The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^6. But let us hear what they next confess: “we have sinned with our fathers: we have done amiss, and dealt wickedly”. What means “with our fathers”?...“Our fathers,” he says, “regarded not Your wonders in Egypt”; and many other things also, he does relate of their sins. Or is, “we have sinned with our fathers,” to be understood as meaning, we have sinned like our fathers, that is, by imitating their sins? If it be so, it should be supported by some example of this mode of expression: which did not occur to me when I sought on this occasion an instance of any one saying that he had sinned, or done anything, with another, whom he had imitated by a similar act after a long interval of time. What means then, “Our fathers understood not Your wonders;” save this, they did not know what You wished to convince them of by these miracles? What indeed, save life eternal, and a good, not temporal, but immutable, which is waited for only through endurance? For this reason they impatiently murmured, and provoked, and they asked to be blessed with present and fugitive blessings, “Neither were they mindful of the greatness of Your mercy.” He reproves both their understanding and memory. Understanding there was need of, that they might meditate unto what eternal blessings God was calling them through these temporal ones; and of memory, that at least they might not forget the temporal wonders which had been wrought, and might faithfully believe, that by the same power which they had already experienced, God would free them from the persecutions of their enemies; whereas they forgot the aid which He had given them in Egypt, by means of such wonders, to crush their enemies. “And they provoked, as they went up to the sea, even to the Red Sea.” We ought especially to notice how the Scripture does censure the not understanding that which ought to have been understood, and the not remembering that which ought to have been remembered; which men are unwilling to have ascribed to their own fault, for no other reason than that they may pray less, and be less humble unto God, in whose sight they should confess what they are, and might by praying for His aid, become what they are not. For it is better to accuse even the sins of ignorance and negligence, that they may be done away with, than to excuse them, so that they remain; and it is better to clear them off by calling upon God, than to clench them by provoking Him.

He adds, that God acted not according to their unbelief. “Nevertheless,” he says, “He saved them for His Name's sake: that He might make His power to be known”: not on account of any deservings of their own.

7. “He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up”. We do not read that any voice was sent forth from Heaven to rebuke the sea; but he has called the Divine Power by which this was effected, a rebuke: unless indeed any one may choose to say, that the sea was secretly rebuked, so that the waters might hear, and yet men could not. The power by which God acts is very abstruse and mysterious, a power which He causes that even things devoid of sense instantly obey at His will. “So He led them through the deeps, as through a wilderness.” He calls a multitude of waters the deeps. For some wishing to give the sense of this whole verse, have translated, “So He led them forth amid many waters.” What then does “through the deeps, as through a wilderness,” mean, except that that had become as a wilderness from its dryness, where before had been the watery deeps?

8. “And He saved them from the hating ones”. Some translators, in order to avoid an expression unusual in Latin, have rendered the word, by a circumlocution, “And He saved them from the hand of those that hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.” What price was given in this redemption? Is it a prophecy, since this deed was a figure of Baptism, wherein we are redeemed from the hand of the devil at a great price, which price is the Blood of Christ? Whence this is more consistently figured forth, not by any sea indiscriminately, but by the Red Sea; since blood has a red colour.

9. “As for those that troubled them, the waters overwhelmed them: there was not one of them left”; not of all the Egyptians, but of those who pursued the departing Israelites, desirous either of taking or of killing them.

10. “Then believed they in His words”. The expression seems barely Latin, for he says not “believed His word,” or “on His words,” but “in His words;” yet it is very frequent in Scripture. “And praised praise unto Him;” such an expression as when we say, “This servitude he served,” “such a life he lived.” He is here alluding to that well-known hymn, commencing, “I will sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously: the horse and the rider has He thrown into the sea.”

11. “They acted hastily: they forgot His works”: other copies read more intelligibly, “They hastened, they forgot His works, and would not abide His counsel.” For they ought to have thought, that so great works of God towards themselves were not without a purpose, but that they invited them to some endless happiness, which was to be waited for with patience; but they hastened to make themselves happy with temporal things, which give no man true happiness, because they do not quench insatiable longing: for “whosoever,” says our Lord, “shall drink of this water, shall thirst again.”