As, therefore, Moses here entered into the cloud when he was first called by the Lord to the mountain, so afterward, when, being more perfect, he himself entered into his tabernacle, a pillar of cloud came down to him and stood in the door of the tabernacle. And all the people, standing, worshiped, each one at the door of the tabernacle. But in the cloud was the Lord; for he made darkness his hiding place. And that you may know it speaks of the Lord: 'And the Lord,' it says, 'spoke to Moses.' But that the tabernacle of Moses is recorded to have been placed outside the camp, so that he might go to meet God, does not seem contrary;
for he who seeks God enters as it were in to God and approaches to the knowledge of him with his whole mind. The just man, therefore, enters in to the Lord, as Moses entered into the cloud; for in the cloud is God. In short, behold, the Lord comes upon a light cloud. In the Gospel you have it written: 'But when you pray, enter into your chamber, and having shut the door, pray to your Father in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.' Therefore within, as it were in your chamber, is God. Hear also elsewhere that God is within: 'Behold,' it says, 'the Lord shall come forth out of his place, and shall descend and ascend upon the high places of the earth; and the mountains shall be moved under him, and the valleys shall melt.'
Scripture says this and even then signified that he would forsake the people of the Jews and pass over to the Gentiles. In short, we find this expressed in the psalm also, when David says: 'And he himself, as a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, rejoiced as a giant to run his course.' By these kinds, then, we have found the going-forth of God or his entering-in, as the Lord Jesus also says, that he comes to the man who fears: 'Behold,' he says, 'I stand at the door and knock; and if any man shall hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me.' These things, then, we have said for this reason, because the prophet says: 'You have cast us off and you will not go forth, O God, in our hosts.'
And let us understand it likewise in this way also: that God went forth in the hosts of the Jews when Joshua son of Nun adored the captain of the heavenly host, and therefore conquered without the sword and without any siege destroyed the city of Jericho, which had most mighty walls. For when God went forth in the hosts of his servants, victory followed; for an angel went forth at the prayers of Hezekiah and laid low the countless forces of the Assyrians. But sometimes the Lord, as it were, forsakes for a time even those whom he wishes to be crowned in the contest, so that they may conquer by faith, and that their devotion may not be relaxed by favorable and prosperous circumstances. In short, often those who have fallen through the course of prosperity and the misuse of good fortune are corrected by adversities.
Therefore we frequently find the Jews fallen after victory, corrected after servitude, because by prayers and lamentations they made God return to them. And likewise that which is said according to the man and the affection of a man does not contradict this sentiment—that the Lord said: 'God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me?' Not that the Lord was forsaken, who says elsewhere: 'For I am not alone, because the Father is with me'; but because according to the flesh of the man and the affection of one who is set in a grievous contest, he seems forsaken by the Lord. In short, Scripture says not idly that after the first temptation the devil departed from him for a time, that is, until the contest;
for when the great contest of the sacred passion drew near, again the adversary came on to the temptations. But man, when he is set as it were in doubt, thinks himself forsaken by his God. Yet just as we take this according to the affection of the flesh—that the man seemed to himself forsaken, whose advance Christ wrought in his own body—so too in his divinity he knew that he was never forsaken by the Father, because he himself said: 'I am in the Father and the Father in me,' and he indicated that he was not alone. He also added this verse: 'You have turned us back from before our enemies.' He is not in a good state who is turned back, for 'no one putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.'
In short, Lot's wife, because she looked back, could not reach the summit of the mountain, that is, the higher things, but was turned into salt, which substance is quickly dissolved and cannot have lasting use. So are those who follow temporal things and do not follow the eternal: here too they are made fools by their own folly and cannot have the grace of things to come. There are nevertheless those who, though placed behind, forget the things that are higher and stretch forward to the things before, that they may be able to attain to the prize. And to Peter it is said: 'Get behind me, Satan,' that he may be better called forth; and in number he is first who is after Christ.
Therefore for this reason 'from before our enemies'—because they afflict us and they pursue us, you willed that we be behind, so that we may stretch ourselves to the higher things, that we may always look ahead of us, pursuing our enemies and desiring to pass beyond their place. In short, Theodotion has it just as the Seventy men, that is, just as this verse has been expounded. Aquila has: 'You have turned us back from the one afflicting us'; Symmachus: 'You have ordained us last, behind every adversary.' What things are contrary to us but the voluptuous things of this world, full of delights and wantonness, and which are incitements to luxury? Lot's wife was deceived, because behind her she had the luxury of the Sodomites and the allurements of that region. Whence was she deceived? Because she looked back behind her.
You too, therefore, do not look back to your enemies; God has placed you last in the world; or rather: he who in humility makes himself last is not turned back, but always looks ahead. And that you may know who your enemies are, hear him who says: 'Hear, O Israel; what is it that you are in the land of your enemies? You are defiled among the dead.' Yet who is so much your enemy and foe as the prince of this world and his associates, who pursued the Lord Jesus even to the cross, not knowing his power? For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty. Therefore you, even if you are last, do not follow your enemies, but follow the Lord Jesus, and lift up his cross, and press on in his footsteps.
For he who follows Christ does not look back behind himself, that is, to the luxuries and allurements of sinners, and therefore he can say with the saints: 'Our heart has not turned back.' Whence it is understood that even he who is before his enemies becomes in heart the last and hindmost, if he look back to them and incline with the affection of his mind to carnal rather than spiritual things. It is possible too that he who is last may be first in heart, if he consider the things that are in heaven and not those that are on earth. Hear that the last in the world is among the first with Christ: 'I think that God has set forth us apostles as the last, as men appointed to death, that we are made a spectacle to this world, and to angels, and to men.'
He called himself last and yet showed that he was the same as the first, when he says: 'But our citizenship is in heaven.' It follows: 'And those who hated us plundered for themselves; you gave us up like sheep for food and scattered us among the nations.' Perhaps you wonder that, although in what follows those who speak have, as we said, the highest constancy of faith, here they say that they were plundered by those who hated them; but let these things not terrify you, for many here are plundered, and yet their merits cannot be separated from Christ.
The apostles were seized, beaten with rods, thrust into prison, separated from one another, and yet they remained with Christ; nay rather, by this very thing—that they were plundered by the faithless—their merits increased and their grace in the heavenly places was augmented. For not at once is he who is plundered by men also conquered. See the apostle Paul rejoicing in his perils, see him glorying that he was let down through a window in a basket.
See how holy Jeremiah, holy Ezekiel, holy Daniel, led into captivity and plundered by the Assyrians, yet endured no captivity of their own faith, nor did they fail in the covenant of the Lord—they who even in captivity kept the precepts of the divine law and did not think anything was to be usurped concerning forbidden foods against the institution of their forefathers. Whence Theodotion well said: 'And those who hated us exulted over us'; for the insulting of enemies brings no prejudice to good minds, nor does the plundering of enemies. And therefore the holy one says, who is sure that plundering cannot harm him: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress?' and the rest.
'But in all these things we are more than conquerors and overcome through him who loved us, being assured that neither death, nor life, nor angel, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Therefore he who is such is not separated from Christ. Whence, even if he be plundered bodily, yet spiritually he is free; and not only is he not subject to plundering, but he even seeks for himself a praiseworthy plunder, like those of whom it is written: 'From the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.' Victor therefore is he who, set in earthly things, has not known how to be a captive of faithlessness;
and not only is that which is glorious not plundered from him, but rather he himself plunders that which is eternal. There are also those who become sheep for food. Good is our Lord Jesus Christ, because he became a sheep for our banquet. You ask how he became so? Hear him who says: 'Christ our Passover is sacrificed.' And consider how our forefathers, plundering the lamb in figure, ate it, signifying the passion of the Lord Jesus, of whose sacrament we daily feed. Through that very sheep, therefore, they became 'flocks for food,' as Aquila said, or 'flocks for food,' as Theodotion spoke, or 'pastures for those who eat,' as Symmachus said. But a good banquet is not only not to be feared by the saints, but even to be desired.
For otherwise one cannot come to the kingdom of heaven, since the Lord himself said: 'Unless you eat my flesh, you shall not have eternal life.' It is proved, therefore, that our Lord is the banquet or nourishment of those who eat, as he himself says: 'I am the living bread that came down from heaven.' And that you may know that all these things were done for our sake, from the time he came down, from that time the holy one says: 'We all are one bread.' Let us not fear, then, that we have been made sheep for food. For just as the Lord's flesh and his blood redeemed us, so too Peter endured many things for the Church; many things also the holy apostle Paul and the other apostles bore, when they were beaten with rods, when they were stoned, when they were thrust into prison.
For by that endurance of injuries and by the experience of perils the people of the Lord was established and the Church obtained increase, while the rest hastened to martyrdom, seeing that through those sufferings nothing departed from the virtues of the apostles, but rather that, even for this brief life, immortality was won for them. This too is shown by the verse that follows, since they said: 'You have scattered us among the nations.' Theodotion said likewise; but Aquila and Symmachus: 'You have winnowed us among the Gentiles' or 'among the nations.' For the holy apostles were sent to the nations and were scattered among the nations, as also the holy prophets, of whom we spoke above, so that in that dispersion very many fruits might be born.
For just as our Lord Jesus Christ fell into the earth like a grain and died, so that he might bring forth much fruit, so too the holy apostles were scattered, that they might bring good seed among the nations, by which, to their likeness, the fruit of the Gentiles might sprout up. In short, Scripture says that the Lord said this: 'For this reason I have sent you, that you may go and bring forth very much fruit, and that your fruit may remain.' The Lord, therefore, became as it were seed, according to what was said to Abraham: 'And to your seed, which is Christ.' Christ, then, is the seed of all, and therefore he suffered himself to fall and to be sown, that he might transfigure the body of our lowliness conformable to his own body.
This saving seed, therefore, sprouted up for all men, and from it the holy apostles, formed like seeds to his image, were sent throughout diverse places and scattered, so that, the nations being gathered into the field of the Church, they might shine with diverse fruits throughout the whole world. These, then, are called dispersions, as also in what follows the same David says: 'The Lord builds up Jerusalem, and he gathers together the dispersions of Israel.' For they were dispersed, that they might make new fruits, and afterward, like new wheat, might be carried into the granaries of the Church. But this dispersion does not take place in the lower regions, that is, not on earth, but in heaven. In short, the precepts of the law confirm this, through which the Lord says:
'If your dispersion be from the highest heaven even to the height of heaven, from thence will I gather you, says the Lord.' What is the dispersion from the highest heaven even to the height of heaven? Who is this so great one, who could be sown abroad in such a way? If a man is born on earth, he begins from below, not from above. If these things move and trouble you, return to the higher words of this holy prophet, and hear who that great one is, who made such crops fruitful on the earth, that their fruit might come to the heavenly receptacles. And he is the bridegroom, who like a giant ran through this whole way, unpassable to others, but passable to himself;
and from him it began to be passable now for mortals, yet in such a way that these might ascend, while he alone went down first, so that afterward his saints might deserve to ascend. Hear, then, how the sowing was from the height of heaven to the height of heaven: 'From the highest heaven,' it says, 'is his going forth, and his meeting even to the height thereof.' To what man could this be attributed? Moses scarcely ascended to the summit of Mount Sinai, and this because he was called by the Lord and exhorted by a heavenly voice. Who would descend from the highest heaven but Christ, who even when he descended to the earth remained in heaven? 'For no one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven.'
You see, therefore, that both when he descended and when he ascended, he himself was and remained in heaven. For he himself said: 'I fill heaven and earth, says the Lord'; he it is who is in heaven. Let these things suffice to have been said concerning the dispersion. As for what it says: 'You have winnowed us'—though it differs in word, it agrees in sense. For just as those who were dispersed were proved, so too those who were winnowed deserved to come to proving. For just as wheat is winnowed and separated from the chaff and is clean, but if it has not been winnowed it cannot be clean, but remains compacted and mingled with chaff, so too man, unless he has been winnowed by temptations, cannot separate from himself the frail things, that is, the chaff. Whence also it was said to Peter:
'Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to winnow you like wheat; but I have prayed to my Father, that your faith may not fail.' See what it says and understand: Peter is winnowed, that he may be compelled to deny Christ. He fell into temptations, he spoke certain things as if full of chaff, but he spoke with a word, that he might be more firmly grounded in affection. In short, he wept and washed his chaff, and by those temptations he deserved that Christ should intercede for him. How much greater is the patronage than the trial of that disturbance! And therefore he gained more than he suffered; for he gained Christ as his patron. But the adversary is compelled to tempt the saints of the Lord to his own loss;
for while he tempts, he makes them better, so that he who is tempted may also be able to instruct others—he who seemed to himself weak. In short, Peter is set over the Church after he was tempted by the devil. And therefore the Lord beforehand signifies what it is that afterward chose him as shepherd of the Lord's flock. For here he said: 'But you, being converted, confirm your brethren.' The holy apostle Peter, therefore, was converted to good fruit and was winnowed like wheat, that he himself might be, with the saints of the Lord, one bread, which might be nourishment for us. For while we read the acts of Peter, while we learn the precepts of Peter, there is made for us a nourishment of eternal life and salvation. 'You have sold,' it says, 'your people without price.'
Buying and selling seem to be a kind of equal contract; but yet, if you consider the affection of the buyer and the seller, each one sells to himself what is of less value and buys what is pleasing. For—to speak apart from that kind of men who carry on the trade of selling slaves—no one easily sells except him who displeases him and whom he thinks unfit for his own use; and again, each one desires to buy him whom he has judged suitable for usefulness or service.
But even those who exercise their outlay in selling slaves and pursue gains certainly hold those whom they sell so cheap that they are of less value to them than money; and often even those whom they have judged more suitable for their trade they prefer to keep rather than to sell. So therefore God too sold the cheaper and bought the better. He sold the people of the Jews—not by God's harshness, but by their own fault—to whom it is rightly said: 'Behold, for your sins you have been sold, and for your iniquities I have put away your mother.' In this manner, then, the people of the Jews was sold, the Christian people was bought; the one sold by sin, the other bought by blood. Whence Peter says:
'You were not redeemed with corruptible things, with silver or gold, but with precious blood.' What is the precious blood but that of the immaculate Lamb, that is, of our Lord Jesus Christ? Therefore the people of the Jews is without price, but the Christian people is precious; the one has no price, because it has sin; the other is in price, to whom sin is forgiven. Whence it is rightly said to the sons of the Church: 'You were bought with a price; do not become the slaves of men.'
If it is said to you that you should not become the slave of men and lose your own liberty, much more is it said to you that you should not become the slave of sin; and again, that you should not become the slave of the serpent, the enemy and adversary, but should serve the Lord alone, who redeemed you by his own love, because he himself is the redemption of his own little servants. The Lord, therefore, does not sell except an evil servant; he certainly does not sell a good one. For even though Joseph was sold, yet the prophet did not say, 'Joseph was sold by the Lord,' but: 'Joseph was sold into servitude,' whom his own brothers sold, whom nevertheless the Lord, in a figure of his own passion, redeemed from servitude and renewed unto grace.
And so his brothers sold him and received money, but the Lord not only restored him to liberty but even heaped dignity upon him. And that there was in him a figure of the Lord Jesus, Scripture shows, which says: 'My son, sought after with zeal, return to me,' and elsewhere: 'The firstborn of the bull is his beauty,' in that God the Father exalted the horn of his Christ. He, therefore, who is sold is cheap and without price, as one who rather is not than is. Whence Aquila too said: 'You have delivered up your people, so that it might not be,' and Symmachus: 'You have delivered up your people without substance.' For those who are rejected by Christ are not;
but there are those who are chosen by the Lord, since the Lord called the things that are not as though they were, and the nations of the Gentiles were chosen, that the faithlessness of the Jews might be destroyed. That people, therefore, was delivered up into nothingness, because it was sold by its own sin; for guilt has no substance. Whence I think it is said: 'And there was no multitude in their exchanges,' that is: you have scattered us among the nations for nothing. For neither do you receive anything by way of exchange in delivering up a man's soul; for nothing is more pleasing to you than the conversion of a soul. But if it refuses to be converted, it delivers itself into nothingness, so that it is given over to sin and disgrace. Therefore without price and without exchange you sold the degenerate people. Whence in what follows it says:
'For there is no exchange for them.' Why is there no exchange for them? 'Because they did not fear God,' it says. But the understanding is twofold as to why the people of error had no exchange: because a man cannot redeem his soul with silver or gold or possessions. For what exchange will he give for his soul, since those things are temporal or transitory, while the soul remains either for reward or for punishment? Nor was there for the impious even that exchange which is in the resurrection, of which the apostle says: 'We shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed.' It can also be understood thus: that, although a few of the redeemed deserved to be changed, like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, yet that exchange did not come to all.
There is also this, that there may not be a multitude in the exchanges of grievous sins, according to what is written, that the sins of certain men are manifest, going before to judgment, but some men they follow after. Those that are grievous and manifest go before and without any doubt are sunk down, but those that are lighter are often relieved by good works; for 'blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.' But where iniquity weighs down, it is recalled by no exchange of good works.
Therefore, even if anyone is redeemed from the people of the Jews, he is not redeemed for this reason—because he had a great estimation of himself, nor because he had a multitude in his exchange—but he is redeemed freely, which the apostle teaches you, saying: 'A remnant according to the election of grace has been saved.' But where grace is, there is certainly no merit of works nor justification of virtues, but the liberality of the giver, the election of the redeemer. This too Scripture has taught you, the apostle Paul saying: 'But if by grace, then no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.' What then? That which Israel sought, this it did not obtain. Learn why it did not obtain it:
because it desired to justify itself, because it sought the boasting of its own works, because it did not bring forth faith nor acknowledge grace. And therefore the election attained it, which heard him calling and received him coming. Rightly, then, in the person of that people it is said: 'You have made us a reproach to our neighbors, a mockery and a derision to those who are round about us.' Who these neighbors are, and how the Israelite people may be seen to have pertained to the neighborhood, is not easy to discern. If a spiritual neighborhood is sought, there is lacking a certain light of knowledge for investigating the mystery of Christ, especially since in that very book of Solomon which is entitled Ecclesiastes we have learned that the more wisdom is sought, the more profound it is judged to be.
For thus it is written: 'I said: I will seek wisdom, and it was made far from me, far more than it was; and the depth of its height, who shall find it?' Whence there arises in me a diffidence to search out the mysteries of Scripture, which is divinely inspired, and to examine its discourses—which he could worthily do who spoke wisdom among the perfect. I see that you are perfect, and I would not undeservedly call you perfect, since I see that you have your senses exercised to the discerning of good and evil; but even he himself, who knew how to take more solid foods, sought aids, that the word of the Lord might run in him. Nor could even he usurp this without prayer, that his praise might be made pleasant to God; for it is the assertion not of one usurping, but of one praying.
Yet, lest we seem to have utterly fled the question, let us consider who were neighbors to the tribes of the Jews. For, to review old things, the Philistines were held to be neighbors of the tribe of Judah; from another side these same drew near to the tribe of Reuben. The Ammonites too were in the desert, and those who were in the borders of Tyre and Sidon were joined to Galilee, that is, to the tribe of Zebulun and the tribe of Naphtali, which were in Galilee, as Isaiah said: 'The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan.' Whence one may gather what was the particular character of each of the several tribes, so that they were joined to certain neighbors, in order that little by little the knowledge of the heavenly mysteries might be poured into the Gentiles also.
This indeed can be understood of that Canaanite woman who went out from her own borders to meet the Lord Jesus as he passed by, and, putting aside her own idols, adored the true author of salvation; to whom our Lord Jesus Christ gave testimony that her faith was great. The grace of the Gospel indeed was already shining forth, and the light of the august presence; but yet, because she went out of her own accord and begged for mercy and confessed the Lord with pious voice, and, though treated as it were with disdain, persevered in the cry of her own petition, this kind of woman received no slight prerogative, who first went out from the nations of the Gentiles and by persevering supplication deserved to carry back so great a testimony of the Lord.
In this passage indeed I have learned that certain people have, as it were, been in doubt as to what is meant by the saying: 'I was not sent except to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel' (Matt. 15:24) — as though the Lord seemed to have sought the nobility of a chosen race for the saving of souls, He who came that all might be redeemed. But He deigned to disclose His purpose, namely that He in no way wished to reject those whom He had first chosen, and that, though they often went astray and wandered, He nonetheless sought to call them back with a kind of fatherly affection. But when they themselves forsook their own author, knowing Himself to be God of the mountains and not of the valleys, and that the kingdom of heaven is seized not by the disdainful but by those who press toward it, He turned little by little to the nations, so that both the affection of the Gentiles might the more be approved, and by their merit the obstinacy of the others might be condemned.