Who am I to go to Pharaoh?; the Lord himself saved us

—a land flowing milk and honey.’ And adding at once: ‘And now behold the cry of the sons of Israel has come to me; and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them; and now come, I will send you to Pharaoh king of Egypt, and you will lead out my people, the sons of Israel, from Egypt’s land’ — clearly and expressly Moses had cried out: ‘Who am I, that I will go to Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that I will lead out the sons of Israel from Egypt’s land?’ Is the type not evident, then, and does the manner of the declining not have the reference upon what is incomparably superior and overlying — that is, Christ? As to say ‘Who am I?’ is unfitting; but very easy is the taking-out of peoples, and saving of nations, and carrying unto freedom, the one holding together unto slavery having been crushed and weakened — that is, Satan.

Palladius: Most easy; for you have spoken rightly.

Cyril: What then? Is it not also from here altogether without toil to see that the Only-begotten has become steward of the salvation of all? For through him we have been redeemed, and the prophet says: ‘Not an elder, not an angel, but the Lord himself has saved us.’

Palladius: From where have you spoken?

Cyril: For the God of all has commanded Moses clearly to go most unhesitatingly toward the sons of Israel, and to say openly as—

—he will. Speak again yourself.

Cyril: I will speak. Dwelling long times with Egyptians, those from Israel, and having slipped into every kind of sin, and delighting in the local luxuries, Moses did not ignore that they will be slow and very hard to move toward good order; yet he was wisely taking that the toil of the works will push them toward obedience unwillingly, if they should see him working wonders. For pleasure is a thing truly hard to exit, and the wildness of passions in us is not easily tamed. And when sweat presses and toils hang over, the one promising to free would easily persuade even to think little of the sweetest things. And I think that God who has the knowledge of every good was then especially letting loose upon those from Israel the Egyptians’ greed — most economically — so that they would be easy toward flight, and not, bound in the foster-pleasures, become hard and altogether hard to lead, and dishonoring the grace of the one calling into freedom, make voluntary the service in Egypt, preferring the immediately pleasant to a few toils. Rather even counting these among better things than those from God — and so, most gladly having put off the greed of those who long tyrannized, and camping according to the desert, and eating the things from above and from heaven — I mean the supply of the manna — they remember not without tears the luxury in Egypt. Preferring rather to have died, as was somehow far better and stronger for them, still luxuriating at the tables in Egypt, stretching themselves and crying out childishly: ‘Would that we had died struck by the Lord in Egypt, when we sat upon the pots—