Commentaria in Leviticum
... in this life, as I said in chapter 1, verse 4. And again “the Lord will be merciful to him,” by grace and the infusion of charity, if truly contrite he has offered this sacrifice.
23. YOU SHALL TAKE AWAY THE UNCIRCUMCISION (praeputia) OF THEM.—God here commands that the fruits of trees which grow on them in the first three years be cast away as unclean, but that those born in the fourth year be consecrated to God, and so at length the fruits of the fifth year be reckoned clean, of which it is lawful to eat. He calls the fruits of the first three years the foreskins (praeputia), as the Hebrews explain; these are called foreskin, by allusion to the circumcision of a boy. For as a boy was unclean, until in circumcision the foreskin was taken from him and cast away: so also the trees were reckoned unclean, until the fruits of the first three years were circumcised and cast away: hence in Hebrew these fruits are called uncircumcised, that is, unclean. And St. Chrysostom, sermon On the Ascension of the Lord, where from this place he teaches that the first-fruits which are demanded by God are a fruit not imperfect and weak, but sound and strong. For he says: “See the prudence of the lawgiver: he does not permit the first fruit to be eaten, lest anyone should seem to have plucked it before God; nor allows it to be offered, lest it be offered unripe to God; but says, Let it go, because it is first, and offer it not, because by offering it is not yet worthy.”
Why? God willed to be worshipped by this ceremony, as by the circumcision of boys, yet suitably to the nature of trees; for their first fruits are more watery and indigestible, and therefore unwholesome to the later. So Abulensis (2).
Allegorically, the first three years were the three first times in which the law was as yet impure, as loaded with the thickness of history, and having its shadow, like a useless husk, round about it. These three times were those in which Moses, Josue and the Judges presided; then followed the fourth, in which the illustrious choir of the Prophets arose: then the fruit of the law became holy and laudable, because the coming of Christ began to be preached. Finally in the fifth time, namely that of Christ, the law was made fit for eating, most useful and most pure, through the Gospel of Christ. So Cyril, book 8, p. 167.
Tropologically, St. Gregory, book 8 of the Morals, chapter 35: “The fruit trees,” he says, “are works fruitful in virtues: we take away their foreskins when, suspicious of the very weakness of a beginning, we do not approve the first-fruits of our works, lest, while praise received is sweetly plucked, the fruit of the work be eaten untimely”; and that until the fourth year in which they are consecrated to God, that is, while the mind, set and settled on a firm square, learns to ascribe all good things not to itself but to God. So Rudolph.
THE FRUIT WHICH THEY BRING FORTH—which the trees themselves produce.
24. BUT THE FRUIT OF THE FOURTH YEAR SHALL BE ALL HOLY, A PRAISE TO THE LORD.—The Hebrew is, in the fourth year all the fruit shall be holiness of praises to the Lord, that is, in the fourth year the fruit shall be consecrated to the Lord in his praise, that is, that it be offered to the priests, like first-fruits and tithes, and go to their right; in the fourth year, then, the priests could eat these fruits, not the laity (3).
26. YOU SHALL NOT USE DIVINATION—you shall not practise magic or magical divination (4).
Note: augury (augurium) is so called as a chattering of birds, and was a divination from birds, and that threefold. For some birds were thought to foretell the future by their flight, others by their song: and the former were called praepetes, the latter oscines. There was also a third kind, from their feeding, when food was offered to chickens taken out of the cage; of which Alexander ab Alexandro at length. But our Interpreter everywhere takes augury generally, for any divination. So Joseph is said to have been wont to practise augury in his cup, Genesis 44:5. So the Latins also sometimes take augury. For the Hebrew nachash absolutely signifies to divine: akin to which is lachash, that is, he muttered, he whispered. For diviners use whisperings and mutterings. The vanity of this art M. Cato recognised, who said that he wondered that a soothsayer did not laugh whenever he saw a soothsayer, perceiving that this whole kind of divinations was an imposture by which the people were gulled: for impostors are wont to laugh among themselves at the folly of the multitude. Witness Cicero, book 2 On Divination.
NOR OBSERVE DREAMS.—The Hebrew is onen, which our version elsewhere, and the Septuagint here, render: you shall not divine from birds; secondly, the Rabbis and Oleaster render it, you shall not be jugglers, as if onen alluded to ayin, that is, “you shall not cloud the eyes with juggling”; thirdly, our version better renders here and in Deuteronomy 18:10: You shall not observe dreams; for the Hebrew onen is various and general: it signifies to observe something with the eyes. Hence meonenim are called observers, whether of times, or of stars, or of dreams, or of birds. Now because augury, which properly is from birds, immediately preceded, whereas observation of times and stars is often lawful: hence our Interpreter prudently judged that here the observers and diviners of dreams are censured (which superstition was then frequent and familiar to many): for onen rightly suits dreams, whether you look to the root ayin, that is, eye; for dreams are nocturnal visions, which are seen by the eyes of the mind, and which the dreamer seems to himself to discern with bodily eyes: or you look to the root anan, that is, clouds; for what clouds are in the air, that dreams and phantasms are in the soul (1).
Further, that the Gentiles attributed much to dreams, Chrysippus teaches, who thus defines a dream: “A dream is a power discerning and explaining what is signified by the gods to men in sleep.” Nay Cicero too in book 1 On Divination: “When the mind,” he says, “has been called away in sleep from the society and contagion of the body, then it remembers things past, discerns the present, foresees the future; for the body of the sleeper lies like that of a dead man: but the mind is awake and lives; which it will do much more after death, when it has altogether departed from the body.”
But the vanity of this superstition Diogenes derided, saying: “What you do when awake you do not care for; but what you dream when asleep you anxiously inquire into. For to a man’s happiness or unhappiness it matters not so much what he suffers in dreams as what he does when awake. There, as often as he commits anything base, he ought to fear the anger of the gods, and a sad issue; not if something is seen by those asleep.” Witness Laertius, book 6.
Heraclitus said that “for the waking there is one common world, but the sleeping each turn aside into his own; but the superstitious man does not enjoy the common world with others even when awake, his thought always dreaming,” says Plutarch in the Morals.
Rightly therefore Ecclesiasticus, chapter 34, verse 2: “As one that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after the wind, so is he that giveth heed to lying visions. The vision of dreams is this against this”; and verse 5: “Dreams have deceived many, and they have failed that put their trust in them”; and verse 7: “For dreams have deceived many, and they have failed that put their trust in them.”
27. NEITHER SHALL YOU CUT YOUR HAIR ROUND-WISE.—Because the Gentiles did this, as also the following things, especially the Egyptians, among whom the Hebrews had hitherto lived. Hence Vatablus expounds thus: You shall not cut your hair round, after the manner of the Egyptian priests. Nay Rudolph says that the Gentiles, when they consecrated themselves to demons, shaved their heads in a circle: for they thought the gods rejoiced in a round and orbicular figure, as the most capacious and perfect of all. Hence Empedocles, asked what God is, answered:
“God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, God is a circumference nowhere,” because namely nowhere is the majesty and immensity of God bounded. This roundness of himself God expressed in the world, as in his image: for he created the heavens and the elements spherical and round.
For this reason the ancients built round temples to their gods: so Numa Pompilius is said to have consecrated a round temple at Rome to Vesta, because he believed her to be the earth, by which the life of men is sustained, that in this way the goddess might be worshipped in a temple like herself: for the earth is round. So Augustus Caesar, in Agrippa’s name, dedicated to all the gods a temple of round circuit, and for that reason called it the Pantheon, and it is now dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and takes its name from the round form which it retains. Aristotle testifies that the ancients delighted to dedicate to the gods round temples, of which kind many are still to be seen at Rome, either in large part ruined, or restored by Christians in honour of Saints.