Psalms — Chapter 113

IN EXITU ISRAEL DE AEGYPTO. Lapide: Psalm 113 — the Exodus psalm. "When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people." Dante takes this psalm (the Italian begins "In exitu Israel de Aegypto") as the model of the fourfold sense of Scripture in the Convivio. Lapide follows the tradition: (1) literal = the historical Exodus; (2) allegorical = the redemption from sin by Christ (Egypt = sin; Pharaoh = the devil; crossing the Red Sea = baptism); (3) tropological = the soul's ongoing exodus from vice to virtue; (4) anagogical = the soul's passage at death from this world to heaven.