Exodus 17:8
And Amalec came, and fought against Israel in Raphidim.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Venit autem Amalec, et pugnabat contra Israël in Raphidim.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Ἦλθεν δὲ Ἀμαλὴκ καὶ ἐπολέμει Ἰσραὴλ ἐν Ῥαφιδείν.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיָּבֹ֖א עֲמָלֵ֑ק וַיִּלָּ֥חֶם עִם יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל בִּרְפִידִֽם
Haydock's commentary
Amalec. The descendants of Esau by his grandson, living about the Red Sea.
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 Fasting, Chapter X
In Exodus, was not that position of Moses, battling against Amalek by prayers, maintained as it was perseveringly even till “sunset,” a “late Station?” Think we that Joshua the son of Nun, when warring down the Amorites, had breakfasted on that day on which he ordered the very elements to keep a Station? The sun “stood” in Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon; the sun and the moon “stood in station until the People was avenged of his enemies, and the sun stood in the mid heaven.” When, moreover, (the sun) did draw toward his setting and the end of the one day, there was no such day beforetime and in the latest time (of course, (no day) so long ), “that God,” says (the writer), “should hear a man”, (a man) to be sure, the sun’s peer, so long persistent in his duty, a Station longer even than late .
St Augustine On the Holy Trinity, They are Proud Who Think They are Able, by Their Own Righteousness, to Be Cleansed So as to See God
20. There are, however, some who think themselves capable of being cleansed by their own righteousness, so as to contemplate God, and to dwell in God; whom their very pride itself stains above all others. For there is no sin to which the divine law is more opposed, and over which that proudest of spirits, who is a mediator to things below, but a barrier against things above, receives a greater right of mastery: unless either his secret snares be avoided by going another way, or if he rage openly by means of a sinful people (which Amalek, being interpreted, means), and forbid by fighting the passage to the land of promise, he be overcome by the cross of the Lord, which is prefigured by the holding out of the hands of Moses. …
St Jerome Against Jovinianus, Book II
They despised angels’ food, and sighed for the flesh of Egypt. Moses for forty days and forty nights fasted on Mount Sinai, and showed even then that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word of God. He says to the Lord, “the people is full and maketh idols.” Moses with empty stomach received the law written with the finger of God. The people that ate and drank and rose up to play fashioned a golden calf, and preferred an Egyptian ox to the majesty of the Lord. The toil of so many days perished through the fulness of a single hour. …