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Clement of Alexandria

Ante-Nicene · to AD 325 · 904 passages across 53 books

Commentary

381–400 of 904
Exodus 16:36

Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah.

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.
Exodus 22:25

If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.

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.
Exodus 22:30

Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen, and with thy sheep: seven days it shall be with his dam; on the eighth day thou shalt give it me.

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.
Exodus 23:4

If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again.

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.
Exodus 23:5

If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.

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.
Exodus 23:19

The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

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.
Exodus 32:6

And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

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.
Exodus 32:34

Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.

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.
Exodus 33:13

Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.

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.
Ezekiel 13:13

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in mine anger, and great hailstones in my fury to consume it.

The words that follow describe and condemn some sin that has been committed. The judgment contained in these words is just, for it is as if he were giving notice in the words of the prophet that, if you had not sinned, he would not have made these threats.… The inspired Word exists because of both obedience and disobedience: that we may be saved by obeying it and educated because we have disobeyed.
Ezekiel 18:23

Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?

He takes delight in the conversion of sinners, for he desires the conversion that follows their sins. Surely, he himself is the only sinless one.
Galatians 1:19

But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother.

For they say that Peter and James and John after the ascension of our Saviour, as if also preferred by our Lord, strove not after honor, but chose James the Just bishop of Jerusalem...

The Lord after his resurrection imparted knowledge to James the Just and to John and Peter, and they imparted it to the rest of the apostles, and the rest of the apostles to the seventy, of whom Barnabas was one. But there were two Jameses: one called the Just, who was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and was beaten to death with a club by a fuller, and another who was beheaded.
Galatians 2:19

For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.

"For I through the law am dead to the law," he says, "that I may live unto God. I am crucified with Christ; it is no longer I that live," meaning that I used to live according to my lusts, "but Christ lives in me," and I am pure and blessed by obeying the commandments; so that whereas at one time I lived in the flesh carnally, "the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God."
Galatians 3:3

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

"Are you so foolish?" he says; "having begun in the Spirit are you now to be made perfect by the flesh."
Galatians 3:12

And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.

Whether, then, Egypt and the land of Canaan be the symbol of the world and of deceit, or of sufferings and afflictions; the oracle shows us what must be abstained from, and what, being divine and not worldly, must be observed. And when it is said, "The man that doeth them shall live in them"
Galatians 3:19

Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.

Whence the law was rightly said to have been given by Moses, being a rule of right and wrong; and we may call it with accuracy the divine ordinance, inasmuch as it was given by God through Moses. It accordingly conducts to the divine. Paul says: "The law was instituted because of transgressions, till the seed should come, to whom the promise was made." Then, as if in explanation of his meaning, he adds: "But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up," manifestly through fear, in consequence of sins, "unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed; so that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we should be justified by faith."
Galatians 3:23

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.

That there is the same equality before the righteous and loving God, and the same fellowship between Him and all, the apostle most clearly showed, speaking to the following effect: "Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed, so that the law became our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster."
Galatians 3:24

Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

For the word which, in matters of doctrine, explains and reveals, is that whose province it is to teach. But our Educator.
And when, having senselessly filled themselves, they senselessly played; on that account the law was given them, and terror ensued for the prevention of transgressions and for the promotion of right actions, securing attention, and so winning to obedience to the true Instructor, being one and the same Word, and reducing to conformity with the urgent demands of the law. For Paul says that it was given to be a "schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.".
Perchance, too, philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a schoolmaster to bring "the Hellenic mind "as the law, the Hebrews, "to Christ.".
As far as a sort of training with fear and preparatory discipline goes, leading as it did to the culmination of legislation and to grace.
Galatians 3:28

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
Galatians 4:1

Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;

And the child, though heir, differeth nothing from a servant, till the time appointed of the father."

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