Commentaria in Genesim
HE DIED. Abraham died in the 40th year after the death of Thare his father, in the 33rd year after the marriage of Isaac (which happened in the 140th year of Abraham and the 40th of Isaac), when Esau and Jacob, born to Isaac at the age of sixty, were already fifteen years old. For although Moses relates the birth of Jacob and Esau in what follows in this chapter, after the death of Abraham, yet it happened before. Moses wished to review together all the deeds of Abraham, his life and death, and then to follow in order the deeds of Isaac and Jacob one by one. Some things, therefore, are joined here by anticipation, although done later, because they belong to the same subject; and for the same reason others are put off, though done earlier, by hysterology.
Note: Abraham was born in the 292nd year after the flood, and lived 175 years; he died therefore in the 467th year after the flood. But Noe died in the 350th year after the flood, when Abraham was 58 years old. Sem, however, the son of Noe, who was the ninth ancestor of Abraham, lived after the flood 502 years; so Sem outlived Abraham by 35 years. Heber, however, the sixth ancestor of Abraham, died in the 564th year after the flood; he therefore outlived Abraham, his sixth descendant, by 94 years. Heber therefore died in the 109th year of Jacob’s life, just as Sem died when Jacob was 50 years old.
Note secondly: Abraham died in the year of the world 2123, when Ishmael was 89 years old and Isaac 75, and he saw two sons of Isaac and twelve of Ishmael, as many princes of peoples. The sons of Cetura were then about 30 years old. For Abraham took Cetura a little after the 140th year of his age, as I have said.
Note thirdly: from the death of Abraham to the descent of Jacob into Egypt, which happened in the 130th year of Jacob’s age, 115 years passed; from the death of Abraham to the departure of Moses and the Hebrews out of Egypt, 330 years passed. Since Moses, therefore, at the departure of the Hebrews out of Egypt, was eighty years old, it follows that he was born 250 years after the death of Abraham.
If Abraham, full of life, desired death, going to the limbo, why should not the Christian desire death, and the martyr the cross for God, going to heaven? Blessed Thomas More, about to be beheaded, when the executioner, as was the custom, asked his pardon, kissed him and gave him a gold angel, saying: “You will do me today a service such as no mortal has hitherto done me or could do.” Hear St. Theodora, running to the place of execution and disputing about martyrdom with the soldier who, by exchanging garments with her, had freed her from prison lest she be violated: “I did not choose you as a pledge of death, but I wished you as a guarantor of my modesty; this sentence that was passed for me was passed against me. I shall die, to be sure, innocent, that I may not die guilty. There is no middle course here: today I shall be either guilty of your blood or the martyr of my own,” as St. Ambrose relates, book 2 On Virgins.
AND WAS GATHERED TO HIS PEOPLE, as if to say, Abraham put off mortality like the rest, entered upon the way of all flesh, and passed from the state of the living to the state of the fathers who dwell in the other life.
Note fourthly: this is the course of Abraham’s life. In the 75th year of his age, called by God out of Chaldea, he set out for Haran; in the 85th year he took Agar, and in the 86th Ishmael was born to him; in the 99th year he was circumcised; in the same year Sodom was burned with fire from heaven; in the 100th year Isaac is born to him;
From this phrase Theodoret, Cajetan, Lyranus and Pererius gather, first, that the soul of man is immortal; secondly, that the souls of the dead do not live solitary but in company and socially, as in a people, whether in heaven or in the limbo, as they were in Abraham’s time; thirdly, in the year 105 Isaac is weaned and Ishmael is cast out of the house; in the year 125 the sacrifice of Isaac took place; in the year 135 Thare dies; in the year 137 Sara dies; in the year 140 he gives Isaac a wife, Rebecca; in the year 160 grandsons, Jacob and Esau, were born to him of Isaac; in the year 175 Abraham dies.
IN A GOOD OLD AGE, ripe and in his due time, whether you consider age or grace: age, because he was decrepit and without sickness; grace, because he departed full of merits. For, as Philo says in the book Who Is the Heir of Divine Things, a certain prophet rightly said that he would rather live one day with virtue than a thousand years in the shadow of death, that is, in sin and an evil life.
FULL OF DAYS, satisfied with living, as the Hebrew has it, and desiring to be dissolved.
it is said of the wicked, such as Roboam, Achaz and others, as well as of the good, “He slept with his fathers”; but of the good and just almost alone, as of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Aaron, it is said: “He was gathered to his people.” Fourthly, St. Augustine, Question 268, Tostatus and Burgensis understand by “people” the society of the angels, to whom Abraham and the other holy fathers were gathered. But Rupert and others, more simply and genuinely, understand by “people” the society of just men, to whom the just are gathered when they die, as ripe harvest is gathered and brought together from the fields into the barn. Fifthly, Burgensis notes that in the Old Testament one reads: “He was gathered to his people,” that is, to Heber, Noe, Abel, Seth, Adam, and others awaiting beatitude in the limbo.
Aristotle complained that nature had granted to animals five or ten ages of life, but to man, born for so great things, had set a term so much nearer. But the faithful man knows that saying: “I know that I rise to descend, to flourish that I may wither, to grow up that I may grow old, to live that I may die, to die that I may be blessed for ever.” Time flies, says Cicero, and the time of this life is nothing else than a race to death, in which, as St. Augustine says, no one is allowed to stand still even for a little, or to go a little slower. The wise man, therefore, who has learned to live, or rather to die, throughout his whole life, knows that this body is a heavy burden for noble souls, and therefore desires it to be restored to the earth from which it has its origin, and dust to be returned to dust, that the free spirit may fly to the fathers and the angels and God.
“Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord.” For the epitaph of Abraham see Ecclesiasticus 44:20, where it says: “Abraham was the great father of a multitude of nations, and there was not found the like to him in glory, who kept the law of the Most High,” and so on. Burgensis adds that before Abraham none of the fathers descended to the limbo; but Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noe and all the just before Abraham went to Purgatory, for the venial sins which they had committed; because, he says, of them it is said that they died, but of Abraham first of all it is said that he was gathered to his people, namely in the limbo. But this is improbable. For Abel died a martyr; therefore he went to the limbo, not to Purgatory. So Noe was a just and perfect man, and walked with God. These and others, therefore, went to the limbo; yet they are not said to have been gathered to their people, because then there was not yet a people and a multitude of the just in the limbo; but they themselves, dying, gradually brought this people together and formed it. For when Abel was slain, there was no one in the limbo, but he himself was the first to go there. Here ends the third part of Genesis, which is from the birth of Abraham to his death, and with which Pererius also ends his third volume of Commentaries on Genesis.
11. AND GOD BLESSED ISAAC, did good to Isaac, enriching him.
14. MASMA ALSO, AND DUMA, AND MASSA. These are the proper names of three sons of Ishmael. The Hebrews use them together proverbially, saying: Masma, Duma, Massa. By this they mean that many things are to be heard, passed over in silence and borne, which the Greeks express by the words “bear and forbear.” For Masma in Hebrew signifies hearing, Duma silence, Massa endurance.
15. THEMA. From him the city and region of Theman, to the south of Idumea, whose king was Eliphaz, the friend of St. Job, who is thence called the Themanite.
From this phrase the Hebrews gather that Ishmael, after his mocking and vexing of Isaac, when he had been cast out of Abraham’s house, changed his mind and his life, lived rightly, and was therefore saved. See what is said on verse 8.