Commentaria in Genesim
I answer: It is true that this contract is commonly wont and ought to be so understood, and so was understood by Jacob and Laban. Jacob therefore used this stratagem on another title, namely, first, the title of compensation: for he was violently oppressed by Laban, an avaricious and unjust man, and could not otherwise extort the just wage of his labours than by this art; for first Laban had done Jacob grave injury, by substituting Lia, deformed and hateful to Jacob, for Rachel promised to him, and by compelling Jacob to serve him seven other years for her. Then, unjustly, after the covenant for the flocks made with Jacob, he separated (verse 35) the single-coloured sheep from the many-coloured, delivering to Jacob only single-coloured ones, from which naturally all the young would be single-coloured and born to him, and none many-coloured to Jacob. Jacob therefore, having no judge to whom to have recourse, of necessity gave judgment to himself, and by this art reclaimed what was his own, that he might obtain the wage due to him.
Second, Jacob did this by God’s admonition (through an angel), as I said; therefore God gave him these cattle of Laban to be born by this art: as God, commanding the Hebrews to despoil Egypt, by that very act gave them the goods of the Egyptians, Exodus xii.
You will ask whether this art and stratagem was natural, or whether it had its effect from supernatural cooperation of God? I answer that it was natural;
for in coition the power of the imagination is wont to be greatest, because then the soul exerts all its force, so much so that some white mothers, from the image and imagination
Verse 38. In the troughs, in the watering-places; the special is added to the general. For “conceived” the Hebrew has they were in heat, namely with desire of coition, which word is of masculine gender, though in the text it is feminine.
of Ethiopians, have borne an Ethiopian. Hear Pliny, book vii, chap. xii: “The reckoning of resemblances,” he says, “is in the mind, in which many chance things are believed to have power: sight, hearing, memory, and images drawn in at the very moment of conception. A thought also suddenly flitting through the mind of either parent is thought to form a likeness or to mingle it; and therefore there are more differences in man than in other animals, since the swiftness of thoughts, the quickness of the mind, and the variety of the genius impress manifold marks; whereas in other animals the minds are immovable, and alike in all, and in each in its own kind.” Galen, in the book which he wrote On Theriac to Piso, relates that a certain woman by gazing at a most beautiful picture conceived a beautiful infant of a deformed husband, “by sight, I think, nature transmitting the image.” St. Jerome here, in the Hebrew Traditions: “Quintilian,” he says, “in that controversy in which a matron was accused of having borne an Ethiopian, argues in her defence that this is the nature of conception, which we have described. And it is found written in the books of Hippocrates that a certain woman was about to be punished on suspicion of adultery, because she had borne a most beautiful infant unlike both parent and kin: had not the said physician solved the question, advising them to inquire whether perhaps such a picture had been in that woman’s bedchamber: which being found, the woman was freed from punishment and suspicion.”
The same St. Augustine relates here, Question xciii, who also in book xviii of The City of God, chap. v, writes that a demon did the like in the ox Apis, which the Egyptians worshipped, by forming it; for it had to be like the former one that was dead, and be marked with white spots. Isidore also, book xii of the Etymologies, chap. i, near the end: “The same,” he says, “is said to be done in a herd of mares, that they set noble horses before the eyes of the conceiving, so that they may conceive and bring forth like them. For lovers of doves also place the most beautiful doves in the same places where those resort, that, their sight being caught, they may beget like. Hence it is that some forbid pregnant women to look on the ugliest faces of animals, as dog-headed apes and monkeys, lest, meeting their sight, they cause them to bear like offspring. For the soul in the venereal act sends inward the forms within, and, sated with their types, snatches their appearances into its own quality.”
While therefore these sheep of Jacob drank, and at the same time the males leapt upon the females, the direct appearance of the peeled and many-coloured rods lying in the waters, mixed with the reflected appearance, or shadow, of the males covering in the waters, presented to the females as it were one variegated appearance, as though they saw their males beautifully variegated with green and white spots: whence by force of imagination they impressed the same colours on their offspring, which they were then conceiving. The males did the same, namely impressed a like power and many-coloured form on their seed, from the like vision and imagination of the rods mixed with the shadow of the females. So St. Jerome, Augustine, Question xciii, Abulensis, and best of all Franciscus Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, chap. xi.
Secondly, one might suspect that rods of poplar, almond and plane, if placed in water, have some power of producing blackness and black spots; for such a power is ascribed to many waters by Aristotle, book iii of the History of Animals, chap. xii, Ovid, last book of the Metamorphoses, Solinus and others.
Finally, the holiness and prayers of Jacob greatly aided this matter; for the angels, favouring Jacob, most vehemently applied the imagination of the sheep, and stirred it to this imagination of many-coloured rods, as is gathered from the following chapter, verse 12. God also, wishing to bless and enrich Jacob, by this imagination, with his own special concurrence, imprinted diverse colours strongly and in many ways on the young at the very moment of their conception; whence St. Cyril, Chrysostom and Theodoret think that these things befell Jacob not so much naturally as by the gift and providence of God, and Jacob himself confesses it in the following chapter, verses 7, 8, 9. You will say: Why, from the green rods, were no young of the four-footed beasts born green? I answer, because in no quadruped is there that proportion and temperament of humours which is necessary for greenness: in place of green colour, therefore, a blackish or dusky colour was painted on the young, says Tostatus, to which the shadow and blackness of the waters, which overshadowed and darkened the greenness, helped not a little, so that they appeared not green but dusky and blackish.
Tropologically, these variegated rods are the various examples of Holy Scripture and of the various Saints, which while we behold, we bring forth and produce offspring like them of virtues and heroic works. So St. Ambrose, book ii On Jacob, chap. iv and vi; Gregory, book xxi of the Morals, chap. i.
IN PART.—For part of the rod, clothed with its bark, appeared green, part, peeled and bared, appeared white.
Verse 39. AT THE VERY HEAT,—because by heat the imagination is chiefly excited, thrives and works. Hence the Physicists teach that the brain requires, first, dryness, for the sake of intellect: for the dry soul is the wisest; second, moisture, for the sake of memory; for moisture easily receives an impressed image; whence the young, because their brain is moist, easily learn anything by heart and commit it to memory; third, heat, for the sake of imagination, whence we experience in studies that, with head and body warm, the conceptions of fancy thrive and flow; with head cold, they are blunted, grow torpid and dull. On the contrary, prudence and sound judgment consist in cold, as Aristotle teaches, sect. 14, problem 8, and for that reason old men excel in prudence and judgment.
41. AT THE FIRST TIME.—As in Lombardy, so in Mesopotamia and Syria, sheep bear twice a year: or at least some conceived in spring, some in autumn. The first time therefore is the vernal, the late is the autumnal. Jacob therefore in spring, when both the air and the animals are vigorous, placed the many-coloured rods, that many-coloured young might be born to him, and these, being vernal, were better, more abundant and sturdier; but in autumn he did not place them: whence then single-coloured, and weaker, young were born to Laban; for this part Jacob conceded to him, partly lest Laban should suspect the fraud from its being so manifest. Valesius conjectures that both these coverings, the first as well as the late, fell on the same day. But far better and truer St. Jerome and other Latins, as well as the Hebrews, divide and distribute them into spring and autumn.