Commentaria in Genesim
26. AND LABAN SAID TO JACOB: WHY HAST THOU ACTED THUS?—See here again in Laban’s words the genius of the world. For first, though he knew that by his perfidy he had given the just man cause to flee, he nevertheless dissembles it, and casts all the blame upon the just man, and, when he ought to have begged pardon for his fault and reconciled the just man, he of his own accord accuses him. So the world dissembles its own sins and casts all the blame on the pious. So Achab accuses Elias of troubling Israel, when he himself, the impious king, was by his sins the cause of the evils. Second, Laban feigns himself a friend when he was an adversary: “That I might have brought thee on the way,” he says, “with joy and songs,” etc. So the world speaks one way and thinks another: woe to the double of heart! Third, he betrays his impiety and folly when he says: “Why hast thou stolen my gods?” It is of impiety that he worships idols; of folly that he calls gods those who cannot guard themselves from thieves. Fourth, he says: “Thou hast done foolishly”; so to the world seems foolish whatever the pious do; the oppressed just man did not act foolishly in seeking his country again, but the world acts foolishly in despising the heavenly country. Fifth, it is arrogance that he says: “It is in my power to return thee evil”; so the world always presumes on power, though it knows that it can do nothing against God. “His arrogance,” says Isaias, chap. xvi, “is more than his strength.” At length, however, willing or unwilling, it is forced to confess the truth, namely that it is forbidden and restrained by the Lord. Whence St. Chrysostom, hom. 57, shows by many examples how God has care of Jacob and other just men, so that he tames and softens not only enraged men but wild beasts themselves, that they harm them not: “For the hand of God,” he says, “is more powerful than all, it fortifies us on every side and makes us invincible. This also is declared in this just man. For he who with such violence sought to seize Jacob, and wished to take vengeance on him for his flight, that Laban, though cunning, as Syrians commonly are, was nevertheless deceived by the more prudent Jacob.
not only says nothing harsh against him, but as a father gently addresses a son, saying: What hast thou done? why hast thou departed secretly? See how great a change, see how he who raged like a beast imitates the meekness of sheep.”
THAT SECRETLY.—In Hebrew again it is, “thou hast stolen my heart,” of which I spoke at verse 20.
AS CAPTIVES TAKEN WITH THE SWORD,—as taken in war and therefore slaves, or bondwomen.
28. MY SONS,—grandsons by daughters.
32. SEARCH WHATSOEVER OF THINE (of thy goods)
Laban,” he says, “that is, whitened, namely Satan (because Satan too transforms himself into an angel of light), and began to demand his things from him. Jacob answered: I have nothing of thine. Seek if thou recognizest anything of thy vices and crimes; I have carried nothing of thy frauds with me, and have no fellowship in thy guile: I have shunned all that is thine as a contagion. And Laban sought, and found nothing of his own. How blessed the man in whom the enemy found nothing that he could call his own, in whom the devil found nothing he could recognize as his! It seemed impossible in a man, but he bore the type of him who said in the Gospel: The prince of this world cometh, and in me he shall find nothing. For nothing is whatever is of the devil, which can have no perpetuity or substance.”
34. UNDER THE FURNITURE,—under the pack-saddles.
by the troublesome flow of the menses, and so on account of weakness I cannot rise.
36. AND SWELLING,—with just anger and indignation, Jacob otherwise most mild: for patience hurt becomes fury.
39. NOR DID I SHOW THEE THAT WHICH THE BEAST HAD TORN.—It is the shepherd’s law that, if without fault of the shepherd cattle are killed by wild beasts, some remainder being shown to the master, the shepherd is exempt from the penalty; for every thing perishes to its own master, unless the fault of the keeper intervene. But this law the hard and unjust Laban did not keep, who wished Jacob to answer not only for fault, but also for chance. For this is what Jacob objects to him, saying: “Whatsoever was lost by theft thou didst exact of me.” Otherwise the shepherd by shepherd’s law is bound to rescue a sheep seized by wolf, bear, etc., and to protect the sheep if he can: which if he neglect, he is bound to restitution for the sheep taken. So David, pasturing sheep, slew the lion and the bear that attacked them, 1 Kings xvii, 34. Much more will God require from pastors who have care of souls, if by their negligence they let them be snatched by the demon and driven headlong, as Ezechiel teaches chap. iii, verse 17, and in the whole of chap. xxxiv. The same judgment holds of princes and magistrates, who ought to protect the safety, bodies and fortunes of subjects. Theirs therefore it is ceaselessly to keep watch, for the protection and guard of their own. “The prince’s care (says Seneca) keeps watch for the safety of individuals.” Such was Caesar, of whom the same Seneca, in the book On the Shortness of Life: “His diligence,” he says, “defends the homes of all, his labour the leisure of all, his industry the delights of all, his occupation the vacation of all.” Such also Plato wishes princes to be, book vii On the Laws.
than the city, when need is, by day or by night; and to rise before light, which is of the greatest profit to health and to the care of the household and to the study of philosophy.” So also Cato, On Husbandry, chap. v, and Cicero, book ii On Divination, give this precept to the steward: “Let him be first to rise from bed, last to go to bed.” Xenophon in the Oeconomicus relates that a certain barbarian, asked what made a horse fit and vigorous, answered: “The master’s eye.” Agesilaus, king of the Lacedaemonians, knew how to govern sleep, and, as Xenophon says, used sleep not as a master but as a servant in business. So the shepherds watched, to whom first the birth of Christ was announced by an angel. So Paul says to Timothy: “But watch thou, labour in all things.” So the Gentiles compare a good shepherd to Argus, who as a shepherd was all eyes, nay full of eyes all around. Homer in the Iliad sings that Jove, the God of the gods, while gods and men slept, was sleepless, and thought of exalting Achilles. So of the true God David sings in Psalm cxx: “Behold he shall neither slumber nor sleep that keepeth Israel.”
40. I WAS PARCHED WITH HEAT AND WITH FROST.—Cold burns: for as heat, so cold burns, that is, pricks, tortures, dries up, and, as the Hebrews have, achalani, that is, it ate me and consumed me, hurts. Hieronymus Magius assigns the physical cause, book i Miscellanies, chap. xvii. So the Poet: “The mountain snows burned.” And Tacitus, Annals, book xv: “The limbs of many were burnt by the force of the cold.” St. Basil, homily on the Forty Martyrs: “Frozen, he says, we were wholly burnt.” And Ecclesiasticus, speaking of the north wind, chap. xliii, 23: “It shall devour,” he says, “the wilderness, and burn up the green thing as a fire.” Hence too hoarfrost (pruina) is said to be so called from burning through (perurendo), because it scorches herbs and fruits, says Festus: doubtless cleanliness befits women, labour men. Therefore Jacob is rightly set by St. Gregory, homily 15 on Ezechiel, as a pattern of labour, and he says that by it he merited victory in the wrestling with the angel, chap. xxxii. “Is it asked,” he says, “how laborious fortitude ought to be obtained? Let Jacob be brought to mind, who, after he knew how to serve a man bravely, was led also to that virtue by which he could not be overcome by the wrestling angel.” A certain king had a chamberlain who in the morning, waking the king, would say: “Arise, O king, and attend to those cares which Mesoromasdes, thy God, willed thee to attend to”; Plutarch is witness, in the book On the Doctrine of Princes. Rightly therefore Homer in the place cited: “It becomes not a man of counsel to sleep all night, to whom peoples are entrusted and so many things are to be cared for.” If then “the life of mortals is a watch,” much more must the life of Princes and Prelates be a watch. So St. Dominic watched by night in prayer, and visited the cells and all the places of his Brothers.