Commentaria in Numeros
Verse 11. LET EACH PRINCE (of the tribes) ON HIS DAY OFFER GIFTS FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE ALTAR—of holocausts, namely, which besides the anointing common to it with the other vessels of the tabernacle had another special dedication for seven days, namely the daily anointing and sacrifices prescribed in Exodus 29:36 and 37. Hence the princes also daily, for the dedication of the whole tabernacle indeed, but chiefly of this altar, offered in turn and man by man their gifts.
This oblation therefore began on the first day of the setting up and consecration of the tabernacle, and lasted twelve days. For there were twelve princes offering, of whom each day one offered his gifts. For the common gifts, namely the six wagons and twelve oxen, all the princes offered together on the first day. Moreover these princes offered their gifts in the order which was in the camp itself and in the standards, Numbers 2: whence on the first day the prince of the tribe of Juda offered; on the second, the prince of Issachar; on the third, the prince of Zabulon, and so on. Finally they offered the same gifts, that no emulation or ambition might arise among them.
Note: God commanded the princes, that what was done in the name of the tribes … God commanded the princes to offer these gifts of theirs, first, that in them he might sharpen zeal for religion and sacred things; second, that he might show that the laity and the people are bound by the divine law of nature to these victims, and to furnish the expenses necessary both for the tabernacle and for the support of the priests. For the priests performed the sacred offices in the name of the whole people; wherefore they ought to be fed by them, and to receive from them all the expenses necessary to the worship of God. Finally, that he might teach that liberality most befits princes. Artaxerxes, called Longimanus because he had one hand longer than the other, used to say, “It is more royal to add than to take away.” Let kings and princes, therefore, be long-handed in giving. For this reason the Hebrews call princes nedibim, from the root nadab, that is, he was willing, spontaneous, liberal. Nedibim is therefore the same as euergetai, that is, benefactors. And this is what Christ says, Luke 22:25: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and they that have power over them are called beneficent.” Beneficent, nedibim, that is, princes, because beneficence most befits them. So Ptolemy, king of Egypt, was surnamed Evergetes, that is, beneficent, because he had brought back by arms into Egypt the ancestral idols carried off by Cambyses.
Verse 14. A MORTAR.—The Hebrew is caph, which our Interpreter elsewhere renders “phial”; but because another word signifying a phial has preceded here, our Interpreter therefore renders caph “a mortar,” as if to say a small phial for receiving incense. For caph signifies a small curved and hollow vessel (for caphaph means to bend), in which frankincense, or incense, or the like was put. So Vatablus and others.
Verse 15. AN OX OF THE HERD.—Note: Besides the vessels, each prince offered 21 victims, and those of every kind, namely an ox, a ram and a lamb for a holocaust; a buck for sin; and for peace-offerings two oxen, five rams, five bucks and five lambs: which Moses sacrificed in the first seven days; but on the eighth day Aaron began to discharge the priesthood, and sacrificed the victims of the eighth prince. On the same day Aaron also sacrificed the victims of the people, which the people offered on account of the new consecration of the priests. On the same day also fire came from heaven, which consumed the sacrifices of Aaron. On the same day finally were slain
Verse 18. THE SECOND DAY NATHANAEL OFFERED.—“He offered” the same, or such as Nahasson had offered the first day: which in the Hebrew manner are here recited at length and repeated for the several princes. Hence the Hebrews in their text do not here put points, since they put them once at the beginning in the first oblation of Nahasson. So we see in Exodus that all that was commanded to be made in the fabric of the tabernacle in chapters 25, 26, 27, 28, is repeated at length and narrated as now done in chapters 36, 37, 38, 39. The same custom of repeating is found among Orientals, Muscovites and other nations.
Verse 84. THESE WERE OFFERED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE ALTAR BY THE PRINCES, IN THE DAY WHEN IT WAS CONSECRATED.—“In the day they were offered” means they began to be offered: for this oblation lasted for twelve days; but the consecration of the altar was completed on the first day.
Verse 89. AND WHEN MOSES ENTERED INTO THE TABERNACLE OF THE COVENANT, TO CONSULT THE ORACLE—namely of God sitting in the Holy of Holies upon the propitiatory. Hence it is plain that in doubtful matters access to the Holy of Holies was always open to Moses, whereas otherwise access to the Holy of Holies was open only to the pontiff once a year, namely on the day of atonement. For Moses was the lawgiver and constant legate of God to the people: hence God spoke with Moses in a human and sensible voice proceeding from the propitiatory, as is said here. By this God signified that Rulers, Prelates and Pastors, to govern the people well, ought often to have recourse to God by prayer, that they may be instructed by him in doubts.
Thus Moses had recourse to the oracle, as St. Gregory teaches, part 2 of the Pastoral Rule, chapter 5. So Minos the lawgiver and king of the Cretans for nine years was the interlocutor of Jupiter, says Plato; for this the Gentiles feigned of him.
Plutarch relates in the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men that they asked among themselves: “Who would be a good and happy prince. Solon first answered: He who turns the rule of one into a popular state of the commonwealth for the citizens. Bias added: He who is first to obey the laws of his country. The third, Thales: He who dies old in the order of nature. The fourth, Anacharsis: He who alone is prudent. The fifth, Cleobulus: He who trusts none of his intimates. The sixth, Pittacus: He who so teaches his subjects that they fear not him but for him. Last Chilo, best: He who meditates on nothing mortal, but on all things immortal.” This Moses learned by assiduously conversing with God in the tabernacle. So Blessed Thomas More, the wisest and most upright Chancellor of England, gave daily much time to prayer, pious reading and meditation, conversing with God: and so when any arduous business was to be handled, he took the Holy Communion, that he might be directed by it as by an oracle, and strengthened to perform that matter rightly and faithfully according to the law and mind of God; Stapleton is witness in the Life of More.
Moreover, that one may approach the Sanctuary and oracle of God, three obstacles must be removed. “There are three things,” says St. Bernard, sermon 5 on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, “which confound the eye of understanding and shut it out from the contemplation of the true light: the darkness of sins, the remembrance of them, and the care of earthly affections. Against this threefold disease there is a threefold remedy. For the first is cured by confession, the second by prayer, the third by quiet.”
The same, sermon 93 on the Canticle: “Into this secret,” he says, “and this sanctuary of God,” namely of prayer and contemplation, “if it chance to any of you at any hour to be so rapt and so hidden that neither a sense of acting (as in the sick), nor a pricking care, nor a biting guilt, nor those things which are more hardly removed, the phantasms of bodily images rushing in, shall call him away or disturb him; he may, when he has returned to us, glory and say: The king hath brought me into his chamber.” Hence Cassian, Conference 10, chapters 9 and 12, warns “that such as we wish to be found praying, such let us be before the time of prayer: for it is necessary that the mind at the time of its supplication be formed from its present state.” “For when,” as St. Gregory says, Morals book 10, chapter 16, “the mind has raised itself to the study of prayer, it suffers a rebound of the images of those things by which it was gladly oppressed before in idleness.”