LIBER DEUTERONOMII

• 445D

A bundle of myrrh, beloved to me. [Vulg. Cant. 1:12 dilectus meus mihi, "my beloved is to me"] Myrrh, an aromatic tree, grows up in height only five cubits, 446whose bark and root and leaves and all parts are bitter. Myrrh is bitter, and is laid upon corpses that it may keep off the rottenness of worms. This is the old law comprised in 447Afive books: bitter, that is, sparing no one, whence also it was signified by Marath; laid upon corpses, that is, devised for sinners, that it might keep off from them the corruption of crimes. The bundle of this law is Deuteronomy, that is, a gathering of many little branches into one. For the law having been completed in four volumes, this fifth was added, gathering briefly into one the things said at large, and supplying also certain things passed over. And it was added to them that it might satisfy the number of the law. For five is the number of the law, four of the Gospel. Whence also the feeding of the five thousand men in the Gospel looks to the fathers of the Old Testament, the feeding of the four thousand to the fathers of the New; for to those were promised and given earthly things, which lie under the five senses; to those, the four-square, 447Bthat is, the solidity of the land of the living. This book serves the Gospel also in its name, in the order of its exposition, in its own dignity. For in Hebrew it is called Elleh Haddebarim, that is, "these words"; in Greek δευτερονόμιον, which in Latin is "the second law": not, as some have said, another after the one aforesaid, whence in the aforesaid books it was said: The Lord spoke; but here, Moses spoke; but second, that is, repeated a second time, prefiguring by this name the Gospel, which succeeded the law, and to which nothing shall succeed. Since also it gathers many things briefly and supplies certain things, it prefigures the form of the Gospel: for this is the abridged word which the Lord made upon the earth, and it supplies the imperfect things of the law; whence: I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil (Matth. V). And when 447Cthis work is said to be so worthy that it is commanded to be borne in the hands of the king, it discloses the dignity of the Gospel, which was ordained in the hand of the Mediator. Since therefore it thus serves the Gospel, deservedly is it a bundle beloved by Christ, not so much for its own sake as because it shows the wheel in the midst of the wheel. The intention is to recapitulate the aforesaid with a threefold end: that it may be the more closely committed to memory; that the usefulness of the aforesaid may be impressed. For to say often what is useful ought neither to be irksome, as the Apostle says (Phil. III), nor troublesome to hear; and that the hardness of the Jews may be condemned, who so many times did not understand the things said. The manner of proceeding: he sets before it what is as it were a prologue, in which he shows who wrote, and what, etc. Afterward he calls to mind the grave offence for which they perished in the desert, that by this fear he may rouse them to hearing. Afterward he sets apart 447Dthe cities of refuge. Afterward he recapitulates things said and done, and supplies things good and evil. Afterward he commands this book to be placed in the ark, and in the seventh year to be read to all Israel at the feast of tabernacles. Afterward he subjoins the canticle: Hear ye, etc., in memory of their murmuring and of its penalty, of obedience and of its reward. And after that, the blessings of the tribes. Last, of the death of Moses.

VERS. 1.-- These are the words, etc. The lawgiver sets before it a title as it were a prologue, in which he shows the name of the author, and what he did, and where, and when. As will be distinguished a little later in the gloss; and it ends, as it seems to some, there: In the fortieth, etc., or 448Alower down, there: Our God, etc. But for the making plain of the things which are in the prologue, and of those which follow, the truth of the history must be touched upon a little. From the going out of the children of Israel from Egypt until they came to the plains of Moab above the Jordan there flowed forty-two years, in which at divers times they made forty-two stations. When the cloud was lifted up, the camp was moved; and when it stood still, they pitched and remained in the same place until the cloud was lifted up again. The first station was in Ramesse, the last in the plains of Moab. From Ramesse as far as Mount Sina, in the space of forty-seven days, they made twelve stations, and this in the first year; and there they stayed almost the whole year. There the law was given; there Genesis was written, Exodus and Numbers were written, and 448Ba great part of this book. Moving their foot thence, in the second year they came into Cadesbarne, and in that space they made twenty stations; from Cadesbarne they sent scouts, who on returning reported the land good, but they found strong men and giants, and being terrified they wished to return into the land of Egypt, whereat the Lord was angered. They went back and ranged about Mount Seir for thirty-eight years; there the murmurers died and were laid low. In the fortieth year they came to Cadesbarne, whence they had gone back through the desert, and in that space they again made nine stations. But for eleven days, before he came to Cadesbarne, Moses recapitulated the law by word alone; and from Cadesbarne as far as the plains of Moab, and in that space of eleven days, he willed to commit it 448Cto writing. Behold: from the first year twelve, from the second one and twenty, from the rest nine; and so forty-two stations.

This was the cause of this book: namely, that the things which had been done, being briefly gathered, might be the more closely held in memory; for the things that are briefly said are easily retained.

(RAB. in Deut. ) These are the words, etc. The beginning of Deuteronomy seems to be the title of the whole work, because it indicates the person of the author, and what he did, and the place, and the time. The name of the book also shows forth the grace of the New Testament. For Deuteronomy is interpreted "the second law," and signifies the Gospel, which expounds spiritually the mysteries of the Old Testament. 448DJust as the book of Deuteronomy is a repetition of the four books of the law: for those contain in themselves their own matters, this one repeats them all, and itself also has its own mysteries.

(ID.) These are the words. This of himself as of another, etc., as far as that no one can doubt that Moses wrote these things.

He spoke. Moses is the old law, which beyond the Jordan, that is, before baptism, taught the Israelite people. For by the Jordan is signified baptism, in which Christ was baptized: in the wilderness of the plain, that is, in the barrenness of the carnal people, which brought forth no fruit of virtues.

In the wilderness, the barrenness of the people, to whom it is said: Your house shall be left 449Ato you desolate (Matth. XXXI; Luc. XIII).

Over against the sea. Because the depraved and perverse generation would not believe in the washing away of sins in the blood of Christ.

Between Pharan. Pharan, increased; Thophel, insipidity; Laban, whitening; Haseroth, courts. For the people was increased in the number of men, in the doctrine of the law and of the prophets; but it was insipid, because it had not the salt of wisdom; whitened indeed by the ceremonies of the law and by divers cleannesses, which it believed itself to have from the letter of the law. And it is well signified by the courts, as being made ready through the divine Scriptures for the entrance of faith; whence many at the coming of Christ received him the more easily, whom they had known as foretold beforehand; whence Philip: Whom 449BMoses wrote of in the law, and the prophets, we have found: Jesus the son of Joseph of Nazareth (Joan. I). These four mountains signify the four Gospels, with which the Church is encompassed.

VERS. 2.-- Eleven days. The law expounded by Moses in eleven days signifies the transgression of the Jewish people in the commandments of the Decalogue:

The eleven days are the eleven apostles, through whom (Judas being reprobate) the Gospel of Christ was preached in the world.

From Horeb. Which in Hebrew is Choreb ( ) [our source prints an empty parenthesis here, and the word Migne sets in it has been lost in the digitization. Three Hebrew words were lost in the same way in the Glossa on the Song of Songs (8944), the companion volume in this same recension, and recovered only from the plate; recovery here would require the same.]; beginning through Seir, that is, passing through the people hairy and foul with vices, he came to Cadesbarne, which is interpreted changed, or chosen, or noble, signifying the literal sense of the law changed into the spiritual through the Gospel. 449CFor all these things happened to them in figure, and were written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come (I Cor. X). For the law is not loosed, but fulfilled, nor shall one iota or one tittle pass away till all be done (Matth. V).

VERS. 3.-- In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day, etc. (ISID., in Deut., tom. V.) Forty years, etc., as far as they shall remain without corruption.

The number forty consists of ten and four, and signifies the fulfilment of the law, of the Gospel, which comes to pass in the Church; for ten belong to the law, and four to the Gospel.

In the eleventh month, etc. As in the eleventh is expressed the transgression of the law, so in the first day the lawgiver's intention, ever watchful to 449Dteach; who, from the time when the disobedient people feared not to transgress the law, straightway, by preaching and correcting, was zealous to instil the will of the Lord, and ceased not to draw or to provoke them to better things by words and by examples.

VERS. 4.-- After he had slain Sehon, etc. It is to be noted that, the two kings of the Amorrhites being slain, the law is recapitulated and the people instructed; because, scandals being removed and the troops of the vices overcome, one fittingly applies oneself to doctrine, and the light of faith is opened to them that worthily desire it.

We ought first to slay the vices in ourselves, and so to deliver the divine commandments to the peoples.

Sehon king of the Amorrhites who dwelt in Hesebon, 450Aetc. (ISID.) In these kings, etc., as far as but, remaining without, let them ever apply themselves to depraved works.

VERS. 5.-- In the land of Moab. For that people was lawless, which had not the spiritual law.

VERS. 6.-- The Lord our God. In the book of Numbers the setting out of the children of Israel from the desert of Sinai is narrated, but the command of the Lord to Moses concerning that same passage is not spoken of; but rather of the cloud which covered the tabernacle, and which withdrew when they were to set out, and went before them to the place where the camp was to be pitched. For thus it is written: In the second year, in the second month, on the twentieth day of the month, the cloud was lifted up from the tabernacle of the covenant, and rested in the wilderness of Pharan (Num. X). But it is manifest that that passage was ordered by the command of God, although it is not there recorded. 450BWhence elsewhere in the book of Numbers, at the command of the Lord they pitched their tents, and at his command they took them down (Num. IX).

It is enough for you, etc. Moses is commanded to withdraw from the mountain on which he had received the law, because a teacher ought not always to be intent upon contemplation, but should sometimes come down, that he may take care of himself and of his neighbours; whence, Whether we be transported in mind, it is to God; or whether we be sober, it is for you.

VERS. 9.-- And I said to you at that time, etc. Concerning this division of powers it is written in Exodus, before they came to Mount Sinai, that Jethro the priest of Madian, the kinsman of Moses, suggested this to him (Exod. XVIII). Whence it is rightly asked: how do these things agree together, both now and at that time? But that which Moses is here said to have said at that time, I am not able 450Calone to bear you, etc., does not signify that time in which they were setting out from Horeb, but the whole time in which, having gone out from Egypt, they were tarrying in the wilderness; and Moses urged this upon his people not from his own, from his kinsman's counsel.

At that time. The saints do all things in the fitting season; so God also, when the fulness of time came, sent his Son (Gal. IV).

VERS. 11.-- The Lord God of your fathers add, etc. He teaches teachers to rejoice at the progress of their subjects, to give thanks, and always to wish better things.

To this number, etc. Determined with God. He knoweth who are his, who numbereth the multitude of the stars (II Tim. II).

(RAB.) See how carefully that is to be observed which elsewhere Scripture 450Dsays: Son, let not thy acts be in many things (Eccli. XI). Consider also the words of Jethro giving counsel, for he says: Hear me, and I will give thee counsel, and God will be with thee (Exod. XVIII). It seems to be signified that a mind too intent upon human actions is in some manner emptied of God, of whom it becomes the fuller the more freely it is stretched out toward things above and eternal.

VERS. 13.-- Give from among you. Give ye, not I: as if, I will not command you, but obey.

I will appoint them. Note: he granted the choice to his subjects, the appointing he kept for himself, lest the people should despise or hate, if it were not permitted them to have whom they wished.

Tribunes. Commanders of a thousand, in Greek χιλιάρχους, who teach their subjects, namely, of the hope of the eternal reward.

451AAnd centurions. Centurions, in Greek ἐκατοντάρχους: who deliver the heavenly commandments to the perfect. Rightly are they set over others, who are endowed with the number of a hundred, that is, with perfection: they rule as it were a hundred, while they lead men through to perfection.

And officers of fifty. In Greek πεντεκοσιάρχους: who announce the works of penance.

Deans, δεκάρχους: who, awaiting through the perfection of the denary the denary of the vineyard, make ready many to be partakers of that same denary.

VERS. 17.-- Because it is the judgment of God; not of men, because in judging you are the vicars of God, who accepteth not the person.

But if anything be difficult. All greater and difficult matters the greater ought to discern and to judge; small and easy ones 451Bthe lesser.

VERS. 19.-- And when we had come to Cadesbarne, etc. That in the second year of their going out the people came into the desert of Pharan, which is Cades, where, the scouts having returned with the fruits of the land and reporting what they had seen, they murmured against Moses and Aaron, and therefore, afflicted with the weariness of a long journey and with mortality, perished: this passage will give a manifest indication. Where it is to be noted that the forty-two stations which they had from Egypt as far as the Jordan seem to fit the courses of three years only: namely, the first, the second, and the fortieth from the going out of Egypt. The first, by a sure division, contains twelve: the first Ramesse, entered on the fifteenth day of the first month; the last the wilderness of Sinai, 451Cadded on the first day of the third month, and by no means left for eleven continuous months, for the sake of building the tabernacle and of teaching the law. Of which twelve stations only nine are expressed by name in Exodus; three are signified without distinction under the name of the desert of Sin (which is said to be between Elim and Sinai). The second year comprises twenty-one stations. All of which, in the order of the history, being included indifferently under the name of the wilderness of Pharan, only the first and the second and the last, that is, the Graves of Lust, Haseroth, and Cades, are distinguished by name. But in the catalogue of the stations it is shown alike of them all how many they are in number, and by what name they are called. The first station, that is, the Graves of Lust, was entered in the second month of that same second year, 451Don the two and twentieth day of the month. For in the second year (as the Scripture says), in the second month, on the twentieth day of the month, they moved the camp from the desert of Sinai, and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Pharan; and they set forward from the mount of the Lord a journey of three days, until they came to the place of the station which, by the desert of a people lusting after flesh, received the name of the Graves of Lust. On what day or in what month of that same year they entered the last of these, that is, Cades, is not said; yet that it is situated in the wilderness of Pharan, and that it was reached in that same year, is not passed over in silence. For it is written: The people was not moved from that place until Mary was called back. And they set forward from Haseroth and pitched their tents in the desert of Pharan, where the Lord spoke to Moses 452Asaying: Send men gui who may view the land of Chanaan (Num. XII, XIII). And lest this be thought to have been commanded and done at the station next after Haseroth, but rather to have been fulfilled at the last of those which are contained under the name of Pharan, it is written below: And the scouts of the land, returning after forty days, having gone round the whole region, came to Moses in Pharan, which is Cades. In Deuteronomy also Moses says to the people: When you had come to Cadesbarne, I said to you: You are come to the mountain of the Amorrhite, etc., and you said: Send men who may view the land, etc. (Deut. I). And that they came to that same station in the second year of the going out, from which nevertheless, by the sin of murmuring, they deserved to turn back, and long to wander through the desert, and to fall on every side, Moses testifies in what follows, saying: You sat in Cadesbarne a long time, and setting forward thence we came 452Binto the wilderness which leads to the Red Sea, as the Lord had said to me; and we went round Mount Seir a long time, and within the time in which we walked from Cadesbarne as far as the torrent Zareth was in the eight and thirtieth year, until the whole generation of the men of war was consumed. But Zareth is not the name of any station of the forty-two, but of a torrent to which (as is read in the book of Numbers) they came when the eighteenth station, by name Jeabarim, had been passed; leaving which, he says, they encamped over against Arnon, which is in the desert and juts out in the borders of the Amorrhite; and it is not hidden that this was done in the fortieth year, which last year contains ten stations of a very long way through the desert: of which the first was regained with great labour, 452Cnamely that very same Cades of the desert of Sin, which eight and thirty years before, their fault requiring it, they left behind them when they had turned back; of which it is written: The children of Israel came into the desert of Sin in the first month, and the people abode in Cades; and Mary died there and was buried in the same place. And when the people wanted water, they came together against Moses and Aaron, etc., as far as this, This is the water of contradiction, etc. (Num. XX). It is to be noted that the same Cades came to be both in the desert of Pharan and in the desert of Sin, as the Scripture relates; whence we conjecture that the part of the desert of Pharan where Cades is, is specially called Sin: but Sin is not that same Cades which, soon after the Red Sea was crossed, they passed through between Elim and Sinai, but altogether another, and written with other letters among the Hebrews. But the second station of that same 452Dfortieth year is Mount Hor, in which Aaron died on the first day of the fifth month; the last, the plains of Moab above the Jordan over against Jericho, where, meditating upon Deuteronomy, they remained until, Moses being dead, under Josue their leader, on the first day of the tenth month they crossed the Jordan. There are therefore twelve stations of the first year, twenty-one of the second, and of the last that same twenty-first which is Cades, and nine others; namely, all together forty-two.

VERS. 22.-- And you came near to me. In the book of Numbers it is written that the Lord said to Moses that he should send men who might view the land; but here the people is read to have said: Let us send men who may view the land; but the people first suggested this to Moses, Moses 453Areferred it to the Lord, according to whose command he afterward sent the scouts.

VERS. 23.-- I sent from among you. (ISID.) Twelve scouts sent to explore the rich land, etc., as far as because neither Christ without the law, nor the law without Christ.

Twelve. These signify the teachers of the Church, of whom some, by teaching depraved things, pervert the people; others, by preaching right things, make progress.

VERS. 33.-- Showing by night. Night is the sinner's, day the life of the just. In the pillar of fire, the damnation of the wicked, to whom the Lord will appear terrible in the judgment; in the pillar of cloud, the light and gentle vision wherewith the elect shall be consoled.

By day through the pillar. Overshadowing in the heat of this world, 453Band sustaining by the strength and by the propitiation of his flesh.

VERS. 34.-- He swore. God is not passible, nor subject to the vice of anger. But by these things the charity of Moses toward the people is made manifest, and the goodness of God, which surpasses all understanding.

VERS. 35.-- Not one shall see. The like is said of those who, being invited to the supper, excused themselves: None of those men that were invited shall taste of my supper (Luc. XIV).

The worst generation possesses not the good land, because it believes not the incarnation of Christ.

VERS. 37.-- Nor is it to be wondered at. Here Moses says that the Lord, being angered with him on account of the people, said that he should not enter into the land of promise, whereas in 453Cthe book of Numbers it is read: The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: Because you have not believed me, to sanctify me before the children of Israel, you shall not bring these peoples into the land which I will give them. But the sentence that follows seems to resolve the question: This is, he says, the water of contradiction, where the children of Israel strove against the Lord, etc. (Num. XX). For the strife and the rebellion of the people was the cause of the anger and of the vengeance, both upon the people and upon Moses and Aaron.

Neither shalt thou enter. (ISID.) It seems in Mary, etc., as far as when Christ the exalted is acknowledged as it were in the eminence of a mountain.

VERS. 41.-- And when, being armed. This sentence strikes at human pride, which presumes upon its own strength, and trusts not in the power of God. For the Amorrhites, 453Dthat is, the embittering, are spiritual enemies, who dwell in the mountains of pride and slay the presumptuous, from Seir even to Horma, that is, from the squalor of vices even to the damnation of punishments: for Seir is interpreted hairy, Horma anathema. For whosoever fears not to be defiled with the filth of vices, he must needs, according to his deserts, be delivered to the fires of Gehenna. For the demons wish to entangle us in earthly desires; and if we persevere in sins, and cease not to ascend into the mountain of pride, they cut us down with fiery darts and lead us through to perpetual anathema. Therefore let us not, after the manner of the Pelagianists, presume upon our own power; but, considering our infirmity, let us obey the Lord in all things, that, 454Aour enemies being overcome, we may attain the promised joys of the heavenly fatherland.

We must beware lest, murmuring against the Lord, we ascend into the mountain of pride, thinking that we can be saved by our own strength, lest we be straightway delivered to the Amorrhites, that is, to the demons.

VERS. 1.-- And we went round Mount Seir, etc. Seir is a mountain in the land of Edom, in which Esau dwelt, in the region of Gabalena, where formerly dwelt the Chorrhite whom Chodorlahomor slew; and it received its name Seir, that is, of the hairy one, from Esau, who was hairy and shaggy. The Chorrhites, like the other nations which they overcame, who were descended from the seed of the patriarchs, set forth malignant spirits 454Bor vices, which they are able to overcome who follow the footsteps and the teachings of the holy Fathers, and wage the spiritual warfare under Christ the king; of which it is said: Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, etc. (Ephes. VI).

VERS. 9.-- I have given to the children of Loth. Ar is the metropolis of the Moabites, upon the bank of the torrent Arnon: once possessed by the most ancient nation of the Emim, afterward held by the children of Loth, that is, by the Moabites, the former inhabitants being overthrown. This is shown to this day upon the top of a mountain; but the torrent, descending through steep places, flows into the Dead Sea. Ar is interpreted he stirred up; Emim, that is, the terrible: these are the demons, who stir up quarrels and contentions, and make ready the darts of wickedness against the faithful. The Enacim also, 454Cbegotten of the stock of Enac, and matched with the giants in stature, signify according to their name the demons; for they are interpreted a necklace upon a lofty neck. For, lifted up with the arrogance of pride, they ascribe all the equipment of their warfare to their own strength, and therefore they easily give way to those who trust in the strength of God, and say with the Psalmist: The Lord is my strength and my praise, and he is become my salvation (Psal. CXVII).

VERS. 14.-- Of Cadesbarne. (HIERON., epist. ad Fabiolam.) Cabesbarne is a place in the desert which adjoins the city of Petra in Arabia, where Mary died, and Moses, the rock being struck, gave water to the thirsting people. The sepulchre of Mary is also shown in that same place to this day; and there too the princes of Amalec were slain by Chodorlahomor.

454DVERS. 26.-- I sent therefore messengers, etc. Sehon signifies the devil, which is a useless shoot, or an unfruitful tree, or the lifted up. Israel, the Christian people, which desires to pass by the way of this world and to come to the heavenly kingdoms. This people sends to Sehon with peaceable words, promising that it will not dwell in his land, but only pass through, and will go by the royal way. This every man promised when first he came to the water of baptism and received the first seals of faith. For he renounced the devil and his pomps, and his works, and all his service, and his pleasures. This is what is said: That Israel will not turn aside into his field, or into his vineyard, and will not drink water out of his well (Num. XXI), that is, it will no more take up the discipline either of astrology 455Aor of magic, or of any doctrine whatsoever that is against godliness; but it will drink of the fountains of the Saviour; it will not forsake the fountain of living water to drink of the fountain of Sehon, but will go by the royal way, which is Christ, who says: I am the way, the truth, and the life (Joan. XIV), and king, according to that word, Give to the king thy judgment, O God (Psal. LXXI). It will not turn aside into his field, nor into his vineyard, that is, to his works, or to his depraved meanings. The Amorrhites are interpreted speakers, or the embittering, because they provoke God to bitterness, and trust in words only, like the poets, the astrologers, the philosophers, who speak vain things; but the kingdom of God is not in speech, but in power. The faithful wish to pass through in peace, and to be peaceable even with the enemies of peace; but so much the more do they offend the prince 455Bof the world, in that they say that they will not tarry with him, nor touch anything of his. Thereupon, being the more exasperated, he persecutes them the more, stirs up perils, threatens torments, gathers his people, goes out to fight against Israel: his people are the princes and judges of the world, and all the ministers of wickedness, who persecute the people of God; but he himself also comes into Jasa, which is interpreted the fulfilment of the commandment. For he who has come to the fulfilling of the commandments of God will not fear Sehon or his raging army. For to fulfil the commandments of God is to overcome the devil and his army. For thus God crushes Satan under our feet, and gives us the power of treading upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the strength of the enemy.

455CVERS. 30.-- Because he had hardened. By long patience, by not correcting; whence in Exodus: I have hardened the heart of Pharao (Exod. X); and the Psalmist: He turned their heart to hate his people (Psal. CIV). But the cause of the hardening is added, that he might be delivered into thy hands, that is, that he might be crushed by thee; which would not come to pass unless he resisted, nor would he resist unless he had been hardened. If we seek the justice of this matter, his judgments are inscrutable, but there is no iniquity with God.

VERS. 33.-- And we slew him. They who are true Israelites, Jews not in the flesh but in the spirit, dwell in all the cities of the Amorrhites, since throughout the whole world the Churches of Christ are spread abroad; and every one of us was a city of king Sehon, because there reigned in us folly, pride, impiety, and all things which 455Dthe devil suggests. But when the strong man was overcome and his vessels plundered, we were made cities of Israel, the inheritance of the saints, the unfruitful tree being first cut down, and the lifted-up king cast down, and the meek one reigning in us, who says: Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart, etc. (Matth. XI). The names of the places also agree: for Aroer is interpreted lifting up; Arnon, a heap of sadness; Galaad, a heap of testimony. From Aroer therefore, which is upon the bank of the torrent Arnon, etc. Because every person of whatsoever dignity, trusting in the arrogance of pride or in worldly pomp, together with the persecutors who straiten Christians with divers tribulations, even to the conventicles of the heretics, who fight against the Church 456Awith the testimonies of the Scriptures depraved, but are not able to resist, are delivered up, overcome, into the hands of the saints, with their dwellings.

VERS. 1.-- And so, turning. To Og, who is king of Basan, they deign neither to send legates nor to ask a passage through his land: straightway they fight with him, overcoming him and his people. Basan is interpreted baseness: rightly therefore are no legates sent to that nation, nor is a passage asked; for we ought to have no passage, nor ascent, to baseness, which must at once be stormed and altogether shunned. But Og is interpreted a closing in; it signifies carnal things, by the desire whereof the soul is shut out and separated from God. Against these we must so wage war that 456Bno vice be left. For nothing ought to be left in the kingdom of baseness; for base things must be cut away, that honourable and religious things may be built up. In the kingdom of Sehon or of Moab this is not commanded. For perhaps we have need of somewhat from them, whereof the manifold use of the present life stands in want: otherwise we should have to go out of this world. But of Basan, that is, of baseness, we leave nothing, because we have need of nothing. Nor, moreover, can that be honourable which is base.

VERS. 4.-- Sixty. It confirms the foregoing sense. For the number sixty, like the number six, signifies perfection. And well does he record sixty cities laid waste in the region of Og king of Basan, that is, of the devil, who is the king of baseness; because he signifies that the delight of all vices is to be perfectly destroyed. 456CArgob, that is, accursed loftiness, signifies earthly pride, which reigns in the children of wrath: the cities being destroyed, he says that the men and the women and the little ones were slain, the beasts and the spoils plundered; because, the fortification of the devil being overcome, whatsoever we shall have felt rebellious in our flesh, whatsoever wanton, together with the little thoughts, is to be crushed with the zeal of God; but whatsoever we shall find fit for the service of God, in the simplicity of a pure understanding or in the adornment of the members, we ought to reserve.

VERS. 12.-- And the land. (GREG., lib. XXVII Moral., cap. 10.) There are many in the Church, etc., as far as namely, vain desires and the irrational motions of the mind.

Ruben and Gad. (RAB.) Ruben the firstborn of Jacob, etc., as far as but with those same women and children 456Dthey strive to pass over and to come to the fatherland.

VERS. 28.-- Command Josue, etc. By a great dispensation of God it came to pass that Moses, who is a type of the law, should not bring the people into the land of promise, because the law brought no one to perfection; but Josue is a type of Christ, who is interpreted saviour. (For Christ saved his people), fittingly, as leader and prince, brought them into the land of promise

VERS. 1.-- And now, O Israel, hear the precepts and the judgments. You shall not add. He teaches the rule of equity, and strikes at every heresy. For he forbids to add anything of depraved intent to right doctrine, or to take away anything 457Aof the truth: for we must go by the royal way, not to the right hand or to the left; whence: For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them (Ose. XIV). In like manner John says: If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book; if any man shall take away, God shall take away his part out of the book of life (Apoc. XXII).

VERS. 7.-- Nor is there any other, etc. There is not another nation so great, in dignity, namely, of gifts, not in the multitude of peoples. For neither did the nation of the Jews surpass other nations in number or in power, but by the prerogative of the fathers and by the divine favour.

VERS. 9.-- Which they have seen. Sight holds the chief place among all the senses: therefore it is put for every sense.

VERS. 16.-- A graven likeness. (AUG., quaest. 457B4 in Deut.) Perhaps by these two words he signified one thing, etc., as far as which is customary of men.

VERS. 18.-- That are under. (AUG., quaest. 5.) Whether he wished the water to be understood as earth, etc., as far as and could not have earthly animals.

VERS. 19.-- Which he created. (AUG., quaest. 6.) It is not so said, etc., as far as but not the worship which other nations have.

VERS. 23.-- A graven likeness. (AUG., q. 7.) Here, speaking generally, he set down likeness and kept silence about image, because if there be no likeness, neither is there an image.

VERS. 26.-- I call to witness this day heaven, etc. Μετονυμικῶς, by that which contains it signifies that which is contained.

457CVERS. 30.-- But in the last time. He foretells the conversion of Israel to the faith of Christ, that after the fulness of the Gentiles shall have entered in, all Israel may be saved.

VERS. 32.-- From the highest part of heaven. (AUG., quaest. 8.) Why he did not likewise say, from the highest part of the earth, etc., as far as since this is said of the last gathering of the elect.

VERS. 1.-- Hear, O Israel, etc. (AUG., quaest. 9 in Deut.) Whether it was said for this reason, etc., as far as both to see, and to hear, and to retain in memory?

VERS. 4.-- Face to face, etc. (AUG.) A little before he took care to admonish, etc., as far as although some have hoped this.

VERS. 5.-- Between you and God. (ID., quaest. 10.) As though 457Dthe Lord were in a place, etc., as far as hearing out of the midst of the fire the voice of God speaking the decalogue of the law.

VERS. 9.-- Repaying the iniquity, etc. (ISID.) There are those who so expound it, etc., as far as but long defers the sentence.

To them that hate me, and showing mercy unto many thousands to them that love me, etc. To those, namely, who by hereditary impiety hate the Lord. For it is perverse that the sins of the fathers should be imputed to sons who do not sin, since it was said through Ezechiel: The son shall not bear the iniquity, etc. (Ezech. XVIII).

VERS. 11.-- Thou shalt not usurp the name of the Lord God in vain, etc. The first commandment pertains to the Father, which is spoken in what follows: Hear, O Israel, the Lord 458Athy God is one (Deut. VI); that, hearing this, thou mayest worship one God the Father, and not take to thyself many gods. The second pertains to the Son, of whom it is here said: Thou shalt not take the name of thy God in vain, that is, esteem not the Son of God to be a creature. For every creature is subject to vanity; but believe thou him equal to the Father, God of gods, God with God, through whom all things were made. The third to the Spirit, by whose gift eternal rest is promised: for because the Holy Spirit is called sevenfold, therefore God sanctified the seventh day. For on the other days no sanctification of the works is named, save on the sabbath, in which God rested. Rightly therefore does this commandment pertain to the Spirit: both because of the name of sanctification, and because of the eternal rest, which pertains to the gift of the Holy 458BSpirit. For it is said thus: Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day: six days shalt thou labour, etc. In the work of six days, etc., there seems to be signified the working of six thousand years; in the seventh, the time of eternal rest, in which after good works eternal rest is promised. Whatsoever therefore we do, if we do it for the sake of the rest to come, we keep the sabbath.

VERS. 16.-- Honour thy father and thy mother, as he hath commanded thee. After the three precepts follow seven which pertain to the neighbour. Among the seven it is the first, but in the order of them all the fourth: Honour thy father, etc. For from his parents a man opens his eyes, and this life takes its beginning from love of them: whence this commandment is called the greatest and the first, namely, on the second table. We are bidden therefore to honour our parents, and 458Cto show them the duty of piety and reverence; for he who does not this to his parents, how shall he do it to others? The fifth: Thou shalt not commit adultery. That is, thou shalt be joined to none besides thy lawful wife. The sixth: Thou shalt not kill. He also kills who sees his neighbour dying of hunger or of nakedness, and does not come to his aid so far as he can. The seventh: Thou shalt not steal. In which he forbids all rapine. The eighth: Thou shalt not bear false witness. He abominates the crime of lying and of falsehood. The ninth: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife. In which he interdicts also the adulterous thought. The tenth: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods. In which he strikes at ambition and concupiscence. The first therefore forbids stealthy deception; the second, error; the third, 458Dthe love of the world; the fourth, impiety; the fifth, fornication; the sixth, cruelty; the seventh, rapacity; the eighth, falsehood; the ninth, the thought of adultery; the tenth, the desire of the world. And it is to be noted that, as the Egyptians are struck with ten plagues, so the people of God is ruled by ten precepts, and the demons are slain.

VERS. 22.-- On two tables of stone, which he delivered to me. (ISID.) The two Testaments, etc., as far as namely, the sensible and the intelligible.

VERS. 29.-- Who shall grant them to have such a mind? God wills it to be understood that this benefit is granted by his grace, that in all things there may be the justice of God which is of faith, not as it were one's own which is of the law; whence: I will take away from them the heart of stone, and will give them a heart of flesh (Ezech. XXXVI), that is, 459Aone having sense; for flesh has sense, but stone has not; and elsewhere: He hath made us fit ministers of the New Testament, not in the letter, but in the spirit.

VERS. 5.-- Thou shalt love the Lord. (AUG., lib. I de Doctrina Christiana, c. 26, 27, 28.) Charity shall not be taken away, etc., as far as who by the opportunity of places and of times, or of any things whatsoever, are more closely joined to us.

(GREG., lib. VII Moral., cap. 10.) Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, etc. Through the love of God is begotten the love of the neighbour, etc., as far as for in good things a friend is not known, and in evil things an enemy is not hidden.

The soul is of a threefold nature: therefore it is bidden to love 459Bin a threefold manner. God wills not that his love be divided, so that we should love at once God, and gold, or wife, or children. No man can serve two masters (Matth. VI); he himself is to be loved above all things, his love is set first.

VERS. 8.-- And thou shalt bind them as a sign. The Pharisees, misinterpreting this, wrote the decalogue (that is, the ten words) upon little parchments, and carried them bound upon the forehead. Which the Babylonians do to this day, that they may be thought religious. Whence: For they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge their fringes (Matth. XXIII).

VERS. 13.-- Thou shalt swear by his name. (AUG., quaest. 12.) They are permitted to swear by the name of God, etc., as far as but he who swears not at all is far from perjury.

459CVERS. 16.-- Thou shalt not tempt the Lord God. He tempts God who, having something that he might do, commits himself to danger without reason, trying whether he can be delivered by God.

VERS. 1.-- Many nations. The seven nations are the seven principal vices, which the spiritual soldier, overcoming them by the grace of God, is bidden to exterminate. They are said to be of a greater number, because the vices are more than the virtues. In the catalogue seven nations are named; in the storming of them they are set down without number; but, when he shall have destroyed many nations before thee. For more numerous than Israel is the people of carnal passions, which is multiplied out of the sevenfold tinder of the vices. Of gastrimargia: revelling, drunkenness; of fornication: filthy speech, 459Dscurrility, jests, and foolish talk; of philargyria: lying, fraud, thefts, perjuries, the appetite of base gain, false testimonies, violence, inhumanity, and rapacity; of anger: murder, clamour, and indignation; of sadness: rancour, pusillanimity, bitterness, and despair, and laziness; of acedia: idleness, drowsiness, importunity, unquietness of mind and body, instability, wordiness, and curiosity; of cenodoxia: contentions, heresies, boasting, and the presumption of novelties; of pride: contempt, envy, disobedience, blasphemy, murmuring, detraction, and many more. Although these are of a greater number than the virtues, yet, when the principal ones have been overcome, they all fall quiet and are blotted out by a perpetual slaying. But that these plagues are the stronger, we feel in temptation: for the delight of carnal passions wars more strongly in our members 460Athan do the pursuits of the virtues, which are acquired by the utmost contrition of heart and body. We possess the regions of these nations when with the army of Israel, that is, with the virtues, we overcome the vices. So that in our heart chastity may hold the place of fornication; patience the place of fury; saving gladness the place of sadness; that fortitude may inhabit the place of acedia; humility the place of pride: so that, each several vice being cast out, the children of Israel may reign in their place, that is, souls seeing God. But when God was speaking to Abraham of things to come, he is read to have numbered not seven but ten nations, whose land is promised to his seed — when, that is, the idolatries of the Gentiles, the blasphemy of the Jews, and the error of the heretics have been cast away, 460Bto which they are subject who, before the knowledge of God and the grace of baptism, tarry in spiritual Egypt. But he who goes out thence, and by the grace of God attains to the spiritual desert, is set free from the assault of three nations, and closes in battle against seven.

The Haethite and the Gergezite, etc. (HIERON. de Nom. Hebr., tom. III.) The Hethite, etc., as far as that is, trodden down, or their stall.

Seven nations. To Abraham it was granted that ten should be destroyed: for then there were ten, but when the children of Israel were passing over to the Jordan, three had already been destroyed. For the sons of Lot destroyed the giants; the sons of Esau the Horrites; or the Cappadocians a part of the Hevites.

And stronger. The spiritual wickednesses are subtler, 460Cand avail more for deceiving than the weakness of men for enduring.

VERS. 14.-- Barren. There were certain barren women among the Jews, but so few that, by comparison with the fruitful, they seemed none at all.

VERS. 20.-- Moreover also hornets, etc. It is nowhere read in the history that God sent hornets or wasps before them against their enemies. But by stinging animals he designates the prickings of fear, by which he put their terrified enemies to flight.

VERS. 22.-- Thou shalt not be able, etc. He shows that care must be taken lest perchance, when sins have been driven out of our flesh, a spiritual beast rise up, that is, boasting, pride, or vainglory, which are rooted out with more difficulty than carnal vices. For Lot, who contained himself in Sodom, 460Dwas defiled with fornication upon the mountain (Gen. XIX). When a vice has been driven out, let a virtue at once be planted, lest the unclean spirit return and find the house empty. (Matth. XII).

(RAB., GREG.) To some God gives the greater goods, and does not grant the lesser, that their mind may always have whence to reprove itself, and that, while they long to be perfect and cannot, they may in no wise extol themselves in the things they have, who of themselves are unable to have small things. Hence it is that he destroyed the strong and mighty adversaries, the Philistines, and long kept back the Canaanites, that in them Israel might be schooled, having those against whom he should fight, lest he should extol himself over the greater ones he had overcome. The same mind therefore is strong from virtue and grows weary from weakness, so that, 461Awhile it seeks what it is unable to have, it may humbly keep what it has. The region above too suffered losses in part among its citizens, and in part stood bravely: so that the elect angels, while they beheld others fallen through pride, might stand the more stoutly the more humbly. So it is wrought in each several soul, that they may confer the greatest gains; sometimes they condemn the least [damnant; read damna, "the smallest losses"].

VERS. 26.-- Anathema. Ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀναθήναι, that is, from setting above, or from hanging up, as offerings were hung up in the temples, and were alienated from those who gave them.

VERS. 2.-- Forty years. For he therefore suffered them to be afflicted through forty years, that they might know 461Bof how great frailty they were.

That he might afflict thee. (AUG., quaest. 13.) Here it is said more openly, etc., as far as and if he had said this, it was to be understood, he would make them known.

VERS. 3.-- Manna. The flesh of Christ, refreshed by which we may come to the true land of promise. For forty years we eat manna, that is, through our whole time, which is rolled round in four changes, we are fed with the sacrament of the Lord's body.

Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every, etc. Spiritual food is commended, whence souls that are to live for ever are filled. The manna given from heaven signifies the flesh of Christ, who says: I am the bread of life; this is the bread which came down from heaven (Joan. VI), because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He that eateth 461Cthis flesh hath life everlasting.

Not in bread alone, etc. It signifies the twofold substance of our nature. For man consists of soul and body: the body, which is of the earth, is nourished with earthly food; but the soul lives of the word of God; and the Spirit of God quickens the spirit of man, if indeed the man is in the body of the Church, that is, of Christ, and in the faith of the Son of God. Therefore he adds: That his garment failed not by age; because the conversation of the new man ought to abide in newness of life, whose foot is not worn away, because the step of his works is kept unhurt: For the Lord knoweth the way of the just, and the way of the wicked shall perish (Psal. I).

VERS. 11.-- Judgments. Those which were enjoined upon the people by Moses at divers times after the law was given, 461Dwhich in Exodus are called justifications.

And ceremonies. Circumcision, the rites of sacrifices. Whence Ambrose on the Epistle to the Romans: Threefold (says he) is the law: the first part is of the sacrament of the Godhead; the second agrees with the natural law, which forbids sin; the third is of the feasts of the law, that is, sabbaths, new moons, and circumcision.

VERS. 15.-- And the dipsas. A kind of asp which in Latin is called situla: whomsoever it has bitten perishes of thirst; so small that when it is trodden upon it is not seen. Its venom extinguishes before it is felt, nor does he who is to die feel any sadness.

Mystically. The divers serpents are heresies, differing indeed among themselves, but all deadly.

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VERS. 5.-- For neither, etc. (AUG., quaest. 14.) These are they who did not deserve to perish in the desert, etc., as far as where those provoked the Lord who by their own desert were not brought into the land of promise.

VERS. 10.-- And he gave, etc. (AUG., quaest. 15.) In Exodus it is read that the Lord gave the tables to Moses, etc., as far as it endures unto the age.

VERS. 4.-- And he wrote in. (AUG. quaest. 14 in Deut.) In Exodus Moses, etc., as far as but he himself helps the choice of a good will.

VERS. 6.-- In Mosera, etc. In the book of Numbers he is written to have died upon 462Bmount Hor, but perhaps the place is of two names. For Beroth of the children of Jacan is a place in the desert, as is Mosera, where Aaron died, as is read in the books of places. And it is shown unto this day at the tenth milestone from the city of Petra, upon the top of the mountain

VERS. 8.-- The tribe of Levi. Unless by this were signified the whole royal priesthood which pertains to the New Testament, a man who was not of that tribe would not dare to say: The Lord is my portion (Psal. LXXII); and elsewhere: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance, etc. (Ibid., XV.)

VERS. 14.-- The heaven of heaven, etc. Some say that there are three heavens: the airy, the ethereal, and the starry. Not a few say seven: the first airy, the second ethereal, the third olympian, the fourth fiery, the fifth the firmament, 462Cthe sixth watery, the seventh of the angels.

VERS. 16.-- Circumcise, etc. It signifies spiritual circumcision, that is, the keeping of the mind and true abstinence. As if to say: when you have extinguished the wantonness of the flesh, cut away also the superfluities of the mind. All the senses are to be circumcised. Whence Moses complains that he is uncircumcised in his lips; and Stephen to the Jews: Uncircumcised, he says, in heart and ears, etc. (Act. VII). Truly therefore he is circumcised who stoppeth his ears that he may not hear blood, and shutteth his eyes that he may not see evil; who does not offend with his tongue, whose heart is not weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness, who washeth his hands among the innocent, and keepeth back his feet from every evil way; who chastiseth his body and bringeth it 462Dinto subjection, and with all watchfulness keepeth his heart. We need a twofold circumcision also, lest out of these things we seek vainglory, lest we be clean without and unclean within, and undergo the penalties of a feigned holiness, like the Sichemites, who imitated the circumcision of the patriarchs, not for the love of God, but for the cause of wantonness: therefore they gained nothing of reward, but on the third day perished within the ruins of their own city. For such men, at the time of the resurrection, when the virtues in which they trusted have been emptied out, die for ever.

VERS. 22.-- Thy fathers went down into Egypt. There is a going down into Egypt: Easy is the descent of Avernus. There is a going up into Jerusalem, because narrow is the way that leadeth to life, and virtue makes for the steep

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VERS. 10.-- Out of which thou camest. In mind, with Moses for leader, that is, with the law teaching us to despise earthly pleasures and to enter the land of promise with Jesus for leader.

Of gardens. Because all carnal men desire to multiply for themselves present happiness and an abundance of temporal things.

VERS. 12.-- From the beginning of the year. That is, from the beginning of a good will unto the perfection of good work he directs the course of life. For it is God who worketh in us to will and to accomplish, according to good will (Philip. II).

VERS. 14.-- The early, etc. Because in the former time he bestowed upon his elect the understanding of the law; he granted the latter rain, because in the last time he laid open to us the mystery of his incarnation.

463BAnd the latter, etc. Because it is the last hour when his preaching reaches us, who says: The lifting up of my hands, an evening sacrifice (Psal. CXL).

VERS. 20.-- Thou shalt write them upon the door posts. (AUG., quaest. 17.) Is this according to the letter, or is it a hyperbolical commendation, as many things are said?

VERS. 29.-- Mount Garizim. Garizim is interpreted Division or Stranger; Hebal is interpreted Old Gulf. For they who separate themselves from vices, and judge themselves strangers and pilgrims in this world, merit also the eternal blessing. But they who cast themselves headlong into the gulf of the old life, serving carnal desires, shall lie under the eternal curse

• 463C

VERS. 6.-- Tithes and firstfruits, etc. (AUG., quaest. 18.) It is to be asked how he commands that the tithings of all fruits and the firstlings of all cattle be not eaten save in the city where the temple was, whereas in the law he had commanded them to be given to the Levites.

VERS. 13.-- Beware lest thou offer. He cuts off the occasion of sacrificing to idols. For he therefore commands that victims be offered in the temple and at the altar of the Lord, that where religion is whole, there a fitting worship may be shown. But mystically he intimates that no gift is acceptable to God outside the catholic Church; for this is the place which God chose, that he might put his name 463Dthere, and dwell in it.

VERS. 16.-- Without eating. He forbids murder. The blood is put for the soul, because the seat of the soul, that is, of human life, is in the blood.

VERS. 17.-- In thy towns. That is, thou shalt not assign to thy own merits the things thou hast received by the divine bounty, not to thy own strength, but to God, by whose gift thou hast had this (Gal. VI).

VERS. 23.-- This only beware. According to the letter the apostles commanded this: and in the blood both murder and the hatred of brethren are forbidden. For he that hateth his brother is a murderer (I Joan. III).

For their blood. Because there is something vital in the blood, and by it chiefly life is lived in this flesh, 464Awhich is diffused through all the veins: this he calls the soul, that is, the life of the body, which is ended by death. But mystically it is intimated that, when carnal men depart from their former manner of life and join themselves in the unity of faith and of good works, we should not turn their errors to our own use, but should pour them out, that is, should reckon them, brought forth by confession, to earthly frailty, and cast them away as unworthy of spiritual men.

VERS. 1.-- If there rise up. He would have it understood that the things which are spoken by diviners not according to God, even if they come to pass, are not so to be received that the things foretold by them should come about; nor does he show that the things which so happen are beyond his own power. But he subjoins why he permits it, 464Bnamely, for the knowing how much they that serve them love God — not for him who knows all things.

VERS. 1.-- You shall not cut yourselves. Unto this day many nations cut themselves at the funerals of the dead. Whence: Be not you sorrowful, even as the rest, who have not hope. But to do these things belongs to them who despair of the resurrection.

Neither shall you make. The hairs of your head are numbered (Matth. X), that is, the thoughts, which ought not to be taken away from the comeliness of the head and offered to the devil, as certain men offer the bodily hairs to the devil.

VERS. 3.-- Eat not. The animals are unclean, 464Cbut what they express by signifying are the manners, namely, of men, and their acts, and their wills.

VERS. 5.-- The camelopard. Which, sprinkled with white spots, is like a camel in the head, like a horse in the neck, like a buffalo in the feet, and for the rest a leopard: it is born in Ethiopia.

Every beast that into two. The Church receives and incorporates into her own members those who divide the hoof, who know how to have the discernment of good and evil, and who chew the cud, that is, who meditate in the law day and night.

VERS. 6.-- That into two parts. He, namely, who, taking up the two testaments, establishes himself with a firm step of justice and innocence

VERS. 7.-- The camel. The Jew, who strains out the gnat and swallows the camel, who chews the letter, but has not 464Da cloven hoof, because he does not divide the letter from the spirit: these are the scribes and Pharisees.

The hare. By the choerogyllus and the hare he signifies the multitude of the Jews, for each animal is weak and feeble.

Because they chew the cud. The Jews chew the words of the law, but they do not divide the hoof, because they do not believe in the Father and the Son, nor do they receive the two testaments. But certain heretics divide the hoof, yet do not chew the doctrine of truth in their mouth (Levit. XI).

VERS. 9.-- These shall you eat of all that move in the waters. By these are understood the Gentiles, who are born again in the waters of baptism.

Which have little fins. Meditating the law of the sublime 465Aand heavenly life; because ignorance of the divine law had long been among the Gentiles, he adds little fins and scales: for as fishes are scaled and finned, so to those whose ignorance is but temporal there is quickly added the knowledge of the sublime and of the heavenly life.

VERS. 12.-- And the griffin. Which is a four-footed beast, like an eagle in head and wings, like a lion in the rest of its body, and it abounds in the Hyperborean mountains, most hostile to horses and to men.

VERS. 15.-- The ostrich. Which is not lifted up from the earth, but is entangled in secular business.

The night owl. Which sees sharply in the night, and not in the day. Like those who glory in the knowledge of the law, and do not take in the light of the Gospel.

The gull. Which flies as a bird and swims as a water creature: he, namely, who 465Bvenerates both circumcision and baptism. To such Paul says: If you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing (Gal. V).

The hawk, etc. They who seem meek, but ally themselves with the mighty and the greedy.

VERS. 16.-- The swan and the ibis. These are said to be of a long neck, and to draw their food from the deep of the earth: but we ought to seek the bread which came down from heaven, and not to be solicitous what we shall eat (Joan. VI Matth. VI)

VERS. 17.-- The night raven. Which creeps and works by night, signifying those who are given over to the works of night, which are fornication, uncleanness, the worship of idols, and the like.

VERS. 18.-- The hoopoe. Which loves mourning. But the sorrow 465Cof the world worketh death: But we ought to rejoice in the Lord, and in all things to give thanks (II Cor. VII; I Thes. V).

The bat, etc. Which flies about the earth, and walks with its wings. But our conversation ought to be in heaven (Phil. III).

VERS. 21.-- But whatsoever. Mystically it is enjoined upon the ecclesiastical man that he keep himself in holiness, and shun all uncleanness of sin, and suffer the stranger, that is, the Gentile, to remain in his own filth.

To the stranger that is within thy gates. As if to say: leave unclean things to pagans and heretics. Hence in the Gospel the demons are permitted to go into the herd of swine (Matth. VIII), and it is said: Let the dead bury their own dead 465D(Luc. IX).

In milk, by middling disciplines, but by more austere ones, that by bitter things they might restore the sweet things which they lost.

VERS. 22.-- The tithe. As if to say: the good things which thou dost, do according to the precepts of the divine law, and set them apart for the Lord, that thou mayest do all things unto his praise.

VERS. 23.-- The firstborn. That is, the beginnings of good work, which are to be tithed, that is, to be consecrated to the Lord.

VERS. 24.-- To carry. As if to say: they who are far from the perfection of the saints, and can neither ascend the summit of the virtues nor be free for contemplation — what they can, let them do humbly and devoutly, and let them make themselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, and treasures in 466Aheaven, that they may be received into the eternal tabernacles, where there is feasting and rejoicing with friends, that is, with the saints and elect of God.

VERS. 26.-- And thou shalt buy with the same money, etc. Spiritually it is enjoined that we should always press upon good works, that after this life we may return to our own house, that is, to the heavenly fatherland.

VERS. 28.-- Another tithe. Besides that one, namely, which thou eatest with thine own and with the Levites, in the place which the Lord shall choose.

VERS. 29.-- And the Levite shall come. He plainly shows that this tithe is not to be shared with him who offers it, but only with those to whom he commanded it to be paid out, among whom he set the Levite chiefly.

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VERS. 1.-- In the seventh year. In this chapter piety and love are commended, that we may have mercy upon our neighbours and look for a reward from the Lord. For in due time we shall reap, not failing, if, while we have time, we work good toward all, but most of all toward the household of the faith (I Tim. V); whence: Forgive, and you shall be forgiven; give, and it shall be given to you (Luc. VI).

In the seventh year. Because in the sevenfold Spirit is remission. Almost all the solemnities of the law are in the number seven: for the sabbath is on the seventh day; and Pentecost when seven weeks are finished; the seventh year also is kept; and the jubilee follows after seven times seven years.

466CVERS. 3-- Of the stranger. Although all are our neighbours, yet mercy is chiefly to be bestowed upon those who with us are members of Christ. For he that hath the substance of this world, and bestoweth not upon his needy brother, how doth the charity of God abide in him? (I Joan. III.)

VERS. 6.-- Thou shalt lend. As if to say: thou shalt be richer than all nations. The Church too abounds in spiritual riches: she herself teaches, and has no need to be taught.

VERS. 9.-- Beware. (AUG., quaest. 21.) The LXX: Attend to thyself, lest there be a hidden word, etc., as far as if he cruelly thinks that it is not to be given at that time at which it is to be given?

VERS. 12.-- When there shall be sold to thee, etc. (ISID.) If 466Da Hebrew boy shall have come into servitude, etc., as far as namely, we shall serve sins for ever.

When there shall be sold to thee, etc. The Hebrew is a passer-over, who, namely, tends toward the eternal fatherland, and passes over from vices to virtues, from earthly things to heavenly; if such a one sell himself to thee, that is, make himself over to thy teaching, thou shalt teach him to be zealous to work in the present life, that he may be able to come to rest. That is: six years he shall serve thee, in the seventh thou shalt let him go free, nor shalt thou suffer him to go away empty; as if to say: thou shalt promise him eternal rewards and true liberty in the other life. But if he shall say, I will not go out, because he loveth thee and thy house — that is, if he did the good things he did not for an eternal reward, but for human praise, as one loving the present 467Alife — thou shalt bore his ear with an awl, that is, his mind with the terror of judgment; thou shalt prick him at the door of the house, because the judgment will be at the going out of this life and the entering of the other, and he shall serve thee unto eternity, that is, thou shalt teach him that, if he has loved the world more than God, he is to be made over to eternal punishments.

(GREG., hom. 3 in Ezech.) Whereas the active life and the contemplative are ours of God's grace, etc., as far as where with an awl the ear of him that refuses liberty is commanded to be bored through.

VERS. 19.-- Of the firstlings. (AUG., quaest. 23.) He says firstborn, etc., as far as because he alone is of the substance of the Father, and equal and coeternal.

Thou shalt sanctify to the Lord thy God. Not to thyself, but to the bestower of all things: Because every best gift is from above 467B(Jac. I). But whatever is light in our thought, or spotted in our manner of life, or lame in the going forward of our works, or blind through ignorance of mind, or in any part deformed or feeble, we ought not to immolate, that is, to impute, to God, but to ourselves.

Thou shalt not work. (GREG., lib. VIII Moral., cap. 34.) To plough with the firstling of the ox, etc., as far as the deceived mind may not perceive the evils that are in them.

VERS. 16.-- But if he shall have. There are certain works which, although they please God less, yet profit the neighbour; and if they cannot be offered to God, they can be eaten. For although they please God less because of the darkened intention which God beholds, yet they help the neighbours by example. As the roe and the hart. The roe goes 467Cby leaping; the hart is the enemy of the serpent, and, leaping over rough and thorny places, it climbs the mountains; and therefore they are taken in a good part.

VERS. 1.-- Observe the month of the new corn. Because in it the handfuls of ears, that is, the firstfruits, were offered to the Lord by the priest.

The first month, namely of the Hebrews, which among them is called nisan, among the Greeks also ξάνθικος, among the Latins April, in which the paschal lamb was slain.

He brought thee out. Mystically. Let us too, delivered from the Egypt of this world and clothed with the new man, walk in newness 467Dof life, consecrating the firstfruits of good works, and celebrating the phase, that is, a good passing over, that, Egypt being left behind, we may come to the land of promise.

VERS. 2.-- And of oxen, in the place. (AUG., quaest. 24.) He adds oxen, although he had given command concerning the sheep only, which he bade be taken from the sheep and the kids or the goats — or because of Christ, who according to the flesh was of the just and of sinners. For he does not say, of the sheep or of the goats, but, of the sheep and of the goats, although properly a sheep is not understood to be of the goats, lest the Jews should say that a goat was to be understood. Why then are oxen added? is it because of the other sacrifices, which are to be immolated on the days of the unleavened bread?

468AVERS. 3.-- Leavened bread. Corrupt doctrine, or the old manner of life; whence: Let us feast in the unleavened bread, not in the old leaven, etc. (I Cor. V).

Seven. Through the whole time of the present life. As they ate unleavened bread for seven days, so let us live purely and simply through the seven days of this life, in which daily the lamb is slain and the pasch is celebrated, if, being renewed, we retain nothing of the old corruption. For what else is leaven than the corruption of nature? For what is leavened departs from its natural sweetness, and is corrupted with an adulterine rancidness.

VERS. 4.-- It shall not appear. Let us feast not in the old leaven, nor in the leaven of malice and wickedness, etc. (I Cor. V); as if to say: leave the old man, and put on the new.

468BThere shall not remain. In this life all the sacraments of the Lord's incarnation are to be searched out, and all his precepts are to be fulfilled (Ephes. IV), before the morning, that is, the end of the world, comes.

VERS. 5.-- Thou shalt not be able. In one house the paschal lamb is eaten, and in one place the phase is immolated, that is, in the catholic Church: outside her the pasch is not rightly celebrated. He forbids the mysteries of Christ to be celebrated in the conventicles of heretics.

VERS. 6.-- In the evening at the sun's. In the last age of the world, when the true Sun went down in the passion and loosed the Egyptian captivity, when Christ our pasch was immolated.

VERS. 7.-- Thou shalt go into the tabernacles. The service of the Lord being accomplished, in the morning of the resurrection we shall pass over into the eternal 468Ctabernacles, that we may rest from all labour, rejoicing over the retribution received.

VERS. 8.-- On the seventh day. By the eternal rest, which the number seven signifies: because of the sabbath, where there is no labour, no reckoning of working.

VERS. 9.-- Seven weeks. More fully in Leviticus. Thou shalt number therefore from the morrow after the sabbath seven full weeks, unto the morrow of the searching out of the seventh week.

(AUG., quaest. 25.) Seven weeks, etc. If this Pentecost was commanded to be observed by the whole people, is it to be believed that all were bidden to put the sickle into the harvest on one day? But if each man observes that fiftieth day for himself, numbering from that day on which he puts in the sickle, it is not one for the whole people. But that one 468Dis one which is reckoned from the immolation of the pasch unto the day of the giving of the law on Sina.

We too celebrate Pentecost, that is, the coming of the Holy Spirit, who is the finger of God, by whom the law was written on the tables.

VERS. 13.-- The solemnity. He who uses the present world as a tabernacle can keep festival and rejoice in it, because of the expectation of what is to come: Because if the earthly house of this our habitation be dissolved, he shall have a house not made with hands in heaven (I Cor. V).

When. He signifies that, the perfection of all good things being consummated and many virtues gathered together, there is to be rejoicing and exulting with friends. When each one who here has been bountiful 469Ain giving shall exult over the retribution received, then truly shall the solemnity of tabernacles be kept — not of changeable ones, that is, but of eternal ones; whence: That they may receive you into eternal tabernacles (Luc. XVI).

VERS. 16.-- The male. Not the female; for nothing soft, frail, or feeble ought to be in our manner of life: God requires of us all things strong (Exod. XXIII, XXXIV; Eccli. XXXV). But if, in the faith of the Trinity, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, with regard for the eternal reward, we sweat at good works in the time of the present life, we set a male in the sight of the Lord.

In all. That they who come from every side may at once, at the entrance, find men prepared, from whom they may receive just judgments.

469BVERS. 19.-- The eyes of the wise. Among men, not with God; to whom it is said: Woe to you that are wise in your own eyes (Isa. V).

VERS. 20.-- Justly. (GREG., lib. X Moral., cap. 19.) He unjustly pursues what is just who is stirred to the defence of justice not by zeal of virtue, but by love of a temporal reward, and does not fear to sell the justice he puts forward. Justly therefore to pursue the just is, in the asserting of justice, to seek justice itself: There are ways which seem to men just, etc. (Prov. XIV). And: Woe to you who justify yourselves before men (Luc. XVI).

VERS. 21.-- Thou shalt not plant. He cuts off the occasion of idolatry. For the nations were wont to immolate, and to adore statues in their shrines.

469CA grove. (ISID.) A wood, leafy unfruitful trees, etc., as far as nor does it permit the feigning of falsehood or of error to be joined to catholic truth.

VERS. 2.-- And when there shall be found. The law above all detests error and idolatry: for it is the greatest wickedness to pay to a creature the honour of the Creator; which the Gentiles do, or bad catholics, who, although they do not withdraw from the Church, yet are found rather to serve the devil through divers vices than to war for God through good works. These he bids to be overwhelmed with stones, whom an irrevocable sentence has foreseen to be condemned.

VERS. 6.-- In the mouth of two or three witnesses. By the attestation, namely, of the law, of the prophets, and of the Gospel, according to 469Dthat: The word which he hath spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day (Joan. XII). In the title of the cross too three tongues bear witness that Christ is the king of the Jews: the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin (Joan. XIX).

Let no man be put to death. So great is the concord of the Old and the New Testament, that neither is without the other.

In human judgment the authority of Holy Scripture is first to be sought.

VERS. 81.-- If difficult. He instructs the priests of the Church of God, that they may conduct ecclesiastical judgments reverently according to the power given them by God, and may decree justly, not at their own pleasure, but according to the decree of the law, lest by accepting a person they change the sentence.

470AVERS. 11.-- According to. Note, it is not said to thee that thou shouldst obey, unless they have taught according to the law; whence: Upon the chair of Moses have sitten the scribes and the Pharisees (Matth. XXIII).

VERS. 12.-- At the command of the priest. Of Christ, who is a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech, who put vicars in his own stead, to whom he says: He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me, etc. (Luc. X). By right therefore he undergoes the sentence of damnation who contemns the power of the Godhead.

VERS. 14.-- When thou shalt have entered into the land, etc. (AUG., quaest. 26.) It can be asked: why did the people displease God when it desired a king, seeing that here it is found to have been permitted? But it is to be understood that deservedly it was not according to the will of God, because he did not command this to be done, but permitted it to them that desired it. Nevertheless he commanded 470Bthat no stranger should be made king, but a brother out of that same people, a native, not one of another race. But as to what he says: Thou shalt not be able: it is to be understood, thou oughtest not.

I will set over. The inhabitants of the land set a king over themselves against the sentence of God.

VERS. 17.-- He shall not have, etc. (AUG., quaest. 27.) It is manifest that Solomon transgressed this precept, etc., as far as it may come to men of another race.

Nor of silver. Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth (Matth. VI).

VERS. 19.-- And he shall read. Note with how great assiduity priests ought to read, since kings read assiduously. Reading itself is light and life; whence: The words which I speak to you are spirit and life (Joan. VI).

VERS. 20.-- Pride. As if to say: let him know that he is a brother. 470CWe all have one Father, God, to whom we say: Our Father, who art in heaven, etc. (Luc. XI).

Pride. It is a blessing to reign over Israel, that is, by reigning to make Israel, that is, men seeing God.

VERS. 1.-- They shall not have. Both in the Old and in the New Testament it is enjoined upon the ministers of the altar to live from the oblations and the tithes, nor is it granted them to gape after the acquiring of earthly possessions. Whence: Do not possess gold nor silver, etc. (Matth. X); and a little after: For the workman is worthy of his food (I Cor. IX.) And elsewhere: They who serve the altar partake with the altar (Num. XVIII). For it is not fitting that 470Dhe who ought always to stand by the divine office should gape after earthly gain, whose inheritance God is. What therefore can be lacking to him who has him that has all things.

VERS. 2.-- Inheritance. For good working, that what he has conceived in mind he may prove in deed; whence: Jesus began to do and to teach (Act. I).

VERS. 3.-- They shall give. Because we ought devoutly to communicate with our teachers in bodily comforts and in spiritual profits; whence: Let him that is catechized in the word communicate to him that catechizeth him, in every good work (Gal. VI).

The maw. The belly is the receptacle of foods; all the labours of men and the momentary flatteries of the gullet are such, and their end he condemns; and to minds 471Aconsecrated to God he shows that the whole of what we devour is cast forth into the outcome; whence: Meat for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both the one and the other.

VERS. 4.-- Firstfruits. It behoves the labouring husbandman to receive first, out of the fruits, the firstfruits of the crops.

VERS. 6.-- If he shall go forth. He as it were forsakes city and house who serves God freely, and sets forth the Gospel without charge.

VERS. 8.-- Except. (AUG., quaest. 38.) What the LXX, etc., as far as that ought to be kept for him which was rendered to his parents.

VERS. 9.-- When thou art entered in. (AUG., quaest. 29.) Since inspectors of portents are forbidden, etc., as far as thus those inspections of the prodigal are to be distinguished from the significations of miracles.

471BVERS. 10.-- Soothsayers. They who go about the altars with unspeakable prayers, and seek divination in the entrails of animals.

Auguries. As it were avigeria, things which are carried on (gerantur) in the voices of birds. Or avigaria, from the chattering (garritus) of birds.

VERS. 11.-- Pythons. Ventriloquists, out of whose belly demons speak, so called from Python, that is, from Apollo, whom they believed to be the god of divination.

VERS. 15.-- A prophet of. Although it may be taken historically of the prophets who after Moses were filled with the Spirit of God among the people of Israel, yet it is better taken of the Lord of the prophets, of whom the crowds filled by him said: This is of a truth the prophet that is to come into the world (Joan. VI). And elsewhere: A great prophet 471Cis risen up among us (Luc. VII).

VERS. 2.-- Three. Faith, hope and charity, to which all penitents ought to flee.

Moses appointed three cities of refuge beyond the Jordan for homicides who committed homicide not willingly; three others about the Jordan he bids to be set apart (Num. XXXV; Josue. XX), mystically intimating that before the receiving of baptism he who wishes to be saved from sin and to be freed from spiritual enemies ought with sincere mind to confess the faith of the holy Trinity, and after baptism to work manfully in faith, hope and charity. And thus living religiously in the world, which was founded in the number six, after the perfection of good 471Dworks he awaits eternal rest in the sabbath-rest.

VERS. 3.-- Into three. That he who is to be saved may escape the more easily. Preachers also ought by word and by example to take counsel for sinners, and equally in the whole earth of the Church to intimate to all the faith of the Trinity, that they may acknowledge the way of truth and the gate of faith to lie open to them, and themselves to be deservedly damned if they should be unwilling to enter.

But to have gone away. For by an example he shows what kind of homicide is to be saved.

(GREG., Past. part. II, cap. X, tom. III.) We go to the wood with a friend, etc., as far as which is not perpetrated maliciously.

(AMBR., lib. de Fuga saeculi, cap. 2.) It is plain that provision was fittingly 472Amade, etc., as far as struck with the Levitical sword let the sense of the flesh die, that your soul may live.

VERS. 9.-- Thou shalt add to thee. In the book of Joshua the son of Nun six cities of refuge are decreed for such homicides (Josue XX). Cades in Galilee of mount Nephtali, Sichem in mount Ephraim, and Cariatharbe, which is Hebron, in mount Juda. And beyond the Jordan, Bosor of the tribe of Ruben, and Ramoth in Galaad of the tribe of Gad, and Gaulon in Basan, of the tribe of Manasse.

(AMBR., ubi supra.) Now there are refuges of six cities, etc., as far as or let us venerate them by the declining of things forbidden.

VERS. 11.-- But if any man hating his neighbour. He who out of malice strikes anyone, and leads him into the death of the soul, is guilty of eternal death; whence: If any man shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, etc. 472BAnd elsewhere: He that hateth his brother is a murderer, and shall not have eternal life (Matth. XVIII; I Joan. III). This man is torn away from the altar, as unworthy of the Lord's sacraments, nor does he earn pardon save through worthy penance. But he who kills not willingly has cities of refuge, namely the Catholic Church, where, constraining himself with the strait of penance, let him give himself to good works through the whole time of the present life; and if he shall have placed his hope in the death of the high priest, that is, of his Redeemer, he shall at length deserve to be saved.

He who keeps fraternal hatred in his heart cannot do fruitful penance, nor appease God toward himself.

VERS. 14.-- Thou shalt not take and remove thy neighbour's landmarks, etc. Whence: Pass not beyond the bounds which thy fathers 472Chave set (Prov. XXII), that is, the rules and the definitions of living of the fathers who went before.

VERS. 15.-- One witness shall not stand. This too we ought to keep historically. And against the impious or heretics, when we have need of the testimonies of the Scriptures, we bring forward two witnesses, that is, the Old and the New Testament; or three, that is, the Gospel, the prophets, the apostle — and so the word stands.

VERS. 21.-- Life for life. For he who has made a soul to err is not worthy of pardon.

Tooth for tooth (Exod. XXI; Lev. XXIV; Matth. V). The force of words. For teeth signify words, according to that: The sons of men, their teeth are weapons (Psal. LVI). And elsewhere: His teeth than milk, that is, 472Dthan the law, are whiter (Gen. XXIX).

A hand, etc. Working: that those things, namely. are useful or hurtful to him which he perverts in another.

VERS. 1.-- Because the Lord. Mystically. (AUG., quaest. 30.) The LXX: Since the Lord, etc., as far as that he might show that they themselves also were about to act.

VERS. 5.-- What man is. (ID., quaest. 31.) He is not the better in war who has already dedicated buildings, etc., as far as but these things were instituted for the trying of the minds of men.

What man is. (ISID.) He teaches that no one can take up the profession of contemplation or of spiritual 473Awarfare, etc., as far as: that he may please him to whom he has approved himself (II Tim. II).

It is better to shun a profession or a persecution than to succumb in it. To a disputation also against heretics one ought not to come, unless learned and perfect, lest, being overcome, he scandalize others.

VERS. 16.-- Thou shalt permit none at all. No vice is to be spared in our manner of life, lest before the eyes of the Lord we appear corrupted by pleasures and abominable, and our enemies, exulting over our ruin, say: Well done, well done to our soul; we will devour him (Psal. XXXIV).

VERS. 1.-- When there shall be found, etc. A carcass, a body 473Bwithout a soul, and a soul without God, who is its life. In the land which the Lord thy God will give thee, that is, in the Church. Guilty of the slaughter, the author of sedition; The elders, those greater in life and in wisdom. The judges, that is, the priests, whose office it is to judge concerning individuals, that is, to discern. They shall measure from the place of the carcass, that is, with the utmost discretion they shall investigate the author of the sedition. They shall take a heifer of the herd, that is, the flesh of Christ, which he took from the fathers. Which hath not drawn the yoke, because he did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. Nor hath it cut the earth with the ploughshare (I Petr. II), that is, it admitted no stain of sedition.

And the guilty of the slaughter shall be unknown. The devil, who is invisible and is therefore said to be unknown; for it is known that he put it into the heart of Judas to betray him (Joan. XIII).

473CThe elders, etc. The apostles and the teachers who by the attestation of Scripture have perceived that no nation was so ready for slaughter as the people of the Jews, who shed the blood both of the prophets and of the Lord.

VERS. 4.-- And they shall lead her to a rough valley, etc. Namely to a despised and most shameful death; whence: Let us condemn him to a most shameful death. Which hath never been ploughed (Sap. II), because the death of Christ was without fault. Nor hath it received seed (Matth. XIII), that is, the cockle of sin, which the enemy man oversowed. We can take the rough valley as the Gentile world, which was rough; stony, because it adored stones; in which the neck of the heifer was struck off, because for the salvation of the Gentiles the death of Christ was celebrated. The neck is the strength of the flesh, which he laid down in death. They shall wash their hands over the heifer, 473Dthat is, they shall purge their works through confidence in the passion of Christ.

VERS. 6.-- And they shall wash their hands, etc. That is, they shall show their works to be clean in the passion of Christ. For although the sacraments of that same passion are repeated daily, yet from all the fraud of the Jews they have hearts and works most clean.

VERS. 8.-- Be merciful. According to their office they bless the people, that vengeance be not rendered for the crime, but salvation for the redemption.

VERS. 10.-- If he shall have gone forth to battle. (ISID.) Let the Jews say, how do they keep these things? what is the reason that the woman is shaved and her nails pared? what if she be found without hair and without nails?

474AVERS. 11.-- A beautiful woman. As Paul, who took from Menander: Evil communications corrupt good manners (I Cor. XV). And from Aratus: In him we live, and move, and are: for we are also his offspring (Act. XVII).

Others think that this woman comely in appearance signifies the reasonable discipline found among the Gentiles: for from her must be cut away every uncleanness of superstition, that she may be taken up unto the study of truth. For the disciplines of the Gentiles have nothing clean, because there is no discipline among them to which somewhat of uncleanness or of superstition is not mingled.

VERS. 13.-- One month, that is, thirty days, that after the faith of the Trinity and the work of the law she may deserve to be joined to the Church; for thrice ten make thirty.

474BAnd afterwards. When neither in the head, that is, in the senses, nor in the hands, that is, in the works, will there be anything superfluous or unclean.

VERS. 15.-- If a man have two wives, etc. Christ joined to himself two wives, namely the people of the Jews and of the Gentiles, under the name of wedlock. The synagogue is hateful, ever contentious, stiff-necked, uncircumcised in heart; the Gentile Church is beloved. But he cannot prefer the son of the beloved to the son of the hateful, that is, prefer the Church of the Gentiles and her sons to the apostles and the other first men, who are the sons of the synagogue. He acknowledges the firstborn of the hateful, he gives him a double portion, because to the first sons of the synagogue he gave the law and the prophets, and the knowledge of his name, and to them first he preached the Gospel. For he is the firstborn of his children.

474COne beloved. Animality, which seems sweet and delightful: it desires all voluptuous things and afflicts with no sorrow.

The other hateful. Rationality, which does not indulge the body, nor serve pleasure, but renounces the hidden things of dishonesty.

VERS. 16.-- The firstborn. The apostles and apostolic men, who hold the place of the firstborn, whose authority the Church follows.

VERS. 17.-- But the son. This is to be done to the letter, that no one follow the motion of his own mind, or love, or hatred, but nature.

All things double. The apostles received all things double, who were endowed with doctrine and with working.

To the other he will give that he may live, not that he may abound; as Abraham set the son of the handmaid 474Dover the nations: upon the son of Sara he heaped not only temporal but spiritual things (Gen. XII).

VERS. 18.-- If he beget. Obedience is better than victims, and to hearken rather than to offer the fat of rams; for it is as the sin of divining to rebel, etc. (I Reg. XV.) Moses therefore bids the disobedient and vicious son to be overwhelmed with stones: the Gospel too rebukes such men with hard reproofs, as with stones: Ye offspring of vipers, who shall teach you to flee from the wrath to come (Luc. III)?

VERS. 22.-- Hanged up. His torment, with the people looking on; whence: Them that sin reprove before all, that the rest may have fear (II Tim. V).

475AVERS. 23.-- It shall not remain. That is, he ought not to be left in the same condemnation, but to be called back by the exhortation of teachers, so that reconciliation be denied to none while he lives.

It shall not remain. Penance is not to be deferred from day to day, but to be done at once, that through unfruitful [infructuosam; read fructuosam, "fruitful"] penance offences may be hidden from the eyes of God; whence: Blessed are they whose sins are covered (Psal. XXXI).

Cursed of God. (AUG., lib. XIV contra Faustum.) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (Gal. III). (For Adam fell in the tree of transgression: therefore he merited a curse for himself and for his posterity, of which he says: Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.) For he underwent a cursed, that is, an execrable and most shameful death.

475B(ID., ubi supra, cap. 3, 4.) He that hangeth is cursed of God, etc. Certain heretics transfer this sentence to the calumny of the passion of Christ, etc., as far as well therefore is that called cursed which God hates: this hung upon the tree.

Thou shalt defile. With the tears of penance we ought to wash away the stench of sins, lest it breed scandal for others and torment for ourselves.

VERS. 1.-- Thou shalt not see. Morally. Thy brother is the teacher of the Church, whose disciple — whether the learned, who is signified by the ox, or the unlearned, who is signified by the sheep — if thou see him err, do not neglect him, but exhort him 475Cthat thou mayest be able to reconcile him to his brother, that is, to his master. Bring him into thy house (I Cor. XI), that is, apply care. And if he be not near, that is, of thy church, but a teacher of another.

VERS. 3.-- In like manner. To the Gentile, namely, whose usefulness and uncleanness we ought not to despise.

With the garment. The people, wherewith the teacher is adorned. To the letter also all these things and the like are to be kept.

VERS. 5.-- A woman shall not be clothed, etc. (AUG., quaest. 32.) Another edition, etc., as far as he ought not to have anything womanish or soft in his teaching.

A woman. Whose colour is naturally diverse, her movement unchaste, and her strength; to whom it is not permitted to teach, nor to have dominion over the man, nor let her usurp the office of preaching (I Cor. XIII).

475DIt is against nature for a man to do womanish things, to curl his hair, to twist his locks; whence the Apostle: If a man nourish his hair, it is a shame unto him. But to the woman her hair is given for a covering; a man therefore shall not be clothed with a woman's garment, that is, with loose and dissolute working.

(RAB.) We go along the way, etc., as far as but out of it we retain the allegorical sense in the mind.

VERS. 8.-- A new house, that is, the Church.

A wall of the roof, that is, the guard of the virtues.

Lest blood be shed in thy house, that is, lest thou be held guilty when another sins.

(GREG., lib. VIII Moral., cap. 39.) Lest it be shed. Through carelessness and sloth. Whence he who gathers virtues without 476Ahumility, as it were carries dust into the wind.

VERS. 9.-- A vineyard, the doctrine, or the people committed to the teachers, where the wine of spiritual grace ought to abound.

With other seed, that is, with the heretical. The good seed is the word of God; the wicked seed is that which the enemy sowed (Matth. XIII): care must therefore be taken lest anything of error be mingled in, and the seed of God be corrupted.

VERS. 10.-- Thou shalt not plough. (ISID.) He ploughs with an ox and an ass who receives the Gospels together with the observance of the Jews, which went before in shadow. In the ox also is the life of those who work well, in the ass the slothfulness of the foolish: as if to say, join not the fool to the wise man in preaching, lest through him who is not strong to fulfil the thing thou hinder him who prevails. 476BBut the fool and the wise are well joined together, so that the one may command and the other obey, not that they should announce the word of God with equal power.

Allegorically he mixes wool or purple with linen garments who lives disorderly, and with departures of divers kinds, as if a nun should have the ornaments of a wife, or a wife bear the appearance of a virgin. Now this was figured in garments which is now declared in morals.

VERS. 12.-- Little cords. For a distinction, namely, as the sign of circumcision separates the Israelites from the rest. But superstitious masters, catching at the breeze of popular favour and at gains from silly women, enlarged their fringes and bound thorns to them, that whether walking or sitting they might be pricked, and so be admonished to serve God; 476Cwhence: They enlarge their phylacteries and they magnify their fringes.

VERS. 13.-- If a man take. (AUG., quaest. 33.) It appears how women subject to their husbands, etc., as far as wherewith the other should have been punished.

VERS. 15.-- Her father and mother. The teachers of the Church, who as father and mother cherish the people: fathers by authority, mothers by tenderness.

VERS. 18.-- And they shall beat him. It is no wonder if the man who falsely accuses is bidden to be beaten and to pay a fine, but the girl, if she be guilty, to be stoned: because through the woman was the beginning of sin, who seduced the man and sinned doubly, first against God, afterwards against the man; the man only against God

VERS. 19.-- A hundred sicles, etc. By the perfection of doctrine 476Dand of solicitude which he should spend upon the people subject to him, or of penance. For the hundredfold number is perfect, the fiftyfold consecrated to penance.

VERS. 23.-- If a man have betrothed a maid that is a virgin. In this chapter, as in the two preceding and the two following, he condemns bodily fornication.

VERS. 26.-- She shall suffer nothing. But she shall be called back to the faith begun, being freed from her enemies through the grace of baptism.

VERS. 29.-- He shall not be able. (AUG., quaest. 34.) It is deservedly asked whether this be the penalty, that he cannot put her away for all time whom he disorderly and unlawfully violated; for if we understand that she cannot, that is, ought not, be put away for all time, because she has been made his wife, there occurs the fact that Moses permitted 477Aa bill of divorce to be given and the wife to be put away. But in those things which unlawfully corrupt he willed that it should not be lawful, lest he should seem to have done it for a mockery, and rather to have feigned that he took her. This he commanded also concerning her whom her husband had calumniated concerning the tokens of virginity not found.

VERS. 30.-- He shall not. Our Father is Christ, whose wife is the Church; it is not lawful for a man to transfer the dignity of that bridegroom to himself, nor to violate his bride, so as to change her love unto himself, seeking his own praise and not God's out of the gift of virtues or out of preaching; to whom it is fitting to say: Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to thy name give glory (Psal. CIII).

VERS. 1.-- He shall not enter. All who live softly, 477Band do not accomplish a manly work, cannot remain in the congregation of the saints, nor are they worthy of entrance into the kingdom of heaven, which suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.

Mamzer. Degenerate in sense or in morals; or one whom the depravity of heretics has made degenerate in the receiving of the sacraments; or whom the rite of heathenism or of Judaism has stained. He shall be received into the Church when with entire faith he shall have kept the decalogue of the law according to the institution of the Gospel, and, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, shall have renounced carnal converse; whence: If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments (Matth. XIX). And elsewhere: I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved (Joan. X).

VERS. 3.-- The Ammonite and the Moabite. (AUG., quaest. 33.) Another edition, etc., as far as they imputed it to the women, 477Cwhom they chose rather to preserve.

The Moabite. It signifies that heretics are ever to be driven from the Church, as if to say, A man that is a heretic, after the first and second correction, avoid.

VERS. 4.-- Because they would not meet us with, etc. The Hebrews hand down that these nations, being near of kin to them, met those going forth out of Egypt with bread only, though they knew that we laboured in the desert most of all with thirst, and therefore they were made subject to this curse.

Mystically they designate heretics, who to those fleeing out of the Egypt of this world unto the true land of promise offer polluted bread, not sweetened with the water of wisdom, and therefore they are estranged from the Church.

VERS. 5.-- And he turned. Because often persecution is the cause of a greater prosperity. For to them that love God all things 477Dwork together unto good (Rom. VIII).

VERS. 7.-- Thou shalt not abhor the Idumaean. The Idumaean, the bloody or earthly one, signifies the flesh (whose matter is earthly); the Egyptian, that is, the dark one, the sickly body. We ought not to abhor our flesh, but to cherish it and to furnish it with what is necessary, yet not to make provision for it in its desires: He is thy brother, he says, because we are of flesh and soul. Let us not abhor the Egyptian, that is, the body, in whose land we were sojourners; for the soul, which has a heavenly origin, dwells in the body as a sojourner; whence the Apostle: While we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord (II Cor. V). They that shall be born of them, etc., that is, little by little they shall become spiritual.

478ABy the Idumaean and the Egyptian is signified the present life; and although in renouncing it we shun the Egyptian land, that is, our former converse and the concupiscence of the world, yet while we are subject to the necessities of this world we do not altogether extinguish the Egyptian nation: but, in a manner set apart, we are content with daily food and clothing; in the third generation they shall enter into the Church, because a man of the world can be joined to the saints of God when he shall have believed perfectly in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, or when he shall have been adorned with hope, faith and charity.

VERS. 9.-- When. He instructs the spiritual soldiers of Christ, to whom it is said elsewhere: Every one that striveth for the mastery refraineth himself from all things (I Cor. IX).

If. (AUG., lib. de bono conjugali, cap. 20.) Many things 478Bthe law sets in sacraments and in shadows of things to come, etc., as far as not because a dead body is sin, but it signifies the sin of a soul deserted by justice.

Mystically (GREG., lib. IX Moral., cap. 40.) If there be among you a man who, defiled by a nocturnal, etc. A nocturnal dream is a hidden temptation, etc., as far as and let it be repaired unto the merits of the faithful, which are to be presumed.

VERS. 12.-- Thou shalt have. For God loves bodily cleanness: therefore he commanded that nothing foul should remain in the camp.

Mystically. (GREG., lib. XXXI Mor., cap. 32.) Thou shalt have a place, etc. Certain superfluities of thoughts burst forth from the womb of our mind, weighed down by the burden of a corruptible nature, as it were the heaviness of the belly. But we ought to carry a paddle under our girdle, so that, being always girt for the reproving of ourselves, 478Cwe may have about us the sharp goad of compunction, which may dig into the earth of our mind with the pain of penance, and may hide what bursts forth foully from us.

VERS. 13.-- In the girdle. For with a girdle the reins are girt; therefore by the girdle is designated the contrition of an evil will; whence Job: He looseth the belt of kings, and girdeth their loins with a cord (Job. II).

Thou shalt cover it with earth. Considering our earthly frailty, we ought to cover our filth.

VERS. 15.-- Thou shalt not deliver up the servant (AUG., quaest. 36.) The LXX: Thou shalt not deliver up the boy to his master, who was set beside thee by his master. Not that the master set him there, etc., as far as he explains this, saying: He shall dwell among you in every place that shall please him (I Reg. XXVII).

478DVERS. 37.-- There shall be no harlot. (AUG., quaest. 37.) The LXX: There shall be no harlot, etc., as far as whence we treated there what might seem to us.

Thou shalt not offer the hire of a strumpet. (AUG. quaest. 38.) The LXX: Thou shalt not offer, etc., as far as it had to be said that it is an abomination to the Lord.

The price of a dog, of a ravening one. The Most High approves not the gifts of the unjust. He that offereth sacrifice of the substance of the poor is as one that sacrificeth the son in the presence of his father (Eccli. XXXIV).

VERS. 19.-- Thou shalt not lend to thy brother upon usury. He removes usury and avarice, and bids charity be spent.

And money, which is forbidden to be given for usury, because 479Ait is a vice of covetousness to wish to exact what thou knowest thou hast not lent. This the Lord had, and thence delivered it to be laid out upon the poor, and invited us to the liberality of largess. There is another which we ought to give for usury; whence: Oughtest thou not therefore to have committed my money to the bankers, that at my coming I might exact my own with usury? (Matth. XXV).

VERS. 20.-- But to the stranger. To the unbeliever or the unjust, to whom we give money for usury when for the word of preaching we exact faith, penance and good working.

VERS. 21.-- Thou shalt not delay to pay. Whence Solomon: It is ruin to a man to deliberate or to delay after vows (Proverb. X).

VERS. 24.-- Going into thy neighbour's vineyard. In the church 479Bof another bishop one may correct or confirm certain persons; it is not lawful for him to rule the whole people, or to handle great affairs.

Without. It is not lawful to carry this grace outside the church, because in one house the flesh of the lamb is commanded to be eaten.

VERS. 25.-- If thou go in. There are certain places of Scripture which historically imbue with faith, certain which morally instruct in holy converse; certain which show the mysteries to be venerated not according to history but according to allegory. Warily therefore must one go into the standing corn of one's neighbour, that by discerning thou mayest pluck food, and mayest not, by that which must be hurried, incur the judgment of the reaped harvest.

VERS. 1.-- If he shall take. (RAB. in Deut., tom. II.) 479CA man took a wife, etc., as far as she remained abominable, as unworthy and defiled with error; whence: To you it behoved us first to speak the word of God, but because, etc. (Act. XIII.)

(AUG., lib. I de sermone Domini in monte.) There were in the law many causes of putting away wives, etc., as far as that they who have wives be as though they had none (I Cor. VII).

He shall write. For the hardness of your heart Moses wrote this precept, choosing rather to allow a separation than that a murder be committed.

VERS. 4.-- Lest he sin. He pollutes his land who defiles his body with carnal concupiscences. Therefore it is necessary that the ambition of the present life be tamed the sooner, lest it prevail to have dominion. And when an earthly action has once 479Dbeen repelled, it is not to be sought again: let not him look back who had put his hand to the plough.

VERS. 5.-- When he shall have taken. As if to say, whosoever binds himself with carnal desires, let him acknowledge that he is not fit for the rule of the Church, nor for the spiritual warfare: because no man being a soldier to God entangleth himself with secular business, that he may please him to whom he hath approved himself (II Tim. II); whence: Impose hands hastily upon no man.

(ISID.) He takes away the upper millstone who says to one weeping for his sin: Thou shalt have no pardon for what thou hast committed. He takes away the lower who, soothing the sin, says: Do evil as much as thou wilt, God is merciful and ready to pardon; both millstones are usefully had, if hope be with amending fear, and fear with hope.

480A(GREG., lib. XXXIII Moral., cap. 16.) Thou shalt not take the lower stone for a pledge, etc. Sometimes we say "to take" for "to offer," etc., as far as and he fears in vain who does not trust.

VERS. 7.-- Thou shalt take away. (AUG., quaest. 39.) Scripture says this continually, etc., as far as which, expounding, he says: He that stole, let him now steal no more (Ephes. IV).

VERS. 8.-- The plague of leprosy. Note that this infirmity befalls men on account of sin, as it did Ozias, who usurped the priesthood.

VERS. 10.-- When thou shalt demand back. (AUG., quaest. 41.) It belongs to the work of mercy that the taker of a pledge should not enter into the house, etc., as far as having nowhere to sleep.

Is it not. He that announceth the Gospel, let him live of the Gospel (I Cor. IX). For the labourer is worthy of his hire 480B(Luc. X).

VERS. 16.-- They shall not be put to death. (AUG., quaest. 42). The law also says, etc., as far as he did not wish three or four to be understood.

VERS. 17.-- Thou shalt not pervert. (AUG., quaest. 43). The LXX: Thou shalt not turn aside the judgment of the stranger and of the fatherless and of the widow. Thou shalt not take the widow's garment in pledge. Why does he not say, etc., as far as continence is praised in them, desolation is not commended.

Of the widow. The widow is the soul formerly joined to the devil, from whom, when she is converted, the garment of faith is not to be taken away.

VERS. 19.-- Thou shalt not return. By envying the Gentiles, who are strangers to the testaments of God.

VERS. 20.-- If thou hast gathered the fruits. Even though the proud and the wicked gather, he does mercy who leaves this behind with the 480Cmind that the needy may have it. Moreover, when these things are enjoined upon the people; they who are not in need are admonished not to seek these things. But if they have sought them, they are to be judged as robbers of the poor.

Thy vineyard. The vineyard from which is gathered the wine that maketh glad the heart of man (Psal. CIII).

VERS. 1.-- If there be a cause. (AUG., quaest. 45). The LXX: But if there be a strife between men, etc., as far as so also of the sins which seem to be committed not against God but against man, some are worthy of death, some of stripes.

VERS. 3.-- Forty. The number forty is completed by ten drawn four times. But we, according to the body, consist of four 480Delements: the precepts of the decalogue are taken by the number ten. He bids therefore that the judgment or the vengeance, in which the sin of the flesh is punished, be ordered according to the precepts, and he wills all the precepts to be understood in the decalogue.

(ISID.) In the number forty this time is figured, etc., as far as there we are found without sin.

VERS. 4.-- The mouth of the ox that treadeth out. (ISID.) In the ox is expressed the life of those that work, of whom it is said: For the labourer is worthy of his hire (Luc. X). Scripture wills therefore that carnal things be supplied to those from whom we receive spiritual things, who, being occupied in teaching, cannot provide themselves with the things needful.

VERS. 5.-- When. (AUG., quaest. 46.) The LXX If 481Abrothers have dwelt together before, etc., as far as or adoption made another father whom Joseph could have.

VERS. 5.-- Shall have died. He suffered and ascended into heaven while the synagogue still remained barren.

But he shall take, etc. He who is strong to rule, in whose face, when he is unwilling, the woman spits. For he who cares not to profit others by spiritual gifts — the Church, upbraiding him too for his goods, casts as it were spittle in his face.

VERS. 9.-- The shoe. Of which it is said: Shod feet in the preparation of the Gospel of peace (Ezech. VI). If we bear the care of our neighbour as we bear our own, we fortify both feet with a shoe; but he who, thinking of his own advantage, neglects that of his neighbours, as it were loses with disgrace the shoe of one foot.

481BFrom the foot, that is, he shall show him deprived of the reward of preaching. For the feet of teachers are shod, because, fortified by the examples of the fathers who went before, they have imitated their steps of preaching. He is shod on both feet who profits himself and others.

VERS. 11.-- And one against the other. The Catholic and the heretic, whose contention is perpetual, because their intention is unlike: for the one defends falsehood, the other truth; and it behoves us to resist error, lest the fool seem wise to himself.

And she shall put forth. He shall have wished by false ignominy or by an abominable action to stain the converse of the Catholic or to defame his teaching.

The privy parts. The weaker members of the Church, whom, namely, they will wish to deceive by flattering or to deride by insulting.

481CVERS. 13.-- Thou shalt not have in thy bag. In Leviticus the same is forbidden. Solomon also says: A great weight and a small, and double measures, are unclean before God (Prov. XX).

(ISID.) Thou shalt not have in thy bag. Spiritually also we must take care that we have not diverse weights in the heart, that is, that, softening the rule of strictness for ourselves, we overwhelm those to whom we preach the word of God with stricter precepts, as with heavier weights. And when we do this, we weigh out the reward and the fruit of the Lord's precepts with a diverse weight; whence: A double weight is an abomination to the Lord (Prov. XX).

VERS. 17.-- Remember what. The Hebrews hand down that 481DAmalec slew the lepers and those with an issue of seed, and others set outside the camp, and these they say are the hindmost of the Lord's army. Amalec is "licking blood." These are the demons who withstand us as we go forth by baptism out of the spiritual Egypt, and who strive to slay, by suggesting sins, those who are hindmost in virtues and wearied in the journey of this life. These, when the Lord shall have given the power, we ought utterly to overthrow, and in every way to cast out and destroy their suggestions, lest, if we have kept back any remnants, as Saul did, we be overthrown with them as disobedient.

VERS. 1.-- And when thou shalt have entered, etc. Just as the Israelites 482Ain the land of promise are bidden to offer their first-fruits for a giving of thanks, because they were snatched out of Egypt, so let us, entering through the spiritual Jordan — that is, baptism — into the land of the Church, place in the basket of our manner of life the first-fruits of good working, and let us offer them to God upon the altar of the catholic faith, that our priest Christ may receive them; and there let us confess to the Lord, saying that the Syrian — who is interpreted "lofty," or "moistening," that is, the devil — was pursuing our father, that is, the first-formed man, that, having deceived him through pride, gluttony and avarice, he might deprive him of the possession of paradise; whence as an exile he sojourned in the Egypt of this world in a small number, because many followed idolatry, and few remained faithful. But after the law was given and more arose, receiving the knowledge 482Band the faith of the one God, the Egyptians — that is, the demons — afflicted them, laying upon them the most grievous burdens of sins. But God looked upon the affliction and the labour of the human race, and sent his Son, who is called his hand and his arm, that he might snatch them out of the power of darkness and carry them over into the kingdom of light. So he handed over to us a land flowing with milk and honey, that is, the mighty Church, where there is the milk of innocence and the honeycomb of doctrine, whereby little ones are nourished, and the honey of a sweet and manifold wisdom, whereby the perfect are filled.

VERS. 10.-- Which the Lord thy God hath given, etc. As if to say, I offer nothing but what he has given; for every good thing is from God.

Of the Lord thy God. Who will keep them as it were beneath his eyes, and 482Cwill render them on that day, a just judge.

VERS. 11.-- Thou shalt feast, with a spiritual banquet, of which it is said: Eat, O friends, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved (Cantic. V).

And the Levite, the true minister of God, taken from among men and appointed for men in the things that pertain to God.

VERS. 12.-- When thou shalt have completed: that Tobias fulfilled this of the law; but those who were far from the temple gave in the third year the tithes gathered of three years to the poor and to the Levites who dwelt with them.

VERS. 2.-- Stones. Teachers ought to lay aside all roughness, and therefore to appear shining, having 482Dthe law written in their hearts.

VERS. 4.-- When therefore. (ISID.) How this was done, etc., as far as who are worthy of the building of the altar.

Those who go beside Mount Gerizim, chosen for blessing, figure those who come to salvation not out of fear of punishment, but kindled by love of the heavenly promise. Those who go beside Mount Ebal, on which the curses were pronounced — these are they who perform the precepts of the law not out of love of the blessings or of the promises, but out of fear of punishments. But all of them go about the ark, because they do not withdraw from the bosom of the Church. Yet nobler are they who serve out of charity than they who serve out of fear of punishment. But Jesus alone can know 483Aminds of this sort, and can station some on Mount Gerizim for blessing, others on Mount Ebal for cursing — not that they should receive the curse, but that they should beware of the curses that are written and appointed for sinners, and out of fear of punishment repent.

VERS. 13.-- And they shall pronounce. Because the priest ought urgently and mightily to preach the word to the peoples, that they may know what perils remain if they pass by the commandments of God, and what benefits follow if they obey — namely, in the present life comfort, and in the life to come an eternal reward. Now the curses and the blessings belong, according to the history, to those who love earthly happiness or dread earthly unhappiness. But Christians must above all take heed lest through disobedience they suffer a want of spiritual things; for to perfect 483Bmen there often comes an indigence of earthly things, while there is always at hand an abundance of virtues, whence: Even unto this hour we hunger and thirst and are naked, etc. (I Cor. IV).

Cursed. Not only the idolatry of images is forbidden, but every error of heretics. For these are the artificers of vanity and of superstitious dogma, who out of their own heart fashion for themselves what gods they will.

VERS. 16.-- All the people. All ought to praise good things and to detest evil things, prelates as well as subjects.

VERS. 17.-- Cursed be he that removeth landmarks. This is he who, not content with the catholic faith and doctrine, brings in superstitions and sects.

VERS. 20.-- Cursed be he that lieth with. Every 483Cincest is an abomination, but it strikes especially heretics and schismatics, who by error corrupt the spouse of Christ (who is the father and creator of all). But tropologically it forbids that anyone, by imitating the depraved deed of his father, defame him and reveal his shame.

VERS. 21.-- Cursed. Cursed is he who follows the folly of the Gentiles. A man or a woman cleaving to such intercourse not through frailty but perseveringly is guilty of death.

VERS. 22.-- Lieth, that is, defiles another's soul by teaching depravedly, or by displaying depraved examples. For our father is one, God, and our mother the Church, and we are all brothers or sisters.

483DVERS. 23.-- With his mother-in-law. The mother-in-law is the concupiscence of a depraved deed, because concupiscence is the mother of every sin. Let us therefore diligently take heed that we resist concupiscence, lest we fulfil the things we have desired.

VERS. 24.-- Cursed. In whatever manner, to kill a man is a sin. It seems strange, therefore, why he called cursed only him who shall have struck in secret. But perhaps to strike in secret is to hate in the heart, whence: He that hateth his brother is a murderer (Joan. III). And elsewhere: Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart (Lev. XIX).

VERS. 26.-- Cursed be he that abideth not. This sentence embraces generally both the past and the present and the yet-to-be-spoken commandments of the law, and is the graver the more general it is. For who can, without trangressione, 484Aabide in all the words of the law, since Paul also says: Whosoever are of the works of the law, are under a curse? (Galat. III.) No one could escape this curse, not even the lawgiver, save Christ, whence: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, etc.

VERS. 1.-- But if thou shalt hear. Just as he foretells curses and punishments to the disobedient, so he promises blessings and rewards to the obedient.

VERS. 4.-- The fruit of thy womb. He marks the diverse orders of subjects. For some furnish bodily helps to the teachers; others can labour at what has been enjoined upon them; others, content with simplicity, are eager to please God through innocence 484Bof life: every one has his own gift from God.

VERS. 5.-- Blessed are thy remnants. The reward of a good intention, even if the will has no effect, because peace to men of good will, etc. (Luc. II.)

VERS. 6.-- Coming in. He comes in through the door who, through the catholic faith, ponders and handles within according to the will of God: he goes out when he makes the same manifest before men to the praise of God.

VERS. 7.-- In thy sight. That thou mayest rejoice: The just shall rejoice when he shall see the revenge (Psal. LVII).

VERS. 8.-- And he shall bless. Granting increase and happy success to good works.

The heaven. The prophets and apostles, of whom it is said, The heavens shew forth the glory of God: whom the Lord opens 484Cwhen through them he grants an abundance of doctrine, that the hearts of carnal men, watered by this shower, may put forth the buds of good works.

Thou shalt lend. That is, so great will thy abundance be that thou wilt be able to give money to the nations, but they not so great. Or, ecclesiastical doctrine is understood.

Thou shalt lend to nations. The Church lends to many nations when she spends the divine graces upon the peoples. Nor does she take interest, because she seeks not a present recompense, but a future one. For she excels all, and is the head of the world, not the tail. She is always above, and not beneath; because although she suffers the pressures and persecutions of the wicked in the world, yet she is stronger than her adversaries, and by faith and virtue is pre-eminent over all. Whence, the Lord shall set thee at the head, etc.

484DVERS. 14.-- Thou shalt not turn aside aectinaveris. (AUG., quaest., 48.) LXX: Thou shalt not pass beyond all the words, etc., as far as nor are they to be worshipped on account of these things.

VERS. 15.-- But if thou wilt not hear. Just as he promised a blessing to those who keep the commandments, so he pronounces a curse upon those who neglect them.

VERS. 22.-- May the Lord strike thee. (AUG. in Enchirid., cap. 98.) Who would be so impiously senseless as to say that God cannot turn the evil wills of men — which he will, when he will, where he will — unto good? But when he does it, he does it through mercy: when he does not do it, he does not do it through judgment, who hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.

And with corrupted air. A life polluted by carnal uncleanness. 485AA carnal life polluted by carnal uncleanness. Carnal life is expressed by air, because the human body is quickened by the breath of the air.

VERS. 23.-- Let the heaven be. He compares the elements by which fruits are nourished to the hardest metals, because the sins of men change the order of things, and those things which were established for the comfort of the human race, whence: The whole world fought for him against the senseless.

The heaven is of brass to the transgressors of the law, when they merit no clemency from the holy teachers, but the harshest discipline, since they themselves have not a heart of flesh and a soft mind, but a stony and an iron one. Just as to a hard people the law was given on stone, that from the gift the receiver might be figured.

VERS. 24.-- May the Lord give dust for the rain of thy land: 485Bas if to say, just as dust and ashes bear no fruit, so let the doctrine poured into thee not stir up the buds of virtues, but foretell an everlasting destruction. For the dust signifies the barrenness of good works, the ashes the burning; because the chaff of sins shall be burned with unquenchable fire.

VERS. 25.-- And be dispersed. Just as the Jews, taken captive, were dispersed throughout the breadth of the world because they gathered themselves against God, so the generation of the wicked, dispersed by unclean spirits, is troubled through kinds of punishments, whence: Thy enemies shall perish, and all shall be scattered that work iniquity (Psal. XCI).

VERS. 27.-- May the Lord strike thee with the ulcer of Egypt. Ulcers are painful and festering malice. Blisters, inflated pride. Scab and itch, burning anger and the 485Cmadness of fury. These are inflicted in the present as a fitting punishment for sins: after this life (which is signified in the hinder parts) they shall bear the stench of their crimes in eternal torments.

May the Lord strike thee. Heretics and schismatics, wrapped in the blindness of error while the Gospel grows bright in the whole world, exercising their madness, contradict the catholic faith. Therefore they endure the calumny of the Church and are crushed by the truth.

Senseless and blind they were, when, seeing the miracles of Christ, they said that these were done in Beelzebub, and denied that Christ was God (Matth. VII), nor did they see the truth, that is, understand it.

VERS. 29.-- And thou shalt grope. Darkness came when Jesus was crucified, until the ninth hour, just as 485Dthere was darkness in the hearts of the Jews.

Mayest thou not direct: neither did they believe when Christ preached, nor were they willing to be directed through penance.

VERS. 30.-- Mayest thou take a wife, and another, etc. By the wife is taken the people joined to heretics, with whom the devil commits fornication while it is seduced into error. The beasts are snatched from the heretics when their subjects are freed from them: when they themselves are deprived of life and of doctrine. The substance too, which the Jews prepared for themselves singularly by teaching and by writing, the Church turns to her own use.

VERS. 33.-- The fruit of thy land. The whole usefulness of the ceremonies has been carried over to the Church. She enjoys abundance, the Jews perish of want, whence through 486AIsaiah it is said: My servants shall eat, and you shall be hungry (Isai. LXV).

VERS. 35.-- In the knees and in the calves. Let him take away strength, namely, and statibilitatem. Or let him be struck in the knees, whose last works are condemned.

From the sole of the foot. Just as from the beginning of a depraved will unto the completion of the deed thou hast exercised malice, whence from the sole of the foot unto the top of the head there is no soundness in him (Isai. I). This was fulfilled in the last captivity.

VERS. 36.-- And he shall lead thee. Heretics, or bad catholics, who despise the precepts of God, are taken captive by demons and by divers vices. As the servant, so also the master; and the king as the people, the teacher as the disciple.

486BAnd the king. Shalmaneser king of the Assyrians led Hosea king of Samaria into captivity with the ten tribes: Nebuchadnezzar took captive Joachin, and Zedekiah king of Judah, together with the people.

VERS. 38.-- Seed, etc. We too must take heed that we lose not the bread which strengthens the heart of man, and the wine which gladdens it, and the oil which makes the face cheerful.

VERS. 43.-- The stranger. The casting off of the Jews and the choosing of the Gentiles is openly signified, whence: The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof, and elsewhere: So shall the last be first, and the first last.

(RAB. in Deut., tom. II.) The stranger that dwelleth with thee, etc. The creator of all through the mystery of his incarnation, etc., as far as and shall have esteemed the blood of the testament 486Cpolluted.

VERS. 66.-- And thy life shall be. Nothing is worse among the curses which befell the Jews by the desert of their pride, than to see their own life, that is, the Son of God, hanging, and not to believe in him. But when curses are spoken out of prophecy: they are not from an evil wish, but are foretold. And it could sound thus to the Jews: Thou shalt see thy life hanging, and thou shalt not believe thy life — that is, amid the threats and the treacheries of enemies thou shalt see thy life hanging in uncertainty.

VERS. 1.-- These are the words, etc. (AUG., quaest. 49 in Deut.) LXX: These are the words of the testament, etc., as far as to Abraham concerning circumcision, or to Noah.

486DVERS. 3.-- The great temptations, etc. (AUG., quaest. 50.) And the Lord God hath not given you a heart to know, etc., as far as since the judgments of God, however hidden, are nevertheless just.

VERS. 6.-- You have not eaten bread, etc. (AUG.) Hence it appears that the Israelites, etc., as far as not the beginning of war, but the beginning of wine.

VERS. 18.-- Lest perhaps there be. (AUG., quaest. 52.) LXX: Is there any among you, etc., as far as he had not coveted another's wife for himself.

VERS. 19, 20.-- The drunken the thirsty, and the Lord, etc. That is, lest anyone full of malice and of idolatry seduce him who thirsts to learn and to know the truth, as the heretics do.

• 487A

VERS. 11.-- This commandment, which I, etc. (AUG., quaest. 54.) LXX: For this commandment, etc., as far as without which, if they be done outwardly with the hands and be not done in the heart, the precepts of God are not fulfilled.

VERS. 14.-- The word is nigh thee, etc. That is, the commandments of God are measured and tempered to human strength. This can be taken of the incarnation of Christ, who, having assumed humanity, was seen upon earth and conversed among men.

VERS. 7.-- And he called. The words of Moses to Joshua signify that Christ distributes the land of the living to each according to his proper merits, and fulfils all the promises 487Bof God. For he himself brings the people into the promised land. For with him as leader we enter the heavenly fatherland, he who says: No man cometh to the Father but by me (Joan. XIV). And: No man hath ascended into heaven but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven (Joan. III); for he who is united also ascends through him.

VERS. 10.-- After seven years. In which the present life is signified, which is rolled round by the number seven; or the time of the old law, on account of the sabbath. After seven years, therefore, in the year of remission, the law is commanded to be read in the assembly: because, the observance of the law being completed, the spiritual law succeeds. Whence: When the fulness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, etc. (Ephes. IV).

487CVERS. 24.-- After therefore Moses had written. Deuteronomy is entrusted to the Levites, because the Gospel of Christ is stored up, through the ministry of true priests, in the memory of the Church, which is the ark of the Lord, where the heavenly treasures are stored up. There are the two tables of the testament, namely the books of the law and of the Gospel. There is the urn which contains the manna, that is, the flesh of Christ, in which is the food of eternal life; there is the rod of Aaron which had put forth leaves, because there is the priesthood of Christ, which abides unto eternity, or, for ever, that it may be there against thee for a testimony. The words of the law are unto salvation for those who keep them, and for a testimony of stubbornness and disobedience for those who despise them: whence: There is one that accuseth you, Moses, in whom you trust. For if you did believe Moses, you would perhaps believe me also: for he wrote of me (Joan. V); and 487Delsewhere: The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge (Joan XII).

VERS. 30.-- Moses therefore spoke. The words of Moses are not to be taken simply, because according to the history he reproaches the Israelites, ungrateful to God the bestower, with their treachery; and allegorically he instructs the holy Church; and through tropology he summons to uprightness of manners. Therefore truth is to be preserved in the history, the mysteries in the allegory, the usefulness of discipline in the tropology, that so we may be carried forward to the heavenly contemplation. It is also to be noted that it is said: Moses spoke the words of this canticle, etc., so that he who praises God with his mouth may not contradict it by his work. Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner (Eccli. XIII).

• 488A

Hear, O ye heavens. At the beginning he calls the greatest elements to witness, that if they neglect his commandments he may punish them, convicted by their testimony.

In Hebrew samaiim, that is, heavens, which is plural and of masculine gender, but he wished it to be understood in the singular, as we speak of single cities, Thebes and Athens.

Hear, O ye heavens. (RAB.) Let the heavens hear the allegory, the earth the history.

VERS. 1.-- Hear, O ye heavens, etc. Some think that heaven and earth are summoned to hear as though they were living things, according to that saying: Who looketh upon the earth and maketh it tremble (Psal. CIII), whereas this belongs to the power of God, 488Bnot to their understanding.

VERS. 2.-- Let it grow. He compares the doctrine of the law to rain and to dew, because it demands from the hearts of the faithful the buds of spiritual fruit. For these are the field and the vineyard of God. Such is that saying of Isaiah: As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return no more thither, but soak the earth, water the face thereof, and make it to spring (Isa. LV).

VERS. 3.-- The name. He shews what the rain is. For to invoke the name of the Lord is to preach the Gospel: and he who hears it and does it shall possess the fruit of life.

Of God. Whence: The heavens and the earth were finished, and all the furniture of them: and God completed on the seventh day his work (Gen. II), which is the redemption of the human race, 488Cwhich he shewed to us when, completing the spiritual sabbath, he rested in the sepulchre.

VERS. 5.-- They have sinned against him, etc. (AUG., quaest. 55.) LXX: The blameworthy sons have sinned not against him. For he who sins, etc., as far as according to this, that they did not harm him by their sin, but themselves.

And not. Because not out of faith. For he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name. But to the unbelieving In fidelibus it is said: You are of your father the devil.

A depraved generation. Of which it is said in the Gospel: A depraved and perverse generation seeketh a sign (Matth. XII). And elsewhere: Ye offspring of vipers, who hath shewed you to flee from the wrath to come (Luc. III)?

VERS. 6.-- Is he not, etc. Who is the one God, creator and founder of all, from whom himself, and through him, and 488Din him are all things. A preposterous order. For first God created by disposing that it should be, secondly he made by forming, thirdly he possessed by ruling.

He created. He created when he founded the matter out of which it might be formed. Foolish therefore and unwise is he, because he does not worship his Creator and Maker with worthy veneration: forgetful of that benefit whereby God snatched him out of the hand of his enemies and took possession of him, led him through the Red Sea, gave him manna from heaven, he himself, ungrateful, worshipped idols, saying: These are thy gods, O Israel, that brought thee out of the land of Egypt (Exod. XXXII).

VERS. 7.-- Thy father. The teacher of the law and the preacher of the Gospel, by whose doctrine and example, namely, thou art to be instructed.

489AVERS. 8.-- When he divided, etc. As if to say, although the multitude of men is innumerable, the Lord chose the sons of Israel alone as his inheritance, to whom he manifested his power and his secrets by the tokens of the law and of the prophets.

He appointed. (GREG., hom. 4 in Evang.) Another edition, etc., as far as and they ascend into their lot through a likeness of manner of life.

VERS. 9.-- But the Lord's portion is his people. When God created all the nations, he chose the Israelites alone, whom he glorified with the knowledge of himself by signs and miracles.

VERS. 10.-- He found. Because on Sinai he entered into a covenant with him, gave manna, and brought forth water from the rock, furnished quails; and in the desert, leading them about for forty years, 489Bhe taught them his precepts.

He led about. By spreading the Church throughout the world, by directing it into the way of his commandments.

He kept. Many were laid low in the desert, but after they had transgressed the commandments of God.

VERS. 11.-- As the eagle. The eagle, according to the natural philosophers, is named from the keenness of its eyes, and sees so sharply that, when it is borne over the seas on unmoving wing and is not visible to human sight, it sees the little fishes swimming in the sea, and, descending like a hurled weapon, drags the prey it has seized with its wings to the shore. Its young too, as they grow their feathers, it beats with its wings and provokes to fly. So Christ, exhorting us by words and by examples, carries us forward to the heights, that we may follow whither he has gone before; whence: Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together (Matth. 489CXXIV). Exalted also above the heavens and withdrawn from human sight, he sees with the eyes of mercy those swimming in the sea of this world, and with the wings of love he draws them to the shore of eternal security. Whence: If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself (Joan. XII).

As the eagle, etc. The eagle, as they say, when it sees its young growing their feathers, turns them toward the sun, and nourishes the one that gazes upon the rays of the sun with unflinching eye; and if it turns its eyes aside, it neglects it as degenerate; and it provokes its young to fly, and holds up the weary on its wings: so God invites us to the true Sun, has compassion on our infirmities, and holds us up on the wings of grace.

Provoking. --To the possessing of the land of Canaan the Lord provoked his people, helped them, and protected them from 489Dtheir enemies.

VERS. 12.-- The Lord. Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one God. He does not say the Father alone, lest he exclude the Son or the Holy Spirit, but the Lord alone, that is, God.

The Lord. The heretics have as many lords as they cultivate errors.

VERS. 13.-- High. Palestine, which is mountainous; Egypt is flat and low.

The Church, which is lofty in virtue and in knowledge. In her the fruit of the fields is eaten, because there the good seed springs up, that is, the word of God. There is the thirtyfold, the sixtyfold and the hundredfold fruit, that each may eat sufficiently according to his capacity.

490AAnd that he might suck. (GREG., hom. 26 in Evang.) That he might suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hardest stone. That this was done according to the history is nowhere read, etc., as far as the gift of the devil through the unction of the Holy Spirit.

Honey indeed, to the letter, signifies an abundance of all things.

VERS. 14.-- Of the children. Basan is a region which abounds in cattle on account of its pastures: whence it was handed over to the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half tribe of Manasses, because they had many cattle.

And goats. Which signify penitents, because they were offered for sin. It is not enough for the faithful to receive the gifts of virtues, unless they be eager to do penance for what they have committed. Whence: Wash me yet more from my iniquity (Psal. L).

490BHe calls those goats who by their own example minister to others the works of penance, although they have not committed grave things: for they bewail the sins of their thoughts as though they were deeds.

With the marrow of wheat. Of the body of Christ; whence: Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground, etc. (Joan. XII).

VERS. 15.-- The beloved grew fat, etc. Just as the Jews, grown fat with benefits, became idolaters: so certain Christians turn the received mystery of the body and blood of the Lord to their own perdition.

VERS. 16.-- They provoked. Some become heretics, others idolaters, who out of their heart fashion for themselves idols and abominations.

VERS. 17.-- New and lately come. Withdrawing from the worship of God, they found for themselves gods whom their fathers had 490Cworshipped.

VERS. 20.-- And he said: I will hide, etc. Nothing is more grievous than to be deprived of the vision of God; whence: Cast me not away from thy face (Psal. L). Likewise: Turn not away thy face, etc. (Psal. LXXXVIII.)

They have provoked me, etc. As if to say: just as they have provoked me by worshipping a multitude of false gods and by rejecting me, so I will provoke them by taking to myself a multitude of nations and by rejecting them.

And I will provoke, etc. By handing them over to the Gentiles, who once were not a people, but now are the people of God. In like manner Christians who, forsaking the truth, turn aside to errors, are handed over to the malignant spirits, who lost their angelic dignity. Who are well called a foolish nation, hating justice, loving iniquity.

490DVERS. 22.-- A fire is kindled, etc. (GREG. lib. XVIII Moral., cap. 12.) Of those whom the scourges condemn and do not set free, it is written: Thou hast struck them and they have not grieved, etc. For these the scourges begin in this life, and shall remain unto eternity; whence Moses: A fire is kindled in his wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell and downward. For of the present striking it is said: A fire is kindled in my wrath (Jer. XV); of the eternal there follows: And shall burn even to the lowest hell and downward (Psal. LXXXVIII). Yet God does not judge twice for the same thing: for it is one scourge which begins in time, and is consummated in eternal torments.

And it shall devour the earth. Others: they shall eat the earth and the things springing from it, that is, the flesh, on account of the works of lust, a threefold flame [terna; read aeterna, "eternal"] 491Ashall burn; for the things springing from the flesh are the works of carnal concupiscence, which are fornication, uncleanness and the like.

VERS. 24.-- Birds with their biting, Which ate the seed along the way.

The teeth of beasts, etc. Beasts and serpents drag the reprobate along the ground with raging teeth, when what they first persuaded carnal men by flattery in order to seduce them, they now furiously demand of sinners in order to torment them.

VERS. 25.-- Without. The burning of eternal fire shall torture the body, and the greatness of anguish the mind; whence: Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched (Isa. LVI).

The young man. No age, namely, shall be spared, because idolatry has defiled 491Ball.

VERS. 26.-- I will make them cease from among men. They were cast out of their land and dispersed through the whole world. But generally sinners shall be taken away from the land of the saints, and their memory; whence: Therefore thy God shall destroy thee in the end, he shall pluck thee out, and shall lead thee out of the land of the living, etc. (Psal. LI.)

VERS. 27.-- I have deferred. Lest they should blaspheme my name; nor yet have I taken away vengeance.

VERS. 30.-- How. He shews so great a fear of the Jewish nation, after they had sinned against the Lord, that one of their enemies put a thousand of them to flight, and two ten thousand — that is, a few put very many to flight.

VERS. 31.-- Judges. Approvers; even they who worship idols understand that there is one God, who made 491Cheaven and earth.

VERS. 32.-- Of the vineyard, etc. He signifies the wickedness of heretics, who received pure spiritual doctrine from the holy teachers, but corrupted it with their own venom, and perverted it into the bitterness of gall and wormwood. Often is Jerusalem compared to Sodom and Gomorrah; whence: Hear the word of the Lord, ye princes of Sodom of Gomorrah (Isa. I) [Vulg. principes Sodomorum … populus Gomorrhae, "ye princes of Sodom … ye people of Gomorrah"].

Most bitter grapes. Their fruits, namely their works, are most bitter, for they offered wine mingled with gall

VERS. 33.-- The gall of dragons. As if they retained within themselves the venom of malice, lest they should receive the medicine of salvation and of correction. Heretics, like serpents, hide their bitterness and their venom, that they may wound the unwary.

491DVERS. 35.-- Revenge is mine, etc, Paul took from this place: Revenge to me, and I will repay (Rom. XII) according to merits.

In time. As if to say, when I shall take a time, I will judge justices (Psal. LXXIV). Hence he said to Moses praying for the people: In the day of revenge I will visit this sin also of theirs (Exod. XXXII)

The day of destruction is at hand. For each one. For whatever is ended is very short, if it be compared to eternity. According to the history the vengeance upon the Jews makes haste, because in a short time they lost their place and their nation and all their prosperity, because they slew the prophets and the Saviour.

492AVERS. 36.-- He shall judge. By separating them from the wicked, according to that saying: Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause (Psal. XLII).

He shall see that the hand is weakened. Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly, because neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom is among the dead (Eccle. IX).

VERS. 37.-- Where are their gods. As if to say, the idols in which they trusted profit nothing, nor riches nor honours nor the pleasures of the world; for they carry nothing with them of all their labour.

VERS. 39.-- See ye that I alone am, etc. A general admonition, as if to say: idolatry or heresy being left behind and all uncleannesses despised, be ye converted to the true God.

I will kill. (GREG., lib. VII Moral., cap. 18.) 492BHe kills that he may make alive, he strikes that he may heal, etc., as far as and makes them sensible through the ardour of charity.

VERS. 40.-- I will lift up. Another edition: I will lift up my hand to heaven, and I will swear by my right hand, and I will say: I live for ever. To lift up, or to raise, the hand of God to heaven is to shew the power of his eternity, excelling above all things. To swear by the right hand, that is, by the Son, who is the right hand of the Father, is to confirm his promises in the sight of men, and to reveal his eternity through the Gospel to those who believe in him, because his power is an everlasting power (Dan. VII).

VERS. 42.-- Arrows. The demons, of whom Job says: The arrows of the Lord are in me (Job, VI), as if to say, I will exact so great a vengeance as could suffice even for the demons 492C.

And of the captivity. The heads of captives were shaved, who were sold off, and were said to be sold under the crown. Of the captivity. The head of the enemies is laid bare when the counsel of an iniquitous mind, by which it thought to sin unpunished, is proved to be vain. The heads of the enemies are also the masters, upon whom the last vengeance will overflow; whence: Blood came out of the lake, up to the horses' bridles (Apoc. XIV), that is, the vengeance of torments even unto the rulers of the peoples.

VERS. 43.-- Because the blood. In the judgment the people of God shall be praised, when it shall appear glorious, and the enemies shall be punished with a just recompense.

VERS. 49.-- Go up into the mountain. Abarim is interpreted a passing over; Nebo, in the closing. 492DNebo is said to be a mountain in the land of Moab over against Jericho, above the Jordan, on the brow of Phasga, near Mount Phogor, from which the region round about it is called Phasga even to this day. Moses therefore dies in Abarim and on Mount Nebo over against Jericho, beyond the Jordan: because the law and circumcision went forward as far as Christ and the sacrament of baptism, and there was closed, because Christ is the end of the law. Moses saw the land of promise, but did not enter it, because in the spirit he foresaw, and in the law foretold, the grace of Christ that was to come, but present he did not see him. Whence: Many just men and prophets have desired to see the things that you see, and have not seen them (Matth. XIII).

• 493A

VERS. 1.-- This is the blessing. Well did he set the blessing at the end of Deuteronomy, because Christ, when he was about to ascend into heaven after the completion of the Gospel, lifted up his hands and blessed his disciples. The blessing wherewith he blessed the sons of Israel in Deuteronomy (which is the second law) belongs to the grace of the New Testament, in which the mysteries of the ancient law are unlocked, and the true Israelites obtain, through the man Christ, the blessing foretold through Moses the man of God. And well is the blessing given when the death of Moses is at hand, because, as the shadow of the law dies, the truth of the heavenly gifts is opened. Foreseeing therefore the coming of the Saviour, and unfolding the grace of the New Testament as though it were already past, Moses, full of gladness, exults with the voice of the primitive Church, 493Bsaying: The Lord came from Sina, etc.

(AUG., quaest. 36.) Another reading, etc., as far as whence: Rejoice, ye nations, with his people. Because blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fulness, etc. (Rom. XI.)

Moses the man. Moses signifies the law, which before its death — that is, before it was brought to an end in him — foretold that the Church was to be blessed in Christ.

VERS. 2.-- The Lord came from Sinai. Sinai ( ) [Our digitized source leaves these parentheses empty; the type Migne prints inside them has been dropped in the digitization, here and at the two names that follow. Recovery requires reading the plate.] is interpreted my amphora or my measure or commandment. Seir ( ), hairy or shaggy. Pharan ( ), their fierceness or fruit-bearing. Sina therefore figures the Old Testament, because, holding a fixed measure of commandments according to the decree of the decalogue, it knows how to forbid, not to help: nor does it set free by the spirit of love, 493Cbut binds its subjects by the fear of punishment. Whence: The one indeed on mount Sina, begetting unto bondage, etc. (Gal. IV.) The Lord therefore came from Sina, that is, out of the law and the prophets he became known to those who believe. For thence he comes, when there he becomes known to one who reads and understands. Whence: He, beginning from Moses and all the prophets (Luc. XXIV), expounded to the disciples, to whose hearts he desired to come. Risen from Seir according to the flesh, that is, from the Jews, most harsh with the thornbrake of malice and perfidy, he enlightened the faithful by the rising of a new light, as the true sun of justice. Whence: To us shall the sun of justice arise (Mal. IV). And elsewhere: A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man shall spring up from Israel (Num. XXIV).

The Lord, etc. Sina is interpreted temptation. The Lord 493Dtherefore came from Sina, because he took our flesh, in which he might be tempted.

And from Seir, etc. Who is also Edom or Esau. This is the people of the Jews, who by the desire of the gullet lost the glory of the birthright as though for a mess of lentils, and, supplanted by the faith of the younger people, forfeited the grace of the blessing.

From Seir he arose for us, etc. This mountain they went about for a long time, and on it received certain precepts. Seir, that is shaggy or hairy, signifies the gentile world, which was horrible with sins; from which arose the Lord, who at the end will preach to the Jews out of the Church of the gentiles, because the remnant shall be saved.

He appeared from mount Pharan, etc. Which is interpreted fruit-bearing, 494Abecause from the Church of the gentiles, fruitful in virtues, the faith of Christ was preached to the Jews. Christ therefore appeared from Pharan; because the more the fierceness of the unbelievers blazed against him, the higher grew the knowledge of his divinity. For the more he lay hidden amid the insults of the passion, the more he shone forth through the power of the resurrection; and they who before persecuted him with the fierceness of unbelief, afterwards clung to him with the ardour of charity; of whom it is added: And with him thousands of saints.

In his right hand a fiery law. The tables, namely, in which is the law, which purges and burns away sins. The right hand of the Father also is the Son, who brought the law of charity, saying: I came to send fire upon the earth, etc. (Luc. XII.)

In his right hand a fiery law. The right hand, the Gospel, 494Bthrough which eternal beatitude is promised; which is called the right hand, not the temporal one, as in the law, which is called the left. Whence: His right hand shall embrace me. In this right hand is a fiery law, that is, charity kindled by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the elect. Whence he says: The fulness of the law is love (Rom. XIII). And elsewhere: A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another (Joan. XIII). This, poured into the apostles by the fiery tongues of the Holy Spirit, wrote out all the fulness of the law as with the finger of God, and made them fervent in spirit and shining in work. But because it was given not to one people, as the law of Moses was, but to all, he adds: He loved the peoples.

VERS.--3.-- He loved. Whence: Greater love than this no man hath, than that he lay down his life, etc. (Joan. XV).

494CAll. Without respect of persons; whence: He that feareth God and worketh justice is acceptable to him (Act. X).

All the saints. Sanctified, namely, in the name of him whose words they heard: Be ye holy, for I am holy, etc. (Lev. XIX).

In the hand. That is, the power by which they are protected. Whence: No man shall snatch them out of my hand, etc. (Joan. X). These through charity are one kingdom in the hand of the Lord; whence Isaias: And thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a diadem of the kingdom in the hand of thy God (Isa. LXII).

And they that draw near, etc. As if to say: Let not those be saddened who did not hear Christ teaching in the flesh, as though they were deceived by men. Through the mouth of the saints Christ speaks; through the feet the doctrine of the head 494Dis heard; whence: He that heareth you heareth me, etc. (Luc. X.) Or those draw near to his feet to receive doctrine who, burning with spiritual desire, keep watch day and night over the evangelical and apostolic Scriptures. But because these things have been said of the New Testament, there follows that in whose voice Moses speaks of the old law, saying: He commanded us a law, etc.

VERS. 4.-- An inheritance. Because this is the profit of the law, the inheritance promised to Abraham: If you shall be willing, and shall hearken, me you shall eat the good things of the land.

It shall be with the most upright, etc. Jacob, blessed by the angel, was called Israel, that is upright of God; and the Jew converted to the faith, blessed by him after the resurrection, against whom he prevailed in the passion, is called most upright for his 495Aprofession of justice. Whence: Hear, O Jacob, my servant, and most upright, whom I have chosen, etc. (Isa. XLIV.)

VERS. 5.-- A king. Christ. But I am appointed king by him, namely that he may make a kingdom and a power, who is himself the first king and power.

With the tribes of Israel. Of whom is the primitive Church. Well are the princes said to be gathered first, and then the tribes, because the apostles were first, and through them the others believed.

VERS. 6.-- Let Ruben live. The salvation of the primitive Church having been foretold, he bestows their proper blessings upon the several tribes; and foretelling the true Israelites out of both peoples, he prophesies now of Christ, now of the apostles, now of the primitive, now of the whole Church.

495BLet Ruben live. As if to say: Although Ruben violated his father's bed, and lost the dignity of the firstborn, yet let him live, and doing penance let him not die. The sons of Ruben, that is, the Jews signified by Ruben, violated the bed of the Father, that is, they defiled Christ his Son with unclean spittle: yet they are reserved unto penance, but few in number in comparison with the Church of the gentiles.

Ruben. Son of vision, because his mother said (Gen. XXIX): God hath seen my humiliation. This is the firstborn, signifying the elect from among the Jews, who, dead by denying and crucifying Christ, and converted by the preaching of the apostles, were made alive by the faith of Christ: these are sons of vision, because saved by the regard of the divine mercy.

VERS. 7.-- This is Juda's. Juda, who is interpreted 495Cconfession, signifies the universal Church, in which is the confession of divine praise and the giving of thanks. Of whom his mother said: Now will I confess to the Lord (Gen. XXIX). This is the true spouse of Christ, who, adorned with the necklaces of the virtues, is not proud, but gives thanks; and for her he prays, that she may be heard.

Hear, O Lord, the voice of Juda. Of the kings, namely, who were of Juda, who longed for Christ; and of Christ himself, who said: I confess to thee, Father, king of heaven and earth, etc. (Luc. X.)

His hands. He prayed the Lord for Juda, to whom he now promises the Lord's helps, as though Juda should not presume upon his own strength, but trust in him who said: Be of good heart, I have overcome the world (Joan. XVI); whose hands upon the cross fought against spiritual wickednesses, that 495Dthrough death he might destroy him who had the empire of death.

A helper. That he may conquer and say: Upon my high places the conqueror will lead me (Habac. III): for he himself conquers in us, and for his own victory crowns us in mercy and compassions.

VERS. 8.-- Perfection. As if to say: how perfect thou art, and how holy thy doctrine, thou hast declared through Moses. Or, from thy holy man, that is, from the Levites, is thy perfection and thy doctrine. For they ought to keep the law, to do it and to teach it.

Thy perfection. These things are said to the choir of angels and of martyrs and of all the perfect, who fulfilled the perfection of charity by dying for the Lord; 496Aand who, renouncing the world, attained the summit of ecclesiastical doctrine, as true Levites having no portion in the land, but saying with the Prophet: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance, etc. (Psal. XV); according to that word: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, etc. (Luc. IX.) He that shall lose his life for my sake, etc. (Matth. X.) But Christ is the true Levi, who did and taught all these things. To him the Levites themselves cling, imitating him even unto blood; of whose passion it is subjoined: Whom thou hast proved in temptation, etc.

At the waters. It is the place where he refused to Moses and Aaron the entrance into the land of promise.

At the waters. It signifies the law, which refused the entrance of the kingdom of heaven to those who live ill. The waters, the peoples, who contradicting cried out: Crucify him. 496BHis blood be upon us, and upon our children (Matth. XXVII). To the sum of Levi's perfection he adds:

VERS. 9.-- Who said to his father. When they made the golden calf, at Moses's bidding the Levites, girded with swords, slew the idolaters from gate to gate. In the avenging of idolatry they did not, as it were, know their own, because they killed without distinction. Whence: Unless a man leave father and mother and wife and children for my sake, he is not my disciple (Luc. XVIII).

Who said to his father and his mother, etc. In temporal things also we ought to profit more those to whom we are more nearly joined. We ought to acknowledge the bond of earthly kindred; but if it hinders the course of the mind, to ignore it, so that affection may fill the bowels of the mind, yet not turn it away from its spiritual purpose. This the cows well suggest, 496Cwhich, tending to the mountains under the ark of the Lord, walk with affection and with unbending resolve: going on for their calves they lowed, but, the journey once taken up, they did not turn their steps aside.

VERS. 10.-- They shall put incense. As Aaron, standing between the dead and the living, made supplication for the people. They shall put incense. The prayer of the saints is a most sweet incense to the Lord: by which (when the people sins) the Lord's anger is mitigated, because, cleansed of every earthly filth and kindled with heavenly desire, it burns like incense in the sight of God, and, as a holocaust from the altar of a pious heart, the flame of devotion flies up into heaven. This befits especially the apostles and martyrs, of whom it is said: As gold in the furnace he hath proved them, and hath received them as the victim of a holocaust (Sap. III).

496DVERS. 11.-- Receive. As things pleasing, that thou mayest reward them. Now to each are given white robes, that is, the gladness of souls; and in the judgment, according to the body, immortality being received, they shall shine as the sun and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds, namely by burning up the empty and unfruitful adversaries; of whose punishment it is subjoined:

Smite their backs. As if to say: they seemed to themselves to shed the blood of the martyrs unpunished, but behind their back, as it were, an unforeseen punishment was being prepared, that is, eternal damnation, into which they shall fall and shall not be able to rise. Whence: A rod for the back of the imprudent (Prov. XXVI).

VERS. 12.-- And to Benjamin. He seems to allude to the history, because Jacob, patriarch and prophet, filled 497Awith the Spirit, loved Benjamin uniquely, and by God's dispensation the place devoted to the divine worship is decreed to be kept by his tribe; whence he adds: As in a bridal chamber all the day, etc.

Most beloved. Christ is the most beloved of God the Father, who says of himself: This is my beloved Son (Matth. XVII). He dwells confidently at the right hand of the Father, to whom it is said: Sit thou at my right hand (Psal. CIX).

Otherwise: Benjamin, called son of the right hand instead of son of sorrow, expresses Paul, made an apostle and a vessel of election out of a persecutor: for he himself was of this tribe; and it was fitting that, as the Lord's forerunner was foretold by a prophetic oracle, so the teacher of the gentiles, who was to profit the whole world, should be proclaimed among the great mysteries of the Church. In whose mind Christ 497Bdwelt with confidence, when amid innumerable perils he preached him steadfastly before gentiles and kings. Of whose soul it is said:

As in a bridal chamber he shall abide all the day. Either enjoying with wondrous delight a marital wedlock, and making it fruitful with the offspring of the virtues, and forsaking the secret place of that most peaceful breast through the unquiet of no vice; or, sitting in it as in a bridal chamber, like a comely bridegroom, he joins to his embraces, through his preaching, the virgin minds of believers. Whence: After her shall virgins be brought to the king (Psal. XLIII). He himself also says: For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ (II Cor. XI).

The Divinity also dwells confidently in the humanity of Christ. He shall abide in a bridal chamber, signifies that 497Cin the womb of the Virgin the Church was joined to the heavenly bridegroom, she who rests confidently in the strength of Christ's power and in his works.

And he shall rest between his shoulders. Burdens are carried upon the shoulders, and therefore in them sturdy patience is designated. And the more gladly did Christ rest in him, the harder were the labours he bore for his sake: the more closely was he embraced, the less was he torn from that embrace by any terror. Whence he says: Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? (Rom. VIII.)

VERS. 13.-- To Joseph also he said. Joseph is interpreted increased. This is Christ, who, cast off by his brethren the Jews, was made prince in the Egypt of this world, and freed the human race from the want of famine by the dispensation of the evangelical 497Dwheat: who is truly the Saviour of the world.

Of the blessing of the Lord be his land. To the letter, it signifies the fertility which the two tribes out of Joseph, that is, Ephraim and Manasses, had in abundance of crops, of fruits, and of pasture for their flocks. This is Basan, a most fertile region, whence it is interpreted fatness.

By the mildness of the sky, and by dew, the fruits, and the abundance of springs and of rivers, are delighted with man, which things are signified in the deep.

Thou hast blessed, O Lord, thy land, namely the Church, which is filled divinely, not by its own power, but by the blessing of the virtues. Whence: Blessed be God, 498Awho hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly things in Christ (Ephes. I).

Of the heavens. The apostles and evangelists are called heaven because of the unity of faith and of doctrine, of whom it is said elsewhere in the plural: The heavens declare the glory, etc. (Psal. XVIII.) For in them, shining with life and contemplation, God dwells as in heaven, thundering terror, raining down consolation, and flashing with miracles.

Of the dew. Of heavenly preaching, which is of wondrous subtlety and grace, by which hearts are watered against the heat of temptation, and that they may always be green with virtues; whence: God give thee of the dew of heaven, etc. (Gen. XXVII.)

Of the deep, namely that it may become the fatter, bedewed from the spring that rises up, like the paradise of God. Whence: A spring rose 498Bout of the earth, watering the whole surface of the earth (Gen. II). From the sea his understanding abounded, and his thought from the great deep. For in vain does the word of the teacher water from without, unless the grace of the Creator waters from within. Whence he subjoins: Of the fruits of the hills, etc.

VERS. 14.-- Of the sun. Of Christ, who is the sun of justice, who says: The just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matth. XIII), because we shall be like to him.

And of the moon. Of the Church, which receives these fruits from the sun, that is, from Christ: let her therefore always look upon the sun with full devotion, lest at any time, turned away, she lose the light.

VERS. 15.-- Of the fruits of the everlasting hills. The everlasting hills are the faithful of the Old Testament, humble sons founded with unmoved firmness upon the faith of the prophets and patriarchs (unde: Mons domus Domini elevabitur super colles (Isa. II) ), with whose fruits the land of Joseph 498Cis blessed, when the Church bears fruit in faith by the doctrine of Christ's prophecy and by the example of virtue. And it is to be noted that above, in the fruits and the dew of heaven, evangelical doctrine is signified, here, in the top of the ancient mountains and the fruits of the everlasting hills, the legal and prophetic; and by both the land of Joseph is enriched, because holy Church is formed by the pages of both Testaments and by the examples of the new Fathers and the old; whence: All fruits, my beloved, that is, the new and the old, I have kept for thee (Cant. VII), and: Every scribe instructed bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old (Matth. XIII). The Manichaeans therefore and the Jews (because the former do not receive the Old, the latter the New Testament) cannot inherit in this rich land.

498DVERS. 16.-- And of the fruits. The Church, fruitful in the whole world with the fruit of justice and with the largess of the charisms, has received of the fulness of her Joseph; whence there follows:

The blessing of him who appeared. The whole Joseph, that is, head and body, is full of blessing, but the fulness of the blessing is chiefly in the head; whence: Like the ointment on the head, which ran down upon the beard of Aaron, etc. (Psal. XXXII.) He, pre-eminent over his brethren, that is, over the faithful, by the privilege of grace, shone forth with the sevenfold Spirit as a true Samson, a Nazarite from the womb of the Virgin, that is, consecrated to God, as it were with his seven locks untouched.

Upon the head of Joseph, of Christ, who is the head of the Church, in whom all nations are blessed, of whose 499Apassion and resurrection it is subjoined: As of the firstborn of a bull, etc.

As. (AUG., quaest. 56.) The firstborn of a bull is his beauty. It is not to be read in such a way that he is called the firstborn of a bull: but, since he is the firstborn, his beauty is the beauty of a bull, because of the horns of the cross.

Christ is the fatted calf, whom the Father sacrificed for the returning Son as the firstborn out of the herd of the fathers, who on the third day was raised up and appeared in glory, who is the firstborn of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth, and who after the glory of the resurrection adds horns out of the power of the passion.

VERS. 17.-- Horns. He compares Joseph to the horns of a rhinoceros, signifying that Ephraim would have the chief place among the ten tribes, over which Jeroboam 499Bof the tribe of Ephraim reigned in the time of Roboam the son of Solomon.

The horns of a rhinoceros. It signifies the horns of the cross, of which Habacuc says: There is his strength hidden (Habac. III). For through the weakness of the flesh he is crowned, like a ram, with the thorns of the mockers, and by these horns he stuck fast; but by the incomparable strength of the passion he stood forth a unicorn, the conqueror of death, and of him who had the empire of death, whence: That which is the weak thing of God is stronger than men (I Cor. I)

He shall winnow. By the preaching of the cross, separating the chaff from the wheat: for the word of the cross is foolishness to them that perish.

The nations. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations, etc. (Psal. II.) For of the inheritance of the true Joseph (which is 499Cthe glorious land) all these things are said; and of its tillers, gathered out of both peoples, there follows:

These are the multitudes of Ephraim. These two tribes out of Joseph are blessed not in themselves, but in their parent. They signify the sons of both peoples, who are blessed in Christ, according to that word: In thy seed shall all nations be blessed (Gen. XXII). These the patriarch Jacob, blessing Ephraim and Manasses with his hands crossed in the manner of a cross, and preferring the younger to the firstborn, signified were to be blessed in the faith of Christ's cross, marking in the younger the people faithful from among the gentiles, lesser in time within the grace of Christ, but greater in faith: to whom the grace of the people of Israel passed over, of whose inestimable multitude it is said: These are the multitudes, etc., whence: Many are the children of the desolate, more than of her 499Dthat hath a husband (Isa. LIV).

Manasses, deprived of the honour of the firstborn and yet blessed, is the Jewish people, which for the greater part of itself was reprobated for unbelief, yet in the remainder obtained the blessing, whence: Blindness in part happeneth in Israel, etc. (Rom. II.)

VERS. 18.-- And to Zabulon. Zabulon and Issachar received their passion in Galilee, where Christ chiefly taught, whence he chose the apostles. Through them therefore the apostles are designated, and to them gladness is promised in their going out, because going out from their own borders they subjected the people of the gentiles to Christ, and in their tabernacles for the conversion of the Jews, from whom they themselves also were chosen. For both peoples therefore gladness is promised them, present and to come: 500Abecause in the present they rejoiced over their conversion, and in the heavenly places they were rewarded with eternal gladness.

In the tabernacles, of the Jews, whence: May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Sem (Gen. IX): because in the churches of the Jews there dwells the breadth of the lesser people through the unity of faith.

VERS. 19.-- To the mountain. Sion, namely, or Jerusalem, or contemplation and the height of the virtues.

They shall call. Teaching that justice is only in the faith of Christ. For the end of the law is Christ, unto justice to everyone that believeth (Rom. X). On the mountain they sacrifice the victims of justice, while they teach that all who come to Christ (in whom the Church is built) are justified not by the works of the law but by the faith of Christ, according to that word: But the just 500Bman liveth by faith (Habac. I). True Christians therefore are the victims of justice, which are sacrificed by the apostles, while they are taught to mortify earthly desires, that spiritual things may be made alive; whence: If by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live (Rom. VIII).

There they shall sacrifice. There is no place of true sacrifice outside the catholic Church, which is set upon this mountain.

Who suck the flood. These tribes gave themselves to trafficking, bringing back merchandise from regions across the sea, and hidden treasures, silver, namely, gold or gems, they shall suck as milk, that is, they shall receive them easily.

Who suck the flood of the sea. It signifies the calling of the gentiles. For the sea signifies the whole race of men; 500Cwhence: The kingdom of heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together of all kinds of fishes (Matth. XIII). By the sea, the world; by the net, doctrine; by every kind of fishes, every sex, age and condition is understood. The apostles therefore sucked the flood of the sea as milk, because they drew the throngs of the peoples flowing together to the doctrine of the Gospel into the increase of Christ's body.

Hidden. The Lord knoweth who are his (I Tim. II). For many are called, few, etc. (Matth. XX.)

The sands are the multitude of the unbelieving; the treasures, the precious souls of the elect. So therefore did they suck, that of the hearers of the Gospel some were carried over as vessels of honour into the treasures of the king, while others remained empty, like barren and 500Duseless sands.

VERS. 20.-- And to Gad he said. In the blessing of Gad he seems to foretell the might of the strong men, or the judgeship, who were of that tribe, such as Jephte, and many others.

In breadth. Because all the fulness of blessing rested upon Christ, whence he blessed his own.

Gad. That is, girded, signifies Christ, who, being about to fight against spiritual wickednesses, appeared in the weakness of the flesh girded with the power of the Godhead, according to that word: The Lord is clothed with strength and hath girded himself (Psal. CXII). And elsewhere: The Lord strong and mighty in battle, etc. He is blessed in breadth, because not among the Jews alone, but among all 501Anations he received a most ample kingdom. Whence the Prophecy says:

From the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof, the name of the Lord is worthy of praise. But because he came to this glory through the humility of the passion, he subjoins concerning his death:

He rested as a lion. I have power to lay down my life (Joan. X). The power of death, not the necessity, is expressed; whence: No man taketh it away from me, but I lay it down. (Ibid.)

He roared as a lion. For whatsoever he said, he powerfully fulfilled.

And he took the arm and the head. When, rising from the dead, he subjected to himself the strength of his enemies. He took also the head, that is, he bent the loftiness of worldly empire to the receiving of the faith; whence: 501BAnd all kings shall adore him; all nations shall serve him (Psal. LXXI). There follows concerning the new state of his kingdom.

VERS. 21.-- And he saw his principality, that in his own portion. When kingdoms and nations had been subjected to him, his power appeared, not by the terror of arms, but by the strength of doctrine.

Laid up. Hidden, while he writes his laws in the hearts of the faithful; whence he says: You have the unction from the Holy One, and you have no need that any man teach you; his unction teacheth you of all things (Joan. II). Or, Laid up, because in the law and the prophets he lay hidden in figures, and taught while concealed the things which he declared openly in the Gospel; whence: Beginning from Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them (Luc. XXIV).

501CWho was with the princes of the people. A helper, whence: The Lord working withal and confirming the word with signs that followed (Marc. XVI), because he says: Without me you can do nothing (Joan. XV).

He did justices. That is, justifying those who believe in him, and at length he will judge according to their merits with Israel, that is, with his people chosen for the vision of God.

Justices. The justifications of believers. For he himself justifies the ungodly out of faith. For neither shall any flesh be justified by the works of the law.

VERS. 22.-- Dan also. Others think that by Dan is signified Antichrist, whom they reckon will be born of this tribe: he is the whelp of the lion, that is, of the devil, who shall flow plentifully from Basan, because he is full of confusion; 501Dfor Basan is interpreted confusion, or fatness, or the locust.

Dan also means judgment, Basan ignominy. But Dan signifies Christ, who says: For judgment I am come into this world (Joan. IX). The whelp of a lion, because of his strength, and because he deigned to become a little one; but taking upon himself our weakness, he did not lose his own power, for that which is the weak thing of God is stronger than men (I Cor. I). Of him it is said: The lion of the tribe of Juda hath conquered, etc. (Apoc. V.) The ignominy of the cross indeed he bore from the Jews, who thought that his name would be blotted out by death: but he who through the weakness of that flesh was a whelp in the passion, appeared through the power of the Godhead an unconquered lion in the resurrection; whence the Apostle: And although he was crucified through weakness, 502Ayet he liveth by the power of God (II Cor. XIII). He flowed plentifully, therefore, as it were out of Basan, when, coming through the ignominy of death to the glory of immortality, he watered the whole world with the streams of the Gospel; whence Isaias: The earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the sea (Isa. II).

Dan is a lion's whelp. This he says because of Samson, who was of the tribe of Dan, and strong as a lion, whose possession reached as far as Basan. But Antichrist shall flow plentifully from Basan, because he shall be sated with the fatness of luxury and of all the vices.

He shall possess the sea and the south. Because his possession reaches from the southern quarter westward as far as the Tyrrhenian sea.

He shall possess the sea and the south. For through the apostles 502Bthe Church is won for Christ out of Jews and gentiles. For by the western sea (which is here understood) the Jews are figured, who serve the shadow and the copy, and have not the light of knowledge and of truth; and because for them the sun of justice has set, they have remained in perpetual darkness. This west the apostles possessed, when out of them they subjected to Christ very many enlightened by the grace of faith, that they who once were darkness might be light in the Lord. By the south is understood the Church gathered out of the gentiles, which, the veil of the law being taken away, enjoys the light of the Gospel, and lying down with the bridegroom at noon, contemplates with unveiled face the glory of the Lord.

VERS. 24.-- To Aser also he said: Blessed be Aser among his sons, let him be pleasing to his brethren. Aser, blessed, that is, Christ, the hope of our beatitude, whose firstfruits he showed 502Cto us in rising from the dead. He is blessed among his sons, because believers, born again through his grace, have filled the whole world with his likeness; to whom it is said: Believe in the light, sons, that you may be of the light (Joan. XII). They bring forth the fruit of light in all goodness and justice and truth. And this was done because he was pleasing with true charity to his brethren, that is, to the apostles, whom he chose out of Judea, so that, the figures being despised, they might rejoice in the truth of the Gospel, and because they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus. And whence they had so great an abundance of charity, he adds, let him dip his foot in oil, etc.

And let him dip his foot in oil. Christ our head, ascending into heaven, anointed most abundantly with the oil of the Holy Spirit the apostles — his feet, who were to go about the world preaching, while still standing on the earth 502D— that they might fail through no labour, but be strong with the brightness of unfading joy. He furnished also the incorruptible defence of a shoe, of which it is subjoined:

Iron and brass cal. (GREG., lib. XXXIV Moral., cap. 5.) This concerning the Church, etc., as far as with these shoes the true pasch is to be celebrated.

VERS. 25.-- As the days of thy youth. It signifies that this tribe abounded in prosperity and delights until the old age of the captivity.

As. To the Church is promised a raw and green old age: that as in the beginning she strongly overcame all assaults, so at the end that is at hand she may overcome the fury of Antichrist, whence: Behold I am with you all days 503Aeven to the consummation of the world (Matth. XXVIII). And elsewhere: My old age in plentiful mercy (Psalmus XCI).

VERS. 26.-- There is no God. Marvelling at the things said above, in praise of Christ, who did all these things, he breaks out full of gladness.

Who rideth upon the heaven. By his own power he ascended, and daily draws the Church to himself. Draw me after thee, run in the odour of thy ointments (Cant. I).

The clouds. The apostles, who rain with words, flash with miracles: whom, ascending into heaven, he sent to preach; whence: The clouds gave forth a voice (Psal. LXXVI), which run to and fro with none to delay them, working signs and wonders not by their own power but by Christ's, and terrifying the hearts of mortals as with lightnings, whence: 503BI have fought a good fight, I have finished my course (II Tim. IV).

VERS. 27.-- His dwelling place is above, etc. The body raised from the dead and placed at the right hand of the Father, of which it is said: Destroy this temple (Joan. II).

The arms. The power, namely, of the passion, which defends all, and which he received on the cross with arms outstretched.

Underneath the arms. These arms, namely, defend those who fight against the true Amalec: nor are they weighed down with weariness, as Moses's were, but lift up with unwearied strength, until they obtain the true victory. Let us venerate therefore in the highest the firstfruits of our resurrection, in the lowest the sacrament of our redemption, that we ourselves also, the adversary being overthrown, may obtain the glory of immortality; concerning which it is promised to the true Israel: He shall cast out 503Cthe enemy from before thy face.

And alone. Living, namely, after his own manner and by his own laws, whence Balaam: The people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations (Num. XXIII).

VERS. 28.-- The eye of Jacob. He who here sweated to supplant the vices, there shall unceasingly contemplate, with the lightest glance of the mind, the glory of Christ, who for our sake took the earth of true flesh: so that he by whose body and blood he was here fed through the sacrament of wheat and wine, may there be filled full with the perpetual vision of his divinity, whence: I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear (Psal. XVI). And elsewhere: I will manifest myself to him (Joan. XIV). Then Jacob, turned into perfect Israel, shall see God face to face, with a knowledge of God so ample, so subtle, so delightful, filled as it were 503Dwith the lightest dew, that the knowledge of the preachers by which we are instructed in the present may seem to grow dark; whence: Or knowledge shall be destroyed (I Cor. XIII). And elsewhere: Dark water in the clouds of the air, before the brightness in his sight (Psal. XVII); and when it shall have been come to, all this doctrine shall cease, and they shall all be taught of God (Joan. VI); whence he rightly adds: Blessed art thou, Israel, etc

And the heavens shall be darkened, as though the dew were poured out so abundantly for the making fruitful of the earth, that the sight of men should grow dark. In which it is signified that the Jews, since they loved earthly wealth beyond measure, were darkened, and could not know Christ; whence: If we let him alone so, all will believe in him, etc.

504AVERS. 29.-- Who is like to thee, O people? As if to say: therefore blessed, therefore none is like to thee, because thou hopest for salvation not from thy own strength, but from the grace of Christ, who saveth his people from their sins.

And the sword of glory. In the world to come striking the adversaries with irrevocable severity, when he shall avenge the blood of his servants. The sword is now hidden here in the lowliness of those who suffer; it shall be revealed in the glory of those who rise again, and therefore it is called the sword of glory of Israel. Christ therefore as a shield protects the one who fights, and as a sword of glory shall avenge the one who triumphs. To him, as to the head, the glory of the body is referred at the end of the prophecy, when it is said:

They shall deny. They shall abominate and hate, like Balac, who asked Balaam to drive back the Israelites by cursing them.

504BThou shalt tread. By subjecting to the Church those who abominate and persecute her.

It is to be noted that there are only eleven blessings. For Simeon is not found among these blessings, in whom Judas is excluded from the apostles, only eleven remaining. Thence also by eleven encampments the sons of Israel came from Horeb to the place in which they received Deuteronomy.

VERS. 1.-- He went up therefore. Moses as well as the other fathers of the Old Testament, lifted up in spirit to the height of contemplation, were able to foresee the grace of the New Testament, which is given in Christ, both by the conferring of the virtues and by the receiving of the heavenly kingdom: 504Cbut they could not await it in the flesh, and died in faith and hope, and were led down to the lower regions, where they awaited the coming of the Redeemer, who by the blood of his redemption should free them from thence.

And he showed him. Moses saw the land of promise, and did not enter it, because the law foreshadowed in words and figures the coming of Christ and the doctrine of the Gospel, but led no man to perfection.

VERS. 2.-- All the land. A part of all the land, so much as he could see from the highest mountain. Or he showed him all the land in spirit.

VERS. 5.-- And he died there, etc. God spares none of the elect, and avenges even the least sins, even in his friends; whence: Moses and Aaron his priests, and he added: Thou wast propitious to them, and 504Dtaking vengeance on all their inventions. The law, namely, being ended, which served the Lord in its own time, the city was destroyed and the altar, nowhere sacrifices, nowhere libations, nowhere priest or pontiff.

VERS. 6.-- In a valley. On the mountain he died, in a valley he was buried, because the law was glorious in its own time: but compared with the Gospel it seems hidden and lowly; whence: I gave them precepts that were not good.

And no man hath known. The Jews assert that this was done lest the Jews, ever prone to idolatry, should worship a dead man as God; but according to allegory it signifies that the time and manner of the ending of the law are hidden in the foreknowledge of God alone, and that neither the depth of the wisdom of God, nor the secret of his counsel, lies open to anyone, 505Abecause his judgments are incomprehensible and his ways unsearchable.

VERS. 7.-- Moses was a hundred and twenty years old. If from one, in the natural order, as far as fifteen, thou shalt join together the sums of the single numbers — one, that is, and two and three, and so onward — they make a hundred and twenty. And fifteen is made up of seven and eight: seven is referred to the sabbath, eight to circumcision, because on the eighth day the boy was circumcised. But if thou look to the New Testament, thou hast the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and in the eighth the resurrection of Christ; the hundred and twenty therefore signify those who even in the Old Testament strive to fulfil the precepts of the Law and of the Gospel.

Moses was a hundred and twenty years old. This signifies that he, as well as the other fathers of the Old Testament, after the perfection of the commandments of God, which is in the two 505Bprecepts of charity, are through the grace of Christ and the redemption of his blood made fit for eternal rest and for the life to come; whose eye was not dimmed, the gaze, namely, of holy intention was not darkened with any cloud, nor were the teeth of malice moved, because their order of discretion was not disturbed by the tempest of the vices, a hundred and twenty are the years of the lawgiver, by which number the height of Solomon's temple was confirmed. The primitive Church also, after the passion and the resurrection and the Lord's ascension, received the grace of the Holy Spirit in this number of men. For fifteen, which is made up of seven and eight, signifies the life to come, which is now carried on in the sabbath of souls and shall be perfected in the resurrection of bodies. Fifteen also, brought into a triangle, that is, reckoned together with its own parts, 505Cmakes a hundred and twenty. Fittingly therefore is the beatitude of the elect in the life to come signified by the hundred and the twenty, and the third upper room of the house of God is completed, because after the labours of the faithful, after the rest of souls, the full felicity of the Church shall be fulfilled in the glory of the resurrection.

506AVERS. 8.-- And they wept. Because death reigned even in those who had not sinned, from Adam unto Moses: therefore tears follow him as he goes down to the lower regions.

(HIERON., epist. ad Paulam.) It is no wonder if to Moses and Aaron, etc., as far as but to be within, that is, to minister to the will of the Lord.

And they were completed. From this the custom seems to have arisen, that for the faithful departed the offices of piety are discharged for thirty days.

VERS. 9.-- He laid upon him. In his Scriptures he bore witness to him, saying: God shall raise up a prophet, etc. (Deut. XVIII), whence: If you did believe Moses, you would perhaps believe me also (Joan. V).

VERS. 10.-- And there arose not, etc. This (as is reported) Esdras added of his own, who by a divine understanding restored the library burnt by the Chaldeans, and found the letters which the Jews now use, whence he was also called a swift scribe 506B.

And there arose not a prophet. Because Moses was more excellent than all the prophets of the Old Testament: whence the Jews arrogantly say: We are the disciples of Moses (Joan. IX). But after the Lord of the prophets came incarnate into the world, all that former dignity and shadow of things to come ceased: because the law and the figure was given by Moses: grace and truth by Jesus Christ, who is the end of the law unto justice to everyone that believeth (Hebr. X; Joan. I; Rom. X).

And he buried him in the valley. The Lord, namely. And by this it is signified that, the hindrance of nature having been removed through Christ, the clean soul, once separated, ascends to God: and the body which is buried remains in the earth until the judgment. Ecclesiastes XII: Until the dust 506Creturn into the dust whence it was, and the spirit return to God who gave it. Which return may he grant to be prosperous for us, who liveth and reigneth for ever and ever. Amen.