Commentaria in Exodum
7. THOU SHALT FLY LYING.—In the Hebrew: Thou shalt be far from a word of falsehood.
THE INNOCENT AND JUST PERSON THOU SHALT NOT PUT TO DEATH.—Hence the theologians rightly gather that a judge cannot put to death one whom he knows to be innocent, though in court he is proved by false witnesses to be guilty. Others, however, teach the contrary, and expound thus: “Thou shalt not kill the innocent and just,” that is, him who in thy court is just, because he is legally proved innocent, or at least is not proved guilty; and the Chaldee favours them when it renders: And him who has been justified, and has gone out just from the judgment, thou shalt not slay.
BECAUSE I ABHOR THE WICKED.—In the Hebrew it is: because I will not justify the wicked; that is, because I will condemn and abhor the wicked, such as he is who slays the innocent. It is a litotes, like that of Exodus 20:7; as if to say: If thou impiously slay the just and innocent, though to men thou seem just, to me thou shalt be wicked, and I will abhor thee as wicked.
8. NEITHER SHALT THOU TAKE BRIBES, WHICH EVEN MAKE THE WISE TO BE BLIND (in the Hebrew, the seeing, that is, those who have the eyes of the mind open, the wise), AND PERVERT THE WORDS OF THE JUST.—This is a most true saying and fully proved by experience, whence the riddle:
Mutnegra and murua make the straightest things crooked.
Read backwards, and thou shalt see that mutnegra is argentum (silver), murua is aurum (gold). The Gentiles judged the same. Hear the Poet:
Even wisdom is bound by gain.
And Plutarch, in his book On Isis, says: At Thebes the images of the judges are seen without hands, and the eyes of the chief judge are closed; because justice is neither taken by gifts nor bent by the face of men. And Themistius says: He is a true prince who is impregnable to gold. Hence Bion also said that a prince, on leaving office, ought to come away not richer but more renowned.
A memorable example was given by Marcus Curius Dentatus, a Roman senator, to whom, as he sat at his hearth, when the Samnites had brought a vast weight of gold, he rejected it and declared freely: “Remember that I can neither be conquered in battle nor corrupted by money; for it is not glorious to have gold, but to command those who have gold.” Cicero in the Cato is witness, and Plutarch in his Apophthegms, who adds that Curius, when the ambassadors came, was boiling turnips, and showing them said he would have no need of gold so long as he lived content with such food.
Like him were the Fabii, who, being sent as ambassadors to King Ptolemy, brought into the treasury the gifts which they had received from him privately before they reported their embassy to the senate.
Among the faithful, Samuel, judge of the people, was illustrious, as appears from 1 Kings 12:3. On the contrary his sons “turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment,” 1 Kings 8:3; and therefore they were deprived of office, and the judgeship and the kingdom were transferred to Saul.
In this age Blessed Thomas More was a judge most upright, and a despiser of gifts and wealth. Once a widow, whose suit he had decided in her favour, offered him a golden cup; he accepted it, but filled it with wine, offered it to her, and gave it back; and, to pass over other things narrated in chapters 3 and 7 of his Life, this is admirable, that, though from his early years he had held great offices in the commonwealth, and had even been Chancellor of the whole kingdom, and had a large household, yet in all his life he did not increase his yearly income beyond seventy gold pieces a year. What will they say to this who in a few years increase theirs to ten, nay twenty thousand?
9. THOU SHALT NOT MOLEST A STRANGER, FOR YOU KNOW THE HEARTS OF STRANGERS,—namely, what mind, what feeling a stranger has when he finds himself forsaken by his own among foreigners and unknowns, how straitened, timid, cast down, fearful, anxious, abashed and sad his mind is; so that you ought not to add affliction to the afflicted, for whom it is punishment enough to be a stranger.
FOR YOU ALSO WERE STRANGERS IN THE LAND OF EGYPT,—that is, you have experienced how pitiable is the condition of a stranger; for none is so ready to succour the wretched as he who has been wretched himself; hence Dido said:
Not unacquainted with misfortune, I learn to succour the wretched.
10 and 11. SIX YEARS THOU SHALT SOW THY GROUND, AND SHALT GATHER THE FRUITS THEREOF: BUT IN THE SEVENTH YEAR THOU SHALT LET IT ALONE, AND SUFFER IT TO REST—from the harvest, but not from the sowing, say some; as if to say: In the seventh year thou shalt sow the field, but not reap. So St. Augustine, Quest. 89. But I say that both are forbidden here in the seventh year, namely sowing as well as reaping of the land: for this is clearly said in Leviticus 25:4: “In the seventh year,” it says, “thou shalt not sow the field.” Josephus and the Hebrews testify that it was so observed among the Hebrews. The Hebrew here indicates the same. For this seventh year was the sabbath of the land, that is, the full rest of the land, as the seventh day was the sabbath, that is, the rest of men.
God ordained this, that the seventh year should be a sabbath of the land: first, to admonish the Hebrews of clemency even toward inanimate things, such as fields, and to draw them away from excessive care of this life and from avarice; secondly, that the land, in this seventh year of rest, as having recovered its vigour, might thereafter be more fruitful: for that reason our own husbandmen also let their fields lie at fixed times, that afterwards they may yield their fruits with greater interest; thirdly, that that seventh year of rest might be a symbol and memorial of the creation of the earth and of all things, as the seventh day, the sabbath, also was, Genesis 2:3; and that the very fallow of the land might be as a rent for its habitation, and as a redemption of it from Him whose it is, that is, from its Creator God, says St. Augustine, Quest. 83 on Leviticus. For as a vassal pays his lord homage and the stated dues for his fief, so the Hebrews, as it were for the fief of their land, paid to God this homage of the sabbath of the land; fourthly, that the poor in that seventh year might enjoy the fruits of the field: for in that year the fruits of the fields were common, as appears from this verse.
Thou wilt say: If in the seventh year it was not lawful to sow anything, what could the poor reap?
I answer: They reaped what had sprung up from the grains fallen from the crop of the sixth year, and whatever herbs and pot-herbs the earth brings forth of itself: hence Leviticus 25:5: “What the ground shall bring forth of itself, thou shalt not reap,” that is, thou shalt not cut it down altogether, and this so that both the servant and the stranger, and the beasts, as is said there, and the poor, as is said here, may gather a part of it. So Abulensis. And in this part this law of the sabbath of the land, otherwise ceremonial, was also judicial: for it was ordained for the benefit of the poor.
The tropology of the seventh year is the same as that of the sabbath, of which Deuteronomy 5:15.
13. AND BY THE NAME OF STRANGE GODS YOU SHALL NOT SWEAR, NEITHER SHALL IT BE HEARD OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.—He commands, not that we should not name them, but that we should not call them gods, and call upon them as gods to be witnesses by swearing by them, says Tertullian, book On Idolatry.
The Jews here are superstitious, nay blasphemous: for they will not read or pronounce the name of our Saviour Jesus; and if by chance it happens that they read or utter it, they punish themselves and strike their own mouth; or if they speak, read or write it, they say Jeshu, and explain it by its initial letters thus: Immach schemo uzichro, that is, Let his name and his memory be blotted out. Such is the hatred of those blind and wretched men toward Jesus Christ, for which they deservedly suffer perpetual exile and destruction.
15. SEVEN DAYS SHALT THOU EAT UNLEAVENED BREAD, IN THE TIME OF THE MONTH OF THE NEW CORN,—that is, in the month Nisan, in which thou camest out of Egypt, when in the Holy Land and in Egypt the new barley crops ripen. See above chap. 12, verse 4.
THOU SHALT NOT APPEAR BEFORE ME EMPTY.—God here commands an offering from everyone who comes to the tabernacle or temple, as an act of religion pertaining both to the worship due to Him and to the support of the Levites. But since Judea was vast, and many dwelt far from Jerusalem and the temple, Lyranus relates that for those who lived far off a dispensation was sometimes made at Pentecost and at the feast of Tabernacles. See Estius on Exodus chap. 34, where he says: This law bound men only, not women, as appears from the words every male; and therefore sons and servants also. Hence Christ at twelve years old went up to the temple to keep this law, Luke chap. 2.
Tropologically, those who approach God ought to bring hands full of mercy and sheaves of the other virtues; so shall they be heard. See St. Chrysostom.
16. AND (thou shalt keep, and celebrate) THE FEAST OF THE FIRSTFRUITS OF THY WORK, WHATSOEVER THOU HAST SOWN IN THE FIELD,—that is, as Vatablus has it: Keep for thyself the feast day of the month of the early fruits of thy work, which thou hast sown in the field; that is, thou shalt celebrate the feast of Pentecost, and on it thou shalt offer me loaves made of the first wheat harvest, as at the Pasch thou didst offer the ripening ears of barley; at Pentecost, therefore, God requires the firstfruits of all the fruits, that is, of the whole wheat harvest, of which more in Leviticus 23:17.