A three days' journey; death or murder

Cyril went on: For it is a true feast to loose oneself from the yoke of the unwanted slavery, and to come thereafter under God, and to fulfill the things dear to him, no one standing against, or forcing one to choose instead and to love what seems good to him. And Pharaoh is very unbridled in tongue, and grows bold against the glory of God, saying he neither knows who the Lord is, nor will let Israel go. And divine Moses does not stop at all, and he strongly affirms that what seems good to God must be brought to its end. For when Satan blocks those who would have come under him from going into freedom, they must take heart, and become better than everything, I think, without any hindrance, and be seen least cowardly, but lie on it, saying: 'The God of the Hebrews has called us. We will go then a way of three days into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to our God, lest death or murder meet us.' For these things the wise Moses also cried out to us then. For it is not, he says, after the likeness toward you, O Egyptians, that a calf is worship for us Hebrews, nor a pig, or a goat, or a man's statue, and a shadow of birds, and images of creeping things, the things set in shrines. The God and Master who crafted this whole has called us. Great then, and not ranked with the Egyptians' gods, and above all the creation, is the God of the Hebrews, who calls us into the wilderness, to bring there the sacrifice well-pleasing to him. Egypt then is named a darkening, and I think those of us who are spiritually must apply ourselves to the things in shadow and types. For we must leave very well every thing, I think, that is accustomed to darken, and, having gone out as from a country lying under the tyrant, I mean Satan, the easiness in sins, be eager in a youthful way to go over into a loosed and cleaner life, and to step through a road of a lawful way of life, not laid under demons; for then we shall be able well to sacrifice to God the fruits of righteousness. And he affirmed that those from Israel must be sent a way of three days according to the wilderness, showing by this that they are not near the bounds of a cheap and low life and of the life being tyrannized. And divine Moses also uses a wise pretext, and says with a very ready occasion that those called by God must be separated from Egypt: 'Lest somehow death meet us,' he says, 'or murder.'

Palladius said: And what is this? For it is not ready for those who wish to understand.

Cyril: I will tell: it was a custom for Egyptians, and it has been kept even until now among the worshipers of the idols, that those going in at temples must refuse to meet a dead body. For they say it is the highest defilement not only if someone should choose to touch, but even if it should fall in upon the mere sights. So from the customs among themselves he persuades them to think that the sacrificing would not be clean for them, if, when they had begun to do this from some unforeseen place, a dead man or a murder should happen upon them — that is, either one who has ended by a law of nature, or one forced out by the murderers.