First let us learn the most general purpose that governs these individual wonders. Then we will be able to apply the meaning to each one. The teaching of truth has different effects depending on how those who receive it respond. The same word shows everyone what is evil and what is good. The person who responds obediently to what is shown has his mind in the light. But the person who resists and refuses to let his soul look toward the ray of truth remains in the darkness of ignorance. If our general understanding of these things is not false, then the individual cases should not prove otherwise when the argument examines them one by one.
It is therefore no wonder that the Hebrew remains untouched by the Egyptians’ evils even while living among foreigners, since we can see the same thing happening now. In crowded cities people are divided by opposing beliefs. For some, the stream of faith drawn through divine teaching is clear and drinkable. But for those who, through false belief, live as Egyptians do, the water becomes the blood of corruption.
The deceptive cleverness of error often tries to turn even the Hebrews’ drink into blood by staining it with falsehood. That is, it tries to show our teaching as something other than what it really is. Yet it cannot make the drink itself useless, even if deception can redden its outward appearance for a time. The Hebrew still drinks the true water, however persuasively opponents slander it, and pays no attention to the deceptive appearance.
So too with the ugly and noisy frogs. Their life is amphibious, and they move with a creeping kind of hop. They are unpleasant not only to look at; their skin also smells foul. They creep into the Egyptians’ houses, beds, and storerooms, yet they do not touch the life of the Hebrews.
The corrupt offspring of vice truly are like frogs, brought to life from the filthy human heart as though from mud. These frogs inhabit the houses of those who choose to live like Egyptians. They appear at their tables, they do not stay away from their beds, and they slip into the storerooms where their possessions are kept.
When you see a filthy and self-indulgent way of life truly born from clay and mud, imitating irrational creatures so that its way of living fits neither condition exactly, you can recognize this amphibious and divided form of life. Such a person is human by nature but becomes a beast through passion. You will find the signs of this disease not only in the bed, but also at the table, in the storerooms, and throughout the whole house.
A person’s way of life is marked by such things throughout his household, so that anyone can readily recognize from what he values at home whether his life is self-indulgent or pure. In the house of the self-indulgent, art may display on the plastered walls images that kindle passionate pleasure. Such sights remind the disease of its own nature, and through the eyes the passion pours into the soul from the shamefulness of what is seen. The self-controlled person, by contrast, takes every precaution to keep even the eyes free from passion-stirring sights.
The same is true of the table. The table of the self-controlled person is clean, while that of the person who wallows in a muddy life is frog-like and loaded with meat. And if you search the storerooms—that is, the hidden and private parts of his life—you will find an even greater heap of frogs among those who live without self-control.
If the story says that the staff of virtue brings these things upon the Egyptians, we should not be surprised by the argument. The story also says that Pharaoh was hardened by God. How, then, could he be blameworthy if some force from above made him hard and resistant? The divine Apostle says something similar: because people did not choose to keep God in their knowledge, God handed them over to dishonorable passions. He says this about those who have sex with males and about those behaving shamefully in dishonorable and unspeakable forms of self-indulgence.
But even though divine Scripture speaks this way, God does not hand over to a dishonorable passion someone who is being drawn toward it, Pharaoh is not hardened by divine will, and the frog-like life is not produced by virtue. If this were what the divine nature willed, the same condition would necessarily prevail equally in everyone, and there would be no difference between virtue and vice in human life. Yet people live in different ways: some succeed through virtue, while others slide into vice. No one, then, could reasonably attribute these differences in life to some overriding necessity established by the divine will, since each person’s free choice has control in his own case.
The Apostle makes clear who is handed over to dishonorable passion: the person who did not choose to keep God in his knowledge. God does not hand him over as revenge for failing to acknowledge Him as God. Rather, the failure to know God becomes the cause of his being dragged down into a passionate and dishonorable life.
Suppose someone said that because a man did not see the sun, the sun threw him into a pit. We would not think that the sun, in anger at the man for refusing to look toward it, pushed him into the pit. We would understand the statement more reasonably: because the man did not share in the light, he could not see, and that became the cause of his fall. In the same way, we should understand both the Apostle’s statement that those who did not acknowledge God are handed over to dishonorable passions and the statement that the Egyptian tyrant was hardened by God. Divine will does not place resistance in Pharaoh’s soul. Rather, his own choice, by leaning toward evil, refuses to receive the word that would soften his resistance.
In the same way, when the staff of virtue appears among the Egyptians, it makes the Hebrew free from the frog-like way of life while showing the Egyptian way of life to be full of this disease.
At times, however, when Moses stretches out his hands even for these people, the frogs disappear. We can see the same thing happening now. Those who understand the outstretched hands of the giver of the law may for a time have lived with these filthy and frog-like thoughts. You surely understand that the riddle speaks to you: the giver of the law points to the true Giver of the Law, and the outstretched hands to the One who stretched out His hands on the cross. But if they look toward the One who stretched out His hands for us, they are freed from their evil companions as the passion is put to death and boils away.
For those who have been freed from such a disease, once these crawling movements have been put to death, the memory of their former life becomes something strange and foul-smelling, filling the soul with disgust through shame. As the Apostle says to those who turn from evil toward virtue: “What fruit did you have then from the things of which you are now ashamed?”