than the other nations whose guardianship He had entrusted to other beings
or angels (vide verse 16).

(104) Lastly, as Moses believed that God dwelt in the heavens, God was
revealed to him as coming down from heaven on to a mountain, and in order to
talk with the Lord Moses went up the mountain, which he certainly need not
have done if he could have conceived of God as omnipresent.

(105) The Israelites knew scarcely anything of God, although He was revealed
to them; and this is abundantly evident from their transferring, a few days
afterwards, the honour and worship due to Him to a calf, which they believed
to be the god who had brought them out of Egypt. (106) In truth, it is
hardly likely that men accustomed to the superstitions of Egypt,
uncultivated and sunk in most abject slavery, should have held any sound
notions about the Deity, or that Moses should have taught them anything
beyond a rule of right living; inculcating it not like a philosopher, as the
result of freedom, but like a lawgiver compelling them to be moral by
legal authority. (107) Thus the rule of right living, the worship and love
of God, was to them rather a bondage than the true liberty, the gift and
grace of the Deity. (108) Moses bid them love God and keep His law, because
they had in the past received benefits from Him (such as the
deliverance from slavery in Egypt), and further terrified them with threats
if they transgressed His commands, holding out many promises of good if they
should observe them; thus treating them as parents treat irrational
children. It is, therefore, certain that they knew not the excellence of
virtue and the true happiness.

(109) Jonah thought that he was fleeing from the sight of God, which seems
to show that he too held that God had entrusted the care of the nations
outside Judaea to other substituted powers. (110) No one in the whole of the