Commentaria in Leviticum
I say thirdly: Oecumenius on Acts 7 and Arias Montanus on Amos 1 think that Moloch was Mercury: for he was called Moloch from malach, that is, messenger, because he was held to be conductor of souls and messenger of the gods. Cajetan thinks Moloch was Priapus. Others think Moloch was Jupiter: for he is Molech, that is, king of the gods. Others, among whom is Christopher a Castro on Jeremias 32:35, think, and perhaps more probably, that Moloch was Saturn: for though the Gentiles sacrificed with human blood not only to Saturn but also to Jupiter, Diana, Bacchus, Mars, Pallas, Agraulis and Diomedes, as Cyril attests, book 4 Against Julian, after the beginning, and Eusebius at length, book 4 On the Preparation, chapter 7, teaches the same from Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Manetho and others: yet the Phoenicians or Chanaanites (whose neighbours the Jews were) and the Carthaginians sprung from them, were wont to immolate to Saturn in a special way their dearest men and their own children, especially in some grave calamity to avert it, as Eusebius above teaches, and Philo in his History of the Phoenicians, Curtius, book 4, and Diodorus, book 20. Hence Imilce, wife of Hannibal, when her son Aspar was to be slain, says: “Consume in your vows those whom I bore.” So Silius Italicus, book 4 of the Punic War.
Hence also Plato, Plutarch and Dionysius of Halicarnassus teach that among the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Rhodians and Cretans it was the custom that infants distinguished by principal honour, whom a cast lot had designated, were sacrificed to Saturn in royal attire: from which rites when the Carthaginians afterwards fell away, being conquered by Agathocles, and therefore thinking the gods angry, they slew two hundred sons of nobles in public and sacrificed them to the gods, says Festus in Lactantius, book 1 On False Religion, chapter 21. And for this reason the Poets feigned that Saturn wished to devour the sons of his parent Rhea, but that the sound and voice of the mother, and the wailing of the boy Jupiter, turned him away and frightened him. So St. Augustine, book 7 On the City of God.
A like idolatry flourished in this our age among the Mexicans in the Indies: for the Mexicans every year offered about 20,000 [human beings] to a demon at the city of Mechoacan; the demon demanded to be offered what was dearest to the citizens, as a bride, or a beautiful infant: for that reason the natives, hating so savage a God, embraced the faith of Christ with open arms, as the chiefs of Mechoacan testified to P. Antonio Mendoza, Provincial of our Society. Learn here the cruelty of the demon, who in return for the small gifts which he bestows on his own, demands victims so precious, calamitous and fatal to himself. The same experience today wizards, indeed all sinners, who for a vile pleasure sell their soul to the devil for eternal torments.
Hear, on the other side, the piety and kindness of the Emperor Constantine, who, being struck with leprosy, when by the counsel of some he was to be washed in the blood of little children, hearing the mothers wailing, and the cause of so great grief being known, said with tears: “The dignity and greatness of the Roman empire has as its fountain and root true piety. That I may show, then, that I have sprung from it, I set my health after the lives of innocent children.” So Nicephorus, book 7 of the Histories, chapter 34. Hence God repaid him with health through baptism, and with so great an honour and glory of empire.
Tropologically, they give their seed to Moloch who do any good work for vain praise, or honour to be acquired on earth, says Rudolph.
Far more truly do they give their seed to Moloch who devote their offspring to the demon, who bring them up in luxury, lusts, rapine and other sins. But to whom? To Moloch, that is, to the most cruel king, the greatest tyrant, namely the devil. “It is unjust,” says St. Gregory, “to serve the devil. What,” he says, “is more wicked, what more malignant, what more worthless than our adversary? who made war in heaven, fraud in paradise, hatred between the first brothers, and in all our work sowed cockle. For in eating he put gluttony, in generation lust, in exercise sloth, in conversation envy, in government avarice, in correction anger, in prelacy or dominion pride. In the heart he put evil thoughts, in the mouth false speeches, in the members iniquitous works: in waking he moves us to wicked works, in sleeping to foul dreams. The joyful he moves to dissolution, the sad to despair. But to speak more briefly, all the evils of the world have been committed by his wickedness.” Hence is the fire of concupiscence with which this Moloch burns his own here, that he may burn them with him in the fire of gehenna.
NEITHER SHALT THOU DEFILE THE NAME OF THY GOD.—For this would be a disgrace to me and my name, if, forsaking me, or to my injury, thou shouldst worship idols, and above all Moloch with so infamous a worship.
23. THOU SHALT NOT COPULATE WITH ANY BEAST—as if to say: Thou shalt copulate with no beast. Note: “any” (omnis) is not the same as “no one,” even by the rules of equipollence among our Dialecticians. It is otherwise with “not every”: for this among Dialecticians is the same as “some not”; but among the Hebrews often it is the same as “no one.” Hence it follows:
24. BE NOT DEFILED IN ANY OF THESE THINGS—that is, be not defiled in any one of them.
25. WITH WHICH THE LAND IS DEFILED.—Hence learn that vices, especially enormous ones, are so horrible and foul that they not only defile the sinners themselves, but also stain with this infamy the land in which they dwell, so that by its most wicked inhabitants the land itself is called wicked and defiled.
THE WICKEDNESS OF WHICH (namely of the land, that is, of whom, namely of the inhabitants of this land) I WILL VISIT—that is, I will punish; it is a metonymy. For “the land,” which immediately before was taken properly, is here taken metonymically for the inhabitants of the land. So St. Augustine, question 58.
26. ANY OF YOUR OWN NATION, NOR ANY STRANGER (colonus).—“Colonus” is here the name of a settler who has passed into the Hebrew colony and law, and “sojourns,” that is, dwells, among them.
28. BEWARE THEN, LEST IN LIKE MANNER IT VOMIT YOU ALSO OUT, IF YOU DO THE LIKE THINGS, AS IT VOMITED OUT THE NATION THAT WAS BEFORE YOU.—Note: “it vomited out,” as if to say: When God drove out the Chanaanites from their land by the Hebrews, the land itself also, as if rejoicing and approving, and not retaining but dismissing them, in a manner cast them out. He speaks of the future as of the past, prophetically: “it vomited out,” that is, it will surely and shortly vomit out. Again, here is a Hebrew metaphor, by which, for greater emphasis, the life and action of an animal is attributed to an inanimate thing.
By a like trope the earth is said to groan, to cry out, to be angry and to demand vengeance, as: “The water of the sea shall rage against them (the reprobate),” Wisdom 5; “Every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain even until now,” Romans 8. By this trope Scripture wishes to signify the enormity of crimes, that even irrational creatures, always obedient to their Creator and fighting for him, detest such sinners, and the earth as it were vomits them out, with a natural aversion and appetite by which they are borne toward their own order, and that of the whole universe, and toward fulfilling God’s will, and turn away from what is contrary to these: which they would do with a rational appetite, if they had it. The crimes of the Chanaanites, then, were the cause why they were driven by the Hebrews from their possession.
Where note that these crimes of the Chanaanites were adulteries, idolatries, sodomies, bestialities, etc., of which in verse 20 and following, rather than marriages with granddaughters, relations by affinity and kinswomen, recounted above; because these were not void by the law of nature, but had only a certain unseemliness and want of modesty, on account of which they seem to have been only venial sins: for that they are now mortal, and that they make marriage void, they have from human positive law. So Cajetan, Bellarmine and Sanchez, vol. 2 On Matrimony, book 7, question 52.
Of this expulsion of the Chanaanites also St. Augustine, sermon 105 On the Seasons, Epiphanius, book 2 Against Heresies, chapter 66, and Andrew Masius on Josue 1 give another cause, namely that in the division of the world Chanaan fell to Sem and his descendants; but the Chanaanites, descendants of Cham, drove out the grandsons of Sem from it, and therefore it was by right restored by God to the Hebrews, descendants of Sem; and they say an argument for this is that Melchisedech, who was either Sem or born of Sem, dwelt in Chanaan. But I have shown at Genesis 9 and 10 that Chanaan fell in the division of the world to the Chanaanites, not to the Semites. Again, that Melchisedech was not Sem, or a Semite, but rather sprung from Cham and Chanaan, I showed at Genesis 14.