Let my people go, that they may feast

Cyril went on: For the world-rulers of this age, having taken under hand the wretched souls of men, wear them out in clay and brickmakings and in the things done toward earth and about earth, and having bound them to an evil and profitless trial (for such the works of the flesh and about it appear), they force them to receive a bitter and wholly toilsome life, which will in no manner bring in what helps for those forced to practice it. For what would the works and passions of the flesh profit our wretched soul? And as it were a gain will be laid up from us for the devil and the demons, and it will be wealth and a boast of the opposing kingdom, just as, of course, Pharaoh also thought it of no small glory for himself that those from Israel should raise cities for him, having been forced to come to this unpaid and without food.

Palladius said: It is so. For the word is very clear.

Cyril: So then the labor of the Israelites writes down a shaping and as it were a clear image of our vain and unholy pursuits on earth, Satan himself lying on them and leaping on them, and the evil powers with him, whom the divine Scripture marks with the names of the taskmasters; and I for my part would say that this is the evil distraction, full of sweat and labor, and filled as it were with clay and uncleanness and a mud-like pleasure. But God even then pitied those maltreated in a most unholy and wild way by the Egyptians' greeds, and serving beside what was due. For he at once made Moses, the best of all, a servant of the gentleness toward them. Or shall we not also find God doing this toward us ourselves? For to us who have slipped into sins he grants the mercy, and at once puts his own law into the hearts of all as a mediator, carrying them toward a free life.

Palladius: I understand what you say.

Cyril: Do you wish, then, cutting the breadth of the history, that we say what is likely as we can?

Palladius: Very much so.

Cyril: It is written then thus: 'And after these things Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, and said to him: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Send out my people, that they may feast to me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said: Who is he, whose voice I shall hear, so as to send out the sons of Israel? I do not know the Lord, and I will not send Israel out.' For those around Moses and Aaron affirmed that Israel must be let go from the Egyptians' country and land, God calling to a feast; for it is a true feast in truth to loose oneself from the yoke of the unwanted slavery, and to come thereafter under God, and to fulfill the things dear to him, no one standing against, or forcing one to choose instead and to love what seems good to him.