Signs in Egypt and the Nature of the Heavens

Therefore, the mountains of the earth, flowing with milk and honey, are called mountains of beasts and of food, from which he says that God will be seen manifest and exceedingly great. And then the proud shall suffer the things laid before them, not even finding their hands to do anything, as if being carried away by a stupor. For you startled them, your people and those appointed to you, defending territories, as if to join the False horse to salvation, and 'These in chariots and horses, but we in the name of the Lord our God will call upon' (Ps 20:8); they themselves stumbled and fell, but we arose and were upright. The same thing is revealed here through the stumbling and the fall, by means of the being carried away and the hardening.

The Confessor thus interpreted: 'For the fury of man shall confess to you, a remnant of fury being girded around' (Ps 75:11). Since the hot-tempered one, acting in anger and towards wrath in all things, not towards righteousness, is subject to confessions and to recognitions concerning those things of which he sins. For fury is easy toward sin, even daring unto murder, so that the reasoning within him produces strong thoughts of repentance, surrounding the whole soul regarding the things done and said not rightly through fury.

From what is laid before us until the second verse, the word will proceed through the difficult and the painful things concerning the people, and thus leads into brighter things following (Ps 76 argument). He says in the present psalm that there is much time in which the nation may sufficiently encompass and the hope of help from God, unless someone, remembering the former things, might be strengthened into the hope of the coming good things.

Thus, even if he has blessed piously in the first verse, he thus introduces weak thoughts that burden men in the longer evils (Ps 76:2,3). For now, for the sake of first confessing to God who received the supplications, he recounts the continuous prayer and the stretching out of the hands through all the nights.

By your power, he says, the whole was set in motion; even the waters groaned in fear, and the abysses had a tumultuous struggle (Ps 76:17-19). And water was being released from above from the clouds, and clouds ran through the ether with much sound, and the arrows from heaven were being carried down; and sounds of thunder were happening according to the airy circle of the clouds passing through, and lightnings were streaming down upon the inhabited world.

And it shook the earth with an earthquake. These things are warning wonders appearing among those in Egypt, those in the wilderness, and those in Judah. For Egypt was struck by hail with fire being carried along, and the Red Sea drew back its waters as if being contracted by some fear. And thunders burst forth in the air and hail was poured down, also against the Canaanites in the war toward the Jews. And it is evident that lightning also flashed together.

Regarding the saying of the thunder sounding in a wheel, one says that it happened when God joined the axles of the wagons and led them into the sea with their leaders. Ps 76:19: He lays for us an airy circle upon which the stars are placed, just as oxen circling a threshing floor. For a spherical heaven, according to the logic of the Greeks, is not to be found in the divine oracles, so that we might conceive of the wheel-like revolution above the earth and below the earth. For the divine writings present water below the earth, not heaven, and waters lying beneath as a boundary above the heaven. For He says of the heaven, stretching out like a skin, covering its upper parts with waters. To set the sun from one end to the other, from east to west, and it is said that not even the smallest part of it turns back from the west. And He says of the one who set the heaven (not the one circling it in a circle) and stretching it out like a tent to dwell in (not as circling around); and Isaiah says of the one coming from the ends of the foundation of heaven to those coming from far off the earth, so that the heaven has been founded and stands, but not circling in a circle. But these things are for the sake of a brief reminder, so that we do not fail to be carried toward the fabrications of the Greeks, neglecting the divine writings.

Ps 76:20-21: He says of the divine way that it has no visible trace like the human way; therefore he also called that journey 'in sea and waters,' since Solomon says that a ship traversing the sea is not recognized, so that what is said is parabolic. And there is no longer a journey for God to pass through; for the Hebrews did not walk through the sea so that He might lead them through it as well, but the thing regarding the Red Sea was brief for them, while the thing through the land was much and long-lasting. You guided as sheep your people in the hand of Moses and Aaron. Moreover, even though unseen by...