Commentaria in Genesim
A brother who had set out from the monastery of Scythia, when asked what that saying of the Gospel meant, “Whosoever is angry with his brother without cause,” defined the only just cause of anger as separation from God; for the rest, however great the injuries received, he who is angry is angry without cause. In the same.
In the time of Edgar, king of England, St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, heard from God that there would be peace in England as long as he lived. Therefore during the sixteen years in which he reigned all things were in the utmost peace. For he had bound the neighbouring kings to himself by a lasting treaty, had removed pirates from the sea and robbers from the land; and wild beasts too: for from Guidualus, king of the Welsh, he exacted a tribute of thirty wolves every year, which was kept up until that kind of beast failed through constant hunting. So great a love of the peaceful state carried him on to eternal peace, and raised him among the saints to heavenly glory. So the Life of St. Dunstan has it.
INCREASED BY THE BLESSING OF THE LORD, because we have seen thee blessed by the Lord. Hence Vatablus renders: for thou art the blessed of the Lord. For they give the reason why they sent Isaac away in peace: namely, because they saw him protected and blessed by God, and therefore did not dare to touch him.
32. WHICH THEY HAD DIGGED. Hence also from verse 25 it is plain that Isaac, as soon as he came to Bersabee, ordered the well called Bersabee to be dug out again and cleared, which Abraham had formerly dug, chapter 21, verse 30, but which the Geraritans out of envy had filled up with earth. So Cajetan and Abulensis.
WE HAVE FOUND WATER. So also the Hebrew. The Septuagint are therefore in error here, as elsewhere, who have the contrary, we have not found water.
33. WHEREUPON HE CALLED IT ABUNDANCE. For “abundance” the Hebrew is shiba, which, according to the variety of points, can be read and explained in three ways. First, it can be read sheba, with shin, and then it signifies seven, as if to say: This is the seventh well that I have dug. So Vatablus. Again: this is the well of the seven ewe-lambs, with which Abraham bought it, chapter 21, verses 30 and 31. Lastly, this well of seven, that is, will give many and copious waters. And our Interpreter seems to have read and understood it so, when he renders it, abundance.
Secondly, it can be read shebua, that is, oath, because at this well Abraham and Isaac swore and made a covenant with Abimelech. So the Septuagint.
Thirdly, it can be read seba with sin; so our version reads; and then it signifies fullness, as if to say: From this well we shall be filled; this well will give peaceful, copious and abundant watering to us and our flocks. This sense is plainly according to the mind of Isaac, as is plain from verse 22 and others.
Mystically, says Hugh the Cardinal: “These three wells are mystically the three states of the Church,” of beginners, of the advancing and of the perfect. He digs the first who with the ploughshare of contrition breaks up the hardness of his heart. This is done at the going out of Egypt, and therefore such a one still retains in himself many remains of Egypt, on account of which the devil raises many calumnies; hence that well is called Calumny: for the works of neophytes are not altogether pure. He digs the second well who with the hand of good work drives out of himself all sluggishness of idleness. Ecclesiastes 9: “Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly; for neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom, nor knowledge shall be in hell, whither thou art hastening”; and St. Bernard: “There is no virtue unless the spirit grows in the very difficulty.” He digs the third who from himself casts away temporal things in contempt for Christ’s sake. Philippians 3: “I have counted all things loss, and do count them as dung, that I may gain Christ.” In the first well is the water of contrition; in the second the water of compunction; in the third the water of devotion, in which there is no contention, no difficulty, but serenity of conscience; hence it is called Room. In the first digging the devil is expelled and conquered; in the second the flesh is subdued and cast down; in the third the world, and so all war is lulled, and now there is peace in the flesh, peace in the mind, peace in the world.” In all your works, therefore, be perfect; pray, study, suffer, strive, labour for eternity; despise this short time and temporal pleasures, riches, honours; look up to the eternal.
AND THE NAME (of the well, then of the neighbouring) CITY WAS CALLED BERSABEE. Beer signifies a well; sheba, or seba, or shebua, with shin, signifies an oath, or seven, as I have already said: Bersabee therefore is the same as well of the oath, or well of the seven ewe-lambs which he gave for it: for from that this well was called Bersabee by Abraham a hundred years before. But Isaac, gently turning the shin into sin, said in Hebrew Bersabee instead of Bersheba, and so called this well, and consequently repeated and renewed the name given by his father; but by the slight change of a single letter in another sense than his father. For Bersabee with sin signifies the well of fullness, because the household of Isaac was filled by it, as I have already said.
Lipomanus explains this otherwise: for he thinks that this well was called Bersabee by Isaac with exactly the same sound and sense as it had been called Bersabee by his father Abraham, so that Bersabee is the same as well of the oath: for Lipomanus judges that Moses here looks back to verse 34, as if to say: On the same day on which Isaac swore an oath and made a covenant with Abimelech, a messenger came to him about this well of his father, dug again; hence he called it, as his father did, Bersabee, that is, the well of the oath: because, just as his father, he swore a covenant with Abimelech at the same well.
But the former sense is the genuine one, and according to the mind of Isaac, and our version demands it, which interprets Bersabee not as oath but as fullness and abundance.
Allegorically, Bersabee is the Church militant, in which there is abundance of graces.
Anagogically, Bersabee is the Church triumphant in heaven, in which there is fullness of glory and of every good; of which the Psalmist sings: “I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear”; and: “They shall be inebriated with the plenty of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure. For with thee is the fountain of life.” This fountain and well must be dug out with great labour, and at the same time we must resist the Philistines who hinder the digging of this well, that is, heretics and other impious men; for these quarrel over the wells, that is, the sacraments and Holy Scripture, which they envy and wish to take away from Catholics and pious men: so Rupert.
34. AND ESAU BEING FORTY YEARS OLD MARRIED WIVES. This happened in the hundredth year of Isaac: for Esau was born in the sixtieth year of Isaac. Josephus adds that these wives were daughters of the lords of the Hethites.
35. THEY BOTH HAD OFFENDED THE MIND OF ISAAC, by their evil manners and obstinacy, and because they remained idolaters. So the Jerusalem Targum. See Isaac, first vexed by strangers, namely the Geraritans, here saddened by his own, bearing all things calmly and dissembling.
Note: Esau, against the wishes of his parents, took foreign wives, and was therefore deprived of the paternal blessing and made subject to his brother, as will appear in the following chapter. Let young people learn here to take wives by the counsel of their parents, faithful and well-mannered, as Isaac, Jacob, Tobias and others did.