Commentaria in Genesim
Someone asked Louis XII for the goods of a certain citizen of Orleans, who had been Louis’s bitterest enemy at the time when Louis was only Duke of Orleans and was at variance with Charles VIII, king of France; to whom Louis, with a wholly royal spirit, said: “Ask something else of me, and favour shall be shown to your merits. Let that one go: for the king of France does not avenge the injuries of the Duke of Orleans,” as if to say: Now that I am made king, I do not wish to avenge the injuries done to me in the Duchy.
Alfonso, king of Aragon, as Panormitanus testifies, being asked why he was so mild toward all, even the wicked, answered: “Because justice wins the good, clemency the wicked.” And when his people complained of his excessive gentleness: “What then,” he said, “do you want bears and lions to reign? Clemency is proper to men, ferocity to beasts. I prefer to save many by my clemency than to destroy a few by my severity.” Someone objected to him: Beware lest this clemency of yours turn to your ruin; to whom he answered: “Nay rather, I have many things to bear, lest I fall into ill-will.” The same, being asked what most moves adversaries, answered: “The name of placability and meekness.”
The same, advancing with his army drawn up against the Venetians, when they came to meet him and humbly sought peace, and his men wished to extort whatever they pleased from them, Alfonso replied: “I reckon no other price of peace granted than to give peace to enemies who fall at my knees.” Rightly says Ovid:
It befits men to take pleasure in saving a man; and no better favour is sought by any art.
We see this now in Belgium.
Verse 22. AND HE LIVED A HUNDRED AND TEN YEARS.—This is the course of Joseph’s life: Joseph was sold by his brethren in the sixteenth year of his age, the 107th of Jacob, the 2216th of the world. He endured servitude and prison for thirteen years. Brought out of prison, he became prince of Egypt in the thirtieth year of his age, the 121st of his father, the 2230th of the world. He called his father Jacob into Egypt and received him there in the thirty-ninth year of his age, the 130th of his father, the 2239th of the world, which was the ninth from his exaltation and principate, the tenth after the death of Isaac. Joseph died in the 110th year of his age, the 80th from his exaltation, the 54th from the death of his father, the 2310th of the world, 144 years before the exodus of Moses and the Hebrews from Egypt.
“You have seen,” he says, “how the rewards are greater than the labours, and the recompenses more manifold. Thirteen years he endured servitude and prison, eighty years he administered the kingdom.”
AND THE CHILDREN OF MACHIR.—“Children,” that is, a child: for Machir begot only one; it is an enallage of number. So St. Augustine.
WERE BORN UPON JOSEPH’S KNEES,—as if to say: Joseph adopted the son of Machir as his own son as soon as he was born, and therefore set him upon his knees and received him, as Rachel did, chapter 30, verse 3 (1).
...I shall be buried in Chanaan, the land promised to us by God, with my father, grandfather and great-grandfather. See what was said at chapter 47, verses 29 and 30. This is what Paul says, Hebrews 11, verse 22: “By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones.” “But this,” says St. Chrysostom, “he did not do rashly; for he was doing two things: one, lest the Egyptians, mindful of his benefits, since after their custom they easily call men gods, should have the body of the just man as an occasion of impiety; the other, that the Israelites might be secure and altogether certain that they would return. And it was possible to see a new and wonderful thing, that he who fed all Israel in Egypt was also the leader of their return, and the one who would bring them into the land of Israel.”
The Israelites kept the promises made to Joseph, when, going out of Egypt, they carried with them the bones of Joseph, brought them into Chanaan, and buried them in Sichem, as is had in Josue 24:32 (2).
Anagogically, Rabanus says: “Joseph, detesting his sojourn in the land of Egypt, desired the land of promise, that so long as we are in this pilgrimage we may desire our true country, the land of the living, promised to the just, and wish to be carried over into it after death”; and therefore let us often sigh with the Psalmist: “Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged! I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar. My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord.”
Similar to those of Joseph and Jacob, that is, pious and heavenly, were the admonitions and wishes of other Patriarchs and of dying Saints: as those of Moses, Deuteronomy 31 and 32; Josue, chapter 24; David, 2 Kings 21 and 23; Eliseus, 4 Kings 13; Mathathias, 1 Machabees 2. So St. Basil, dying, instructed his people who flocked to him with sacred doctrine, and, saying: “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,” joyfully breathed out his soul. Nazianzen is witness, oration 20.
St. Ambrose, dying, said: “I have not so lived that I am ashamed to live among you. But neither do I fear to die, because we have a good Lord.”
St. Augustine, dying, said: “It is no wonder that wood and stones fall, and mortals die.”
St. Chrysostom, in exile and in great affliction, writing shortly before his death to Pope Innocent: “We are now in the third year of exile,” he says, “exposed to pestilence, famine, war, continual incursions, unspeakable solitude, daily death, and the swords of the Isaurians.” Worn out by these things at last, and dying, he said: “Glory to thee, O Lord, for all things,” as Nicephorus relates, book 13, chapter 37.
St. Martin, dying, with eyes and hands towards heaven, ever looking at it, did not relax his unconquered spirit from prayer; and when the priests asked him to relieve his little body by changing his side: “Let me,” he said, “look at heaven rather than at earth, that the spirit may be directed on the way by which it is about to go to the Lord.” Having said this, he saw the devil standing by; to whom he said: “Why do you stand here, bloody beast? You will find nothing deadly in me. The bosom of Abraham will receive me,” says Sulpicius.
St. Fulgentius, seized with a most acute illness, said: “Lord, give me now patience, and afterwards pardon”; and, asking pardon of his people for his faults, and distributing to the poor what money remained, he departed.
St. Gregory, writing near his death to Rusticana the patrician: “Bitterness of mind,” he says, “and continual exasperation, and the trouble of gout afflict me so that my body is dried up as if in a sepulchre; wherefore I ask that you pray for me, that I may be sooner led out of this prison.”
St. Hilarion, as St. Jerome testifies, said when dying: “Go forth, my soul, what do you fear? Why do you doubt? For nearly seventy years you have served Christ, and do you fear death?”
St. Bernard, dying, said: “These three things I have kept in life, which I commend to you: first, I trusted my own judgment less than another’s; second, when injured, I never sought vengeance on the one who injured me; third, I wished to give scandal to no one; and if ever it happened, I calmed it as I could.”
Gerard, the brother of St. Bernard, dying, said: “Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the high places.”
Ferdinand, king of Castile, dying, said: “Lord, the kingdom which I received from thee I restore to thee; place me, I pray, in eternal light.”
Charles, king of Sicily, dying, said: “O the vain thoughts of men! What does the kingdom profit me now? How much better it would have been to have been poor, and not a king!”