Commentaria in Leviticum
5. THE THRESHING OF YOUR HARVEST SHALL REACH UNTO THE VINTAGE, AND THE VINTAGE SHALL REACH UNTO THE SOWING TIME,—as if to say: So great shall be your abundance of corn and wine that before you have finished the threshing the vintage shall begin; the vintage in turn shall be so great that you shall not have finished it before the time of sowing comes; nay it shall even overtake the time of making the sowing: a like phrase is Amos 9:13.
Tropologically Radulphus: Every good action is as much harvest as seed, because the pleasure which our mind conceives from past labours germinates the desire of new ones, that, the seed of action being multiplied, the harvest of reward may also be multiplied. See him, as also Hesychius, who explains these temporal blessings spiritually, as what follows: “You shall sleep, and there shall be none to make you afraid,” as if to say: When you die (for the death of the Saints is only a sleep, on account of the hope of the resurrection), neither the demon nor conscience shall terrify you, because you shall be conscious to yourselves of nothing whereby you should be terrified. So the rain is the pouring out of the Holy Ghost and his grace.
6. THE SWORD (of an enemy) SHALL NOT PASS THROUGH YOUR QUARTERS,—you shall fear neither enemies nor wars.
8. FIVE OF YOURS SHALL PURSUE A HUNDRED.—So Gedeon with three hundred overthrew innumerable Madianites, Judges 7:22; the Machabees did the same.
10. YOU SHALL EAT THE OLDEST OF THE OLD STORE.—In Hebrew, you shall eat the old, long kept, as if to say: I will multiply you, and at the same time multiply your corn supply, so that you cannot consume it for its multitude and abundance, but must keep it very long, and so be compelled to cast it away, the sweetness and abundance of new crops coming on.
12. I WILL WALK AMONG YOU.—I will have such care of you as if I walked among you on every side and round about, so that no place is given to enemies of invading or oppressing you, since, protecting you on every side, and fighting for you, I walk about as a most powerful guard and swordsman. See what was said 2 Corinth. 6, at the end of the chapter.
13. I HAVE BROKEN THE CHAINS OF YOUR NECKS,—I delivered you from the Egyptian servitude, that you might be free.
15 and 16. SO AS TO MAKE VOID MY COVENANT (if you stand not to the covenants agreed, if, namely, you keep not my laws).
Note: As ver. 3 God promised twenty-nine blessings to those who keep his laws, so here he threatens to those who do not keep them as many and more and graver curses and evils. For admirably does Cicero say, book 5 On the Nature of the Gods:
“As neither house nor commonwealth,” he says, “would seem to be ordered by any reason and discipline, if in it there were no rewards for right deeds nor punishments for sins: so there is surely no divine governance of the world over men, if in it there is no distinction between good and bad.” Socrates, asked “what city can be rightly governed,” answered: “That in which the good are invited by rewards, and the unjust pay penalties.” Lysander, asked “what commonwealth he most approved,” said: “That in which to the brave and the timid are rendered what is fitting to each.” So Plutarch in the Laconics. Xenophon in the Economics says that animals are brought to obey by two things, namely by coaxing, if they are of nobler kind, as the horse; and by blows, if more stubborn or dull, as the ass. So hard and base men are to be incited to duty by punishments, the noble by rewards. “For there is nothing,” says Livy, Decad 4, book 4, “that men will not attempt, if great rewards are set before those who attempt great things.” Moreover these penalties are grave, as are the rewards, both because they are proposed by God, and because they are ordained for hard-hearted Jews. “For light penalties,” as Dionysius of Halicarnassus says, book 2, “cannot restrain the madness of youth and fierceness of temper, nor bring back to temperance despisers of honourable things.” Finally Theophrastus, asked “what preserves human life,” answered: “Beneficence, honour and punishment.” And Lycurgus used to say “that a commonwealth is held together by two things, reward and punishment.” Solon said the same; for as from the viper, the crocodile and other most noxious beasts physicians make remedies efficacious against poisons and diseases, so punishment of the guilty either deters or restrains many from crimes.
16. AND CONSUME YOUR LIVES,—that is, your lives.
19. THE PRIDE OF YOUR STUBBORNNESS,—your proud stubbornness.
19. I WILL MAKE TO YOU THE HEAVEN ABOVE AS IRON, AND THE EARTH AS BRASS,—as if to say: I will shut up heaven to you, that is, the clouds, so that it be hard like iron, and deny its use to your lands, and rain no shower upon them. “I will make also the earth as brass,” so that it receive no more than brass the seeds and the influences of heaven; and thus it will give you either no fruits or few and thin. St. Ambrose beautifully explains this sentence, epist. 5 to Romulus.
21. IF YOU WALK CONTRARY TO ME (adverse and disobedient; it is a catachresis). The Septuagint render: If you walk against me crookedly; the Chaldee: If you walk before me in hardness. Vatablus renders: If you walk with me by chance, that is, if you say that the evils which I send upon you happen by chance. For the Hebrew qeri, that is, an encounter, signifies as well an adverse thing as chance; whence also what follows can be so rendered: I too will walk with you by chance, as if to say: I will no longer care for you; I will so deal with you that all your affairs seem to happen by chance. If you perceive that I do not care for mortal things, I will not care for your affairs, I will leave you to the wheel of fortune, that you may be turned with it, and be the sport of lot and chance.
24. I ALSO WILL WALK CONTRARY TO YOU,—as an enemy invading you, punishing and slaying.
AND WILL STRIKE YOU SEVEN TIMES,—I will strike you with a full, perfect and manifold stroke. For seven is the symbol of perfection and multitude.
26. AFTER I SHALL HAVE BROKEN THE STAFF OF YOUR BREAD,—as if to say: After I shall have sent famine upon you, which shall compel you to surrender to the besieging enemy, as happened in each destruction of Jerusalem, namely that effected by the Babylonians and that by the Romans.
Bread is called a staff, because it is the support of life, and on it as on a staff the life of man leans.
A like phrase is Psalm 104:16; Isai. chap. 3:1, where for the strength of bread there is in the Hebrew a staff:
and they shall deliver you your bread by weight, nor shall you eat as much as you wish, and as hunger demands.
28. SEVEN PLAGUES,—many other plagues. For so this phrase is taken ver. 21, 24 and elsewhere.
30. I WILL DESTROY YOUR HIGH PLACES.—High places are called the temples of idols, which the Jews built in high places after the manner of the Gentiles.
AND BREAK YOUR IDOLS.—In Hebrew, for idols it is hammanim, as you might say sun-images or images of the sun; for the sun is called chamma or hamma, from heat; for hamam signifies to be hot: whence the Punic Hammon is Jupiter Hammonius, to whom in Africa there was a celebrated temple, famous for an image of the sun, Macrobius testifying, book 1 Saturn. chap. 21. But here and elsewhere hammonim is taken by synecdoche for any image and idol: yet God chiefly looks to Jupiter Hammon, whom the Jews had seen worshipped, nay had worshipped, in Egypt, and forbids them to worship him and like gods thereafter.
31. I WILL MAKE YOUR SANCTUARIES DESOLATE,—whether those of idols, or what you dedicated to me, namely my tabernacle or temple.
AND I WILL RECEIVE NO MORE YOUR SWEET-SMELLING ODOUR,—the immolation of sacrifices and the burning of your incense, before most sweet and most pleasing to me, will no more please me.
34. THEN SHALL THE LAND KEEP HER SABBATHS,—as if to say: Then your land shall enjoy its rest, when you who harassed and defiled it shall be expelled from it, and transferred into the land of your enemies: for then the land will metaphorically rejoice in this rest, partly for itself and its deliverance, partly with God its avenger, just as before it grieved to be inhabited and polluted by such impious men, and therefore as it were vomited you out. See what was said chap. 18, ver. 24 and 28.
35. AND REST IN THE SABBATHS OF HER DESOLATION, BECAUSE SHE DID NOT REST IN YOUR SABBATHS,—as if to say: Because you took from her the rest of the seventh year, on account of avarice and covetousness of crops, and so transgressed my law: for this cause God will expel you from this land, and so to the land, the soil as it were abandoned, he will render its sabbath, that is, its rest due to it by my law.
36. I WILL SEND FEAR IN THEIR HEARTS, etc., THE SOUND OF A FLYING LEAF SHALL TERRIFY THEM.—This fear is both the companion and the punishment of an evil conscience, as on the contrary a good conscience is fearless in all things. This fear God cast on the Jews under Titus, and often at other times; likewise on the Egyptians in the three days’ darkness, as I said Exod. 10:23; likewise on Cain, Gen. 4:14. “No punishment,” says Isidore, book 2 Soliloq., “is heavier than the punishment of conscience. But wouldst thou never be sad, live well. A secure mind bears sadness lightly. A good life always has joy; but conscience is always in punishment to the guilty; the guilty soul is never secure: for the mind of an evil conscience is whirled round by its own goads.” Lucan, “All the ghosts are in Caesar; him all the swords which Pharsalia saw, or the avenging day was to see at the senate’s urging, press that night; him the monsters of hell scourge. Alas how great a penalty a conscious mind gives the wretch!”