On the Life of Moses

Contents

The scan text used breaks off just before the closing words of the final sentence.

Reading pages: 297–315 · 317–335 · 337–353 · 355–371 · 373–389 · 391–407 · 409–425 · 427–429

1. 297Gregory opens with the picture of spectators at a chariot race who cheer on the contestants they favour.
2. 299Gregory accepts his friend’s request for an account of the perfect life and argues that virtue, like every good, has no limit except its opposite.
3. 301Since the divine Good is unlimited, participation in it can never come to rest, so human perfection lies in always growing in the good; Scripture offers examples, as Isaiah points to Abraham and Sarah.
4. 303Gregory answers the objection that no one now can share the circumstances of the ancients, proposes Moses as the example, and begins the narrative of his birth and rescue from the Nile.
5. 305The narrative continues: Moses returns to his own people, kills an Egyptian, flees, marries into a foreign family, and sees the burning bush, where he is commanded to free Israel.
6. 307The narrative continues with the signs of the rod and the hand, the meeting with Aaron, Pharaoh’s harsher demands, the contest with the magicians, and the first plagues, from which the Hebrews are spared.
7. 309The narrative continues through the remaining plagues, the Passover blood, the departure with the Egyptians’ wealth, Pharaoh’s pursuit, and Moses striking the Red Sea.
8. 311Israel crosses the Red Sea on dry ground, the Egyptians drown, the people sing their victory song, Marah’s water is made sweet, and they reach Elim before thirst strikes again in the desert.
9. 313The narrative continues with the manna, given in equal measure to all, spoiling when hoarded and doubled before the Sabbath, and with the victory over Amalek while Moses’ hands were held up.
10. 315Gregory narrates the purifications before Sinai and the terrifying theophany of darkness, fire, and trumpet-voice, which leads the people to ask that Moses mediate the law.
11. 317Left alone, Moses enters the darkness where God is, receives the teaching about God’s incomprehensibility and the moral law, and is shown the pattern of the tabernacle with its gold, silver, and bronze.
12. 319Gregory describes the materials of the tabernacle and the high priest’s vestments revealed to Moses on the mountain: ephod, engraved stones, breastplate, robe with bells and pomegranates, and gold plate.
13. 321While Moses is forty days with God, the people make the golden calf; Moses breaks the tablets and has the guilt cleansed through the Levites.
14. 323The narrative runs through the quails and their deadly surfeit, the spies and the sentence on the unbelieving generation, the water from the rock, the rebellion against Moses and Aaron, and the budding of Aaron’s rod.
15. 325The historical outline ends: the passage through foreign lands, Balaam’s failed curse turned to prophecy, the sin with foreign women stopped by Phinehas, and Moses’ death after viewing the promised land.
16. 327Beginning the spiritual contemplation, Gregory reads Moses’ birth as the birth of virtue: since a changeable nature is always being born, we are in a sense our own parents, and by choice can bring forth the “male” offspring of virtue that the tyrant fears.
17. 329The ark in which the infant Moses is saved signifies education; the princess who adopts him is pagan philosophy, which may be used for a time provided one is not cut off from the Church’s milk; the fight with the Egyptian is the fight of godliness against error.
18. 331Moses’ fights figure the inner struggle of virtue against vice and of truth against heresy; his retreat to Midian signifies withdrawal into a peaceful life, after which the truth, which is God, shines as from the bush — a figure of the Incarnation and of the Virgin’s birth.
19. 333Loosing the sandals means putting off the “garments of skin” given after the fall; then one learns that only God truly is and all else exists by participation. Such a one can free others, as Moses did with the changed hand and the staff, which figure the Incarnation.
20. 335The hand made leprous and restored figures the Son who took our nature and raised it to freedom from passion; the staff turned serpent figures Christ “made sin” to destroy the serpents of sin; strengthened thus, the soul confronts Pharaoh, with pagan learning as a permissible companion.
21. 337Pagan philosophy may be a spouse to the life of virtue once its errors (transmigration, a material God, eternal matter, fate) are “circumcised”; Aaron’s coming to meet Moses figures the guardian angel given to each person, who is opposed by an evil demon.
22. 339Each person chooses between the guardian angel and the demon; when he turns to the good, the angel, his “brother,” meets him. Gregory explains his method: not every detail of the history must fit the spiritual sense, as the objection about Aaron shows.
23. 341Since “brother” and “angel” can be used in good and bad senses, the difficulty about Aaron is eased; Moses’ address to the people teaches that one must be trained before teaching, and Pharaoh’s harsher oppression shows how the devil assails new believers.
24. 343Making bricks of clay figures the endless filling and emptying of material desire; straw and stubble are fuel for fire; the plagues show that the same word of truth brings light to the obedient and darkness to the resistant.
25. 345The plagues of blood and frogs figure the corruption of faith by false teaching and the filthy “amphibious” life of the licentious, which shows itself in house, table, and secret life; the hardening of Pharaoh raises the question of God’s part in evil.
26. 347God does not cause vice: being “given up” to passion or “hardened” means that whoever refuses to know God falls by his own choice, as one who will not look at the sun falls into a pit; the frogs die when Moses stretches out his hands, a figure of Christ on the cross.
27. 349The plague of darkness shows that light and darkness come from our own choice, not from compulsion; the Egyptians’ return to light after three days figures repentance through knowledge of the Crucified; the boils from the furnace figure Gehenna, from which Christ’s outstretched hands can heal; the remaining plagues are caused by each person’s own choice.
28. 351Each person stores up his own punishment, as a bad diet produces the humour the physician purges; the death of the Egyptian firstborn cannot be read only as history, since punishing infants for their fathers’ sins would be unjust, so it must teach a doctrine.
29. 353The death of the firstborn teaches us to kill the first beginnings of evil, desire and anger, as Christ taught; the blood on lintel and doorposts figures the soul rightly ordered, reason above desire and spirit, guarded by faith in Christ.
30. 355The spiritual reading fits the history, since it is the Egyptian offspring that must die; the Passover meal, eaten in haste with girded loins, sandals, and staff, without breaking the bones, must signify more than a way of eating.
31. 357The traveller’s dress signifies life as a passage: sandals are self-control against the thorns of sin, the belt restrains enjoyment, the staff is hope; the roasted lamb is faith, of which we take what is plain and leave the hidden mysteries, the “bones,” to the Spirit, the fire.
32. 359The command to take the Egyptians’ goods cannot mean fraud; it means that Christians should take over the riches of pagan learning to adorn the Church, as Basil did; at the Red Sea, temptations assail new believers, and the leader must encourage them while speaking to God in his heart.
33. 361God hears Moses’ silent prayer; the cloud that guides Israel is the grace of the Holy Spirit; the Egyptian army drowned in the sea is the array of the passions, its three-man chariot the three parts of the soul.
34. 363Crossing the sea figures baptism: every passion must be drowned in the water, as no leaven was to be mixed with the Passover; those who after baptism keep the fruits of robbery, perjury, or adultery still bring the Egyptian army with them.
35. 365After the sea, the believer trusts God and obeys his priests; the bitter water of Marah sweetened by wood is the hard life of virtue sweetened by the cross; Elim’s twelve springs and seventy palms are the twelve apostles and the seventy.
36. 367The rock that gives water is Christ, who dwells in those who believe; when the Egyptian provisions are gone, the manna, varied in taste though uniform in look, is the heavenly bread, the body born of the Virgin, which adapts itself to each like Paul’s milk, vegetables, and meat.
37. 369The equal portions of manna teach contentment with daily need; hoarded manna breeding worms is the undying worm of greed; the double portion kept for the Sabbath is the treasure laid up in this life, the “preparation,” for the rest of the life to come.
38. 371The victory over Amalek is won by God himself through Joshua, a type of Jesus, the true successor of Moses; Moses’ raised hands are the spiritual understanding of the law, held up by the priesthood, and form the sign of the cross; so strengthened, the soul is led to the mountain of the knowledge of God.
39. 373Gregory sums up the journey so far and turns to Sinai: the washing of garments signifies purity of life inside and out, and the exclusion of animals from the mountain signifies rising above sense-knowledge to contemplate God.
40. 375The trumpets growing louder signify the revelation of God, faint in the law and prophets and full in the Gospel; the people’s leaving the mountain to Moses teaches that not all should pry into the mysteries, as heretics do; Moses’ entry into darkness shows that the closer the mind comes to God, the more it sees that he cannot be seen.
41. 377Seeing God consists in not seeing, for God is beyond all knowledge, as Moses learned in the darkness; any concept that claims to grasp God is an idol; Moses rises from peak to peak, from the darkness to the heavenly tabernacle.
42. 379The harmony of creation is a trumpet that leads the purified mind into the darkness where God is; there Moses sees the heavenly tabernacle, whose earthly copy, with its pillars, ark, lampstand, altar, cherubim, curtains, and skins, Gregory describes.
43. 381The heavenly tabernacle is Christ, uncreated in his divinity and “constructed” in his incarnation, the one who was before the ages and became man to restore us to being; like his other names, “tabernacle” fits him in a sense befitting God.
44. 383The furnishings of the heavenly tabernacle signify the angelic powers created in Christ who lift souls to virtue; the cherubim, the seven lamps of the Spirit, the mercy seat (Christ), and the altar of praise are interpreted in turn.
45. 385The red skins and hair curtains signify Christ’s saving passion; in the tabernacle below, the Church, the pillars and lamps are its apostles and teachers, the lavers those who baptize, the curtains the concord of believers, the red skins the mortification of the flesh.
46. 387The holy of holies signifies the truth of being, which is beyond comprehension and must be believed rather than pried into; the priestly vesture signifies the adornment of the soul by virtue, the sky-blue robe a life made light and airy, ready to be caught up to the Lord.
47. 389The bells and pomegranates are faith and good conscience: faith must ring out in proclaiming the Trinity, while the austere life, like a pomegranate, is bitter outside and sweet within; the tassels are voluntary virtues beyond the commandment, as Paul preached without pay.
48. 391The patriarchs’ names on the shoulders set before us the examples of the saints; the shields are faith and conscience guarding on both sides; the square breast-piece is steadfastness, its straps the union of contemplation and action; the priest wears no sandals, and the one who has ascended so far receives the tablets.
49. 393The broken tablets and the destruction of the golden calf, swallowed by the people, signify the end of idolatry; the Levites’ indiscriminate slaughter shows how partial punishment corrects the whole body, and in the higher sense it calls the friends of the law to slay what is falsely akin to them.
50. 395The brothers, friends, and neighbours to be slain are the sinful thoughts that grow with us; Aaron who made the calf is the false “brother,” as distinct from the angelic brother; the earrings given up for the idol are the law removed from our hearing, as the serpent did in Eden.
51. 397The broken and renewed tablets figure human nature, made unbroken and immortal, shattered by sin, and refashioned by Christ, who took flesh from our earth without marriage, inscribed by the Spirit, God’s finger; Moses’ glory figures Christ’s glory at his coming, which the ungodly will not see.
52. 399Gregory asks why Moses, who already spoke with God face to face, asks to see him; the request to see God and the answer about the rock and God’s back cannot be taken literally, since a God with front and back would be a body and so corruptible.
53. 401As a falling body accelerates, so the soul freed from earthly ties rises ever higher toward the good; Moses, after every ascent of his life, still longs to see God as he is, because the lover of beauty is always drawn from what he sees to what lies beyond.
54. 403God grants Moses’ request by refusing it: to see God is never to stop desiring him, since God, the true life, is beyond all knowledge and without limit; a bounded God would be enclosed and overpowered by evil, which is absurd.
55. 405The “place beside God” points to the infinite; standing on the rock means that firmness in the good is itself the means of ascent, as one cannot climb on sliding sand.
56. 407The hole in the rock is the heavenly house prepared for those who finish the race; the rock is Christ, in whom all good is found, and God’s hand is the only-begotten Son; to see God’s back is to follow behind God, as the Psalms and Christ’s call “Follow me” teach.
57. 409To see God’s back is to follow him, never to face him as an opponent; one who follows God is beyond the reach of vice, as Moses was beyond the reach of envy, the root of evils from Eden to Cain and Joseph, which Gregory describes at length.
58. 411Moses, untouched by envy, prays for Miriam and Aaron, armed with Christ as with armour; when the devil turns to the people with gluttony, Moses keeps his eyes on the promised land, trusting the good report of Joshua rather than the faithless spies.
59. 413The cluster of grapes carried on a pole figures Christ hung on the wood, whose blood is the drink of believers; repentance lets those who fell away find the rock again; the bronze serpent on the pole figures the cross, by looking to which we are healed of the poison of desire.
60. 415The bronze serpent figures Christ, who came “in the likeness of sinful flesh”: looking to the cross does not abolish desire but prevents its deadly bite; when desire is mastered, arrogance follows, as when Korah’s party seized the priesthood and went down into the earth.
61. 417Every passion is a fall, so mastering pleasure does not excuse ambition for the priesthood; the budding of Aaron’s rod shows that the priesthood is from God, and its nut, hard outside and nourishing within, shows what a priest’s life should be, unlike the luxury of many clergy.
62. 419Keeping to the king’s highway signifies virtue as the mean between excess and deficiency — courage between cowardice and rashness, wisdom between serpent and dove, self-control between licence and the condemnation of marriage; when the people grow in virtue, the devil turns to secret plots through Balaam.
63. 421Balaam the augur, taught by his donkey, learned that Israel could not be overcome, as the demons confessed Christ; the curse turned to blessing shows that reproach cannot touch the virtuous; so the devil turned to pleasure.
64. 423The Israelites, unbeaten in battle, were conquered by the Midianite women; Phinehas’s spear stopped God’s anger. Pleasure is the hardest enemy of all, which is why Christ cut out its root in the lustful look.
65. 425Returning to the prologue’s thesis that perfection is unending progress, Gregory recapitulates Moses’ whole life as a continual ascent, from his birth and education to the giving of the law and the zeal of Phinehas.
66. 427Moses ends his life on the mountain as “the servant of the Lord,” a living death that leaves no grave; Gregory sets out the whole journey as a programme for the reader, whose end is to become God’s servant.
67. 429Gregory concludes, addressing Caesarius: Moses, God’s servant and friend, is the pattern of perfection, and true perfection is to avoid vice not from fear of punishment nor to do good for reward, but to fear only the loss of God’s friendship.