Tractates 6–7

As far as God the Father, by his power and his Spirit, has deigned to reveal it to the capacity of our strength, as far as the co-equal omnipotence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit has granted, as far as the one and the same divinity of the eternal Trinity, which has no beginning, has inspired, we have opened to your love, from the first vigils of Easter to this day, the meaning of the name of the book of Exodus; the meaning of the Passover, whose observance is there first decreed; why this month, in which God commands it to be kept, is called the first among the months of the year; what Egypt is; what the tenth and the fourteenth day signified; who the sacrificial lamb was, and why it was to be taken from the sheep and the kids; what is meant by "toward evening"; what that lintel is, what those doorposts, what that blood; and why they are commanded to eat the flesh neither raw nor boiled in water, but roasted with fire, the head with the feet and the entrails, and in haste; why no bone of it is to be broken; what the burning of the remains is; and what mystery is figured in the shoes on the feet, the staffs in the hands, and the girding of the loins. It remains for us to discuss the striking of the firstborn of Egypt, the unleavened bread with bitterness, and the seven days of unleavened bread.

"I will pass through the land of Egypt this night," he says, "and I will strike every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from man to beast; and on all the gods of the Egyptians I will execute vengeance: I am the Lord. And the blood shall be a sign for you in the houses in which you are; and I will see the blood and protect you, and the plague of destruction shall not be on you when I strike Egypt. And this day shall be a memorial for you." God did indeed, on that night at that time, strike all the firstborn of Egypt, as he had threatened Pharaoh through Moses, when he would not let go the people of Israel, the people whom the same Lord deigned to call his firstborn son; when the Egyptians, struck by the sudden slaughter of so many deaths, drove out at midnight the Israelites whom they had long refused to release as captives. But since the same God has done far greater things for our people against the true Egyptians, and what then happened in shadow has been fulfilled in us, we, mindful of our redemption, must not hide the gifts of his kindness in ungrateful silence. On the day on which the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, was sacrificed, toward evening (with the darkness already looming which, as soon as he was crucified, had covered the whole earth), in the night of that day he struck the firstborn of the Egyptian demons, that is, the images of dead men, which they themselves had first created in this world in order to be worshipped through them.

But since it is added there, "On all the gods of the Egyptians I will execute vengeance," you may perhaps say: "Who are these gods of the Egyptians, if the demons, whom the pagans think gods, are themselves the Egyptians?" Hear, then, that not only the demons are Egyptians, but their worshippers too, all who persist obstinately in unbelief, are Egyptians, since they are children of darkness: for children of the Egyptians by nature, they are sons of demons. Hence it is said to all unbelievers: "You are of your father the devil." For as all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, according to the teaching of the apostle Paul, so too all who are led away by the spirit of the devil are sons of demons. The divine Scripture calls the devil and his army "Egypt" because they have become estranged from God, who is light, by rebelling against their own Creator. For the holy Apostle says: "What wonder if Satan transforms himself into an angel of light?", proving of course that he is an angel of darkness who tries to display himself as an angel of light in order to deceive. By a like reasoning all unbelievers who oppose God and are exiled from the light of his divinity are called Egyptians; yet the Lord himself urges them to salvation, saying: "While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may be sons of light." So if a willing faith can make them sons of light, their being sons of darkness is a fault of the will, not of nature.

On the night, then, on which the Son of God, leaving his lifeless body on the cross, passed with his soul into the lower Egypt to visit the souls placed in the underworld, he then executed vengeance on all the unclean spirits, the gods of the Egyptians, slaying the strength of their dominion in its firstborn. For when his passion was near the Lord Jesus says: "Now is the judgment of this world; now the prince of this world is cast out. And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all things to myself." So the Lord Jesus called back to himself all his creation, which the most wicked usurpers of divinity had enslaved to themselves with a rebellious spirit, so that all things might be subject to the rule of him through whom all things were made; and he who has protected and will protect those who believe in him from the plague of destruction through the sign of his cross, as it is said: "And the blood shall be for you a sign in the houses where you are; and I will see the blood and protect you."

Before we pass on to what follows, however, we must ask how he says "I will protect you," as though from another destroyer; and again Moses says: "The Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and will see the blood on the lintel and on both doorposts, and will pass over the door." What, then? Did the Lord pass through to strike the Egyptians by the hand of the destroyer? Far from it. For a little later he says: "And he will not let the destroyer enter your houses." If he himself struck, how is it said, "He will not let the destroyer enter"? Consider carefully, then, reader, in the text of the reading itself, that where it speaks of the Egyptians being struck, it does not say "by the destroyer"; but where it speaks of the Hebrews being protected, it says they are protected not from him who struck the Egyptians but from the destroyer. The destroyer does not strike the Egyptians, whose friend and prince he is; since, as the Lord says in the Gospel of the most blessed Mark, "if Satan has risen up against himself, he is divided"; "he cannot do this," he says, "or he has an end." But surely, beloved, while God strikes the Egyptians, the destroyer wishes to strike the Hebrews. For he plots retaliation against the servants of God, indignant that his followers have been struck by him; for the devil is most inflamed when he is being extinguished. He rages against the servants of God at the very time when his first strength is being slain in its firstborn, when God destroys from among us idolatry or superstition or the other chief errors of the demons. For that most wicked one says, murmuring against God: "You strike my Egyptians for the sake of your Hebrews, and I for the sake of my Egyptians will pursue and kill your Hebrews." For the enemy said: "I will pursue and overtake, I will divide the spoils, I will fill my soul, I will kill with my sword, my hand shall rule." But his threatening is frustrated if we diligently obey the Lord's command, by which he warned beforehand that we can be safe. For it is added: "And you shall keep this word as a lawful ordinance for yourself and your sons for ever": that is, that we should always be careful to celebrate the Lord's Passover with lawful zeal and watchfully do what has been commanded us, lest through our contempt or our negligence the destroyer find a way in to ravage, when the defence of God our protector ceases.

Let each of us, then, be on the side of the Lord, who struck the Egyptians; let him be an Israelite, always beholding God with his mind, so that he may be protected from the plague of the destroyer. Let him have, or rather let us have, on both doorposts, that is, in heart and in mouth, the saving passion of the Lord. How? As the Apostle teaches: "With the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Let us also have on the lintel of the forehead the sign of the blood of the Lamb, so that God may not let the destroyer come in to us. For this was not done only then, either in the history of the Law or at the time of the cross of the Lord Jesus; but now too God, the avenger of his people, always strikes the Egyptians; the destroyer, the devil, always tries to enter the houses of the Israelites, wishing to kill them; the Son of God always guards his own and protects them wherever he recognizes the sign of his passion. To him be glory with the Father and with the Holy Spirit for all ages. Amen.

Having discussed the weightier parts of the paschal commandments, we said yesterday that three items still remained from the reading of Exodus set before us. The first of them, on the killing of the firstborn of Egypt, we interpreted at once as best we could; the two that remain, on the prohibition of leaven and on the seven days of unleavened bread, we now set out to explain, by the gift of the Lord's grace. "For seven days," he says, "you shall eat unleavened bread; and from the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. Whoever eats leaven from the first day to the seventh day, that soul shall perish from Israel."

Some of the old heretics, among them the mad Marcion and the accursed Manichaeus, since, led by the spirit of error, they contend that all the Scriptures of the Old Testament must be rejected, try to make out from many chapters of the Scriptures that the God of the old Law is evil: as if either the God of the New Testament were another than he who came having been foretold, as he was, by the Law; or as if, in comparison with the goodness of God, anyone could properly be good, since angels or men are judged to have some share in goodness from this, that they know the good God, adore, venerate and love him; as the Lord Jesus declares that "a good man brings forth good things from the good treasure of his heart." But God, the Son of God, possessing perfect goodness with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and knowing that the goodness of the Trinity is one, as its divinity is one, took it ill to be called good after the manner of created goods, and said: "Why do you call me good?" That is: "I do not want you to call good one whom you do not know; first know who I am, and when you have known the true God, I welcome your calling me good, because no one is good but God alone." For that Jew had said to the Son of God (God and man) as though to a mere man, a good teacher indeed: "Good Master, what shall I do to possess eternal life?" And therefore the Lord said to him: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." For God is one where there is no division of the Deity. Through all the books of the holy Scriptures we read that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, not gods, because the unity of majesty does not allow them to be called gods; for in the Trinity there is only a distinction of persons, not a diversity of nature. Had Marcion and Manichaeus been worthy to notice this, they would surely never have said that one God, of the New Testament, is good, and another, who spoke through the old Law, evil.

They dared also, in this law of unleavened bread, to ascribe cruelty to him, saying that a man's soul is destroyed on account of the leaven of bread, than which nothing could be more cruel. The senseless men did not understand either how great the benefit of the command was, or that God has a greater cause to punish when he is despised out of sheer stubbornness of spirit in small things, where there is no difficulty in keeping the command. God pardons necessity more easily than presumption. Indeed, it is not imputed as sin to holy David that, placed in the necessity of hunger, he ate the holy loaves which it was not lawful for any but the priests to eat. But here let us see what necessity could have pressed upon them. God commanded the Israelites not to make leavened bread for themselves during the seven days of the Passover. Had he commanded that leavened bread be made, diligence would have been needed so that it should not be lacking; what he commanded is a matter of idleness, not of labour. He commands a neglect so as to prove obedience; and do you not want him to condemn the soul that has applied diligence in order to despise him?

But now let us see what the reason and benefit was in the command itself, either for the Jews, historically, until the presence of Christ, or what edification it gives us today according to the spiritual understanding. When the children of Israel were oppressed in Egypt with the heavy wrongs of captivity, they cried out groaning to the Lord God that he would deign to rescue them. God chose from among them Moses and Aaron, through whom he would address King Pharaoh to let them go. When he would not let them go, he was beaten with his people by many plagues, and received this last plague of punishment: that the firstborn of all the Egyptians, struck by God, should perish on that night on which the Jews had to celebrate the sacrifice of the Passover by God's command. "At midnight, then, there was a cry" and a wailing "in the whole of Egypt; for there was no house in which there was not one dead." Then the king of Egypt, fearing that he too and all his people would likewise perish, compelled Moses and Aaron to lead all the people out of Egypt at that hour of the night. When they were being urged to go out, let us note what they did. "And the people," he says, "took the kneaded flour before their dough was leavened, and bound it in their garments and put it on their shoulders. And when they had gone out and come to Succoth, they baked the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, unleavened loaves baked in the ashes." So, that they might be mindful of this necessity and of God's benefits, he commanded them to celebrate the Passover during seven days of the first month without eating leavened bread, and always to tell their sons the reason why they had been commanded to do this: so that that ungrateful people, reminded at least by an image of what had been done, might be compelled to give thanks to their deliverer. And therefore it is so insistently commanded them: "For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; and from the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; whoever eats what is leavened from the first day to the seventh, that soul shall perish from Israel."

God did very many other things for them too, both at the Red Sea and in the desert; but they were unmindful of God's mercies (to say nothing of their other evils), besides having made the golden head of a calf and saying as they worshipped it, "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt," they also rejected with sacrilegious minds Jesus, the Son of God, who had been their deliverer, when he came to them. Hence the holy evangelist John recalls, not without complaint: "He came to his own, and his own did not receive him": that is, he came to those whom he had freed from the slavery of Egypt; whom he had led across the Red Sea with dry foot; before whose eyes he had overwhelmed Pharaoh and the Egyptians by loosing the walls of the waters that stood around them; whom he had filled with heavenly manna in the desert; for whom he had brought forth springs from the dry rock; to whom he had entrusted the oracles of the Law; to whom he had foretold his coming in the flesh by the prophecy of the prophets; to whom above all he had come, saying: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." These not only would not receive him but even slaughtered him by the punishment of the cross; yet he endured that the body he had taken should die for this reason: that by rising again by his own power he might show the omnipotence of his majesty, that in death taken away and conquered he might give back life to believers, and that he might condemn the full wickedness of those who crucified him. Therefore, rising on the third day, he transferred himself to the Gentiles, as he had long before threatened: "The kingdom will be taken from you and given to a nation producing its fruits."

Since, then, to us who follow Christ faithfully it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, let us see what the same Lord and Master of ours taught us to understand by this leaven. "Take heed to yourselves," he says, "and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." When he had repeated this more clearly, the apostles understood that they were to beware not of the leaven of bread but of the wickedness of a corrupting teaching. Hence the apostle Paul, a fit preacher of the gospel, cries out to us: "Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the feast," he says, "not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Let us beware, then, of the leaven of malice; for where the leaven of wickedness has appeared, prepared by the devil from the dough of sins and iniquities, there destruction draws near to that soul. When, then, you see that evil thoughts have entered your soul, scheming to twist you away from the worship of God or to make you commit some sin, know that he has entered there who is accustomed to make the leaven of death; therefore beware lest such leaven be found in you and your soul be destroyed by God. "Do you not know," says the Apostle, "that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump?" See to it, then, that you are not persuaded to yield even a little either to the error of the Gentiles, or to the iniquity of the Jews, or to the wickedness of the heretics, who corrupt the whole lump of the faith with the devil's leaven, the rancour of faithlessness.

And when he said that the unleavened bread must be eaten with bitterness, he taught that no one can lead a sincere life without sorrow of the flesh. Fasting seems bitterness, and every abstinence from carnal delights; but the Lord's Passover is not celebrated in any other way, and the unleavened bread of sincerity is not eaten in any other way. But when you have gone out of the Egypt of this world, in conduct or in body, you will eat the food of manna; you will receive the bread of heaven, and, led into that land of promise of the saints, you will enjoy at once the pleasantness of paradise and the eternal sweetness of the Lord himself. Sweet is the bitterness that is followed by the reward of so great a sweetness. From the first day, then, whether of our regeneration or of our conversion, let us cast out the leaven of wickedness from the dwellings of this earthly habitation of ours; and through the seven days of our whole life (since the same days revolve through the ages) let us eat the unleavened bread of sincerity and purity, so that we may be counted worthy to obtain the gifts of the heavenly promises, which may God the almighty Father deign to bestow on us through his co-eternal Son, who lives and reigns with him and with the Holy Spirit, before all ages, and now, and always, and for all ages. Amen.