When David foretold that the Messiah would deliver His people from their
enemies, one can believe that in the flesh these would be the Egyptians; and
then I cannot show that the prophecy was fulfilled. But one can well believe
also that the enemies would be their sins; for indeed the Egyptians were not
their enemies, but their sins were so. This word enemies is, therefore,
ambiguous. But if he says elsewhere, as he does, that He will deliver His
people from their sins, as indeed do Isaiah and others, the ambiguity is
removed, and the double meaning of enemies is reduced to the simple meaning
of iniquities. For if he had sins in his mind, he could well denote them as
enemies; but if he thought of enemies, he could not designate them as
iniquities.
Now Moses, David, and Isaiah used the same terms. Who will say, then, that
they have not the same meaning and that David's meaning, which is plainly
iniquities when he spoke of enemies, was not the same as that of Moses when
speaking of enemies?
Daniel (ix) prays for the deliverance of the people from the captivity of
their enemies. But he was thinking of sins, and, to show this, he say