Commentaria in Exodum
Dost thou wish rare examples of angelic guardianship and help? Take all those of Holy Scripture in their order. First, Cherubim guard paradise, when Adam the sinner was cast out, and turn a flaming sword, Genesis 3:24: for the purest angels either flee, in the highest degree, or put to flight impure sinners. “As smoke drives away bees, and stench doves, so a wretched and foul sin repels the angel guardian of our life,” says St. Basil, and from him Maximus, serm. On Sin; secondly, an angel brought back the fugitive Agar to Sara her mistress, Genesis 16:7; thirdly, three angels promised Abraham a son Isaac, Gen. 18:10; fourthly, two angels led Lot out of Sodom, and burned the Sodomites with fire from heaven, Gen. 19; fifthly, an angel comforted Agar, and by showing a well saved the life of Ismael dying of thirst, Gen. 21:17; sixthly, an angel stayed the sword of Abraham, who would have sacrificed Isaac, Gen. 22:11; seventhly, Jacob saw angels ascending and descending by a ladder, for his help, Gen. 28:12; eighthly, an angel taught Jacob the way of producing, by means of rods of divers colours, the young due to him by agreement, Gen. 31:11; ninthly, angels conducted Jacob from Mesopotamia into Chanaan, Gen. 32:1; tenthly, an angel placed himself between the camp of the Hebrews and that of Pharao, lighting the one and leading it through the Red Sea, darkening the other and drowning it, Exodus 14:19; eleventhly, an angel led the Hebrews through the desert into Chanaan, Exodus 23:20; twelfthly, an angel spoke by the mouth of an ass, and rebuked Balaam, Num. 22:22; thirteenthly, an angel comforted the Hebrews afflicted by their enemies, Judges 2:4; fourteenthly, an angel strengthened Gedeon for the war against Madian, Judges 6:11; fifteenthly, an angel promised Manue a son, Samson the Nazarite, Judges 13:3; sixteenthly, an angel smote Jerusalem with pestilence because David had numbered the people, 2 Kings 24:16; seventeenthly, an angel strengthened Elias with bread, that he might walk forty days to the mount of God, Horeb, 3 Kings 19:5; eighteenthly, an angel sent Elias to King Ochozias, to foretell his death for the worship of Beelzebub, 4 Kings 1:3; nineteenthly, an angel smote 185,000 of the Assyrians, 4 Kings 19:35; twentiethly, Raphael led Tobias there and back, and procured for him Sara to wife, as appears from Tobias; twenty-firstly, an angel kept Judith, and directed her to the slaying of Holofernes, Judith 13:20; twenty-secondly, an angel defended the three children from the fire in the Babylonian furnace, Daniel 3:49; twenty-thirdly, an angel shut the mouths of the lions that they might not devour Daniel, Daniel 6:22; twenty-fourthly, the angel Gabriel showed Daniel that after seventy weeks Christ was to be slain, Daniel 9:21: the same revealed to him various future things concerning the kings of Syria and Egypt, chap. 11; twenty-fifthly, an angel guarded and vindicated the chastity of Susanna, Dan. 13, verses 55 and 59; twenty-sixthly, an angel caught up Habacuc to carry a dinner to Daniel in the lions’ den, Dan. 14:33; twenty-seventhly, an angel revealed to Zacharias, chaps. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, various mysteries; twenty-eighthly, an angel brandishing a spear went before the camp of Juda, and gave victory.
Now in the New Testament angels sang at the birth of Christ: “Glory to God in the highest;” they counselled the flight into Egypt, and the return from thence, they ministered to Christ after the temptation, comforted Christ in His agony, announced the resurrection of Christ: an angel brought Peter out of prison, caught up Philip to the eunuch, bade Cornelius call Peter, delivered Paul and his companions from shipwreck, and finally, appearing often to St. John, revealed the Apocalypse.
21. AND DO NOT THINK HIM ONE TO BE CONTEMNED.—In the Hebrew: Provoke him not to bitterness, or, be not bitter, disobedient and rebellious against him.
AND MY NAME IS IN HIM.—In the Hebrew, in the midst of him; as if to say: This angel bears my name, person, authority and will; hence the Chaldee renders, because in my name is his word; as if to say: Whatever this angel commands, he commands in this my name (1). Rightly, therefore, that Abbot in the Lives of the Fathers, book 7, chap. 24, being asked what his daily exercise was, answered: “I wait for my angel standing by me, and I guard myself, remembering what is written: I set the Lord always in my sight; for he is at my right hand, that I be not moved. I fear him therefore as the keeper of my ways, who daily ascends to God and reports my deeds and words.”
24. THOU SHALT NOT DO THEIR WORKS.—In the Hebrew: Thou shalt not do according to their works, namely that thou raise up for them groves, temples, altars, statues, after the pattern of those which thou shalt find and see in Chanaan, but destroy them when found.
25. I WILL BLESS THY BREAD AND THY WATERS,—as if to say: I will give you food and drink in abundance; for such were the promises of the Old Testament, says St. Augustine, Quest. 92.
26. I WILL FILL THE NUMBER OF THY DAYS,—as if to say: I will make you have a sound and long old age, and die full and satisfied with days; on the contrary it is said of the wicked, Psalm 54, last verse, that “they shall not live out half their days” (2).
28. SENDING HORNETS BEFORE, WHICH SHALL DRIVE OUT THE HEVITE.—By hornets St. Augustine, Locut. 101, and Eusebius of Caesarea understand the stings of dread and fear by which the Chanaanites were cast down at the coming of the Hebrews, as easily as if wasps and hornets had struck them down (3). But because mention of fear has plainly gone before, it is more distinct and better to understand by hornets real hornets, because they are so called also in Deut. 7:20, and the last chapter of Josue, verse 12, teaches that such were sent upon the Chanaanites. The same is plain from Wisdom 12:8, where the Wise Man says: “Thou sentest wasps, forerunners of thy host, that they might destroy them (the Chanaanites) by little and little: not that thou wast unable to destroy them by cruel beasts.” God, therefore, sent hornets before the Hebrews, which harassed, weakened and wore down the Chanaanites, that they themselves might afterwards be more easily conquered and expelled by the Hebrews.
29. I WILL NOT CAST THEM OUT FROM BEFORE THEE IN ONE YEAR, LEST THE LAND BE BROUGHT TO BE A DESERT.—Hence it is plain that Chanaan was ample and fertile, as one that could not be so cultivated by six hundred thousand Hebrews but that a great desert of it would still remain, to be filled with beasts and wild animals that would harm men, unless the Chanaanites had remained in it in many places.
There was also another reason why those nations were not at once exterminated by God: namely that God willed to train Israel by them, as is said in Judges 3:4, that Israel might not grow torpid in idleness, but, waging war continually, might not be dissolved in luxury, idol-worship and fellowship with the Gentiles; and might learn to worship God through fear of enemies, to serve Him alone, and to hope in Him as the giver of victory. But God is silent here about this reason, lest He should dishearten an unwarlike people, used to peace, by this fear of war.
For the allegory of all this, concerning the Church subduing the Gentiles, see Rupert.
31. AND I WILL SET THY BOUNDS FROM THE RED SEA TO THE SEA OF THE PALESTINES, AND FROM THE DESERT UNTO THE RIVER.—God here marks out, according to the four quarters of the world, the land of promise to be given by Him to the Hebrews: for it has on the south the Red Sea as a boundary; on the west the sea of the Palestines, that is, of which the Philistines are the inhabitants, which is the Mediterranean: whence Scripture often signifies the west by the sea. Toward the east it has the deserts of Arabia, which lie between it and Egypt. On the north, finally, it has the river Euphrates, which by antonomasia is called the river.
God sets these bounds for the Hebrews that they may know the amplitude of the promised land, and long for it: though by their own fault and desert they did not possess the whole of it, save for the short time of Solomon’s reign, in which, however, those regions of theirs were not tilled and inhabited by them, but only subdued and made tributary, regions which had long before been occupied and inhabited by enemies.
33. IF THOU SERVE THEIR GODS.—Morally, a man’s gods, or idols, are his cupidities. Learn hence that sinners serve sin in wretched slavery. Hear Claudian:
If thou fearest, if thou desirest base things, if thou art led by anger, thou shalt endure the yoke of servitude, thou shalt bear unjust laws within: then shalt thou hold all rights, if thou canst be king of thyself.
The sinner alone serves ill; though he enjoy a wide realm, he is a wretched slave enough:
when the carnal mind, under a tyrant that rules excessively, serves as many sceptres as it is given up to vices.
And Seneca, epist. 47: “One,” he says, “is slave to lust, another to avarice, another to ambition, all to fear: no slavery is more shameful than that which is voluntary.”
“The fool,” he says, “though he rule, is a slave to his own passions, a slave to his cupidities, whose dominion can be shaken off neither night nor day, because he has masters within himself, and within himself suffers intolerable servitude.”
And St. Ambrose, book 2 On Jacob and the Happy Life: “He serves,” he says, “whoever is broken by fear, or ensnared by pleasure, or led by cupidities, or embittered by indignation, or cast down by sorrow. For every passion is servile.”
“The good man,” he says, “even if he serve, is free; but the wicked man, if he reign, is a slave; and not of one man, but, what is graver, of as many masters as he has vices.”
WHICH UNDOUBTEDLY WILL BE A SCANDAL TO THEE,—namely, that to sin, or the sin of the idolatry of the Chanaanites, will be to thee a scandal, in the Hebrew a snare, that is, a ruin and destruction: for it will be the cause of thy ruin and downfall.
The pronoun which may also be referred, in the Hebrew manner, to what went before, namely “let them not dwell in thy land:” for this was properly a scandal of fault to the Jews, not of punishment, because it was to them an occasion of idolatry.