Allegory of the Exodus and the Sea

Obstacles to honor are produced by disobedience to God and by disorder among men, as the fleshly nature mourns the spiritual nature and the beauty beside it vanishes through its own pleasure. But the God of discipline leads things through certain ways; the end of discipline is the correction of man toward the right through the leadership of the spirit, and the obedience of the flesh.

For this reason, he placed the provision of pleasures as a teacher, so that the desire of these might be made subject to the intellect according to the will of God, and he led them through dangers, training them to endure what is otherwise to be fled from through the hope toward God which is fitting for those who think rightly. And since men are more fleshly in the present state, first he relents from justice toward the disobedient and small-souled, but later, toward a return, he punishes.

Since, indeed, not punishing those shrinking from and arguing against the Red Sea, he punishes those who did not dare to follow him toward the promised land. For it was a manifest sign of unbelief. For to have seen so many and such wonders, to dare to rebel against all things was not just by the power of salvation.

And indeed, since having punished the Egyptians less, even though they were more impious, in some parts, he punished more severely with the death of the people in the disobedience of all the people of that time regarding the distribution of the land, because through the former justice they were not made wise and they remained to test God even more. Regarding Psalm 105:28, he did not say the cause of idolatry was that which was fornication, leading them into participation in reverence (for this was related to gluttony), but the result condemns it, for the sake of which also the law spoke of the mixing with women of foreign nations, lest they should fall into participation in impiety through the sympathy of the women, which indeed happened. For it led them so far into madness, as to be initiated into the things of Beelzebub and to be joined in sacrifices performed by the dead.

In Psalm 105:46-47, in this he shows that the return of the captives through mercy would not remain unshaken, having brought a prayer concerning the gathering from the nations and ending in this, so that they might find the salvation from God himself to be firm and immovable and through all things give thanks to the Savior and the life in God.

They have joy. And it is necessary for mercy to receive those after their present unbelief, as the apostle says, so that having been petitioned, they may dance to God all the days, as Zechariah foretells (Ps 106:6).

He says these things concerning the Jews: first, having been freed from the oppression in Egypt by crying out to the Lord, now, being subject to the same things and being delivered from all kinds of wandering, if they would cry out to the Lord, they might happen to reach the perfect liberty through Christ. And this is the same allegory, whence it does not seem at all that these things are being allegorized. For the words spoken do not suit the idea of the same people wandering in a desert and being bound in a dark prison. But it is clear according to Isaiah, he who says to those in bonds, 'Come forth,' and to those in darkness, 'Be uncovered,' concerning which Zechariah says that by His blood His covenant sent the prisoners out of a pit without water. Christ is therefore Savior from the Father, and Father through Christ. But Israel is being covered by death now, and is bound by humility and by the necessity of slavery. For the covering is a shadow, but humility is poverty, and necessity is iron. And for the Gentiles, they establish them being cast into a land of the nations, the poor from the beginning, concerning whom the 105th Psalm says, 'The poor shall eat and be satisfied' (Ps 105:9).

Allegorizing the evils of the Jews as wandering, famine, thirst, darkness, and bonds, he uses now an allegory of mariners: the disturbances in the sea and the transformations from these into prosperity, and leading them even unto a prosperous salvation through these labors; and he who has received the labors shall find rest, not without God having been disturbed into waves their former calm, but they show it by a divine command, just as one having raised a storm by command and having shaken their former prosperous sailing with the waves, by which they are being lifted up to a height and tossed down, as it happens to be in the sea, being humbled and being poured out and being tossed about by an ecstasy; then to experience a change by the wind, whenever God might command this, and He releases the violence of the winds into a gentle breeze and quiets the sound of the waves, where...