Clement of Alexandria — Commentary on Scripture

Exodus 2:12

Eupolemus in his work On the Kings of Judea says that Moses was the first sage and the first person to transmit to the Jews the science of writing, which passed from the Jews to the Phoenicians and from the Phoenicians to the Greeks. When he reached the age of manhood he developed his practical wisdom, being zealous for his national, ancestral educational traditions, to the point of striking down and killing an Egyptian who was unjustly attacking a Hebrew. The mystics say that he eliminated the Egyptian simply by speaking, as later in Acts Peter is said to have killed by his words those who had kept for themselves part of the price of the land and had told lies.

The Stromata Book 1

Exodus 3:2

When the almighty Lord of the universe began to legislate through the Word and decided to make his power visible to Moses, he sent Moses a divine vision with the appearance of light, in the burning bush. Now a bramble bush is full of thorns. So too when the Word was concluding his legislation and his stay among men as their Lord, again he permitted himself to be crowned with thorns as a mystic symbol. Returning to the place from which he had descended, the Word renewed that by which he had first come, appearing first in the bush of thorns and later being surrounded with thorns that he might show that all was the work of the same one power. He is one, and his Father is one, the eternal beginning and end.

The Instructor Book 2

Exodus 3:19-22

He said to Moses, “Go and speak to Pharaoh, that he may let my people go, but I know that he will not let them go.…” He manifests his divinity by foreseeing what is to happen and also his love for man by offering to the free will of man an opportunity to repent.

The Instructor Book 1

Exodus 7:7

On the same basis, you would not be able to point to anyone of the past generations approaching a pregnant woman in the pages of Scripture. Only later, after the birth and weaning of the child, would you again find the wives in physical relations with their husbands. You will find that Moses’ father observed this point. He left a three-year gap after Aaron’s birth before fathering Moses.

The Stromata Book 3

Exodus 15:1

It is said in the ode, “For he has triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider has he cast into the sea.” The many-limbed and brutal affection, lust, with the rider mounted, who gives reigns to pleasures, “he has cast into the sea,” throwing them away into the disorders of the world. Thus also Plato, in his book On the Soul, says that the charioteer and the horse that ran off—the irrational part, which is divided in two, into anger and concupiscence—fall down. So the myth intimates that it was through the licentiousness of the steeds that Phathon was thrown out.

The Stromata Book 5

Exodus 16:36

Anyway, when the instruction is given to consecrate in a golden vessel the memorial of the food sent down by God from heaven, “the gomor,” it is written, “is a tenth part of three measures.” For our purposes, “three measures” means three sources of judgment: perception of sensible objects; reason, for evaluating sentences, nouns and verbs; and the intellect, for intelligible objects.

The Stromata Book 2

Exodus 22:25

There is a great deal about sharing and exchanging, but it is enough to say that the law forbids lending at interest to a brother. By brother it means not merely one born of the same parents but a member of the same tribe or one of the same faith, who shares in the same Logos. The law does not deem it right to collect interest on the capital. It seeks to enable free giving to those in need, with hands and minds wide open. God is the creator of this free gift. It is he who shares his goods, exacting as the only reasonable interest the most precious things human beings possess: gentleness, goodness, high-mindedness, repute, glory.

The Stromata Book 2

Exodus 22:30

Scripture says, “At least grant the offspring to its mother for its first seven days.” For if nothing comes to be without reason and milk flows in the mothers for the nourishment of the offspring, then in taking the offspring away from the providential endowment of milk, a person is doing violence to nature. So Greeks and anyone else who runs the law down ought to blush for shame if the law is generous over irrational beasts, whereas they actually expose human offspring to die. Yet for a long time with prophetic authority the law has cut short their ferocity through the commandment of which we have been speaking. For if the law refuses to allow the offspring of irrational creatures to be separated from their mother before taking milk, it is far more forceful in preparing human beings against that cruel, uncivilized view. If they ignore nature, at least they may not ignore the lessons of the law.

The Stromata Book 2

Exodus 23:4

A reputation for nobility follows the refusal to remember ills and leads to the cessation of hostility. From this we become disposed to concord, and concord leads to happiness. If you catch anyone you regard as a traditional enemy acting stupidly and irrationally out of desire or temper, turn him toward good behavior.

The Stromata Book 2

Exodus 23:5

The Lord tells us to relieve and lighten the burden of beasts of burden, even when they belong to our enemies. He is teaching us at a distance not to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others and not to laugh at our enemies. He wants to teach those who have exercised themselves in these disciplines to pray for their enemies.

The Stromata Book 2

Exodus 23:19

Our physical nature rebels against the thought of making the nourishment of the living a garnish for the dead or the cause of life an accessory to the death of the body.

The Stromata Book 2

Exodus 32:6

Of old, the Word educated through Moses and after that through the prophets; even Moses was in fact a prophet. For the law was the education of children difficult to control. “Having eaten their fill,” Scripture says, “they got up to play,” using a Greek word which means not food but cattle fodder, because of their irrational gorging.And since they were continually filling themselves without obeying reason and playing without listening to reason, the law and fear followed them to restrain them from sin and to encourage them to reform themselves.

The Instructor Book 1

Exodus 32:34

In this passage, he teaches him the art of educating. And well he might, for it was through Moses, in fact, that the Lord of the ancient people was the educator of his children. It is in his own person, however, face to face, that he is the guide of the new people.

The Instructor Book 1

Exodus 33:13

As a result Moses, convinced that God will never be known to human wisdom, says, “Reveal yourself to me,” and finds himself forced to enter “into the darkness” where the voice of God was present; in other words, into the unapproachable, imageless, intellectual concepts relating to ultimate reality. For God does not exist in darkness. He is not in space at all. He is beyond space and time and anything belonging to created beings. Similarly he is not found in any section. He contains nothing. He is contained by nothing. He is not subject to limit or division.

The Stromata Book 2