and the rest. But now the time has come for it to say: “I will return to my former husband, for it was better for me then than now.” You have returned, then, to your former husband; doubtless you have offended your lovers with whom you committed adultery. Unless, then, you now remain with your husband in all fidelity and cleave to him wholly, because of the many crimes you committed you are suspect to him: every movement of yours, your glance, even your gait, if it is somewhat careless, will displease him. He can no longer bear to see anything wanton in you, anything dissolute and prodigal. And if you turn your eyes even a little away from your husband, the memory of the former things must at once arise. So that you may blot out the former things, then, and be trusted in what remains, you must not only do nothing unchaste but not even think it. For see what is written: “When,” it says, “the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest and does not find it. Then he says: I will return to my house from which I came out. And if on coming he finds it empty, swept, and adorned, he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter that house and dwell in it. And the last state of that man will be worse than the first.” If we attend to this, how can we give room to negligence even in a small thing? For the unclean spirit dwelt in us before we believed, before we came to Christ, when, as I said above, our soul was still committing sexual immorality away from God and was with its lovers, the demons. But after it said, “I will return to my former husband,” and came to Christ, who created it in the beginning according to his image, the adulterous spirit necessarily gave way when it saw the lawful husband. So we have been received by Christ, and our house has been cleansed of former sins and adorned with the ornaments of the sacraments of the faithful, which those who have been initiated know. But this house does not at once merit to have Christ as its inhabitant unless its life and conduct are so holy, so pure and undefiled that it merits to be a temple of God. For it must no longer be a house but a temple in which God dwells. If, then, it neglects the grace it has received and entangles itself in worldly business, at once that unclean spirit returns and claims the empty house for himself. And so that he cannot be expelled again, he brings with him seven other spirits more wicked, and the last state of such a man becomes worse than the first; because it would have been more tolerable for a soul that had once played the harlot not to have returned to its former husband than, having gone out again after confessing its husband, to become an adulteress once more. So there is no fellowship, as the Apostle says, of the temple of God with idols, no harmony of Christ with Belial. If we are God's, we must be such that what God says of us may be fulfilled: “For I will dwell in them and walk among them, and they shall be my people.” And as the prophet says in another place: “Go out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. Go out, and do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord almighty.” For this reason, then, he says: “You shall have no other gods besides me, nor shall you make for yourself an idol, nor any likeness of whatever is in heaven and whatever is on earth and whatever is in the waters; you shall not worship them nor serve them.”

“For I am the Lord your God, a jealous God.” See the kindness of God: in order to teach us and make us perfect, he himself does not refuse the frailty of human feelings. For who, hearing of a jealous God, would not at once be surprised and think it a fault of human frailty? But God does and suffers all things for our sake, and so that we may be taught, he speaks to us in terms of feelings known and familiar to us. Let us see, then, what it is that he says: “I am a jealous God.” But so that divine things may be contemplated more easily, let us be taught by human examples, following what we discussed above. Every woman is either under a husband and subject to a husband's laws, or she is a harlot and uses the freedom of sinning. Whoever goes in to a harlot knows that he has gone in to a woman who is prostituted and open to all who wish, and he cannot be indignant if he sees other lovers with her too. But whoever is in a lawful marriage does not allow his wife the power of sinning, but is kindled with jealousy to preserve the chastity of the marriage, so that he may become a lawful father through her. By this example, then, let us understand that every soul is either prostituted to demons and has very many lovers, so that now the spirit of sexual immorality enters it, and when he departs the spirit of avarice enters, after him comes the spirit of pride, then of anger, then of envy, after that of vainglory, and many other unclean spirits with them. And all these so play the harlot with the unfaithful soul that one does not shut out another, nor are they moved by jealousy toward one another. And why do I say that one does not exclude another? Rather they invite one another and summon one another willingly, as we said a little before that it is written in the Gospel of the spirit that went out of a man and, returning, brought with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, so that they might dwell together in one soul. So the soul that is prostituted to demons suffers no jealousy from its lovers. But if it is joined to a lawful husband, to that husband to whose marriage Paul joins and unites souls, as he himself says, “For I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,” and of whom it is written in the Gospels that a certain king made a wedding for his son: when the soul has given itself to the marriage of this husband and has obtained a lawful marriage with him, then, even if it was once a sinner, even if it played the harlot, yet once it has handed itself over to this husband, he no longer allows it to sin. He cannot bear that the soul which has obtained him as husband should again dally with adulterers, because the jealousy of that husband is roused over it, and he defends the chastity of the marriage. And therefore the Lord is called jealous, because he does not allow the soul given over to him to be mingled with demons. Otherwise, if he sees it violating the rights of marriage and seeking occasion to sin, then, as it is written, he gives it a bill of divorce and sends it away, saying: “Where is the bill of divorce of your mother, with which I put her away?” To which he also adds: “Behold, for your sins you were sold, and for your iniquities I sent away your mother.” The one who speaks these things is jealous, and he says them moved by jealousy; for after the knowledge of himself, after the enlightenment of the divine word, after the grace of baptism, after the confession of faith, and a marriage confirmed by so many and such great sacraments, he does not want us to sin any longer; he does not allow the soul of which he is called bridegroom or husband to play with demons, to whore with unclean spirits, to wallow in vices and impurities. And if this should perhaps unhappily happen at some time, he waits in mercy, at least that it may turn, return, and repent. For this is a new kind of goodness, that he receives a soul even after adultery, if it returns and repents with its whole heart. As he himself says through the prophet: “If a woman goes out from her husband and sleeps with another man, will she return to her husband? Will she not be utterly defiled? But you have committed sexual immorality with many lovers, and yet you returned to me.” Likewise he says elsewhere: “And after you had committed sexual immorality in all these things, I said: Return to me; and even so you did not return, says the Lord.” If, then, this jealous God seeks and desires your soul to cleave to him, if he keeps you from sin, if he reproves, if he chastises, if he is indignant, if he is angry and shows a kind of jealousy toward you, recognize that there is hope of salvation for you. But if when chastised you do not come to your senses, when reproved you do not amend, when beaten you despise it, know that if you advance so far in sinning, his jealousy departs from you, and what is said through the prophet Ezekiel to Jerusalem will be said to you: “Therefore my jealousy will depart from you, and I will no longer be angry with you.” See the mercy and kindness of the good God. When he wishes to have mercy, he says that he is indignant and angry, as he says through Jeremiah: “With pain and the scourge you will be chastised, Jerusalem, so that my soul may not depart from you.” If you understand this, it is the voice of a merciful God; where he is angry and jealous, there he applies pains and blows. “For he scourges every son whom he receives.” But do you want to hear the terrible voice of an indignant God? Hear what he says through the prophet: when he had enumerated many abominable things the people had committed, he adds this too: “And for this,” he says, “I will not punish your daughters when they commit sexual immorality, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery.” This is terrible, this is the last extremity: when we are no longer reproved for our sins, when we are no longer corrected when we offend. For then, when we have exceeded the measure of sinning, the jealous God turns his jealousy away from us, as he said above: “For my jealousy will be taken away from you, and I will no longer be angry with you.” So much on what is said: “a jealous God.”