출애굽기 7:12의 제2성전 문헌

[83] You must have observed how the aim of those who use charms and enchantments, when they bring their trickery into play against the Divine word and dare to attempt to do things like those which it does, is not so much to win honour for their own skill as to traduce and ridicule the miracles which are taking place. They transform the rods into real snakes, and turn the water to the colour of blood, and by incantations draw up on to land what frogs are still left (Ex. 7:12, 22, 8:7), and, as they add one thing to another tending to their own destruction, they are cheated, miserable fools, while they think that they are cheating.

[85] Accordingly “Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods” (Ex. 7:12), as the oracle shews. For all the arguments of sophists are devoured and done away with by Nature’s many-sided skill, and the acknowledgement is made that these events are the Finger of God (Ex. 8:19), and the word “Finger” is equivalent to a divine rescript, declaring that sophistry is ever defeated by wisdom; for holy writ, speaking of the tables on which the oracles were engraved, says that they were written by the Finger of God (Ex. 32:16). Wherefore the sorcerers can no longer stand before Moses, but fall as in a wrestling-bout vanquished by the sturdy strength of the opponent (Ex. 8:18).