Commentaria in Leviticum
Secondly, because idolaters, especially the Syrians, neighbours of the Jews, and from them the Jews themselves, did these things in mourning, and cut the flesh, as is plain from 3 Kings 18:28 (1). The same St. Augustine testifies of the sacrifices of the mother of the gods, book 2 On the City of God, chapter 26, and book 7, chapter 26, where he says: “The great mother was believed to help the forces of the Romans by the mutilation of the virility of men; whence her priests at her festival poured themselves out in blood, cutting the flesh of their arms: but the high priest cut off his own virility, in honour of the first priest of that goddess, called Attis.”
Hear also Herodotus of the Scythians, book 4: “The Scythians, What when he who is to be consecrated receives the seals? They lay little points in the furnaces, with these they proceed to burn the limbs, and when they have made them glow, whatever part of the body the burning mark has stamped, that part they proclaim thus consecrated.
Doubtless by these marks they professed themselves as slaves of the Deity, whose peculiar mark they bore. So, as the writer of the third book of Maccabees relates, not far from the beginning, Ptolemy Philopator ordered the Jews who had fallen away to idols to be enrolled and marked with fire on the body with the sign of an ivy leaf of Bacchus.
at the funerals of kings,” he says, “cut off the ear, cut the hair round, cut the arms about, pierce the left hand with arrows.” Lucian also of his Syrians (for he was himself a Syrian) says thus in the book On the Syrian Goddess: “All are pricked with certain marks, some on the palm of the hand, others on the neck; and hence it is that all the Assyrians have marks burnt in.” The same in the book On Mourning mentions the tearing of the hair and the bloodying of the cheeks in mourning. So also Virgil, Aeneid 4, speaking of Anna lamenting the death of Dido:
Defiling her face with her nails and her breast with her fists. And Ovid, book 3 of the Tristia, elegy 3:
Yet spare to tear thy cheeks, nor rend thy hair; not now for the first time, my light, shall I be taken from thee.
And Servius on Aeneid 3 says thus: “Varro says that women at funerals and in mourning were therefore wont to tear their faces, that by showing blood they might satisfy the shades below.” Wherefore this was forbidden by the law of the Eleven [Twelve] Tables, where, as Cicero witnesses, book 2 On the Laws, this was the ordinance: “Let not women tear their cheeks.” Moreover that they loosened and tore their hair in mourning Ovid teaches, book Soon when her mind returned, she tore her loosened hair. And Tibullus, book 1, elegy 1:
Do not hurt my shade, but spare, Delia, thy loosened tresses, and spare thy tender cheeks.
Clearly Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3: “From this opinion,” he says, “are those various and detestable kinds of mourning, the squalor of women, the tearing of cheeks, the beating of breast and head. Hence that Agamemnon of Homer, and the same in Accius, tearing in grief again and again his unshorn hair. In which Bion’s witty saying: that the king was most foolish who in mourning pulled out his hair, as though baldness lightened sorrow,” when rather it is increased by the pain of the pulling. Hear “Some of the barbarians,” he says, “cut off parts of the body, namely noses and ears, punishing also the rest of the body.”
30. KEEP MY SABBATHS.—“Sabbath” here signifies any feast by synecdoche: for the sabbath was the greatest of all feasts.
[And reverence my sanctuary]: reverence my tabernacle and temple, both lest you approach it irreverently when unclean, and lest you curiously pry into it, or enter further than I have prescribed: for the laity could not enter the Holy Place, nay not even the court of the priests. This is another law from the preceding one about sabbaths.
31. GO NOT ASIDE TO WIZARDS.—The Hebrew is, to pythons, who have a familiar demon, especially a ventriloquist. For these are called obot, as if a confused voice spoke from a bottle (uter)
Morally, the old are to be honoured for six causes.
the demon; whom the Greeks call engastrimythoi, that is, prophesying from the belly, says Theodoret, question 29; whence also the Septuagint here and elsewhere call them ventriloquists.
NOR ASK ANYTHING OF SOOTHSAYERS.—Soothsayers (arioli) are properly those who divine from sacrificed victims. This art was first invented by one called Tages, who they say leaped out of the earth while a field was being ploughed, witness Lucan, book 1 of the Civil War, and Boccaccio, book 1 On the Genealogy of the Gods. This is also mentioned in the Canon Law, 24, question 5, chapter “Episcopi.” For “soothsayers” the Hebrew is yidd’onim, that is, knowing ones.
32. HONOUR THE PERSON OF THE AGED MAN, AND FEAR THE LORD GOD—as if to say: If thou fear not the old, fear God at least, and for fear of the Lord honour the old: for God here commands them to be honoured. And that first, because the young ought to bear themselves toward their elders as disciples toward masters; and it belongs to masters to sit, to disciples to stand by them and listen. Hence the Emperor Theodosius commanded his sons to stand before Arsenius, their master.
Secondly, because, as Aristotle says, Ethics book 9, chapter 2: “To every elder honour is to be rendered for his age, by rising to him and yielding him a seat,” etc. The same Plato teaches, dialogue 9 On the Laws, and Cicero, book 1 On Duties: “It is the part,” he says, “of a young man to reverence his elders.”
Thirdly, because in the old, besides the excellence of age, there is the excellence of experience and of prudence from longer age. Hence the old of old governed the commonwealth, and from the old the senate took its name, just as among the Spartans the gerousia (from gerontes), which was the magistracy sitting with the king. Hence St. Thomas says that old age is a sign of virtue, and therefore to be honoured, though sometimes virtue fails. Hence the Chaldee, for what we have, “rise up before the hoary head,” renders, rise up before him who is learned in the law.
Fourthly, because almost all nations by instinct of nature have honoured the old. The Spartans, witness Plutarch, when old men came into the theatre, all rose up, and received them to sit. The Roman youths led the elders into the senate-house, and waited for them outside the senate-house to lead them home. Hear Juvenal, satire 13:
They thought this a great crime, to be atoned for by death, if a young man had not risen up to an old one.
To the Spaniards this word senior, somewhat twisted into señor, and to the Italians into signore, signifies lord. Of the Essenes Philo says: “The reverence and care toward their elders is such as can be that of natural children toward their parents.”
Fifthly, because the old are like parents, and represent God, the parent of all. Hence Teleclus, asked why the Spartans [were so used to show to the old this honour...], “the more they would venerate their parents.” Witness Plutarch in the Laconic Sayings.
Sixthly, because, as St. Basil says, in the book On the Renunciation of the World, if you honour the old, “for this submission of your mind God will crown you with glory”; and, as Hesychius says here, he will bring it about, when you have grown old, that the same reverence be repaid you by the younger: if you neglect the old, the penalty of retaliation will punish you in your old age, so that you will be despised by the younger as a dotard.
33. IF A STRANGER DWELL—namely a circumcised proselyte, of whom in the following chapter, verse 2.
35. DO NOT ANY UNJUST THING IN JUDGMENT, IN RULE—with which, namely, things are measured, such as the ell, as if to say: Use a just measure in measuring.
36. LET THE WEIGHTS BE EQUAL.—The Hebrew is, let the stones be equal; for of old they used stones for weights: hence Proverbs 16:11 these weights are called stones of the bag, not of the age (seculi), as some wrongly read.
THE BUSHEL JUST.—The Hebrew is, let the ephah be just. The ephah contained three bushels (modii): but our Interpreter for ephah substituted the usual and common name of a measure among the Greeks and Latins, namely the bushel; in like manner for “and the sextary equal,” namely let it be, the Hebrew is, let the hin be equal. The hin was a measure of the Jews containing 12 sextaries. But because among us there is no one measure answering to that of the Hebrews, the Interpreter fittingly put the sextary for the hin. For this measure is very well known to us: for God wishes only to say and command here that the Hebrews use just measure both in liquids and in dry things; for as the hin and sextary were the measure of liquids, so the ephah and bushel of dry things.
The Hebrews write that he who uses unjust measures and weights is the cause of five crimes and evils. First, he pollutes the land. Secondly, he violates or profanes the name of God. Thirdly, he makes the majesty, glory and presence of the Divinity recede. Fourthly, he causes Israel to fall by the sword. Fifthly, he brings it about that they are cast out into exile from their own land.