Commentaria in Exodum
Hear the Gentiles also. Livia, wife of Augustus, dedicated in the Capitol a crystal of about 50 pounds: Pliny is witness, book 37, chap. 2. When the Romans had decreed to send to Delphi a golden bowl as a tenth of the spoil, and had no gold at hand, the matrons straightway of their own accord took off their golden ornaments from their bodies, and furnished them all, to the weight of eight talents, for the gift. And therefore it was decreed by the senate that a funeral oration be given in their praise: Plutarch is witness in Camillus.
Let virgins and women, therefore, who dedicate themselves to God, cast away their mirrors, which serve the beauty of the glassy flesh, and vow them as anathemas to God. Rightly virginity in Nazianzen’s poem thus paints her own dress:
Sordid hair is my adornment, a mean garment.
Hence St. Paula, as St. Jerome testifies, if she saw a virgin somewhat more adorned, rebuked her as erring by contraction of brow and sadness of countenance, saying: “Cleanness of body and dress is uncleanness of the soul.”
Wherefore let virgins set before themselves another mirror, in which they may adorn their mind and manners by imitation, namely the Blessed Virgin, in whom, as St. Ambrose says, book 2 On Virgins, “as in a mirror shines forth the image of chastity and the form of virtue.” Truly St. Bernard, epist. 113: “The daughters of Babylon,” he says, “are clothed in purple and fine linen, while their conscience lies in rags; they glitter with necklaces, they are foul in morals. On the contrary, thou, virgin Sophia, ragged without, shinest within in beauty, but to divine eyes, not human: within is what delights, because within is he whom it delights.” The images of Silenus were such that, shut without, they showed a ridiculous appearance of a flute-player, opened, a god. Such, says Alcibiades, was Socrates. Such let the virgin be, mean without, within beautiful and divine.
THAT WATCHED AT THE DOOR OF THE TABERNACLE.—For “that watched,” the Septuagint render, that fasted; the Chaldee, that prayed; Cajetan renders, exercising. The Hebrew tsobeoth properly signifies women who served in war, or kept watch. There were, therefore, says R. Abraham, in Israel women worshipping God, who, despising the vanity of the world and striving to please God alone, offered their mirrors to the Lord, and came every day to the door of the tabernacle to pray, and to hear the precepts of God, which afterwards, when this solemn tabernacle was made, and especially when the temple was built, was more in use: for then a fixed dwelling was built at the door, or in the court of the tabernacle, for such pious women, given to prayer, fasting and the service of the tabernacle: such was Anna the prophetess, Luke chap. 2, verse 37; and of such Scripture speaks, 1 Kings 2:22. Among these the Blessed Virgin lived and was brought up, after she was presented in the temple at three years old. This was a kind of religious company of devout women of that time, which was as it were a type and shadow of our Religious women, who may justly derive their origin and antiquity from these. Nay the Gentiles also instituted a like company of virgins, who kept watch in the shrines and guarded the sacred fire of Vesta: whence they were called Vestals.
The army of the militant, then, is the multitude of Religious virgins, who in convents and temples, presented in the very flower of age, follow the standard of the Virgin Mother of God. For, as St. Chrysostom says, hom. 81 on Matthew, “The fight against the devil is common to women and men, and often in such a battle-line women have fought more bravely than men, and been renowned with signal trophies.” And, to say nothing else, a weak woman has in herself a greater enemy than a man, namely inconstancy and wantonness of mind as of flesh: the victory of a woman is therefore nobler than that of a man. Who does not admire Thecla, Agnes, Catherine, Ursula? “This,” says St. Ambrose, book 1 On Virgins, “is that heavenly warfare which the army of praising angels promised on earth.” Hence that of Cant. chap. 7: “What shalt thou see in the Sulamite but the companies of camps?” The congregations of virgins are like camps, because they wage war with the enemy; like choirs, because they sing the divine praises, says Theodoret. Whence St. Ambrose in the same place: “What,” he says, “shall I say of the virgins of Bologna, who, leaving their parents’ house, pitch their tents in the tabernacles of Christ, tireless soldiers of chastity: now they resound with spiritual canticles, now they earn their living by work?”
9. HANGINGS.—Those he calls everywhere here the curtains of the court
17. THE SOCKETS OF THE PILLARS WERE OF BRASS, AND THEIR HEADS, WITH ALL THEIR ENGRAVINGS, OF SILVER,—“Heads,” rightly: for that the Hebrew vav signifies this Oleaster well teaches from chap. 26, verses 10 and 11; for there all render vavim heads. But because here another word is placed in the Hebrew which signifies head, therefore the Septuagint and the Chaldees here render vavim hooks: both rightly; for vav signifies a nail, and its head: such is the character of the Hebrew letter vav, which the Septuagint and Chaldees call a hook; and it is likely that such were the heads of the pillars, ending below in a point like a nail, and above in a knob, which knob was the head of these heads, or hooks. Render the Hebrew thus, therefore: the heads of the pillars with their engravings were of silver, and the covering, or knob, of the heads silver. So understand also verse 19.
21. THESE ARE THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE TABERNACLE, etc.
OF THE LEVITES (Hebrew and Septuagint).—For the Levites served in the taking down and carrying of the tabernacle, when the camp was to be moved; and again in its setting up, when the camp was to be pitched; and over these presided Ithamar the younger son of Aaron, to whom therefore the reckoning of the several instruments of the tabernacle was to be reckoned; as over the other Levites who bore the very vessels and furniture of the tabernacle, who were the Caathites alone, or descendants of Caath, son of Levi, presided Eleazar, brother of Ithamar and elder; of these more in Num. 4.
25 and 26. AND IT WAS OFFERED BY THEM THAT PASSED TO THE NUMBERING (who were numbered) FROM TWENTY YEARS OLD AND UPWARD, OF SIX HUNDRED AND THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ARMED MEN; AND THERE WERE BESIDES A HUNDRED TALENTS OF SILVER,—“It was offered,” not the gold which preceded: for that he has already said was collected not from the census of the people but from spontaneous gifts; but that which in the census was commanded by the law, chap. 30, verse 13, to be offered, namely a half shekel of silver from each head, so that there were offered a hundred talents of silver and 1775 shekels from 603,550 Hebrews (for so many were counted and numbered); but our Interpreter left this to be understood from chap. 30, verse 13, and, not to repeat the same so often, omitted it, as is his wont, especially since there immediately follows the distribution of the silver collected by the census: what he therefore renders “there were besides a hundred,” etc. is the same as if he said, “there were therefore,” or “whence there were besides,” as if to say: There was offered in the census by 603,550 that which was commanded, namely a half shekel from each head: whence it came about that “besides,” that is, beyond those twenty-nine talents of gold, of which I spoke in verse 24, there were collected from the census of the people a hundred talents of silver. That it is so, and this is the sense, is plain from the Hebrew, which reads word for word: and the silver, namely the number and weight, which was offered by those numbered of the Synagogue, was a hundred talents, a thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels after the weight of the sanctuary; half a shekel for each head, or from each head, namely was offered. In like manner have the Septuagint and Chaldee, but our Interpreter has omitted many of these things, for the reason already stated. So Abulensis, Lipomanus and the Hebrews.
Hence it is manifestly gathered (as Villalpando and a few others rightly observe) that the Hebrew talent contained three thousand shekels. This I demonstrate: for the Hebrew, Chaldee and Septuagint here say, first, that those who were here numbered, and offered the price of the census, were six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty; and since each of them offered half a shekel, it follows that the sum offered, or the sum of shekels, was half the number of the offerers, so that there were as many whole shekels as there were offerers by halves; and so, since those offering half a shekel were 603,550, it follows that the whole shekels offered by them were 301,775. Secondly, the Hebrew, Chaldee and Septuagint say that the sum offered by them was 100 talents and 1775 shekels: but the sum offered was, as I have said, 301,775 shekels; therefore 301,775 shekels make 100 talents and 1775 shekels. Now take away the 1775 shekels common to both sides, behold there remain 100 talents equivalent to 300,000 shekels; divide, then, 300,000 shekels by 100 talents, you will have for each talent three thousand shekels. Here, then, by clear arithmetical demonstration it is concluded that the Hebrew talent contained three thousand shekels, whether of silver, if it were a silver talent, or of gold, if it were a golden talent.