{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-4013","native_reference":{"book_number":50,"chapter_from":5,"chapter_to":5,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":2,"verse_to":2},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: What do these words mean? The Lord your God has concluded an alliance with you in Horeb. The Lord did not conclude this covenant with your parents, but with you, with you who are all here alive. Face to face did the Lord speak to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire? Is it that those who do not enter the promised land -for all died- do not belong to this alliance, whose recognition was then made when they were counted from twenty years old up to fifty years old as people capable of war? (Cf Numbers 1,20) And how Did the Lord speak to those who live today? Perhaps because those from twenty years down, who could well remember this, could be many then, free from that punishment that God established for those who were counted then, telling them that they would not enter the promised land and says this to those who even though they were not twenty years old or up, when God spoke to them on the mountain, in order to be counted then, however, they could have been from nineteen years old down to childhood, so that they could see, hear and retain in memory the things that were done and said? But what do these words mean: Face to face the Lord spoke to you, who says to those who a short time before he tried to admonish them seriously, warning them that they had not seen any image, but had only heard a voice coming from the midst of the fire? perhaps of those words for the evidence of things and for the presence in some way of the manifestation of divinity, of which no one could doubt? And if this is so, what problem is there in understanding this very thing about Moses, when about him it is said that the Lord spoke with him face to face, (Cf Exodus 33,11) so that even he would not see with his eyes out of the fire? Or is it necessary to think that he saw something else, since it is said that he entered the fog or the cloud where God was? (Cf Exodus 24,18) But even if he had seen something other than what they saw, it can not be deduced that he would have seen the substance of God with his mortal eyes, of the words he addressed to God, saying: If I have found grace before you, show yourself to me, so that I may see you clearly. For the rest, we should not think that this people, to whom Moses spoke, would have seen God face to face, when he spoke on the mountain from the midst of the fire, as the Apostle says that we will see him in the hereafter, with these words: Now we see in a mirror, confusedly; then we will see face to face. He then says what it is and how much it is: Now I know imperfectly; but then I will know how I am known (1 Corinthians 13,12). But this same thing must be taken with caution, so that man does not think that he will have as much knowledge of God as God does now of man, but that, according to his capacity, he will have such perfect knowledge that he will not have to wait that nothing more is added to it. Because with the same perfection with which God now knows man and does it as God with respect to man, so man will know God perfectly and will do as man with God. And although it has been said: Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect, (Matthew 5,58) not for that reason should we expect equality with the Father who has the Only Begotten Word. In spite of everything, there have been those who have thought that this will happen too, unless we misunderstand what they say. 10 (Deuteronomy 5.5). What do these words mean: And I was then between the Lord and you to announce to you the words of the Lord? Is it that the Lord was somewhere, that is, on the mountain, from where they heard the voices? This should not be taken in the sense that by this text we should think that the substance of God is in some bodily place, because God is all everywhere, without approaching or moving away by local distances. The manifestations of God do not show themselves in any other way to the human senses in that creature that is not him. Therefore, the Lord, wanting to turn our minds away from the suspicions by which God is thought to be contained in a place, says: There will come a time when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews. But there comes a time and it is this, in which the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeks those who adore him in this way. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4,21-24). Moses, therefore, said that he was an intermediary, not between the substance of God and the people by a local distance, but because the people preferred to hear through him the remaining words of God, after having been terrified to hear, coming from the midst of the fire, the voice of the Lord that promulgated the Decalogue (Cf Exodus 20,19). But with all reason we can investigate the meaning of these words of Moses collected by Deuteronomy: And I was then between the Lord and you to announce to you the words of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up to the mountain, saying: I am the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 5,5.6), etc. These are already words of the Lord contained in the Decalogue. What, then, means the addition: saying? If we thought that there is hyperbaton and that the order of words would be: And I was then between the Lord and you to announce to you the words of the Lord, saying: \"I am the Lord your God\", then this is not true. For the people did not hear these words through Moses, but he heard them from the midst of the fire. The town could not stand this. When he heard the Decalogue, he asked for the rest to be told by Moses. In short, the word: saying, means as if it had been said: when it said. And the meaning would be: I was then between the Lord and you to announce to you the words of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up to the mountain, when he said: \"I am the Lord your God.\" It is understood: «when the Lord said». When the Lord said these words mentioned below, taking them from the Decalogue, the people were afraid before the fire and did not go up the mountain, and prayed that the Lord would speak to them rather through Moses (Cf 20,18.19). Moses recalls in Deuteronomy that the people said those words to him, because he did not want to hear the voice of the Lord anymore, but they asked God to speak to them through Moses, saying: Look, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and we have heard his voice from the midst of the fire (Deuteronomy 5,24), etc. In the Exodus it does not say exactly the same when the things that are repeated here are counted for the first time (Cf Exodus 20,22). But as we have already recalled some other times, we should not think that we should attribute to a lie the fact that the same decision is expressed by any other words, and this in attention also to the own words of the evangelists, that the ignorant and Slanderers claim that they contradict each other. For Moses, in fact, it was not difficult to attend to what he had written in the Exodus and to repeat it with the same words, if it were not for our holy doctors to suggest this to the disciples, telling them not to seek, in the words of the who speak, nothing other than the intention with which the words have been put to indicate it.<br/><i>— QUESTIONS ON DEUTERONOMY, Q. 9 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"3e03c2414b627bce20a7bb9f794ebd6bca2490cfb6bc49edaa2617bab0855eba","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":4013,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"28a9632a9886dd199fb9e5493a85164e92562c6125d70862ec669ab058220d1b","translator":null,"work":null}