Exodus 14:24
And now the morning watch was come, and behold the Lord looking upon the Egyptian army through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, slew their host.
Open Exodus 14:24 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Jamque advenerat vigilia matutina, et ecce respiciens Dominus super castra Ægyptiorum per columnam ignis et nubis, interfecit exercitum eorum,
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἐγενήθη δὲ ἐν τῇ φυλακῇ τῇ ἑωθινῇ καὶ ἐπέβλεψεν Κύριος ἐπὶ τὴν παρεμβολὴν τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ἐν στύλῳ πυρὸς καὶ νεφέλης, καὶ συνετάραξεν τὴν παρεμβολὴν τῶν Αἰγυπτίων,
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַֽיְהִי֙ בְּאַשְׁמֹ֣רֶת הַבֹּ֔קֶר וַיַּשְׁקֵ֤ף יְהוָה֙ אֶל מַחֲנֵ֣ה מִצְרַ֔יִם בְּעַמּ֥וּד אֵ֖שׁ וְעָנָ֑ן וַיָּ֕הָם אֵ֖ת מַחֲנֵ֥ה מִצְרָֽיִם
Haydock's commentary
Watch. About four o'clock. The Hebrews divided the night into three equal parts, (Calmet) or four, consisting each of three hours, (Menochius) which varied in length as the night was longer. (Haydock)
Slew many by his thunderbolts, as Artapanus relates, and the Scripture elsewhere insinuates. (Chap. xv. 6, 12; Psalm lxxvi. 16, 18; Josephus, [Antiquities?] ii. 7.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian On Repentance, Final Considerations to Induce to Exomologesis
If you shrink back from exomologesis , consider in your heart the hell, which exomologesis will extinguish for you; and imagine first the magnitude of the penalty, that you may not hesitate about the adoption of the remedy. What do we esteem that treasure-house of eternal fire to be, when small vent-holes of it rouse such blasts of flames that neighbouring cities either are already no more, or are in daily expectation of the same fate? The haughtiest mountains start asunder in the birth-throes of their inly-gendered fire; and, which proves to us the perpetuity of the judgment, though they start asunder, though they be devoured, yet come they never to an end. …
St Augustine Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter I. 15-18
19. Expel, therefore, from your hearts carnal thoughts, that you may be really under grace, that you may belong to the New Testament. Therefore is life eternal promised in the New Testament. Read the Old Testament, and see that the same things were enjoined upon a people yet carnal as upon us. For to worship one God is also enjoined upon us. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” is also enjoined upon us, which is the second commandment. “Observe the Sabbath-day” is enjoined on us more than on them, because it is commanded to be spiritually observed. For the Jews observe the Sabbath in a servile manner, using it for luxuriousness and drunkenness. How much better would their women be employed in spinning wool than in dancing on that day in the balconies? God forbid, brethren, that we should call that an observance of the Sabbath. …
St Augustine Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter XV. 24, 25
2. But what is meant when, after saying, “If I had not done among them works,” He immediately added, “which none other man did”? Of a certainty, among all the works of Christ, none seem to be greater than the raising of the dead; and yet we know that the same was done by the prophets of olden time. For Elias did so; and Elisha also, both when alive in the flesh, and when he lay buried in his sepulchre. For when certain men, who were carrying a dead person, had fled thither for refuge from an onset of their enemies, and had laid him down therein, he instantly came again to life. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CXXIV
4. …“When their fury was enraged upon us.” They are now in anger, they now openly rage: “perchance the water had drowned us” ( ver. 4 ). By water he meaneth ungodly nations: and we shall see what sort of water in the following verses. Whoever had consented unto them, water would have overwhelmed him. For he would die by the death of the Egyptians, he would not pass through after the example of the Israelites. For ye know, brethren, that the people of Israel passed through the water, by which the Egyptians were overwhelmed. But what sort of water is this? It is a torrent, it flows with violence, but it will pass by…Hence He, our Head, first drinketh, of whom it is said in the Psalms, “He shall drink of the torrent in the way: therefore shall He lift up His head.” For our Head is already exalted, because He drank of the torrent by the way; for our Lord hath suffered. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).