Commentaria in Exodum
The bread of the firstfruits allegorically signified the Eucharist, says St. Irenaeus, book 4 Against Heresies, chap. 32.
AND THE FEAST IN THE END OF THE YEAR, WHEN THOU HAST GATHERED IN ALL THY FRUITS OUT OF THE FIELD.—This feast is that which was afterwards called Scenopegia, in which they pitched tabernacles and dwelt in them for seven days, in memory and thanksgiving for the divine protection, whereby God had led and protected the Hebrews wandering in the desert and dwelling in tabernacles for forty years.
This feast was held on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, and lasted seven days.
From this place it is plain that the beginning of the sacred year was one thing, and that of the common year, which the Hebrews afterwards used also in civil matters, another, before the going out of Egypt, as I said on chap. 12, verse 2.
The common year, then, began from the month which was nearest the autumnal equinox (as the sacred year began from Nisan, that is, from the month of the vernal equinox); but if the seventh month, which was called Tisri, was nearer to this autumnal equinox, then that was the beginning of the year; but if the eighth month, which was called Marchesuan, were nearer to that equinox, it was the first month of the year; and this could easily happen, for example if the vernal equinox fell on the full moon, or a little before it, then Nisan, or the first month, was that same lunation, and the fourteenth day of Nisan was alike at the equinox and the full moon: for since lunar months are shorter than solar, in many solar months (say thirty-two) one lunar month grows over and above; since therefore the sun runs in six of its months from one equinox to the other, in the case now supposed it would come to pass that the seventh solar month, in which the equinox fell, coincided with the eighth lunar month.
Hence he says, “in the end of the year,” that is, about the end of the year: the Scenopegia could be celebrated before the end of the common year, namely if the year began from the eighth month; and it could also be celebrated after the end of the old year, and at the beginning of the new year, namely if the year began from the seventh month.
Moses preferred to say “in the end” rather than at the beginning of the year (which he might well have said: for what is the end of the preceding year is also the beginning of the following), that he might indicate the cause of the feast, which was thanksgiving for every kind of fruit gathered, from fields as well as gardens and vineyards, when that year had run out. Another cause was added afterwards, namely the memory of the divine protection in the desert, where they had dwelt in tabernacles; whence the feast was afterwards given the name of Tabernacles, of which more in Leviticus 23:42.
17. THREE TIMES IN THE YEAR ALL THY MALES SHALL APPEAR BEFORE THE LORD,—namely at the three more solemn feasts of the year already mentioned, the Pasch, Pentecost and the feast of Tabernacles, Deuteronomy chap. 16.
Allegorically St. Basil, on Isaias chap. 1, says: God requires the faith of the Holy Trinity; for, as the Gloss says, at the Pasch the Son is sacrificed, at Pentecost the Holy Ghost is given, in the gathering of the fruits the power of the Father the Creator is signified.
Seek the tropology from Rabanus.
BEFORE THE LORD,—that is, before the ark, or before the tabernacle if the ark was separated from it, as happened when the Philistines took the ark in the time of Heli, and after the ark was brought back, for a long time thereafter the ark was separated from the tabernacle; and then the Hebrews sacrificed and celebrated their feasts not before the ark but before the tabernacle.
18. THOU SHALT NOT OFFER THE BLOOD OF MY SACRIFICE UPON LEAVEN,—with leaven, but with unleavened bread only, that the sacrifice may be pure and unleavened; of which more in Leviticus (3).
NEITHER SHALL THE FAT OF MY SOLEMNITY REMAIN UNTIL THE MORNING.—“The fat of my solemnity,” that is, the fat of the sacrifice offered in my honour, or on a solemnity dedicated to me: for that is my solemnity in which sacrifice is made to me; God commands here, therefore, that when the victim is sacrificed and slain, that which is chief and fattest in it, namely the fresh fat, be burned at once to Him.
19. THOU SHALT NOT BOIL A KID IN THE MILK OF HIS DAM.—The Chaldee renders: Thou shalt not eat flesh with milk; hence some of the Hebrews also, as Gregory of Venice testifies in Problem 442, in their fashion thus render it: Thou shalt not eat milk with flesh; wherefore they eat no cheese after flesh, because the digestion of meats along with cheese is bad. Secondly, others in Vatablus by a hypallage interpret thus, as if to say: Thou shalt not boil, nor eat, the kid with its suckling mother; as if to say: Let it suffice thee to eat the kid; abstain from the mother: for this seems cruel; so God commanded him who takes the young in the nest to let the mother go, Deuteronomy 22:6. Thirdly, Abulensis, Lyranus, Cajetan and St. Thomas, 1–2, Question 102, art. 5, ad 4, simply take this precept as it sounds, namely that it is forbidden to boil a kid, or, as the Hebrew has it, to stew it, in its mother’s milk, lest what was a delicacy to the kid be turned into a torment (1). Fourthly, and best, Vatablus and Oleaster expound thus: Boil not a kid in its mother’s milk, that is, kill not and boil not a sucking kid as long as it sucks its mother’s milk: for that is what the Hebrew idiom means. This exposition is proved: for first, there was nowhere any custom of stewing kids properly in their mother’s milk, such that it needed to be forbidden to the Jews: therefore these words must be taken in the sense I have just given; secondly, because this sense answers best to the allegory, as I shall presently say; thirdly, because St. Chrysostom, homily On the Innocents, and St. Augustine, Quest. 90, so understand it. According to the letter, then, God forbade tender kids or lambs to be killed for food (the Septuagint renders it lamb, and the reason of the kid and of the lamb seems the same), to teach the Hebrews humanity and kindness toward men, when He enjoined it even toward brutes, and commanded them to have compassion on their cattle, and to shrink from and abhor cruelty to them, especially to the tenderest lambs and kids, who move all to pity when they are slaughtered.
I say “for food,” for Leviticus 22:27 says that on the eighth day a kid, a lamb and a calf might be offered to the Lord; and it seems to speak altogether of an offering by slaughter and immolation: for in the sacrifices of victims, even tender ones, immolated to God by the priests, there was no semblance of cruelty; for religion purged and excluded it.
The Jews so superstitiously observe this law that they will not cook flesh and milk in the same pot, nay, they do not think it lawful even to cut flesh and cheese with the same knife, but use different ones: and on this ceremony they have written a whole book, in which they teach what is lawful and what is not lawful in the eating of flesh and milk.
The allegorical and chief cause of this law was to signify that Christ, an infant and a suckling, could not be slain, whether by Herod or by the Jews, before the mature age and the time fixed by the Father. So St. Augustine and Chrysostom above. Morally this law teaches us to have compassion on the tender and weak, and to bear with their infirmity.
Tropologically, heretics boil kids in their mother’s milk. For the milk of the stinking goat, that is, of heresy, is their impious doctrine: in this they boil kids, that is, their disciples, to be boiled again afterwards in the eternal fires of hell. For this milk is turned for them into eternal torment. So some say; though this tropology does not sufficiently agree with the allegory just given.
20. BEHOLD I WILL SEND MY ANGEL, WHO SHALL GO BEFORE THEE.—By this angel, first, Cajetan understands Moses himself; secondly, others understand Josue, because he brought the Hebrews into the promised land: so Justin Against Tryphon, folio 28, and Eusebius, book 4 of the Demonstration of the Gospel, chap. 23, and Rabanus; thirdly, Rupert here, and St. Athanasius, book On the Common Essence of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, near the end, and Hesychius, book 7 on Leviticus chap. 26, folio 653, think that the Son of God is here called an angel, because it is added: “And my name is in him” (that is, God’s), as if to say: He is called God equally with me (2). But Rupert said this, as he is wont, and likewise Hesychius and Athanasius, in an allegorical rather than the literal sense; fourthly, therefore, and rightly, this angel was a true and mere angel, namely the president of the host of the Hebrews: for he went before them in the way in the pillar of a cloud by day, and of fire by night; he also in God’s name gave commands to Moses and the Hebrews; and he finally punished the rebellious. It is probable that this angel was Michael, who in Daniel 10, last verse, is called the prince of the people of Israel. For he of old presided over the Synagogue of the Jews, as he now presides over the Church of the Christians.
AND KEEP THEE IN THY JOURNEY.—Note here the name of the angel, guardian of the whole people, and his five offices: the first is, “he shall go before thee;” the second, “and keep thee in thy journey;” the third, “and bring thee into the place that I have prepared,” namely into Chanaan; the fourth, “he will not forgive when thou hast sinned,” as if to say: If thou sin, he will punish thee; the fifth, “my name is in him.” The same may be applied to the guardian angel of every man.