Commentaria in Genesim
AND SIN AGAINST MY GOD,—whom, as everywhere present, I behold and revere, whom as a father I love, and as an avenger I fear. Pererius piously notes here that there are three bonds by which holy men feel themselves most strongly bound, so that they cannot offend God. The first is reverence for the divine majesty, everywhere present and discerning all things. For holy men, always walking in the sight of God, seem to themselves unable not to do all things chastely and holily, and therefore, lest they offend the present Godhead in anything, they most religiously beware of all that displeases him. The wicked do the contrary, of whom it is said, Psalm ix: “God is not before his eyes, his ways are filthy at all times, thy judgments are removed from his sight.” Such were those old men who laid snares for Susanna, of whom it is said, Daniel xiii, 9: “They perverted their own mind, and turned away their eyes that they might not look unto heaven, nor remember just judgments.” The second is the remembrance of the benevolence and beneficence of God toward oneself. And this is what the Lord says, Osee xi: “I will draw them with the cords of Adam (that is, those by which men are wont to be drawn, namely love and benefits), with the bands of love.” Who would not reckon it impossible for himself to sin against God, if he seriously considered the so many and so great benefits of God toward him, past, present and future, which he has promised to his own? and that God is he in whom we live, and move, and are, whose gift is whatever good we have in body and soul? Finally, if he considered that God in himself is the best, most beautiful, most sweet, supremely lovable, and such does he show himself to us now, and will show himself yet more in heaven, if we steadfastly cleave to him. See St. Augustine, sermon 83 On the Season, where, speaking of this our Joseph, he adduces from St. Ambrose this golden sentence: “The lover of God, most beloved, is not conquered by the love of a woman; youth does not move the chaste mind, nor the authority of one who loves: a great man indeed, who, sold, did not then know how to serve, loved, did not love in return, entreated, did not yield; seized, fled away.”
The third bond is the fear of God, conceived from the consideration of the most severe judgment and vengeance, which God exercises both often in this life, and most certainly and rigidly on the day of judgment, where he will leave no sin unpunished, even the least.
Whence David, Psalm cxviii: “Pierce thou my flesh with thy fear: for I am afraid of thy judgments.” Hence St. Basil on that of Psalm xxxiii: “Come, children, hearken to me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord:”
“When,” he says, “the desire of sinning has assailed thee, think of that dreadful tribunal of Christ, where the judge will preside on a lofty throne; and all his creation will stand by, trembling at his glorious sight: we also, each one, are to be brought, to give account of what we have done in life: and then to those who have done evil, terrible and deformed angels will stand by, bearing fiery faces, and breathing fire upon men, namely the impious. To this add the deep abyss, and the inextricable darkness, and fire without splendour, having the force to burn, but deprived of light; then a kind of worm, sending forth poison, and devouring flesh, insatiably hungry, and never feeling satiety, and inflicting intolerable pains by the very gnawing. Finally, what is most grievous of all, that reproach and everlasting confusion. Fear these things, and by this fear as by a bridle restrain thy mind from the concupiscence of sins.” So St. Basil.
Chaste Susanna imitated chaste Joseph; when solicited to the crime she said: “I am straitened on every side; but it is better for me to fall into your hands without doing it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord.” So all the Saints resisted sin even unto death. Paul, Rom. viii: “Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, etc. For I am sure that neither death nor life,” etc. Rufinus told the Emperor Theodosius that he would bring it about that Ambrose should loosen the bonds laid on him. To whom Theodosius: “I know the constancy of Ambrose, and that by no terror of royal majesty will he transgress the law of God.” When the Empress Eudoxia threatened St. Chrysostom, his people said: “In vain you frighten that man; he fears nothing but sin.” St. Louis, king of France, as a boy, learned from his mother Blanche “rather to meet death than to consent to mortal sin.” Tobias to his son: “Take heed never to consent to sin; thou shalt have many good things, if thou fear God.”
St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury: “I would rather leap into a most burning pyre than knowingly commit any sin against God.” The Wise Man: “Flee from sin as from the face of a serpent.”
St. Anselm: “If I saw bodily on one side the horror of sin, on the other the pain of hell, and had of necessity to be plunged into one of them, I should choose hell before sin.” So the Machabees, so the Martyrs preferred torments to sin.
Hear the Gentiles also: Aristotle, Ethics, book 3: “It is better to die than to do anything against the good of virtue.” Seneca: “Even if I knew that men would not know, and that God would pardon, yet I should not wish to sin, because of the baseness of sin.” For what is sin? It is a corpse, a leprosy, a most foul sewer: it is a monster of rational nature: it is an offence and injury to the divine Majesty: it is guilt of eternal fire: it is deicide, it is christicide. Papinian the jurisconsult, though a Gentile, chose to die rather than defend the parricide of the Emperor Caracalla, who had killed his brother Geta: witness Spartianus in Caracalla. The boy Democles in the bath, to escape the lust of King Demetrius, leaped into the boiling water: that he might not be defiled, he preferred to die: witness Plutarch in the Life of Demetrius.
10. WITH SUCH WORDS AS THESE DAY BY DAY SHE SPOKE.—Note here the unconquered constancy of Joseph. For even huge trees fall, struck by great and frequent blows; even the hardest rocks are hollowed by the continual fall of the tiniest drops: how much more is man to be overcome by the greatness and persistence of temptations, whose flesh is not brass, as Job says, nor is his strength the strength of stones; yet Joseph yielded not, neither to the weakness of human nature, nor to the proneness of youthful age to lust, nor to the constant solicitation of his mistress, nor to the wealth and promises which she offered, nor to the threats and gravest perils to which he exposed himself if he refused the deed. Learn hence that no temptation, however great, is insuperable, and that you will be inexcusable if you let yourself be overcome by it, since you can and ought, by the grace of God, to overcome every one, as Joseph did, especially if you are constantly mindful of eternity and of eternal glory or hell.
12. THE SKIRT,—the border or edge of the cloak. Josephus adds that she feigned illness, and solicited Joseph on a solemn feast day, when the household was away from home. But Josephus seems to add this, as other things, of his own contrary to the truth; for if it is so, how then did the woman, verse 13, after Joseph had gone, cry out and call forth the household?
HE FLED.—Joseph, as a young man robust in the flower of age, could have wrested this cloak of his from the woman by force, but he would not: and that first, out of reverence, lest he should use any violence to his mistress. Second, because the most present remedy against temptations of lust is not struggling, but flight. Whence the Apostle says: “Fly fornication.” See on this flight, and on avoiding familiarity with women, St. Augustine, sermon 250 On the Season, where among other things he says: “Joseph, that he might escape his shameless mistress, fled; therefore against the onslaught of lust seize upon flight, if you wish to obtain victory: nor be it shameful to you to flee, if you desire to obtain the palm of chastity. Among all the contests of Christians, the battles of chastity alone are harder, where the fight is daily and victory rare: here therefore daily martyrdoms cannot be lacking to Christians. For if Christ is chastity, and truth, and justice; and if he who lies in wait for them is a persecutor, he who has wished both to defend them in others and to keep them in himself will be a Martyr.” Rightly therefore St. Bernard in the Shorter Sentences: “Thrift in abundance, bounty in poverty, chastity in youth, is martyrdom without blood.”
Third, Joseph fled lest he either touch the woman, or be touched by her: because the touch of a woman, as contagious and poisonous, is to be shunned by a man no less than the bite of a most rabid dog, says St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian.
a twofold shield of chastity. The first is the remembrance of the presence of God, love and fear, if you consider both the presence of God, the judgment of God, the vengeance of God and hell; and also the goodness, beauty and delights of God, which immeasurably surpass all beauty and pleasure of bodies, of which I spoke on verse 9. The second is the flight of occasions and temptations, and especially of women. For so Joseph fled, leaving his cloak.