Commentaria in Genesim
St. Giles, one of the first companions of St. Francis, asked the brothers in assembly: What do you do against the temptations of the flesh? Rufinus answered: I commend myself to God and the Blessed Virgin, and humbly cast myself on the ground. But Juniper said: When I feel such thoughts, I say at once: Far off, far off, for the lodging is taken. To whom Giles said: I am of your mind; for it is best to flee: chastity is a clear mirror, which is clouded by a mere glance and breath.
Of the same family, Brother Roger, a holy man, looked in the face no woman, not even his mother, and she an old woman. Asked why, he answered: “Because when a man does what is in him, God in turn does what is His, and preserves man from falling; but if a man exposes himself to danger, especially in a matter so slippery, God leaves him to his own strength, which he cannot long resist.” For as the magnet draws iron, so his Agnes draws a man.
St. Xavier used to say that women are approached with greater danger to chastity or reputation than there is fruit. Hence that provident and strict ordinance of our Society, that we may not visit women even for the sake of piety, except the sick and dying, and that only with a companion who can be a witness of all that is done.
Lastly, hear what a harlot taught St. Ephrem: he was going from the desert into the city, to draw some pious instruction from what he met; a harlot met him, at whom he gazed fixedly; to Ephrem asking the reason she answered: What wonder if I look at you, since woman was made from man? But do you fix your eyes on your mother, that is, the earth from which you were formed. See more at Numbers 25, at the end.
2. Prince of the land: the son of the prince Hemor.
3. His soul was fast knit unto her: he loved her vehemently and desperately; for the soul of a lover is more where it loves than where it animates.
7. In Israel: against Israel, the father of Dina.
11. To the father (of Dina, that is, to Jacob) and to her brethren: namely to Ruben, Simeon, Levi and the other brothers of Dina.
12. Increase the dowry: as if to say, I do not require that Dina bring a dowry as a bride, but I myself will endow her as much as you wish, and that in compensation for the injury done to her and to you by me in the ravishing.
13. Deceitfully: because they feign peace while they plot vengeance and slaughter of the Sichemites.
21. These men are peaceable. Hence it is clear that Hemor and the Sichemites circumcised themselves not out of love of piety and of the Jewish religion, but in hope of gain and of marriages with the Israelites.
23. They will be ours: through mutual marriages and commerce.
25. On the third day, when the pain of the wounds is greatest. Josephus says that the Sichemites were overcome by guile by Simeon and Levi while they were indulging in banquets and wine.
Second, Calvin wrongly denies that the pain of wounds is greatest on the third day; for Moses himself teaches the contrary, and Holy Scripture itself here, and not Simeon and Levi, from whose mind and sense Calvin thinks these things are said; for these are its words.
Hippocrates teaches the same, in his book On Fractures, and the reason is that on the first day only the division is felt in the wound itself, and it scarcely lasts; on the second day phlegm flows to the place of the wound, which is a mild and gentle humour; on the third day bile flows down to the same place, which, being sharp and hot, excites pain: then, the blood running together, inflammation follows, fever, etc., which scarcely abate within the space of twenty-four hours. So Francis Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, chapter 12.
SIMEON AND LEVI—as leaders, with a crowd of servants; for the other brethren were not present at this slaughter, but after it was done rushed upon the spoils, as is plain from verse 27. Simeon was then about twenty-four years old, Levi twenty; so St. Chrysostom, Abulensis, Cajetan and Pererius, and it is gathered from what was said at verse 4.
Thou wilt ask whether these sons of Jacob sinned in committing this slaughter of the Sichemites. Some excuse them, because by a just war and stratagem they avenged the injury done to their sister and themselves. For since they were foreigners, having as it were a separate commonwealth, and could not bring Hemor and Sichem, as princes of a people, before any higher tribunal, they seem to have had the right of war against them, since in no other way than by war and arms could they make good the injury done to them; and in this war, being few, they used guile as a stratagem, saying: Whether guile or valour, who asks it of an enemy? But I answer that they sinned, because they attacked and slew them against the covenant made with the Sichemites, verse 15.
“we shall consent to you,” a word to be referred to its root.
They sinned, therefore, first, by deceitful and pernicious lying, as is clear from verse 13. Second, by perfidy: for they had already pardoned the injury, having received just satisfaction, and had given their pledge of the covenant, nay of the marriage. Third, by imprudence and disobedience, in that, young men hot with anger, they undertook so arduous and dangerous a thing without the counsel and authority of their father, to whom they knew this plot would be wholly displeasing. Hence they sinned also by the injustice of the war: for they made this war on the Sichemites by private authority, not public; for this was in Jacob, as head and prince of the family, and not in these two sons of his. Fourth, by sacrilege: for they abused circumcision for their guile and unjust slaughter. Fifth, by cruelty, in that on the third day they attacked men afflicted with pain and as it were dying. Sixth, by excess of vengeance: for they killed not only Sichem but all the males of the city, among whom many were innocent; they took boys and women captive; they plundered all the fields and flocks, nay they even pulled down the walls of the city, as is sufficiently intimated in Genesis 49:6. Seventh, by rashness and impiety, in that they exposed their father Jacob and all his family to the hatred, slaughter and plunder of the Chanaanites. So St. Thomas, Cajetan, Pererius, nay Jacob himself, Genesis chapter 49, verse 5, where he says: “Simeon and Levi brethren, vessels of iniquity waging war. Let not my soul go into their counsel, nor my glory be in their assembly: because in their fury they slew a man, and in their pleasure they undermined a wall. Cursed be their fury, because it is stubborn: and their wrath, because it is cruel.”
Thou wilt say: Judith chapter 9, verse 2, seems to praise this deed and the zeal of Simeon and Levi; for she says: “O God of my father Simeon, who gavest him a sword for the defence (in Greek, for the vengeance) of the strangers, who proved violators in their defilement, and laid bare the thigh of a virgin to her confusion, and thou gavest their wives for a prey, and their daughters into captivity, and the spoil to be divided among thy servants, who were zealous with thy zeal.”