Commentaria in Leviticum
Alexander the Great, invited to see the most beautiful captive daughters of Darius, refused to go, saying: “I will not suffer that I, who have conquered men, should be conquered by women.”
The same, looking upon a most beautiful image of a woman on the altar of Jove, when Hephaestion said that it was fair for him to take her whom he loved: “Would it not be most unworthy,” he said, “that we who wish to censure the incontinence of others should ourselves be found by strangers slaves of incontinence?” Maximus relates it, sermon 3.
Menedemus, when a certain young man said it was a great thing if one could obtain whatever he desired: “It is much greater,” he said, “to desire nothing of those things that are unbecoming.”
Hear Christians. St. Ephrem in the Life of St. Abraham: “Continence,” he says, “is the foundation of the spiritual life.”
Abbot Isaac in the Lives of the Fathers had so studied continence that he said it was forty years since he had felt the same motion in his mind, yet had never consented to concupiscence or anger. In the same place, a prior, ordered by St. Antony to greet his sister, did so, but with eyes shut: so continent was he in his eyes. And Mark greeted his mother with eyes closed. Simeon Stylites refused to see his mother. Eusebius, according to Theodoret, would see neither the neighbouring fields nor the sky, but, weighed down with iron, walked bent, looking at the ground. The continence of Arsenius is known, who endured neither to satisfy hunger nor to see any woman. Dorotheus in Palladius, in the Lausiac History, chapter 2, mortified himself with labour and heat; asked why, he said: “The body must be killed (mortified), lest it kill us.”
Abbot Pambo asked Abbot Antony: “What shall I do to be saved?” “Be continent,” he said, “in belly and tongue.” The continent, therefore, are peace-victims to themselves and to God.
Without blemish.—The Hebrew is tamim, that is, entire, perfect. See what was said on chapter 1, verse 3.
He shall offer before the Lord—before the altar, by which God is worshipped and represented.
Verse 2. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the victim.—I gave the reason of this rite in chapter 1, verse 4.
Which shall be slain in the entry of the tabernacle of the testimony.—The Hebrew has, which shall be slain at the door of the tabernacle of the testimony, namely at the altar of holocausts (which was beside the tabernacle in which was the testimony, that is, the law or the tables of the law in the ark), namely at the side of the altar that looks to the north, as is plain from chapter 1, verse 11.
And the sons of Aaron shall pour the blood round about upon the altar.—Tropologically, they pour blood round about the altar who cast from themselves vicious affections and cupidity around the cross of Christ (namely while they turn over in their minds the virtues of Christ): for our altar is Christ, on whom we lay whatever will be pleasing to the Father, and through Him we offer it.
Verse 3. And they shall offer of the sacrifice of peace-offerings, for an oblation to the Lord, the fat that covereth the entrails.—“Entrails” (vitalia), in Hebrew “the inward parts,” namely the heart and the precordia, which contribute most to preserving life, and which being injured we fall from life.
Verse 4. And the caul of the liver.—This caul is the fat which like a net surrounds the liver. Hence verse 15 it is called the fat of the liver.
Allegorically Origen and Bede: The fat covering the vitals is the soul of Christ, covering His divinity; the kidneys are the flesh of Christ: for Christ is all our victim, as well peace-victim as holocaust and that for sin.
Tropologically Radulphus: “The fat,” he says, “which covers the vitals signifies the affection we have for this life; the fat also which is within hints at the love of those things which are possessed in this life, such as house, field, money, father, mother and kindred, all of which, if they abound in this life, seem to make men happy: but God commands that these be offered and burnt to Him”; although this be done grudgingly and with sorrow, that is, that a man would rather lose them, and be turned from them, than depart from God and piety. “For he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” says the Lord.
With the little kidneys—with the kidneys already named in this same verse. It is a pleonasm, or repetition of the same thing; for by “little kidneys” here are always understood the two kidneys which are in the loins, and so that God wills the lumbar kidneys to be burnt to Him here is plain from the Hebrew, the Septuagint, Josephus and Philo, who constantly here and elsewhere render nephroi, that is, kidneys. So St. Basil reads, in his book On Virginity, Origen here, homily 3, Theodoret here and Question 61 on Exodus, Hesychius, Radulphus, Bede, Vatablus and others, nay even our interpreter, who, those he in this verse called kidneys and little kidneys, in verses 10 and 15 calls only little kidneys. The kidneys and the little kidneys, then, are the same.
Tropologically the same, namely St. Basil, Theodoret, Hesychius, Radulphus, understand by the kidneys the concupiscible appetite, chiefly of lust; for the kidneys are the vessels of generation, says Philo. Hence the Church prays: “Burn our reins and our heart with the fire of the Holy Ghost, O Lord, that we may serve Thee with a chaste body, and please Thee with a clean heart.” The same understand by the caul of the liver the irascible power and appetite: for the liver is the fountain of blood, that is, of cruelty: these things, says Radulphus, those who offer a peace-victim, that is, the middling and married, ought not wholly to cast away, but partly to offer to God and spend on divine things, and partly to mortify and restrain, as St. Basil and Theodoret teach.
of the tabernacle, as I said on verse 2, namely before the Holy, at the altar of holocausts.
Verses 9 and 10. And the whole rump, with the kidneys.—Our interpreter rightly renders the Hebrew, however differently more recent writers with the Chaldee render it: for the Hebrew reads thus word for word, “the entire tail he shall take away over against the backbone,” that is, he shall take away the tail so far that he takes away together the kidneys lying opposite the backbone; for the backbone, in that part where it joins the tail, supports the kidneys. So Cajetan. And this the Septuagint seem to have meant here and in chapter 7, verse 29, who for “tail” have “loin”; for they render thus, “and the loin without blemish with the muscles,” which the interpreter of the Royal Bible does not render well, “and the loin without blemish with the flanks”; it should be rendered, “and the loin without blemish with the muscles” (for these are called the inner parts, or inner flesh, to which the kidneys adhere), which is the same as if he said: Let them take away the loin with the kidneys and offer it to God. In the peace-victim of a sheep, therefore, namely of a lamb and a ram, as is plain from Leviticus 9:19, it was peculiar that the tail was burnt to the Lord; for this was not done if the peace-victim was an ox or a goat. The tropological reason of this Radulphus gives. The tail, he says, because it is the end of the body, is a symbol of consummation and perseverance in holy and good works; this God commands to be offered in the sheep alone, because indeed for sheep, that is, the simple, the thoughtless and the slothful, inconstancy is to be feared; not so for the victims of goats, that is, penitent sinners; nor for the victims of oxen, that is, the laborious, who, seeing the fruit of their labours, are fed with great pleasure, and so are sharpened and strengthened for labours. Hence St. Gregory, homily 25 on the Gospels: “By the precept of the law,” he says, “the tail of the victim is commanded to be offered in sacrifice: for in the tail is the end of the body, and he immolates well who duly brings the sacrifice of a good work to the end of the action.”