Fire and snakes for murmurers; Sinai; Christ leads to rest

people was speaking against God and against Moses, saying: Why did you lead us out from Egypt’s land, to kill in the desert? for there is not bread, nor water; and our soul has loathed this empty bread. And the Lord sent into the people the snakes that kill, and they were biting the people, and much people of the sons of Israel died.’ You see therefore that the whispering and murmuring people has been consumed with fire and with snakes. For the ones set out from the mountain of the Lord, the ark leading them forward and seeking out rest beforehand; and Moses praying and mediating, and indeed also a cloud overshadowing them; yet the others, naming the bread from heaven empty, were making as great a cry-down as possible against both God and Moses. On account of this indeed, those ones necessarily became fire’s work, and these perished without delay by bites of bitter snakes.

Palladius: And what observation again would there be in both? and what is the mountain of the Lord?

Cyril: The mountain of the Lord, I think somewhere, he says is Sinai, upon which the Craftsman of all came down in a form of fire, and was seen by all the people, according to what has been written, and oracled the laws upon the things to be done: ‘For he set there for the sons of Israel righteous ordinances and judgments.’ Yet Christ was also of old lawgiving those things. Therefore he also calls the words through Moses his own laws. For he said: ‘Amen I say to you, until heaven and earth should pass away, one iota or one keraia will not pass away from the law, until all things should come to be. Heaven and earth will pass away, yet my words will not pass away.’ Come therefore already, leaving the thickness of the history, let us look down upon the thinness of the spiritual meanings. For those already counted worthy of God-vision and God-knowledge, and having beheld the brightness of the divine nature with the mind’s eyes, as it were on a mountain—that is, in a most high and very much settled-apart superiority (for God’s glory and nature is beyond everything)—who have presented themselves as it were through the faith to Christ, and have become not unhearing of the words from beside him, and have promised the obedience (for this Israel also did then saying: ‘All things as many as the Lord your God said, we will do and we will hear’) will enjoy the sparing already genuinely fitting, and will share care sufficient unto salvation for them; for they will have him as leader, defender, and one leading forward toward reconnoitering the rest for them. For first Christ for us and on behalf of us set himself opposite Satan who conquered of old, having both fasted and been tempted in the desert, in order that we may have the rest, seeing him conquered, and fallen, and spread under our own feet. Therefore he also was saying: ‘You have affliction in the world, but take heart; I have conquered the world.’ And again: ‘Behold I have given you authority to tread upon snakes and scorpions, and upon all the power of the Enemy.’