[77] Such are they who honour the father and what is his, but disregard the mother and what is hers. But the son who is at enmity with both his parents is shewn to us by Moses, when he represents him as saying, “I know not the Lord and I do not send Israel forth” (Exod. 5:2). Such a one, we may expect, will oppose both what right reason rules to be our duty to God and what training and education establish for our dealings with the world of creation; and thus he will work universal confusion.
[78] The human race has never purged itself of the wickedness which is unmixed with good, and there are still those whose will and purpose is to do no action whatever that can tend to piety or human fellowship, who on the contrary keep company with impiety and godlessness, and also keep no faith with their fellows.
[79] And these are the chief pests which haunt cities, controlling or, to speak more truly, upsetting private and public life with their restless intrigues. We might well treat them like some great plague or famine or murrain, or any other heaven-sent curse, and endeavour to avert them by prayers and sacrifices. For great is the havoc they work among those whom they meet. And therefore Moses sings of their destruction; how they fell through their own allies and were swallowed up by the heavy sea of their own imaginations.