Commentaria in Exodum
AND ALL THE SONS OF LEVI GATHERED THEMSELVES TOGETHER UNTO HIM.—Hence it seems that most of the Levites did not consent to the sin of the people and the worship of the calf, and that it displeased them. Nay, R. Solomon and Abulensis think that no one of the tribe of Levi consented to this idolatry. But this is false: for Aaron consented, and made the calf; and Aaron, as head of the tribe of Levi, many of the Levites followed. Again, many Levites here were slain by their own brethren: therefore they had been partakers of the crime and of the calf. The antecedent is plain from verse 29, where Moses says to the avenging Levites: “You have consecrated your hands this day to the Lord, every man in his son and in his brother, that a blessing may be given you.”
Thou wilt say: How then are all the sons of Levi here said to have gathered themselves to Moses, if some of them were slain?
I answer: They are said to be “all,” that is, nearly all, almost all, very many gathered themselves to Moses. For the word all in Scripture sometimes signifies not absolutely all, but a great multitude, as is plain from Judges 20:1, where all Israel is said to have been gathered, though the men of Jabes Galaad were wanting, as is said in the next chapter, verse 8. Like is 2 Kings 16, and chap. 17:14.
Note here the zeal of Moses and the Levites for the glory of God, against the idol and the idolaters. Like, but different in manner, was the zeal of the Christian soldiers whom Julian the Apostate wished to lead by guile into idolatry. For when he invited them to receive a gift from his hand, and, as they departed, to cast some grains of incense into the fire, for honour’s sake, in his presence and that of his people, who interpreted this ceremony as done to idols, and as a tacit abjuration of Christianity: these soldiers, when after the deed they discovered the Emperor’s mind and fraud, went to Julian in a fury, and cried out: “We have not received gifts, O Emperor, but are condemned to death; we have not been called for honour’s sake, but marked with ignominy. Grant this favour to thy soldiers: sacrifice us and cut us down for Christ, to whose sole command we are subject. Repay fire with fire: for that reduce us to ashes. Cut off the hands which we wickedly stretched forth; the feet with which we ran amiss. Give gold to others, who will not afterwards repent of having received it. To us Christ is enough and more than enough, whom we have in place of all.” Julian, inflamed with anger, and envying them the glory of martyrdom, punished them with exile. Nazianzen relates the matter at length, oration 4 Against Julian. With like zeal Gedeon overthrew the altar of Baal, Judges chap. 6, verse 31. Gedeon was imitated by Wolfred, martyr of Sweden, who, preaching to the people, said: “If your god Tostan is powerful, let him avenge himself”; and seizing an axe he cut the image in pieces: for which, pierced by a thousand swords of the bystanders, he fell. So Crantzius the Metropolitan, book 4, chap. 8.
27. THUS SAITH THE LORD GOD OF ISRAEL.—Moses, as ruler and leader of the people, had the power of the sword over it, and that from God: for he was appointed leader by him, not by the people; but here is added the will and command of the Lord, that it may the more incite the Levites to avenge the offence against God.
LET EVERY MAN KILL HIS BROTHER, etc.,—as if to say: Let each kill whomsoever he meets, even though most closely connected with him: for nearly all in the people were guilty and accessory to the idolatry of the calf, and this they betrayed sufficiently by voice, by dress, by dances, by drunkenness, and in other ways. Others, in Rupert and Abulensis, will have it that the guilty were distinguished from the innocent by the drinking of the ashes of the calf: for thence the guilty, they say, contracted a golden beard, or golden lips, others even a disease. But these are fables of the Jews.
Behold how Moses, the meekest of mortals, puts on severity and wrath for God, that by the punishment of a few he may reconcile God to the whole people. For this is holy anger, that is angry at sin. “For anger is the whetstone of virtue”; and: “He has no mind who has no anger.” So Archidamus, when someone praised Charilaus because he was equally mild to all; “How,” said he, “can he be justly praised who shows himself mild even to the wicked?” See St. Basil, sermon On Anger, and Gregory, book 20 of the Morals, chap. 6, and part 3 of the Pastoral, chap. 22. “Behold,” says Gregory, “Moses, who sought the life of all with his own death, extinguished the life of a few with the sword: within he was kindled with the fires of love, without with zeal of severity: on both sides a strong ambassador, he pleaded the people’s cause with God by prayers, God’s cause with the people by swords: within, loving, he withstood the divine wrath by supplication, without, raging, he consumed the fault by smiting. He succours the many more quickly in the offence of the few; but God therefore heard him the more quickly when he pleaded for the people, because he saw what he would do against the people for God. In governing the people, therefore, Moses mingled both, that neither should discipline lack mercy, nor mercy discipline.”
Tropologically St. Ambrose to Romulus: “He is the true Levite,” he says, “the avenger and champion of God, who puts to death the flesh and the body of passions and vices, that he may save the soul, that it may now be no longer the flesh of sin, but of God. For who is more brother or neighbour to the soul than the flesh?” and a little before: “The holier ministries are chosen for this purpose of the Levites, whose portion is God. For they know not how to spare their own, who know nothing as their own: since to the saints God is all.”
28. THERE WERE SLAIN THAT DAY ABOUT THREE AND TWENTY THOUSAND MEN.—So constantly read the Roman Bibles, and the older Latin ones everywhere; so also St. Gregory on 1 Kings 14, Rupert, and almost all the old commentators after St. Jerome. So also reads St. Paul, 1 Cor. 10; whence it is likely that the Septuagint also (whom Paul is wont to follow) so read, namely twenty-three thousand for three thousand, as is now read; and certainly in so great a crowd of sinners three thousand are few, especially since elsewhere, as Num. 25, twenty-four thousand were slain for a like idolatry.
On the contrary, three thousand, and not twenty-three thousand, read the Hebrew, Chaldee, Latin, Complutensian and Royal Bibles, Tertullian, Scorpiace, St. Ambrose, epist. 56 to Romulus, Isidore, Rabanus and Philo. Whence the variation or error arose is uncertain. Lyranus thinks that our Interpreter included those who in verse 35 are said to have been struck by the Lord, and that these were twenty thousand. But this is guessing, nor does our Interpreter translate that place here, but this present one, in which the Hebrews have only three thousand; for those in verse 35 were struck not on this day, but afterwards. Perhaps in the Hebrew the error first arose from some scribe having written, for twenty, by abbreviation the letter kaph, which is the sign of twenty among the Hebrews, which kaph others afterwards took as a sign of likeness, for about.
See here what one magnanimous leader can do. Chabrias said truly: “An army of stags with a lion for leader is more terrible than an army of lions with a stag for leader.”
Like a stag, timid Aaron gave way to the idolaters, and lost the camp of a faithful people, strong as lions: like a lion, fearless Moses invades the camp, subdues it, and slays twenty-three thousand; and so he withstood the wrath of God, and out of stags made lions again. So the Thebans, like timid stags, before and after Epaminondas always served, but as long as Epaminondas lived, their lion-like leader, they ruled over others; so that one Epaminondas was worth more than the whole commonwealth of the Thebans, says Plutarch in his Life. Such among the Aragonese was King Alphonsus, whose saying this was: “I do not shrink from dangers however great, without which no one ever won glory.” So Panormitanus in his Life. Hence also Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, coming to Henry king of England to rouse him to war for the Holy Land, when the king offered him for this a vast weight of gold, answered: “It is not money, but a commander, that we need”; and so he urged the king, but did not persuade him, to go before the rest into the Holy Land himself as leader of the war. So P. Aemilius, book 6 of the History of the Franks.
29. YOU HAVE CONSECRATED YOUR HANDS THIS DAY TO THE LORD.—Hence the Levites merited the blessing and the priesthood. Hear Deut. chap. 33, verse 9: “Who hath said to his father, and to his mother: I do not know you: and to his brethren: I know you not: and their own children they have not known. These have kept thy word, and observed thy covenant, thy judgments, O Jacob, and thy law, O Israel: they shall put incense in thy wrath, and a whole burnt offering upon thy altar.” So also Phinees, for a like zeal, by which he slew the fornicators and worshippers of Beelphegor, merited the high priesthood.
30 and 31. AND ON THE NEXT DAY, etc., AND RETURNING TO THE LORD.—Hence it is gathered that Moses, on the day after his descent from the mount, on which he had been forty days, went up again into the mount, and remained there another forty days, to receive the second tables of the law, as will appear in chap. 34, verse 28.