Some ask how the people can be told that God gave the order that he would lead them from Egypt into the land of Canaan, while Pharaoh was told that they wanted to make three days’ journey into the desert to offer sacrifice to their god by his command. But the passage should be understood thus: although God knew what he was going to do and knew that Pharaoh would not agree to dismiss the people, that fact was to be stated first that would also happen first, if Pharaoh let the people go. The contumacy of Pharaoh and his courtiers merited everything that happened, to which the Scripture afterward attests. God is not lying when he commands what he knows is not going to be done by the one he commands; his purpose is to obtain a just judgment.

Let us then become lowly, that we may be high. For most utterly does arrogance abase. This abased Pharaoh. For, I know not, he says, the Lord, and he became inferior to flies and frogs and the locusts, and after that with his very arms and horses was he drowned in the sea. In direct opposition to him, Abraham says, I am dust and ashes and prevailed over countless barbarians, and having fallen into the midst of Egyptians, returned, bearing a trophy more glorious than the former, and, cleaving to this virtue, grew ever more high.

When both the good and the bad do the same things and suffer the same things, they are to be distinguished by their intentions, not by their acts and penalties. Pharaoh oppressed the people of God with hard labors; Moses afflicted the same people, who had fallen into idolatry, with severe punishments.^[1] They did the same things, but they did not aim at the same result. The former was puffed up with pride of power, the latter was animated by love.

Even Pharaoh knew that it was proper for one to seek God when he was unoccupied, and for this reason he reproached Israel: You are unoccupied, you are idle, and you say, ‘We shall offer prayers to the Lord, our God.’ Now leisure itself is good and useful to him who is unoccupied, since it produces quiet for the acquisition of salutary doctrines. But the leisure of the Athenians was evil, who used to spend all their leisure telling or listening to something new.^[1] Even at the present time some imitate this, misusing the leisure of life for the discovery of some newer teaching.

In Moses and Aaron the law and the prophets are prefigured. A sick soul often murmurs to itself against the sacred words. After it has begun to hear and follow the heavenly words, the opposition of the Egyptian king—that is, the temptation of an evil spirit—rises up. So the physician should carefully make known to the soul that is making progress which temptations will attack it, so that it can carefully prepare itself for the snares of an evil spirit.

The words that Moses speaks to the Lord are not words of contumacy or indignation but of inquiry and prayer. This fact is clear from the way the Lord answered him. For he did not accuse him of infidelity but revealed what he was about to do.

It will naturally be asked how he that is beyond the universe, himself the only almighty God, appeared to the fathers. And the answer will be found if we realize the accuracy of Holy Scripture. For the Septuagint rendering, I was seen of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, being their God, Aquila^[1] says, And I was seen by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as a sufficient God, clearly showing that the almighty God himself, who is one, was not seen in his own person and that he did not give answers to the fathers, as he did to Moses by an angel, or a fire or a bush, but as a sufficient God. Thus the Father was seen by the fathers through the Son, according to his saying in the Gospels, He that has seen me has seen the Father.^[2] For the knowledge of the Father was revealed in him and by him. But in cases when he appeared to save men, he was seen in the human form of the Son, giving an earnest before the time^[3] to the godly of that salvation which should come through him to all men. But when he was going to be the avenger and chastiser of the wicked Egyptians, he appeared no longer as a sufficient God but as an angel ministering punishment, and in form of fire and flame, ready at once to devour them like wild and thorny undergrowth. So they say that the bush darkly refers to the wild, savage and cruel character of the Egyptians and the fire to the avenging power of the chastisement that overtook them.

The God of gods is the Lord Christ; with the Father and Holy Spirit he is truly called God of gods, though the title is not wholly appropriate to the Godhead because the human tongue cannot, as we have already said, indicate the height of the Godhead beyond this. Deus (God)^[1] in the Greek language means fear, and since he alone is to be feared the word attained the role of a title. We read in Exodus: My name Adonai I did not show them. From this we are to realize that the name is secret and is known to have been revealed not even to chosen ministers. So he spoke through prophets, through apostles and more powerfully through his own mouth. See