In this way Moses leads the people out of Egypt, and everyone who follows in Moses’ footsteps frees in the same way from Egyptian tyranny all those whom his teaching guides. But I think those who follow a leader toward virtue should not leave behind the wealth of Egypt or possess none of the treasures of foreigners. They should take whatever their opponents possess and keep it for their own use, just as Moses commanded the people to do then.
If someone understood this only at the surface level, he would hardly approve Moses’ advice if it meant commanding the Israelites to defraud their lenders and so becoming a teacher of injustice. Nor could anyone truly say that Moses commands such a thing, considering the later laws that repeatedly forbid injustice toward one’s neighbor. This remains so even if some think the act reasonable on the ground that the Israelites were collecting from the Egyptians the wages owed to them by this device.
Even so, such a command would still be open to the charge of falsehood and deception. Someone who receives something as a loan and does not return it wrongs the lender if the property belongs to another. And even if what he keeps can be regarded as his own, he is still rightly called a deceiver if he misled the person who lent it in the expectation of getting it back.
The higher meaning is therefore more fitting than the surface one. It commands those who pursue the free life through virtue to acquire also the wealth of education from outside the faith—the wealth in which those foreign to the faith take pride. Moral and natural philosophy, geometry, astronomy, the study of logic, and everything else cultivated by those outside the Church are to be taken from those who are rich in such things in Egypt and received for our own use. At the proper time they can be useful for adorning the divine temple of the mystery with this intellectual wealth.
Those who have stored up such wealth bring to Moses, as he works on the tabernacle of testimony, whatever each can contribute to the making of the holy things. We can see the same thing happening now. Many people offer their education from outside the faith to the Church of God as a kind of gift. The great Basil was one of them. In his youth he acquired the wealth of Egypt well, dedicated it to God, and with such wealth adorned the true tabernacle of the Church.
But let us return to the point from which we digressed. When those who are already looking toward virtue and following Moses as their guide in life leave the boundaries of Egyptian rule, attacks of temptation somehow follow them, bringing constriction, fear, and even danger of death. Terrified by these things, the mind of someone still new in faith can fall into complete despair of the good. But if a Moses—or someone who, like him, knows how to lead the people—is present, he will oppose counsel to fear and encourage the frightened mind with hope in divine help.
This cannot happen unless the leader’s heart is speaking to God. Many who hold positions of this kind of leadership care only that what can be seen of them is well ordered and give little thought to what is hidden and seen by God alone. Moses was not like this. While he was telling the Israelites to take courage, he made no audible prayer to God, yet God Himself testified that Moses was crying out to Him. The lesson, I think, is that the voice which sounds clearly and rises all the way to God’s hearing is not a cry made by straining the voice, but the thought sent upward from a pure conscience.
For a person in this condition, the brother now appears to offer only small help for the struggles that seem to lie ahead. This is the same brother who, by God’s will, met Moses as he went down toward the Egyptians and whom our interpretation understood as having the rank of an angel. But then the divine nature itself appears, in the measure that the one receiving it is able to contain. We hear from the story that this happened then, and from the spiritual interpretation we learn that it happens continually.
For when someone flees the Egyptian and, having passed beyond his borders, becomes afraid before the assaults of temptation, the guide points out an unexpected salvation from above. When the enemy has surrounded the pursued person with all his power and there is no other way out, the sea itself is made passable for him—