Commentaria in Exodum
Tropologically, the ephod signified the evangelical burden and the yoke of the Lord. For in the taking up of this and in obedience consists the perfection and happiness of the Christian. So also the Gentile Agesilaus, being asked why the Spartans were happier and more powerful than others, said: “Because they exercise themselves more than others in commanding and obeying.” And king Agis, being asked what discipline was chiefly practised at Sparta, said: “The skill of commanding and obeying.” More closely and truly Theopompus, when someone said that the safety of Sparta came from its having kings fit to command, answered that this was not the cause, but that the citizens knew how to obey. So Plutarch in the Laconic Sayings.
What the various colours signified I have said chap. 25, verse 3. The two edges joined, on the left side as on the right, and that above at the shoulders, signified that outward work and holy operation must be joined to a pious intention both in adversity and in prosperity. The ephod had sleeves, because the burden laid by God and by God’s vicars is at once to be embraced with both hands. This ephod must be girded with a girdle, that is, with the will of God: so Bede; for by this all the arduous and adverse things which God lays upon us as an ephod are easily borne and overcome. Hear St. Jerome to Paula, On the Death of Blesilla: “God is good, and all that the good One does must needs be good. The bereavement of a husband is laid upon me, I lament what has happened; but because it so pleases the Lord, I shall bear it with an even mind. An only son has been snatched away: hard indeed, but tolerable, because He took away who had given. If I become blind, the reading of a friend will console me. If deaf ears also deny me hearing, I shall be free from vices, and think of nothing else but the Lord. Poverty, cold, sickness and nakedness will threaten besides, and hard: I shall await the last hour, and think it a brief evil that a better end follows. I am well, I give thanks to the Creator. I am sick, and in this I praise the will of the Lord: for when I am weak, then am I strong; and the power of the spirit in the infirmity of the flesh is made perfect. But why should that be hard which must sometimes be suffered?” Morally, therefore, learn here that the first and chief vestment which clothes and adorns the priest, that is, the faithful soul cleaving to God, is the ephod, that is, obedience. Obedience, says St. Gregory, book 35 Moral. chap. 10, “is the only virtue that plants the other virtues in the mind, and guards them when planted.” And: “Better is obedience than victims, because by victims another’s flesh, but by obedience one’s own will is sacrificed.”
Secondly: “If thou wilt be wise, be obedient; for so it is written: Thou desirest wisdom, keep the commandments, and the Lord will give her to thee,” says St. Bernard in the sermon on the Epiphany.
Thirdly: “The good obedient man,” says St. Bernard, “gives up his own willing and his own not-willing, that he may be able to say: My heart is ready, O God, ready to do whatsoever Thou shalt command, ready to obey more quickly at a nod, ready to be free for Thee, to serve my neighbours, to keep myself, and to rest in the contemplation of heavenly things. The obedient man is lovable to his companions, ready to serve all, and burdensome to none, devout toward God, kindly toward his neighbour, sober toward the world, the servant of the Lord, the companion of his neighbour, the lord of the world. He has superiors for joy, equals for fellowship, inferiors for service.”
Fourthly, St. Cyprian, in the treatise On the Twelve Abuses: “A youth without obedience,” he says, “is a youth without discipline.”
Fifthly, St. Gregory, book 35 of the Morals, and it is found in 11, Quest. 3, canon Quid ergo: “What wonder is it,” he says, “if a man subjects himself to obedience in the present life, when the Mediator of God and men both held to it and commanded it to be held; and when He rewards the obedient, does He forsake them?”
Sixthly, Justin Martyr, book On the Right Confession: “We must yield,” he says, “to the will of God, as clay yields to its potter:” And Procopius on Levit.: “As it is fitting,” he says, “that beasts of burden obey us, so our reason ought to obey God.”
Seventhly, St. Laurence Justinian, book On the Tree of Life, chap. 12: “As without a leader there is no confidence of victory, and without a pilot the harbour is not reached, so without obedience it is impossible not to be in peril on the sea of this life. For this makes a man triumph.”
Eighthly, Abbot Pambo, in the Lives of the Fathers, book 5, chap. 14, on obedience, four Religious being presented to him, the first fasting, the second poor in spirit, the third loving, the fourth obedient, preferred the obedient man above all: “Because,” he said, “the other three keep the virtue which they possess by their own will; but this man, cutting off his own will, has made himself the servant of another’s will. Such are true confessors, if they persevere so to the end.”
In the same place, no. 9, a certain Abbot saw four orders in heaven: the first, of the sick, and those who give thanks to God; the second, of those who practise hospitality; the third, of solitaries; the fourth, of obedient juniors, who, adorned with a golden collar and crown, had greater glory than the others, because, he says, they had cast away their own will, and resigned it to God into the hand of the Superior, and he concludes: “Obedience is the salvation of the faithful; obedience is the mother of all virtues; obedience is the finder of the kingdom of heaven; obedience opens the heavens, and raises men from the earth; obedience is the dweller together with the angels; obedience is the food of all the Saints: for by it they were weaned, and by it they came to perfection.”
Ninthly, in the same place is celebrated the obedience of Mark, who left a letter unfinished when called, and of Mutius, casting his son into the river, p. 547 (I follow the edition of our Father Heribert), and of John bringing a bundle of wood tied up to the Abbot, p. 502; of Euphraxis in hard things, p. 355; of John watering a dry stick for a whole year with water fetched from afar, which at length put forth leaves, p. 546; of the same, trying for a long time to move a huge rock, p. 547.
Tenthly, St. Antony said that the swift and compendious way of coming to perfection is obedience; which that Christ might teach us, He says that He came to do not His own will, but the Father’s. Whence Paul the Simple, from this doctrine of St. Antony, by the merit of obedience and simplicity ascended to such a height of graces that he wrought many more and greater miracles than St. Antony himself; Rufinus is witness in his Life.
Eleventhly, John of Lycus obtained by obedience the gift of prophecy, in which the Emperor Theodosius so trusted that he would not go forth to wars until he was encouraged by his oracles; relying on which as though sent him from heaven, he always carried off trophies from desperate wars and enemies. Witnesses are Sulpicius and Cassian, book 4 of the Lives of the Fathers, chap. 25.
Hear the Gentiles. Solon, asked by what means a city may be safe, answered: “If the citizens obey their magistrates, and the magistrates the laws.”
Zeno of Citium used to invert the most celebrated sentence of Hesiod. For whereas Hesiod gives the first place to him who is wise of himself, the second to him who obeys one who rightly counsels, Zeno in the inverted order thus pronounced:
He indeed is best who obeys one that counsels rightly, but he too is worthy who knows all things of himself.
He added the reason, that he who knew all things of himself would have nothing beyond understanding; but he who obeyed one who counselled rightly would have, besides understanding, also the effect. For he is said to obey who does what he has learned to be best. Laertius is witness, book 7, chap. 1.
13 and 14. AND THOU SHALT MAKE HOOKS OF GOLD, AND TWO LITTLE CHAINS OF GOLD.—That, namely, by them the rational may be bound to the superhumeral, that is, to the ephod itself: for the rational was bound immediately to the ephod by four rings, existing at its four corners; but because the weight of the gems in the rational was great, there were added here two little chains, which outwardly were inserted into the rational in its two rings, and that through hidden tubes, that they might not appear, so that the ephod and the rational might seem to be one texture, say Josephus and Jerome. These little chains went up as far as the shoulders and were fastened to circles, or, as our version better renders, golden hooks, which were on the top of the ephod behind. Of these chains and hooks Moses again makes mention in the rational, verses 24 and 25. For that these are the same as those is easy to see from the agreement of the Hebrew text in both places, and from Josephus and St. Jerome, who mention these little chains only in the making of the rational. So Abulensis.
14. LINKED ONE TO ANOTHER,—as if to say: Make two little chains, in each of which the rings are interlaced and cohere with one another. So Abulensis, Hugh of St. Victor and others. For the left chain could not cohere with the right, or the contrary, but both the right and the left were woven, or rather interlinked and interwoven, with their own rings or loops, as is usual in chains. Whence the Hebrew is, thou shalt make them of plaited work; and the Septuagint, thou shalt make them intermixed like flowers, that is, after the manner of flowers, so that as flower is inserted into flower and wreathed and plaited into a garland, so these rings of the chains may be plaited into one another, to make a chain.