Genesis 47:21

According to the testimony of Scripture no Egyptian is free. For "Pharaoh reduced the people into servitude to himself" and left no one within the borders of the Egyptians free, but throughout the whole land of Egypt liberty was taken away. And perhaps it is for this reason that it is written: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Egypt, then, has become a house of bondage, and — what is more unhappy — of voluntary bondage. For concerning the Hebrews, although it is reported that they were reduced into servitude and that they bore the yoke of domination with their liberty snatched away, they are nevertheless recorded to have been brought into this "by force." For it is written that: "The Egyptians abhorred the children of Israel, and the Egyptians by their power oppressed the children of Israel by force, and afflicted their life with hard labors, with clay and brick, and with all the works that were in the fields, in all of which they were reducing them into servitude with violence." Attend then more diligently, how the Hebrews are written to have been reduced "by force" into servitude — men in whom there was an inborn liberty, which was extorted from them not easily or through some deception, but with violence. Pharaoh, however, easily reduced the Egyptian people into servitude to himself, nor is it written that he did this with violence. For the Egyptians are prone to a degenerate life and quickly fall down into every enslavement to vices. Look back to the origin of their race and you will find that their father Ham, who had laughed at his father's nakedness, deserved a sentence of this kind, that his son Canaan should be a servant to his brothers, so that in him the condition of servitude might convict the wickedness of his morals. Not without reason, then, does the discolored posterity imitate the ignobility of the race. But the Hebrews, even if they are reduced into servitude, even if they suffer tyranny from the Egyptians, suffer it "by force" and by necessity. Therefore they are freed "from the house of bondage" and are recalled to their former liberty, which they had lost against their will. Finally it is even provided by the divine laws that, if perchance someone should buy a Hebrew boy, he should not possess him in perpetual servitude, but that he should serve him for six years, and in the…

If, then, we understand these things spiritually — what the servitude of the Egyptians is — we recognize that to serve the Egyptians is nothing other than to become liable to carnal vices and to be subject to demons. Into which, certainly, no necessity brought in from without compels anyone, but the sluggishness of the mind and the lust and pleasure of the body subdues him, to which the mind subjects itself through slothfulness. But he who takes care for the liberty of his soul and ennobles the dignity of his mind with heavenly thought, this man is of the children of Israel. He, even if he be oppressed "by force" for a time, does not nevertheless lose his liberty forever. Finally our Savior too, discoursing in the Gospel about liberty and servitude, speaks thus: "everyone," he says, "who sins is a slave of sin." And again he says: "if you abide in my word, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." But if perchance someone should say to us: how then, through Joseph, is all the land handed over into Pharaoh's possession, and all this servitude, which we expounded above as taken on from the condition of sin, is said to be ministered to Pharaoh through a holy man? — we can answer to these things that the very word of Scripture excuses the ministry of the holy man, when it says that the Egyptians sold themselves and their possessions. The fault, then, is not reflected back upon the one who dispenses, where things worthy of the recipients' merits are provided. For you will find something of the kind done even by Paul, when by him the man who, through the foulness of his deeds, made himself unworthy of the fellowship of the saints is handed over to Satan, "that he may learn not to blaspheme." In which certainly no one would say that Paul acted harshly, who cast the man out of the church and handed him over to Satan. But without doubt the fault is referred to that man who by his own deeds deserved this, that there should be no place for him in the church, but that he should deserve to be joined to the fellowship of Satan. So then Joseph also, since he saw nothing of Hebrew liberty, nothing of Israelite nobility in the Egyptians, joined worthy servitudes to a worthy dominion. I say even something more. You will find in the divine dispensations also that something of the kind was done, in that which Moses says: "when the Most High divided the…