Commentaria in Numeros
God uses this phrase for the sake of elegance, as though God, just as he distributed to the other seventy a part of the burden taken from the shoulders of Moses, had likewise taken something from the spirit of Moses, prepared for bearing that burden, and distributed to them a spirit like the spirit of Moses.
Moreover, this spirit is understood to be prophetic, as is sufficiently gathered from verse 25. For that holds the first place in the skill of governing a people. Prophecy here and elsewhere is general, and embraces many things, as I said on 1 Corinthians xiv, namely: first, prudence in ruling; second, doctrine and counsel, for resolving doubts both of law and justice and of ceremonies and religion, and any others whatever; third, knowledge of hidden things, for deciding hidden quarrels and causes; fourth, properly the foreknowledge of things to come, either to bring them on or to guard against them and ward them off from the people; fifth, the praises and hymns of God, as I shall say on verse 25.
Verse 18. “Be ye sanctified,” that is, as the Chaldee has it, prepare yourselves, namely by cleansing and purifying yourselves for the heavenly banquet, as for eating the divine and sacred flesh of quails, which to-morrow I will breathe upon you.
“That the Lord may give you flesh,” namely on account of your gluttony and murmuring, and therefore he will indeed give you flesh, but to your destruction; so Vatablus and Abulensis. And it is an enallage of person: for God speaks of himself in the third person, as if to say: Therefore I, God, will give you flesh.
that is, for a whole month, or on all the days of the month; so Vatablus.
Verse 20. “Till it come out at your nostrils, and become loathsome to you”—as if to say: Until through excessive greed your stomach belch up the flesh, and your nostrils breathe it forth, and the flesh at length become to you a nausea and an aversion. For this is what the Hebrew zare properly signifies, although the Chaldee renders it a stumbling-block and the Septuagint, choler; but these interpret not so much the proper meaning of the word as, by paraphrase, the sense and the thing itself.
Ulysses Aldrovandus teaches, Ornithology, book XIII, chap. xxii, that quails, especially the fatter ones, if eaten too often and too freely, generate putrid blood and thick, phlegmy and viscous humours, which are apt to bring on epilepsy, tetanus and like diseases. Hence they brought on the Hebrews who gorged themselves on them nausea and other diseases. So St. Jerome; Fracastorius, book II On the French Disease, when he says:
Let the slow quail, with its heavy fatness, be avoided.
The ancients removed quails from their tables, because they feed on poison, and thought they would be likewise infected with poison if they ate them. But Aldrovandus refutes this; where he also refutes the opinion of Galen and Pliny, who say they had observed many who after eating quails were seized with distension of the muscles and spasm, because, they say, these birds feed on hellebore.
There is this singular remedy for turning away lust, gluttony and surfeit, if one looks upon filth, phlegm, vomit, nausea, and the other things that follow from it. So in the Lives of the Fathers, book V, tit. v, no. 22, that hermit did, who, tempted by the spirit of fornication about a certain woman, when he heard that she was dead, went and opened her tomb, and wiped with his cloak the corruption of the putrefied corpse; then returning into the desert, when a foul suggestion assailed him, he smelt the stench of that infected cloak, saying: “Behold what thou soughtest; be satisfied with it.” And so he tormented himself with this stinking cloth till that lustful thought departed. For if the gluttonous body is punished with such filth, with what shall the gluttonous soul be punished? Rightly, therefore, did Augustine say, in Possidius in his Life, chap. xxii: “I fear not the uncleanness of the food, but the uncleanness of desire.”
Hence in the Lives of the Fathers, book V, tit. v, no. 93, to a certain monk who had overcome a carnal temptation by labour and fasting, there appeared the demon who incites carnal concupiscence, in the form of a foul and stinking Ethiopian woman, so that he could not bear her stench; and this Ethiopian woman said to him: “I am she who appear sweet in the hearts of men; but on account of thy obedience and the labour which thou sustainest, God has not permitted me to seduce thee, but has made my stench known to thee.”
So Blessed Jacopone, tempted by a craving for beef, procured it, and kept it in his cell until it rotted and stank horribly through the whole corridor, and then he smelt it, and kissed it as though it were a most fragrant thing. Because of the stench thus raised, he was cast by his Superior into a most foul place, where he gave thanks to God continually. Christ appeared to him, consoling him, and saying: “Ask what thou wishest, and thou shalt obtain it.” Then he said: “I ask, Lord, that thou cast me into a place far more foul than this, that in it I may expiate my sins; for this is too tolerable for me.” Presently Christ filled him with an unwonted consolation, and gave him grace thenceforth to be superior to all the evils, hardships and torments of this life; and he was fixed, as it were, in continual contemplation of God, and as if rapt. The same man, at the beginning, to tame his gluttony, used wormwood on his food as if it were salt, and so spoiled it, until he came to the point of referring the taste of food to God alone, so that at last nothing tasted to him but God.
“Because you have cast off the Lord,”—because you rejected the manna, as a great gift of the Lord, and because you repent of the deliverance by which the Lord brought you out of Egypt.
Verse 21. “There are six hundred thousand footmen of this people.” “Footmen,” namely the armed men of the Hebrews: for the number of women, children, servants and Egyptians easily amounted to three million.
Verse 23. “Can the hand,” that is, the power, “of the Lord be weak?” God here answers the doubt of Moses by setting his omnipotence against it. For Moses, being disturbed, showed certain movements of doubt and distrust toward God, although by reason of his disturbance and want of consideration he did not sin gravely. St. Augustine, however, thinks that Moses doubted not of the thing promised but only of the manner of carrying it out, as the Blessed Virgin doubted, saying: “How shall this be done, because I know not man?”
Verse 25. “They prophesied.” You will ask, what and how? The Rabbis answer that these seventy elders prophesied of the death of Moses in the desert, and of the succession of Josue in the leadership of the people; they conjecture this from the fact that Josue said to Moses: “Forbid them.” But these are their own inventions, nay, … Others answer, more probably, that they prophesied something concerning what pertained to the government of the people. Third, and best, Abulensis: They prophesied, he says, that is, by the instinct of God they celebrated God and the praises of God. For so Saul is said to have prophesied when, as though moved by an enthusiasm of God, he sang the praises of God as a prophet, 1 Kings x. So also singers and psalmists are called Prophets, and are said to prophesy on harps, psalteries and cymbals, 1 Paralipomenon xvi: for this spirit was a sign and part of general prophecy, of which I spoke on verse 17.
“Neither did they cease afterwards.” For “they ceased,” the Hebrew has yasaphu, that is, “they added”; so the Septuagint, Theodoret here, Question XX, and Vatablus. Whence it follows that these seventy prophesied then only, and no more. But our Interpreter and the Chaldee have read, with other points, yasephu, that is, “they failed,” “they ceased,” from the root soph or asaph, that is, he finished, failed, ceased. And this is truer: for this spirit (though not as to the praises and song of God, yet as to its other parts, of which I spoke on verse 17) they continually needed for deciding the quarrels of the people. They always had, therefore, the prophetic spirit, as it were ready to hand and present to them in a habit; although they did not always prophesy in act, but only then when they had to answer the questions of the people. For then God spoke to them inwardly, and inspired what was to be said or done, just as he inspired the Prophets with what they were to say or do.