And the same [Moses] by divine inspiration foresaw the name Jesus very clearly and again also endowed this with special privilege. The name of Jesus, which had never been uttered among men before it was made known to Moses, Moses applied first to this one alone. He knew that Joshua, again as a type and a symbol, would receive the rule over all after Moses’ death. His successor, at any rate, had never before used the title Jesus. He had been called by another name, Auses,^[1] which his parents had bestowed upon him. Moses himself proclaims Jesus, as a privilege of honor far greater than a royal crown, giving him the name because Jesus, the son of Nave,^[2] himself bore a resemblance to our Savior, who alone, after Moses and the completion of the symbolic worship transmitted by him, received the rule of true and pure religion. See

Later on, a sacred vine put forth a cluster of grapes that was prophetic. To those who had been led by the Educator to a place of rest after their wanderings it was a sign, for the great cluster of grapes is the Word crushed on our account.^[1] The Word desired that the blood of the grape^[2] be mixed with water as a symbol that his own blood is an integral element in salvation.

Now the Lord said to Moses, I will strike them with death and wipe them out. Then I will make the house of your father a nation, greater and mightier than they. This threat is not a sign of wrath but a prophecy. Another nation was to be taken over, that is, the people of the Gentiles, but not through Moses. Moses excused himself, for he knew that the great nation which was promised was not to be called through him but through Jesus Christ. Those people would not be called Mosaic but Christian.

The attitude [of one brother] was like that of Moses and indeed of God himself in that he did not in any way wish to be saved alone. Because he was spiritually bound to them by holy love in the Holy Spirit he did not want to enter into the kingdom of heaven itself if it meant that he would be separated from them. O sacred bond! O unutterable power! O soul of heavenly thoughts, or, rather, soul borne by God and greatly perfected in love of God and of neighbor!

Moses was often scorned by an ungrateful and faithless people and almost stoned, and yet with mildness and patience he prayed to the Lord in their behalf.

That is to say, God will not punish us at once for our thoughts and resolves but will send retribution upon their offspring, that is, upon the evil deeds and habits of sin which arise out of them.

We must also consider the words as I live, says the Lord. Perhaps living in the proper sense, especially on the basis of what has been said about living, occurs with God alone. And see if the apostle . . . considered the superiority of the life of God to be beyond comparison and understood the words as I live says the Lord in a manner worthy of God. Can [he] for this reason have said of God, Who alone has immortality,^[1] because none of the living beings with God has the life which is absolutely unchangeable and immutable? And why are we uncertain about the remaining beings, when not even the Christ had the Father’s immortality? For he tasted death for all.^[2]

Of such inflexibility were those youths of twenty years, who foretokened in figure God’s new people; they entered the land of promise; they, it is said, turned neither to the right hand nor to the left.^[1] Now this age of twenty is not to be compared with the age of children’s innocence, but if I mistake not, this number is the shadow and echo of a mystery. For the Old Testament has its excellence in the five books of Moses, while the New Testament is most refulgent in the authority of the four Gospels. These numbers, when multiplied together, reach to the number twenty: four times five, or five times four, are twenty. Such a people (as I have already said), instructed in the kingdom of heaven by the two Testaments—the Old and the New—turning neither to the right hand, in a proud assumption of righteousness, nor to the left hand, in a reckless delight in sin, shall enter into the land of promise. [There] we shall have no longer either to pray that sins may be forgiven to us or to fear that they may be punished in us. [We have] been freed from them all by that Redeemer, who, not being sold under sin,^[2] has redeemed Israel out of all his iniquities,^[3] whether committed in the actual life or derived from the original transgression.

For my part I am afraid to examine the secrets of this mystery, for I see comprehended in it the calculation of sins and punishment. If each sinner is assigned punishment for the sin of one day and according to the number of days he sins must spend so many years in punishment, I fear that perhaps for us who sin daily and spend no day of our life without offense, even ages and ages will not suffice to pay our penalties. In the fact that for forty days of sin those people were afflicted in the desert for forty years and not permitted to enter the holy land, a kind of similarity to the future judgment seems to be evident. At that time the number of sins will have to be calculated, unless perchance there is the balance of good works or of evils which a man has suffered in his life, as Abraham taught concerning Lazarus. However, it is within the power of no one to know these things perfectly, except him to whom the Father has given all judgment.^[1]