Commentaria in Exodum
Note: the chief attribute of God is holiness
“For holiness,” as St. Dionysius says, “is freedom from all defilement, a most unstained and most perfect purity”; whence the Holy Spirit also takes His name from holiness: because holiness surpasses all things, not indeed in God, in whom all the attributes are equal, nay one and the same, but in us. For the highest good and perfection of man and of angel is holiness. Hence the Seraphim, Isaias 6, cry out to God three times holy, saying: “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts.” So also those four holy living creatures in Apocalypse chapter 4: “They rested not day and night, saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty.” So too the Mother of God sings: “Because He that is mighty hath done great things to me, and holy is His name.” So the Trisagion was handed down to a boy caught up on high, under the Emperor Theodosius the Younger, in the year of Christ 446. For when Constantinople was shaken by a great earthquake, the Emperor, the Patriarch, and the people went out of the city and stayed in the fields, praying to God as suppliants; and behold, a certain boy of the common people, caught up on high by angels, learned this hymn: “Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy on us”; and when he had been set down again among his own people and had told what he had learned, the whole people sang the same hymn, and so the earthquake ceased, and the boy died immediately. So the Menology of the Greeks has it, on September 24; Damascene, book 3 On the Faith, chapter 10; Nicephorus, Baronius, and others.
Verse 38. “And Aaron shall bear the iniquities of those things which the children of Israel have offered and sanctified,” as if to say: Therefore the high priest bears on his forehead the holy name of God engraved on the plate, that he may, as it were, take upon his shoulders and carry away, through the name, the power, and the authority of divine holiness, which he tacitly invokes by this ornament, the iniquities of those things, that is, the faults committed in those things, which the children of Israel shall offer, and by offering shall sanctify. This sense is plain from the Hebrew.
See here how humble priests and pious men ought to be, how modest and ashamed before God, because even in their prayers and sacrifices they admit distractions, curiosities, and other indecencies and faults, which they ought there to confess and acknowledge, and to ask pardon for them, invoking the name of the Lord.
“And it shall be always on his forehead, that the Lord may be well pleased with them” (so it must be read according to the Hebrew, the Septuagint, the Chaldee, and the Roman text, not “with him,” as the Plantin edition reads). As if to say: The priest, bearing on the plate Holy to the Lord, by this as it were profession of praise and of the holiness of God, and by this act of worship and obedience, will above all entreat God to be reconciled to the people, and in this way shall bear and take away the sins of the people.
Verse 39. “And thou shalt gird the tunic with fine linen.” This is the fourth vestment of the priest, namely the linen and close-fitting tunic: for this is what the word “thou shalt gird” (stringes) signifies; whence the Septuagint also render it by a Greek word meaning bands, and such, says Suidas, are bands, and, says Hesychius, girdles. Wrongly, therefore, do R. Abraham, R. Solomon, R. Saadias, Vatablus, and other more recent writers translate the Hebrew word scibbatsta, that is, “thou shalt gird,” as “thou shalt adorn with eyelets,” that is, with little eyes, or with figures of eyes, as a garment checkered. But these eyes the sharp-sighted interpreters did not see, the Septuagint, the Chaldee, St. Jerome, Philo, and Josephus, who, as a priest, often wore this tunic: for all these constantly render scibbatsta as “thou shalt gird,” and so elsewhere the Jews themselves also render it; only in this one place, carried away by novelty, they attribute to it this blind notion of eyelets. Finally, that this linen tunic was girt with a girdle is plain from Leviticus 8:7. Fifth, the girdle. Hence it is clear that the high priest had a double girdle, one with which he girded this linen tunic, another with which he girded the hyacinth one, as is plain from Leviticus 8:7.
God therefore here commands that the tunic be girded with fine linen, that is, with a girdle of byssus, which Josephus says was four fingers broad, and hollow within, so woven that it might look like the cast skin of a serpent; and that it was embroidered with flowers of scarlet, purple, hyacinth, and byssus, and finally that its warp was of byssus alone.
“The tunic.” This tunic was the inner one, which in Hebrew is called kethoneth; whence the Septuagint also call it in Greek chiton, as if you said linen: for, as Josephus and St. Jerome teach, chiton, or kethoneth, signifies linen in Hebrew, although in the Bible that meaning is rarely found.
Josephus describes this tunic thus: “Over the breeches,” he says, “the priest puts on a linen inner garment, of byssus, made of double web: it is a tunic reaching to the ankles (of which a little later), fitted close to the body, having sleeves about the arms, themselves close-fitting, and it is girded about the breast a little below the armpits with a girdle four fingers broad; this tunic is nowhere gathered in folds (that is, it has no wrinkles; for it was fitted very closely to the body), and it has about the neck a wide opening, whose edges are joined at the breast and the back.”
Hence it is plain that this linen tunic was, first, the one which the priest put on next over the breeches.
Second, that it was made of the finest linen, which Scripture calls byssus. Third, that it had no wrinkles and no folds, and again that it had its own girdle with which it was girded.
Fourth, that it clasped the body very tightly; and this, says St. Jerome, in order that the priests might be unencumbered for their ministries. For the lesser priests, who ministered daily and everywhere in the tabernacle, used this tunic alone.
Hence, fifth, St. Jerome relates that it reached only to the legs, and was like the shirt which soldiers use, that they may be unencumbered for running, for fighting, and for every work. Whence it is surprising that the same is called by St. Jerome and Josephus a poderes; but they seem to understand by poderes a garment not reaching to the ankles, but falling as far as the feet, that is, to the legs.
Tropologically, Bede says: The linen or byssine tunic, lying next to the body, signifies chastity, so necessary to the priest; therefore it binds the whole breast, the belly, and the loins. The girdle signifies the other virtues that stir up chastity and keep it from pride, and moreover prudence and fortitude; for chastity ought to be armed with the sword of modesty, says St. Jerome to Principia. So St. Thomas, 1–2, question 102, article 5, reply to 9.
Hence also among the Gentiles, especially the Egyptians, the byssine or linen tunic was a symbol of religion, and was the garment of priests; whence Apuleius in his Apology says of linen cloth: “The dress and covering of priests is of it.” And Herodotus, book 2, number 46: “The Egyptian priests wear only a linen garment, nor is it lawful for them to put on any other.”
Linen aptly signifies the sanctity of priests; for first, it is most clean, both because it wipes away dirt far better than wool, and because it can be washed often.
Second, because woolen and silken stuffs can be dyed and painted, but linen, a lover of simplicity, rejects all dye and paint; it is therefore a symbol of a simple and candid mind, which rejects all pretence, such as ought to be in a priest. Third, linen, though fine, is nevertheless sinewy and strong, so that it cuts through wild boars that entangle themselves in its nets; such ought to be the strength and sinews of the priest.
Fourth, linen, as Pliny says, “is always made better by ill-treatment”; so the true sanctity of priests is increased by adversity. The injuries which linen endures, until it comes to the desired whiteness and brightness, are very many, namely “to be plucked up, dried, steeped in the river, dried again, beaten with the flax-mallet, stripped of its bark, split with a wooden blade, combed with iron hooks, spun, smoothed in the thread, dashed often upon flint with water, woven, and beaten with a club.”
Hence linen is the best symbol of the patient, and consequently of sanctity (which ought to shine forth in a priest). For these reasons the Apostles, in imitation of Aaron, retained the white linen vestment in sacred rites.
Moreover, as the linen tunic encircled the whole body, so the patience of the priest, and of any of the faithful who is a spiritual priest, ought to embrace and overcome the whole life of man, all his actions and difficulties, and to surmount them. This is the work of the Christian philosopher, whom Nazianzen paints to the life, oration 28, where he says that every one of the faithful is sprung from an ignoble stock, namely from clay; but that his nobility consists in virtue, and especially in quiet and constant patience everywhere. Whence he says: “Is he sick? He will fight; and if he is conquered, he will conquer: having attained this, that he now fights no more. Is he poor? He will have God for riches; he will laugh at the rich, who, though they increase their wealth daily, are yet always poor, because they need more, and drink so as to be inflamed with a greater thirst. Is he vexed with hunger? He will be fed with the birds, whose food is free from sowing and ploughing. Is he afflicted with thirst? Fountains and rivers will supply him drink, and a drink that does not intoxicate, nor is it measured out.