Commentaria in Genesim
19. THE WAY WHICH LEADETH (from Jerusalem the metropolis) TO EPHRATA, THIS IS BETHLEHEM.—This city was first called Ephrata, from Ephrata the wife of Caleb, 1 Paralipomenon 2:24, whom the Hebrews think to have been Mary the sister of Moses, but falsely.
The city was afterwards called Bethlehem, that is, the house of bread, from the fertility of grain which was there after the famine that had occurred in the time of Elimelech, as is related in the book of Ruth, says Lyranus. Similarly Ephrata in Hebrew signifies fertile, fruitful, from the root para, that is, he bore fruit; for this place is fertile.
As Rachel bore Benjamin, so the Blessed Virgin bore Christ in Bethlehem, because Christ is the bread and the delight of men and angels. She bore Christ, I say, as her own Benoni, that is, a man of sorrows, in the utmost lowliness and poverty; whom accordingly the heavenly Father made his Benjamin.
So thought St. Jerome, who for that reason, together with St. Paula, removed to Bethlehem. Hear him in the Epitaph of St. Paula: “Paula swore, he says, that she saw with the eyes of faith the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, the Lord crying in the manger, the Magi adoring, the star shining above, the Virgin Mother, the careful foster-father, the shepherds coming by night; and with tears mingled with joy she said: Hail, Bethlehem, house of bread, in which was born that Bread which came down from heaven. Hail, Ephrata, most fruitful region, whose fruitfulness is God. Behold, we have heard of it in Ephrata, we have found it in the fields of the wood; this is my rest, because it is the Lord’s country: here will I dwell, because the Saviour hath chosen it.”
20. AND JACOB SET UP A PILLAR.—Brochardus relates that this pillar, or monument of Rachel, was a most elegant pyramid, on whose base were arranged twelve very large stones, according to the number of the twelve sons of Israel.
See here the very ancient custom of erecting monuments and epitaphs, in memory of the dead, beside their sepulchres, among which the first that we find in Scripture is this of Rachel. So Simon Maccabeus erected a magnificent monument over the sepulchre of his father and brethren, 1 Machabees 13:30. St. Jerome writes that he was accustomed to pray at the mausoleum of King David, in the letter to Marcella; of which also St. Peter says: “And his sepulchre is with us,” Acts 2:29. Hear Prudentius in the passion of Hippolytus:
Very many tombs, marked with little letters, speak, either the martyr’s name, or some epigram.
21. BEYOND THE TOWER OF THE FLOCK.—The Hebrews think this place to be Jerusalem and Sion, or the place of the temple, because Jerusalem is called by Micheas, chapter 4, verse 8, the tower of the flock. But Micheas calls it so by a trope, enigmatically and parabolically: for the tower of Eder, that is, of the flock, is a thousand paces distant from Bethlehem; but Jerusalem is distant from Bethlehem six thousand paces. The tower of the flock is therefore a place very rich in pastures, where accordingly there was plenty of flocks, situated between Hebron and Bethlehem, where Jacob also pastured his flock. So St. Jerome in the Epitaph of St. Paula, Eucherius, Rupert. Hence St. Jerome, Tostatus, Adrichomius and others think that near this tower the angel appeared to the shepherds keeping watch over their flock, and announced to them the birth of Christ.
Hence also St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, built a notable church near this tower, under the name of the Holy Angels.
22. REUBEN SLEPT WITH BALA.—Hence father Jacob deprived Reuben of his birthright, and dying cursed him, Genesis 49:4. And Jacob thereafter forsook Bala, nor touched her any more, as defiled by this incest: as David abstained from the concubines whom Absalom had defiled, 2 Kings 16:22. This was the sixth cross and affliction of Jacob: the fifth was the death of Rachel, verse 19.
26. WHO WERE BORN TO HIM IN MESOPOTAMIA.—That is, eleven were born in Haran, but one, Benjamin, is excepted: for he was born in Chanaan, near Bethlehem. So St. Augustine, Question 117. Less rightly, therefore, do St. Cyril, Chrysostom and Procopius judge from this place that Benjamin was conceived in Haran but born in Chanaan: for Benjamin was born ten years after Jacob’s departure from Haran and his dwelling in Chanaan. Moses here enumerates the posterity of Israel, as the chosen seed, to set them over against the posterity of Esau, as the rejected, whom he enumerates in the following chapter.
27. THE CITY OF ARBEE—in Cariatharbe, or Hebron, where Isaac dwelt, there likewise he died and was buried. Tropologically, St. Ambrose to Irenaeus, On the Immolation of Egypt: “Let us follow, he says, the ways of St. Jacob, that we may come to those sufferings, to those conflicts, that we may come to patience (he alludes to Jacob’s mother Rebecca, whose name he interprets as patience), the mother of the faithful, and to the father Isaac, that is, one capable of joy, overflowing with gladness; for where there is patience, there is gladness,” as if to say: As Rebecca and Isaac are joined in marriage, so patience and gladness are united, that gladness, like a faithful husband, may never desert patience, as his wife.
28. THE DAYS OF ISAAC WERE FULFILLED, A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY YEARS.—Note the chronological series of Jacob and Isaac: Jacob, fleeing Esau, went into Mesopotamia in the 77th year of his age. He stayed there 20 years; thence he returned to Chanaan in the 97th year of his age. There he sojourned ten years, and apart from his father Isaac, because both were rich and had abundance of flocks, for which the pastures of one and the same place would not have sufficed; yet Jacob visited his father from time to time, both in person and through servants, messengers and letters. After 10 years, namely in the 107th year of Jacob’s age, in which year Rachel died and Benjamin was born, Jacob came to Hebron, to Isaac his father, now failing with old age, to remain with him permanently: he remained with his father 13 years, after which Isaac dies in the 180th year of his age, which was in the same year. Again, in the same year in which Rachel died and Benjamin was born, which was the 107th of Jacob, Joseph, being sixteen years old, was sold by his brothers and carried away into Egypt. When Isaac therefore died, in the 180th year of his age, Joseph was in Egypt in the 13th year of his servitude and the 29th of his age, which was the 527th year from the flood and from the creation of the world 2928. There is here, then, a hysterologia: for the death of Isaac is set down here, which in the order of time ought to have been placed after the sale of Joseph, toward the end of Genesis 40. So Abulensis, Pererius and others.
Observe by the way the climacteric years of the life of Jacob, namely 77, of his exile in Haran; 84, of his marriage with Rachel and Lia; 91, of the birth of Joseph; and 147, of the death of Jacob. For all these years are multiples of seven, which physicians maintain bring a great change to a man, as they did here to Jacob.
29. AND BEING SPENT WITH AGE—the natural heat failing, and the radical moisture, which feeds and preserves the natural heat, drying up, as the flame of a lamp is fed by oil.
AND WAS GATHERED TO HIS PEOPLE—to his fathers in limbo.
See what was said in chapter 25, verse 8. Isaac lived 180 years; we live 60 or 70. Men complain that life is short, because all live for others, few for themselves: the cause is that they live as though they were always going to live. Let them at least think on that saying of Seneca: Time is present, past or future; what we are doing is brief; what we are about to do is doubtful; what we have done is certain. Why then do we not, from this slight and falling passage of time, give ourselves with our whole mind to those things which are immense because they are eternal? What place awaits thy soul after this life, what lot, where after death will nature, nay God, set thee?