Commentaria in Numeros
For this number the letters of the Greek name Jesus contain, the mystery of which number the Venerable Bede explains on Luke ii: “Namely that by Jesus is signified the resurrection, and that the way to heaven is laid open. For the number eight, whether simple, or multiplied by ten, that is eighty, or by a hundred, that is 800, signifies the eighth day of the resurrection.”
And hence perhaps the demon, who is the ape of God, and so great a rival of our Saviour, introduced among the Romans and Greeks Jupiter and Minerva Soter, Jupiter Eleutherius, the goddess Salus, Minerva Sospita, and like masks of gods, of which Giraldus treats at length, book On the Gods of the Gentiles, syntagma 1, p. 1241. Finally Justin, Apology 4 for the Christians, before the end, writes that the Christians of his time were wont to cure the possessed, and to free them from demons, by the invocation of the name of Jesus; see Gretser, book III On the Cross, chap. xxvii.
For this name Jesus is most holy and most august, and so more venerable than the tetragrammaton name, as Abulensis rightly proves, Question VII, on Exodus xx. For it is the proper name of the Word incarnate, as St. Augustine teaches, tract. 3 on the first epistle of St. John, tom. IX, and therefore comprises in itself all the other names of Christ, which Scripture attributes to him in great number and of the highest excellence. For it signifies the whole economy of the Lord’s incarnation (in which, beyond the other works, all the attributes of God shine forth), and all the goods that thence come to us, whether in soul or in body, both in this life and in the future through all eternity. See Origen, homily 22 on this place, and homily 4 on Josue, Bernard, sermon 15 on the Canticle, where he says that the ancient Jesuses gloried in empty names; for they did not afford true salvation, but only a shadow of it: this only our Jesus has afforded.
Of the name of Jesus I have said more on Philippians ii, 10.
Verse 20. “What cities, walled or without walls.” The Interpreter renders clearly the Hebrew, which has thus:
Whether the inhabitants dwell in camps or in fortifications, that is, in enclosed places. “Camps” here are opposed to places enclosed by a wall: camps, therefore, here are open places, or towns, in which the inhabitants dwell in troops (1); for so soldiers in camps are not shut in by walls, but live in tents in the field. So Oleaster. Enclosed places are what we commonly call Burgos; whence the Burgundians were so called, as being safe from raids.
Verse 21. “Now it was the time when the firstripe grapes (that is, the first ripe) are fit to be eaten,” as if to say: The spies sent by Moses explored Chanaan when it was the time of the first grapes there: whence also they carried a cluster thence to the Hebrews. This exploration therefore took place about the beginning of June (for then in Palestine, as a hot region, grapes are ripe), in the second year of the exodus from Egypt. For one year and three months had already passed since this exodus, and then after a few days the Hebrews would have entered Chanaan, had they not murmured. For this murmuring put off their entrance for 38 years: so Abulensis.
Verse 22. THEY SEARCHED THE LAND FROM THE DESERT OF SIN, TO ROHOB, AS MEN GO TO EMATH.—As if to say: By the way by which one goes from Sin and enters the region of Emath, in which was a powerful city, which was afterwards called Epiphania by Antiochus Epiphanes, says St. Jerome on Amos 6; and it was in the borders of Syria, bounding the holy land on the north; whence in Scripture Emath is often mentioned among the boundaries of the promised land. There was also another great Emath, afterwards called Antioch, a most celebrated city of Syria.
Verse 23. WHERE WERE THE SONS OF ENAC.—“Sons,” that is, grandsons and descendants of the giant Enac: see verse 30; whence from this giant Enac giants in Scripture are called sons of Enakim. FOR HEBRON WAS BUILT SEVEN YEARS BEFORE TANIS, A CITY OF EGYPT.—All agree, says Adrichomius, Cajetan and Oleaster, that Tanis is the noble city of Egypt, situated not far from Memphis, which was formerly called Titannis, built by 10, or, as Adrichomius says, 17 Titans, sons of Noe, but with the first syllable cut off was called Tanis, or the city of Taneos; and it is famous in Scripture, as being the place in which Moses before Pharaoh did his signs and sent the ten plagues upon Egypt, as is plain from Psalm 77:12, where it is said: “He did wonderful things in the land of Egypt, in the field of Taneos;” and verse 43: “How he wrought his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the field of Taneos.” Whence it seems that Tanis was then the royal seat of the kings of Egypt; the same is gathered from Isaias 19:11. It was situated near the mouth of the Nile, which from it is called Tanitic, and is next to the Pelusiac mouth. To this Tanis, Godolias having been slain, the Jews fled with Jeremias the prophet, and there Jeremias was stoned by the Jews, whose idolatry he rebuked: whence there is frequent mention of Tanis, or Taphnis, in Jeremias, as chapters 2, 43, 44 and 46.
In Tanis, therefore, the Hebrews also saw a race of giants, as the conjunction “for,” which our Interpreter has in this verse, indicates, as if to say: It is no wonder that there are giants in Hebron, such as you saw in Tanis, since Hebron is older than the city of Tanis, so that it could be inhabited by the first giants, as Lyranus and Abulensis say.
Verse 24. “They cut off a vine branch with its cluster.” Philo also expressly asserts that there was not more than one cluster. The Hebrew and the Chaldee have a branch and a cluster of grapes, that is, one branch with one cluster; he says “of grapes,” because there are also clusters of cypress and of other fruits. Wherefore it must be said that the grapes in Chanaan were very large: since one of them required two men to carry it on a pole, which was a sign that that land was most fertile. So Pliny, book XIV, chap. i, says that in the interior of Asia grapes grow of the size of a cow’s udder, of a pot, nay of a small child. Euphorus and Metrophanes, in Stephanus On Cities, relate further that in Eucarpia, a town of Asia Minor, such immense clusters grow that single ones are a load for single carts; so that once a cart broke down and collapsed merely under the carriage of one cluster, and thence the city was called Eucarpia, that is, fertile, and therefore the ancients used to say that this city was given by Jove to Ceres and Bacchus to dwell in; but I think that cart, laden with a thicker lie than with grapes, collapsed and vanished long ago. What wonder? The faith of the Greeks is known, and we know that Greeks are accustomed to play the Greek and to tell fables. More credibly Strabo, book II, mentions clusters of grapes each two feet in length. The same, book XI and book XV, relates that in Mauritania and Carmania clusters grow which extend to two cubits in length.
Allegorically, as the spouse says to Christ: “A cluster of cypress is my beloved to me in the vineyards of Engaddi,” and that on account of the sweetness and glory of the resurrection of Christ; so likewise here the grape hanging on the pole is Christ hanging on the cross: this was born of the promised land, that is, the Blessed Virgin, whom Isaias promised, chap. vii, verse 14. “The two bearers are the two testaments: the Jews go before, the Christians follow; the one (the Christian) bears salvation before his sight, the other (the Jew) behind his back: the one brings obedience forward, the other contempt. Let us labour, therefore, not to put down from our necks so holy a burden.” So St. Augustine, sermon 100 On the Time; Jerome to Fabiola, at the 15th station; Prosper, part II of the Predictions, chap. ix; Rupert here, and St. Bernard, sermon 44 on the Canticle.
“Which two men carried.” St. Ambrose, in the place already cited, says that these two bearers of the cluster were Josue and Caleb: which is favoured by the fact that these two alone commended the land of Chanaan to the Hebrews, as is plain from what follows.
Verse 26. “And they that went to view the land returned after forty days.” For 40 days, therefore, the spies went through the land of Chanaan, during which they did not eat manna; for that was found only in the camp of the Hebrews; but they fed on the fruits of the land of Chanaan, which they either gathered in the fields, as here they gathered the cluster, or bought from the Chanaanites in the villages. So Abulensis.
Verse 27. “And came to Moses, etc., to the desert of Pharan, which is in Cades,” as if to say: The spies, returning to their own, came into Cades, or Cadesbarne, which is in the desert of Pharan; it is a hypallage.
It is doubtful whether this Cades, from which the spies were sent, is the same as the Cades of the thirty-third station, of which Numbers xx, 1, and chap. xxxiii, verse 36.
Abulensis thinks that it is the same place and the same station, and consequently that the spies were sent not from the fifteenth, but from the thirty-third station, and that in it, or near it, the Hebrews stayed 38 years, namely until the death of Mary, who died in Cades at the beginning of the fortieth year of the exodus from Egypt, Numbers xx, 1. He proves the same from Deuteronomy i, 46, where it is said: “So you abode in Cadesbarne a long time.” Abulensis therefore holds that the Hebrews in the second year ran very quickly through all the stations from Sinai, which was the twelfth, to Cades, which was the thirty-third, and stayed in Cades from the second year to the fortieth.