Commentaria in Leviticum
Another said to a talkative lawyer: “One ought not to say little in many words, but much in few.”
Ausonius says: “As empty vessels ring most, so those who have the least of mind and judgment are the most talkative.”
Aesop said: “The end of talkativeness is misfortune.”
The Greeks relate that the crow was driven away by Pallas, that is, garrulity from meditation and wisdom. So Pierius, Hieroglyphics, 90.
Among the Romans there was a certain figure called Citeria, shrill and loquacious, which was carried in the procession for the sake of laughter. Hence M. Cato against Caecilius: “What more, then, should I say? I believe he will at last be carried in the procession at the games in place of Citeria, and chatter to the spectators.”
Plutarch wrote a book On Garrulity, in which among other things he says: “Other men retain their speech, but the garrulous are full of chinks and leak; then, like vessels bereft of mind, they walk about full of noise. In this they are unhappy, that they neither hear nor are heard. The end of speech is to win the belief of the hearers; but no one believes the talkative, even if they speak the truth. What is in the heart of the sober is on the tongue of the drunken; garrulity is dangerous, hateful and ridiculous. As teachers of speaking we have men, but as teachers of silence the gods, receiving silence as it were from hand to hand in the initiations and mysteries. When the king of the Egyptians had sent a victim to Pittacus and commanded him to take out the best and the worst flesh, he took out the tongue and sent it back, as though the tongue were the greatest instrument alike of evil and of good. Those who have obtained a liberal and royal education have learned first to be silent, then to speak. The disciples of Pythagoras were silent for five years. ‘I have often repented of having spoken,’ says Simonides, ‘never of having been silent.’ Silence not only does not bring thirst, as Hippocrates says, but neither sadness nor pain.” Those who speak words as seed, therefore, are those with an issue of seed.
19. A WOMAN WHO, AS THE MONTH RETURNS, SUFFERS AN ISSUE.
SHE SHALL BE SEVEN DAYS SEPARATED FROM THE BLOOD (of the monthly courses)—not outside the camp; for no mention is made of that here, as is made of the man defiled in sleep: for he is commanded to go out of the camp, Deuteronomy 23:10; but she shall be separated from the company of men, and that for seven days, not because blood flows during all those days, but because it cannot flow longer. Note: the monthly courses are a flow of women and a purgation of a cold and undigested humour, which nature expels as noxious. They are called menstrua because they are wont to come to women every month who are of an age to conceive; whence they are also called menses. Pliny describes the poison of the monthly courses, book 7, chapter 15: “Nothing,” he says, “is found more monstrous than the flow of women: new wine turns sour at its approach, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, the shoots of gardens are scorched, the fruit of the trees on which they have sat falls off, the brightness of mirrors is dulled by the mere sight, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dimmed, the hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a dire odour taints the air, and dogs that taste it are driven into madness, and their bite is fixed with an incurable poison.” Rightly, then, are the monthly courses and the woman in them here judged unclean.
See here what a woman is, even the most beautiful: though a vessel of filth, food for worms. “A beautiful woman,” said Diogenes, “is a temple built over a sewer.”
So that chaste matron wisely foiled the temptation of lust of a certain monk, saying: “I am now in my courses, and no one can come near me, nor bear the stench.” Witness John Moschus in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 115. A beautiful woman, therefore, is a whitened sepulchre, splendid outside, but within full of corruption and filth: for her rosy and ruddy skin covers and contains these.
22. EVERYONE THAT SHALL TOUCH HER SHALL BE UNCLEAN—that is, if he be grown up and in possession of reason; for an infant touching his mother in childbirth, and sucking her breasts, was not contaminated by her touch: necessity excuses here, and the piety of nature, and the age of infancy.
23. EVERY VESSEL—every instrument: so St. Paul is called a vessel of election, that is, a chosen instrument; so the sacraments are called vessels, that is, instruments of grace.
24. IF A MAN SLEEP WITH HER IN THE TIME OF HER MONTHLY BLOOD.
HE SHALL BE UNCLEAN SEVEN DAYS—if, that is, the matter is hidden: for then he can be expiated secretly; but if the matter is discovered, and he is accused and convicted, then he is to be put to death together with the woman, as is commanded in chapter 20, verse 18.
25. THE WOMAN THAT HAS AN ISSUE OF BLOOD MANY DAYS
—that is, haemorrhoids, such as that woman had who was healed by Christ, Mark chapter 5, verse 26; she is unclean both naturally and by the law. This flow, since we cannot check it, renders us weak; hence of such a soul Jeremias says, chapter 2, verse 24: “All that seek her shall not fail; in her monthly courses they shall find her.” So Rudolph.
27. WHOSOEVER SHALL TOUCH ANY OF THESE—“these,” namely, the things she has sat or lain upon.
the couch and the vessel. So the Roman, Hebrew and Chaldee texts; wrongly, therefore, do the Plantin editions read “her.”
30. THE PRIEST (shall offer one turtledove or young pigeon) FOR A SIN OFFERING (shall sacrifice it).—Not that this flow of the monthly courses is truly a sin, but that it is a legal uncleanness and a legal sin: such a sin also were leprosy and the issue of seed. See canon 31.
AND HE SHALL PRAY FOR HER BEFORE THE LORD, AND FOR THE ISSUE OF HER UNCLEANNESS—that is, that she may be freed from the legal uncleanness which she contracted by this flow. Hence the sense is, he shall expiate her from the flow; for throughout this chapter and the preceding, this purgation from sin is to be understood of such legal uncleanness. Wherefore Abulensis does not rightly expound this verse and similar ones, verse 15, saying in effect: he shall pray for the flow of blood and of seed, that it may be stopped and not return.
Tropologically, the flow, both of the monthly courses and of blood, signifies partly idolatry, both because in it the soul, having left God, slips away into countless monstrosities of gods, and because sacrifice was made to idols even with human blood: so Hesychius; partly those who through earthly and carnal desires with which they burn, run away into various concupiscences: this flow makes us feeble, and renders us weak to resist the devil as he casts us down.
Abulensis, on Leviticus chapter 21, question 2, adapts this otherwise: “Lepers,” he says, “with an issue of seed, and women in their courses, signify those excommunicated by the greater excommunication; but those who touch them signify those who contract the lesser excommunication by consorting with them.” Hence also the judgment of leprosy, that is, of excommunication, belongs only to the priests.
31. YOU SHALL TEACH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL TO BEWARE OF UNCLEANNESS.
AND THEY SHALL NOT DIE IN THEIR FILTH—that the unclean be not suffered to enter my tabernacle; otherwise I will punish them with death for their filth, namely, because, while labouring under a foul flow of seed or blood, they dared to enter my tabernacle, and by this entrance and their uncleanness to infect and pollute it.
The Septuagint render it: “You shall make the children of Israel religiously cautious of their uncleannesses”; for the Greek word signifies both religious, and cautious and wary (1).