Divine Kindness and Severity

Death is a loss, because there is no one in death remembering you, and life is merely existence because those living, he says, will praise you. For we have being through connection to the One who is, and separation is corruption. My discourse pleased him, and I shall be glad in the Lord; and he is worthy of prayer, so that God may be glad through our hymns, and we may have joy through them in every way. Even if all this were such that all our actions were a hymn to God, God would be glad for us, just as he was glad from the beginning.

One should not ignore, he says, that he is the Lord our God, whose providence governs the whole universe with divine judgments, so that nothing happens unsuitably or without his providence (Ps 104:7). The plagues were applied without distinction to the ranks of the plagues and he does not leave all of them out, for I think the power of God and the ever-spoken wonders are shown; and it is necessary that God's power be made known, and not an uninterrupted history of events (Ps 104:15).

He says the frogs did not come simply to the land, but into the houses, and the most prominent of the houses and their innermost parts, so that their onslaught would be unhindered and most violent, with no one, not even the strongest, being able to prevent it (Ps 104:27). It is also paradoxical that the dust and the lice were poured out over the whole earth and stood at the borders, not spreading further, as if the judgment were being carried out only in Egypt. Therefore, the bloodletting of the river also happened to stop at the borders, while in the neighboring regions the flows were such that, according to the Egyptians, the punishment was the removal of the river's prosperity (Ps 104:37).

Regarding the salvation given and the prosperity, he says of the power from God which led the Egyptians away, they ask to provide many and costly things for those about to leave the land. And it is great also to be delivered from suffering, while the land suffers most, until one is safe (Ps 105:14). When they tested God in a waterless place, being unchangeable and not forgetful, he did not fail them; he gave them...

Not only regarding their petition, but also when they were ascending in the Red Sea, and then He made His power known to them; but when they mocked Moses and Aaron in the camp, the earth suddenly opened and swallowed them up. For it was necessary that the servants should not be despised.

But also, since kindness and severity are both with Him, according to 'Behold then the kindness and severity of God' (Rom 11:22), first the things of kindness were provided to them; but as they were not able through it, following that, He met them with the medicine of the cauterizer.

Regarding Moses, indeed, those concerning Dathan and Abiram mocked, saying, 'Has God spoken to Moses alone? Has He not also to us?' and Korah and his assembly, daring to bring strange fire and sacrifices to God in the land of the sanctuaries. But for those who spoke against Moses, the earth opened and swallowed Dathan and covered the assembly of Abiram; and for Korah and those with him who were about to offer their incense, a flame proceeding from the Tabernacle burned them.

According to justice, the term is of destruction, but according to philanthropy, the remission is of saving. Regarding the remission, the embassy gave space because of the holiness of the one embassying and the providence for the sake of the world, through which the ambassador pleaded, so that the grace of God regarding Israel might not be considered insufficient; and because of the memory of the fathers and the promise to them, which Moses reminded God while pleading, for according to their impiety and the foreknowledge of all their evil, they would have been destroyed.

And the dispute concerning the earth is more ancient than the stand of Korah and Dathan, but greater and more impious, contending against the promise of God and not striving for the healing of God; so it is fitting that it is arranged through the cowardice occurring from the aforementioned impiety toward God, just as that dispute occurred through small-mindedness, a despairing of the success of the cowardice, just as the small-mindedness because of the separation of Moses was making a despairing of the return of Moses. For not only desires, but also cowardices and small-mindednesses of those owing to God and those owing to men are taken away, the endurance...