In the year 805 before the founding of the City, unspeakable evils and intolerable plagues fell upon the Egyptians, as Pompeius and Cornelius testify; and since both of them set out to relate these things in connection with the Jews, they have somewhat troubled me by their disagreement.
1 Anno autem ante urbem conditam DCCCV infanda Aegyptiis mala atque intolerabiles plagas incubuisse Pompeius Corneliusque testantur: qui quidem, cum haec ambo de Iudaeis referenda proponant, aliquantulum me pro sui diuersitate mouerunt.
For Pompeius, or Justin, speaks in this way: “When the Egyptians were suffering from scabies and leprosy, warned by an oracle, they drove Moses out of the borders of Egypt together with the sick, lest the plague spread to more. Having become the leader of the exiles, he stole the sacred objects of the Egyptians; and when the Egyptians tried to recover them by arms, they were forced by storms to return home.”
2 ait enim Pompeius siue Iustinus hoc modo: Aegyptii cum scabiem ac uitiliginem paterentur, responso moniti Moysen cum aegris, ne pestis ad plures serperet, terminis Aegypti pellunt. dux igitur exulum factus sacra Aegyptiorum furto abstulit; quae armis repetentes Aegyptii domum redire tempestatibus conpulsi sunt.
Cornelius, however, speaks of the same matter thus: “Most authors agree that when a wasting disease that disfigured the body broke out throughout Egypt, King Bocchoris went to the oracle of Ammon seeking a remedy, and was ordered to purge his kingdom and to carry off that race of men to other lands as hateful to the gods.1
3 at uero Cornelius de eadem re sic ait: Plurimi auctores consentiunt orta per Aegyptum tabe, quae corpora foedaret, regem Bocchorim adito Hammonis oraculo remedium petentem purgare regnum et id genus hominum ut inuisum deis alias in terras auehere iussum.
1Tacitus, Histories 5.3. Bocchoris was an Egyptian king of the late eighth century BC, far too late for Moses.
So the mob was sought out and gathered together, and after it had been abandoned in desolate places, while the rest lay numb with weeping, Moses, one of the exiles, warned them to expect no help from gods or men, but to trust themselves to a heavenly leader, the first by whose help they might drive off their present miseries.”
4 sic conquisitum collectumque uulgus postquam uastis locis relictum sit, ceteris per lacrimas torpentibus Moysen, unum exulum, monuisse, ne quam deorum hominumue opem exspectarent sed sibimet duci caelesti crederent, primo cuius auxilio praesentes miserias pepulissent.
Thus Cornelius says that the Jews were driven out into the deserts under compulsion from the Egyptians themselves, and afterwards he incautiously adds that with the help of Moses as their leader they had driven off their miseries in Egypt. This shows that certain things vigorously accomplished through Moses have been concealed.
5 itaque Cornelius dicit, quod ipsis Aegyptiis cogentibus Iudaei in deserta propulsi sint, et postea subiungit incaute, quia ope Moysi ducis in Aegypto miserias propulissent. quare ostenditur quaedam quae per Moysen strenue acta sunt fuisse celata.
Likewise Justin asserts that Moses, driven out together with his people, stole the sacred objects of the Egyptians, and that the Egyptians, attempting to recover them by arms, were forced back by storms and returned home. Here too he has disclosed something more — though not the whole — of what the other concealed.
6 item Iustinus adserit pulsum aeque cum populo Moysen sacra Aegyptiorum fuisse furatum, quae Aegyptios armis recipere molientes, coactos tempestatibus ac repulsos, domum redisse. et hic aliquid amplius etsi non totum prodidit quod ille celauit.
Therefore, since both have borne witness to Moses, that great leader, let these things be set forth from Moses himself, as they were both done and told through him.
7 quapropter, quia Moysi magno illi duci testimonium ambo dixerunt, ab ipso sicut per eum et gesta et dicta sunt proferantur.
The Egyptians were oppressing the people of God — that is, the race of Joseph, by whose help they had been saved — crushing them with slavery and tormenting them with labour, and were moreover forcing them by a cruel command to kill their own offspring; and God, through Moses as his messenger, commanded that his people be let go free to serve him.
8 Cum populum Dei hoc est genus Joseph Aegyptii, cuius ope salui erant, seruitio oppressum labore cruciarent, insuper etiam ad necandam subolem suam crudeli imperio cogerent, dimitti Deus populum suum liberum ad seruiendum sibi per Moysen nuntium iubet;
When he was scorned, he drove the stubborn with the harshest punishments; and they, loaded and ground down by ten plagues, at last compelled those whom they had refused to release even to make haste.
9 contemptusque durissimis contumaces suppliciis agit, qui decem plagis onerati ac protriti, tandem quos dimittere noluerant, etiam festinare coegerunt.
After the waters were turned into blood, bringing to those burning with thirst remedies more grievous than the punishments; after the loathsome filth of frogs crawling over all things clean and unclean; after the fiery gnats, which, while the whole air quivered with them, could nowhere be avoided;
10 post aquas in sanguinem uersas ardentibus siti grauiora adferentes poenarum remedia quam poenas, post horridos ranarum squalores per omnia munda inmundaque reptantes, post ignitas sciniphes et nusquam, toto aere uibrante, uitabiles,
after the dog-flies running about with horrid motions even through the inner parts of the limbs and bitterly inflicting torments as grievous as they were shameful; after the sudden ruin and general slaughter of all their flocks and beasts of burden; after the seething blisters and running sores, and — as they themselves preferred to call it — the “scabies and leprosy” breaking out over their whole bodies;
11 post muscas caninas etiam per interiora membrorum horridis motibus cursitantes acerbeque inferentes tam grauia tormenta quam turpia, post omnium pecorum et iumentorum repentinam ruinam stragemque generalem, post uesicas efferuescentes ulceraque manantia et, ut ipsi dicere maluerunt, 'scabiem ac uitiliginem' totis corporibus erumpentem,
after the hail mixed with fire, crushing men, herds and trees everywhere; after the clouds of locusts which, when everything else was devoured, went after even the very roots of the seeds; after the darkness, dreadful with apparitions, palpable in its thickness, deadly in its long duration;
12 post grandinem cum igne permixtam, passim homines armenta atque arbores proterentem, post lucustarum nubes, exhaustis omnibus ipsas quoque radices seminum persequentes, post tenebras imaginibus diras, crassitudine palpabiles, diuturnitate ferales,
and finally, after one and the same death of the first-born throughout all Egypt and a like storm of bereavement over all — those who had not yielded to God when he commanded yielded to him when he punished. But soon, in a most wicked change of heart, they dared to pursue the people they had released, and paid the final penalty for their abominable obstinacy.
13 postremo post uniformem in tota Aegypto primitiuae subolis necem paremque per uniuersos orbitatum tempestatem - qui iubenti Deo non cesserant cessere punienti, sed mox pessima paenitentia dimissos persequi ausi, ultima nefandae peruicaciae expendere supplicia.
For their king led the whole army of Egypt, equipped with chariots and horsemen, against the wanderers. Its size we can gauge above all from this one argument: that six hundred thousand men feared it and fled.
14 nam rex eorum uniuersum Aegypti exercitum curribus atque equitibus instructum in circumerrantes egit, cuius numerum hoc solo uel maxime argumento conicere possumus, quod eum sescenta milia uirorum timuerunt atque fugerunt.
But God, the protector of the oppressed and the avenger of the stubborn, suddenly divided the Red Sea, and, drawing back its edges on either side, held up the sides of the stiffened waves like the face of a mountain, so that, drawn on by the hope of an unobstructed path, the godly might enter a way of salvation they had despaired of, and the ungodly a pit of death they had not looked for.
15 sed protector depressorum et ultor contumacium Deus diuisit subito Rubrum mare ac dilatatis utrimque marginibus rigentium undarum in montis faciem latera erecta suspendit, ut inoffensi spe limitis prouocati, pii uiam desperatae salutis, impii foueam insperatae mortis intrarent.
So, while the Hebrews walked safely over the dry ground, the masses of the standing waters were poured back behind them, and the whole multitude of Egypt with its king was overwhelmed and killed; and the entire province, already tormented by the plagues, was emptied by this last slaughter.
16 itaque Hebraeis tuto per sicca gradientibus, refusis a tergo aquarum adstantium molibus, obruta est et interfecta cum rege suo uniuersa Aegypti multitudo, totaque prouincia plagis ante cruciata hac postrema interfectione uacuata est.
There still exist even now the surest memorials of these deeds. For the tracks of the chariots and the ruts of the wheels can be clearly seen not only on the shore but also in the deep, as far as sight can reach; and if by chance they are disturbed for a time, whether by accident or by curiosity, they are at once restored by divine power to their former appearance by the winds and the waves:
17 exstant etiam nunc certissima horum monumenta gestorum. nam tractus curruum rotarumque orbitae non solum in litore sed etiam in profundo, quousque uisus admittitur, peruidentur et, si forte ad tempus uel casu uel curiositate turbantur, continuo diuinitus in pristinam faciem uentis fluctibusque reparantur:
so that whoever is not taught the fear of God by zeal for the religion made manifest may be terrified by the example of his wrath in the vengeance once taken.
18 ut, quisque non docetur timorem Dei propalatae religionis studio, ira eius transactae ultionis terreatur exemplo.
In these times, too, so constant and heavy a heat blazed up that the sun, carried along out of its course, is said not to have warmed the whole world but to have scorched it with fire; and neither the Ethiopian, beyond what he was used to, nor the Scythian, who was not used to it, could bear the burning heat laid upon them. From this some, unwilling to grant God his ineffable power and searching out empty little reasonings, wove together the ridiculous fable of Phaethon.
19 His etiam temporibus adeo iugis et grauis aestus incanduit, ut sol per deuia transuectus uniuersum orbem non calore affecisse sed igne torruisse dicatur, inpressumque feruorem et Aethiops plus solitum et insolitum Scytha non tulerit; ex quo etiam quidam dum non concedunt Deo ineffabilem potentiam suam, inanes ratiunculas conquirentes ridiculam Phaethontis fabulam texuerunt.