Commentaria in Exodum
He alludes to the history of Genesis 47:22, where the reason is given why the priests alone in Egypt were not forced, in the common famine, to sell their possessions: namely, because the priestly land curb the appetite of luxury, now temper the heat of avarice, now depress the glory of elation, now overwhelm the suggestion of envy, now extinguish the fire of fury: they are kings therefore, because by not consenting to the motions of their temptations, not to succumb, but by dominating and ruling, they know how to preside”; hence in heaven they shall receive the kingdom: “He that shall overcome, I will give to him to sit with me in my throne, as I also have overcome, and have sat with my Father in his throne”; then they shall say that of Apoc. 5:10: “Thou hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests, and we shall reign on the earth,” nay above heaven and the heavens of heavens.
A HOLY NATION,—separated from other profane and idolatrous nations, and devoted and as it were consecrated to me alone by my calling and election.
8. AND WHEN MOSES HAD RELATED THE PEOPLE’S WORDS TO THE LORD,—as if to say: When Moses on the same day had returned to the Lord, and was thinking, and began, to relate the obedience and words of the people to the Lord, the Lord anticipated him, and said: “Lo, now I will come to thee in a cloud.” For that after those words of the Lord Moses announced and reported to the Lord the ready obedience of the people, and that the Lord replied to it, the following words teach; this is clearer in the Hebrew, where after the words of the people Moses is said to have reported them to the Lord, but at an indefinite time. Note: The Hebrews say that is done which is done, and begins: see Can. 22. Moses reported, not that God did not know them, but to offer to the Lord the obedient will of the people: as angels report the vows of men to God, joining their own with them.
I will appoint [thee] lawgiver of the Hebrews, to give them a law not human but divine: which that the people may know and believe, for this cause I will speak with thee from heaven, and give thunders, lightnings, etc., before the people. So also Gentile lawgivers, as Zaleucus, Zoroaster, Minos (so also Mahomet), seeking authority, feigned that they had conversed with God, and received laws from him. So Lycurgus, lawgiver of the Lacedemonians, going to Delphi consulted the oracle: the Pythia answered that he was dear to the gods, and more a god than a man; and to him asking about the good enactment of laws she said that God gave and pledged to him that state of the republic which should be by far the most excellent of all. Wherefore Lycurgus called his laws rhētrai, as if you should say, oracles. So Numa Pompilius, lawgiver, and second Roman king, feigned that he conversed with the goddess Egeria. So Pythagoras used to stop and lead away a tamed eagle by his voice, as if through it he received his doctrines from heaven: Plutarch is witness in Numa and Lycurgus. Mercury, who first gave laws to the Egyptians, was held a divine Theologian, and therefore surnamed Trismegistus, that is, thrice greatest.
10. SANCTIFY THEM TODAY AND TOMORROW, AND LET THEM WASH THEIR GARMENTS.—As if to say: Let the Hebrews today and tomorrow separate themselves from all uncleanness, and procure bodily cleanliness of themselves and of the camp, by washing and purging. Whence Philo, book On the Decalogue, asserts that they were purified by washings for three days, that by this means that rude people might be roused to reverence for receiving the divine law on the third day. Whence the Chaldee renders, prepare them. Hence Moses also commanded each to wash his garments, that this outward washing might remind them of the inward washing and purification, so that with pure mind they might meet God. This sanctification and preparation, therefore, was placed, first and chiefly, in continence, that they should abstain from their wives; for so Moses explains it, verse 15; secondly, in the washing of bodies and garments; thirdly, in the purging of the camp; fourthly, in the reverent expectation of God about to promulgate his law.
11. AND LET THEM BE READY AGAINST THE THIRD DAY: FOR ON THE THIRD DAY THE LORD WILL COME DOWN IN THE SIGHT OF ALL THE PEOPLE, UPON MOUNT SINAI.—This third day was the fiftieth from the pasch, and from the going out of Egypt, and was the pentecost, on which they received the law from God on Sinai; for in memory of the law given, the Hebrews yearly celebrated pentecost on this fiftieth day from the pasch, as St. Jerome teaches to Fabiola, and St. Augustine, Question 70, and others passim. This third day was the sixth of the third month, which is called Sivan, and answers to May: for on the third day of Sivan the Hebrews came into Sinai, as appears verse 1; and from their arrival, on the third day, which was the sixth of the third month Sivan, they received the law. Whence the Hebrews in their Calendars, as Genebrard witnesses, set down pentecost on the sixth of Sivan; and it is plain, because the sixth of Sivan is the fiftieth from the going out and the pasch, exclusive. For these 50 days from the pasch to pentecost are so to be counted that the pasch, or the first day of the azymes, be excluded, and the first day of these fifty be the second day of the azymes, which was the day after the pasch and the going out, as will appear Levit. 23:11. Count therefore from the second day of the azymes, namely from the sixteenth day of the first month, the remaining 14 days of the same month, and the 30 days of the second month (for the months of the Hebrews, being lunar, were alternately of 29 and 30 days), you will have 44 days. Add to these six days of the third month, you will complete 50, or pentecost. Abulensis therefore errs here, Question 10, when he asserts that the law was given not on the 50th day, but the 48th from the going out: and that from this, that he thinks the Hebrews came into Sinai on the first day of the third month, and received the law on the third day after. For the first day of the month, he says, is called “this day,” verse 1. But I showed there that “this day” is called not the first but the third.
THE LORD WILL COME DOWN,—I will come down. It is an enallage of person, frequent among the Hebrews. I will come down, I say, not by local motion, but by the revelation of my glory, as the Chaldee indicates. See verse 18.
12. TAKE HEED YOU GO NOT UP INTO THE MOUNT, AND THAT YOU TOUCH NOT THE BORDERS THEREOF,—as curious searchers into the presence and majesty of God; but rather, revering it, contain yourselves and your beasts in the camps.
Tropologically St. Gregory, book 6 of the Morals, chap. 25: “A beast,” he says, “touches the mountain, when a mind subject to irrational desires lifts itself to the heights of contemplation; but it is struck with stones, because not sustaining the highest things, it is slain by the very blows of the superior weight.”
12 and 13. EVERY ONE THAT TOUCHETH THE MOUNT, DYING HE SHALL DIE: NO HANDS SHALL TOUCH HIM, BUT HE SHALL BE STONED TO DEATH.—Because he who against my precept boldly and irreverently touches the mountain, now made sacred by the presence of God, is to be accounted sacrilegious, and so polluted and unclean that he is to be avoided as an anathema, and not touched, lest he communicate any stain to those handling him; I command therefore that he be not struck at close quarters, but stoned from a distance. So Rupert.
WHEN THE TRUMPET SHALL BEGIN TO SOUND, THEN LET THEM GO UP INTO THE MOUNT.—The Hebrew is, when the trumpet shall draw out, or prolong, that is, as our Interpreter renders Josue 6:5: “When the sound of the trumpet is heard longer and with a broken tone.” But because the Hebrews have no compound verbs, but express them by the simple, hence the Septuagint and Chaldee render withdraw or take away in the contrary sense: When the sound of the trumpet shall be withdrawn and cease, then go up into the mount. But our Interpreter has followed the more usual meaning of the verb, since it is scarcely found in the other, which the Septuagint have. Whence also moderns everywhere so render it; and that the Hebrews went up into the mount at the voice of the trumpet, not at its ceasing, is plain from verses 16 and 17, from the common version and consent of all Interpreters.
This trumpet, say the Jews, was the horn of the ram immolated for Isaac; but these are trifles. This trumpet therefore was not of horn, but of air: for the angel striking the air so as to give a sound like a blowing trumpet is said as it were to trumpet by a trumpet here.
The angel therefore sounding from mount Sinai, as the Chaldee and Septuagint have, and what follows indicates, by this blast called the people out of the camps, distant from the mountain, to come to the foot of the mountain, and there hear the law of the Decalogue, the angel proclaiming as God’s herald. Mystically, the sound of the trumpet signified the gravity of the precepts of God, to fulfil which war is proclaimed on man against himself, says St. Thomas on Hebrews chap. 12, lect. 4.
LET THEM GO UP INTO THE MOUNT,—let them go up toward the mountain, up to the limits fixed by Moses at God’s command, at the very foot of the mountain. See verse 17; for in verse 12 they were forbidden, on pain of death, to touch the mountain itself. They are here therefore commanded only to go out of the camps, and to approach nearer to the foot of mount Sinai. So Rupert, Hugh and others. Add that this whole mountain smoked with fire, as appears Deut. 5:4; the Hebrews therefore could not approach nearer to it.
14. AND SANCTIFIED THEM,—in the way which has been said, and which follows, namely by commanding them to wash their garments, and to abstain from their wives, and to prepare themselves by cleanliness and reverent expectation of God and of his law, for the third day, on which the promulgation of the Decalogue was to be.