Sinai fire; no silver gods; earth altar = Emmanuel; stone altar uncut

Palladius: Do you wish then that we say a few things both concerning the holy tent and concerning the priesthood according to law, the word examining for us the things solemnly oracled upon both?

Cyril: The matter is not roughless; for long labor will be needed, I think, and sweat for us, O Palladius, both toward being able to understand these and indeed also to say them. Yet, if it seems good, let us go through trusting God; for you thoroughly learned him saying clearly, ‘Who gave a mouth to a human? And who made hard-of-hearing and deaf, seeing and blind? Did not I the Lord God? And now go, and I will open your mouth.’

Palladius: Come then already, making also toward this the provider of wisdom a fellow-helper.

Cyril: So then I am yours, and indeed I will also speak, having brought together very well the things from the holy Writings. For God the creator of all leaped down in a form of fire upon mount Sinai, and was setting laws according to which each of the things to be practiced was to be carried toward the straight and what holds unadulterated. Then carrying them away from the more ancient wandering, and setting them as far as possible from the false-worship in Egypt, he was speaking toward Moses who was then mediating. ‘These things you will say,’ he says, ‘to the house of Jacob, and you will announce to the sons of Israel: You have seen that I have spoken toward you from the heaven; you will not make for yourselves silver gods, and gold gods you will not make for yourselves.’ For he was not releasing them to worship the falsely named gods. And he commands that they must lie beside only the one come from above and from heaven, and the one who has essentially taken up the power over all, not having the conspicuous in fair colors of materials, but in showing heaven as being his own. And there was somehow a necessity that those ordered to depart from the ancient unholiness and profane worship transfer at once unto another habit, and somehow come under as a yoke the worship under God who is by nature. For a mind let loose, unrestrained, and very ready unto carrying-off, toward every one of the most outlandish fears and cares hung over, passes through altogether without toil toward the straight, and declines toward what benefits. And since we approach the Father through Son: ‘For no one comes toward the Father,’ he says, ‘except through me.’ Thereafter necessarily he was legislating the approach through Son and the types of the fruit-bearing in him, saying: ‘An altar from earth you will make for me, and you will sacrifice upon it the whole-burnt-offerings and your sacrifices, your sheep and your oxen, in every place where I should name my name there; and I will come toward you, and I will bless you. And if you should make an altar for me from stones, you will not build them cut; for you have cast your knife upon it, and it has been defiled.’ For he names an earthly altar Emmanuel; ‘For the Word became flesh.’ And earth from earth is the nature of flesh