Commentaria in Exodum
8. HE SHALL BURN INCENSE THAT SHALL BE PERPETUAL.—Not that the incense is kindled or burns all day, but that each day, once in the morning and once in the evening, it must be burnt continually. Now this was the manner and rite of offering the incense, as Abulensis rightly teaches, Quest. VII. First, the priest went to the altar of holocausts, from whose horns hung censers and receptacles for fire, and from thence took one censer, and put in it live coals which he took from the altar of holocausts. Then he entered the Holy Place, and there took incense from the vessels which were above the table of the loaves of proposition, and laid it upon his censer and the fire; presently he set this censer of his, with the fire and incense, upon the altar of incense, and there the incense was burnt and consumed: when it was consumed the priest took up his censer, and going out outside the camp emptied it, and poured the ashes in a clean place, and finally brought the censer back to the altar of holocausts, and hung it again from its horns, whence he had taken it.
9. YOU SHALL NOT OFFER UPON IT INCENSE OF ANOTHER COMPOSITION.—“Of another,” namely than that which I shall prescribe to you, verse 34. On the altar of incense, therefore, it was not lawful to offer a victim, nor to pour a libation, nor even to offer another incense, however precious, compounded by man’s skill, but only that which the Lord commands to be compounded.
10. AND AARON SHALL PRAY UPON THE HORNS THEREOF ONCE A YEAR.—Moses here passes, says Cajetan, from the daily office of this altar to the yearly office to be performed upon the same altar, which belonged not to the lesser priests, but to Aaron alone, that is the high priest; to be performed, I say, on the Day of Atonement, the tenth day of the seventh month. For on that day the high priest, after the expiation of the Holy of Holies, returning thence to the Holy Place and the altar of incense, there prayed for his own sins, and dipped the horns of the altar in blood, which he carried with him in a small vessel, with which he had also just sprinkled the Holy of Holies, Levit. chap. xvi, 18; and this is what he says here: “He shall pray in the blood (that is, by the blood, or by dipping the horns of the altar in the blood) of that (animal) which was offered for sin,” namely of the animal, to wit the calf and the goat. For this purification of the altar by the sprinkling of blood was made in order that by it the altar might be expiated, as being defiled by the sins of all the people, in whose midst it stood, committed through the whole year, and therefore to be purified and reconciled by this purification and expiation.
AND SHALL APPEASE,—namely Aaron the high priest shall appease God.
IT SHALL BE MOST HOLY TO THE LORD,—as if He said: This rite of expiation shall be most holy; most holy also shall be the altar which is thus expiated; for “most holy” can be referred as well to the altar as to the rite of expiation. So Abulensis.
Note: The Hebrews express exaggeration, or the superlative degree, by an abstract noun, or by a concrete noun doubled, as, It is holiness, or It is holy of holies, that is, it is most holy.
12. WHEN THOU SHALT TAKE THE SUM (in Hebrew the head, that is the heads, that is the sum of the heads) OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL ACCORDING TO THEIR NUMBER, EVERY ONE SHALL GIVE A PRICE FOR HIS SOUL TO THE LORD: AND THERE SHALL BE NO PLAGUE AMONG THEM WHEN THEY SHALL BE RECKONED,—as if He said: As often as thou shalt take the number of the people, not out of vanity or pride (as David did, whose numbering or census of the people was therefore a sin, and gravely punished by God), but either at My command, or of public necessity, as for tribute, war, or any other just cause: so often shall each one numbered pay a price for his soul, whereby they may as it were redeem their soul, that is their life, from God, that God may preserve them in life, and send upon them neither pestilence nor any other plague, by this as it were law and covenant: for if thou, O Hebrew, hast not redeemed thyself with a price when reckoned, God will punish thee as a transgressor of this law and pact with some plague, as He did in the time of David, when that king numbered the people, and yet had not accepted from it the census here prescribed. Although there was also another fault, namely pride, as I have already said. By this price of the census, therefore, by this law and as it were pact with God, the Hebrews redeemed their life, that they might escape pestilence and other deadly plagues, into which they fell who withheld this price of the census from God and the temple. So also today those who steal tithes from the temple and from God often fall into grievous plagues and calamities, by which they are impoverished or consumed.
God willed this price in the census to be paid to Him by every Hebrew: first, that the Hebrews might know and remember that the multiplication of their people was from God, and from the promise made to the fathers; and that God has care of His people, and wishes as it were to have them numbered for Himself. For this is signified by the tribute which was paid to the temple.
Secondly, to teach that no man is lord of his own head and life, but that all have one Lord, namely God, says St. Cyril, book II on John, chap. xcii.
Thirdly, that by this temporal tribute might be signified the spiritual tribute of the new law, which is to adore God in spirit and in truth, which every one numbered by God, that is, every Christian, ought to pay to Him.
The Emperor Vespasian imposed the same price on the conquered Jews: “He imposed,” says Josephus, book VII of the Jewish War, chap. xxvii, “a tribute on the Jews wherever they dwelt, and ordered them to bring two drachmas each year into the Capitol, as before they had paid to the temple at Jerusalem.”
Anagogically, Bede, book III On the Tabernacle, chap. xiii: The sum, he says, of the children of Israel signifies the sum of all the elect, who by the price of ten obols, that is, by the observance of the Decalogue, redeem their souls, and merit the penny of eternal life, to be received in the evening, that is, at the end of life.
13. AND THIS SHALL EVERY ONE GIVE THAT PASSETH AT THE NAMING, HALF A SICLE ACCORDING TO THE STANDARD OF THE TEMPLE.—“Every one that passeth at the naming,” in Hebrew every one that passeth to the numbered, that is, every one that is numbered, or whose name is reckoned, namely from the twentieth year and upward, as is plain from verse 14; for from that age the Jews were counted and numbered, as fit for war. Hence our Interpreter, chap. xxxviii, 25, where he first enumerates the census of the people, says this price of the census was offered by six hundred thousand armed men, although “of armed men” is not in the Hebrew: for the Interpreter rightly understood that only those were counted who were fit to bear arms, and consequently would be armed in this host and battle-line of the Hebrews.
HALF A SICLE.—The sicle was formerly a coin in very frequent use among the Hebrews, which was also called a stater; the sicle is called in Hebrew sekel, that is, weighed out, poised. For the root sakal signifies to weigh out and to poise. The ancient Jews, like the Romans, used a rude mass of brass, silver or gold, of a certain weight, in place of price and money: afterwards they also stamped and cast coined money, but always weighed it by just weight. So Pliny testifies, book XXXIII, chap. iii, that the Romans first began to use coined silver after Pyrrhus was conquered, which was in the year of the City 485, and therefore before the first Punic war; and that a gold coin was struck 62 years later.
Brass, however, was coined earlier, namely among the ancients by Saturn, among the Latins by Numa Pompilius, the second king of the Romans, who marked it with images and inscribed it with the title of his name, and hence numus or nummus took its name from Numa, says Isidore, book XVI, chap. xvii, Cedrenus and Epiphanius, in the book On Weights, at the end.
The weight of the sicle was four Attic drachmas, or half an ounce, as Josephus testifies, book III of the Antiquities, chap. ix. The silver sicle, therefore, weighed and was equal to four Spanish reals, that is, it was worth one Brabant florin. There were also brazen and golden sicles, all of equal weight, but of unequal value according to the material. For one drachma of gold is worth ten or twelve drachmas of silver: for the price of gold is tenfold or twelvefold the price of silver. A golden sicle, therefore, was worth ten silver sicles. Arias Montanus, in the book On Measures, describes the stamping of the sicle: namely, that on one side it bore a pot with manna, with this inscription (in the ancient Samaritan letters) sekel Israel, that is, the sicle of Israel; on the other side it bore the flowering rod of Aaron, with this inscription, Jerusalem kedesca, that is, Jerusalem the holy.
See here how small a tribute, namely half a sicle, and that rarely to be paid, God demands for Himself. Let princes imitate this.
The Emperor Constans, as Eutropius testifies, used to say that “public wealth is better held by many private persons than stored up within the single enclosure of a prince.”