Commentaria in Numeros
Wherefore that old man in Sophronius, in the Spiritual Meadow, chap. ccvii, to a brother who was assailed by sadness, saying: What shall I do? because my thoughts rise up against me, and say: Uselessly and unseasonably hast thou renounced the world, thou canst not be saved; prudently answered: “Thou knowest, brother, that even if we cannot enter the land of promise, it is better for us to fall in the desert than to return into Egypt.” For, as Cassian says, book X, chap. xxv, “it has been proved by experience that the assault of acedia is not to be escaped by shunning it (for if thou flee, it will follow, and will assail thee more grievously), but is to be overcome by resisting.”
Verse 5. “And when Moses and Aaron heard this” (the murmuring of the people wishing to return into Egypt) “they fell down flat on the ground before all the multitude,” namely to entreat the Lord not to send vengeance upon the murmurers, as he had done at the Graves of lust, chap. xi, 33.
Verse 8. “If the Lord be favourable, he will bring us into it.” The little word “if” is not that of one doubting, but of one adding the reason and manner of the victory, namely that God would give it to the Hebrews if they themselves followed God and relied upon him: for God had surely promised them this victory, nay the possession of Chanaan. Again, that God was favourable to the Hebrews they could easily see from the manna, which he gave continually, and from the pillar which led them; for if God supplied these to them freely, he would certainly have supplied also the entrance into Chanaan which he had promised.
Verse 9. “All aid is gone from them.” In Hebrew, their shadow is departed from them; the shadow, that is, the protection, and, as the Chaldee renders, the strength: because as a shadow protects us from the sun in the heat, so protection shields from dangers and enemies. God, therefore, who until now had preserved the Chanaanites, at the coming of the Hebrews was withdrawing from them his protection, that they might fall before the Hebrews. The Septuagint render, the time is departed from them, namely which had been given to the impious Chanaanites to reign and flourish, says St. Augustine. So the time of Baltassar and of the monarchy of the Chaldeans was numbered and taken away, Daniel v, 26. St. Augustine notes here that Josue does not say, “The time is departed from them,” and ours has succeeded; but “The Lord is with us”: the Lord, namely, who is the creator, ordainer and dispenser of all times (1).
The Hebrews relate that about this time St. Job died in Chanaan, by whose prayers, while he lived, God was appeased and spared the Chanaanites; now, he being dead, the shadow that protected them was departed, namely the merits and prayers of St. Job, and all protection; whence St. Jerome in the Hebrew Places says it is handed down that the house of St. Job was in Carnea beyond the Jordan; and Abulensis: “The sepulchre,” he says, “of St. Job, highly built in the plain of the Jordan, remains in great honour among the Greeks and Gentiles to this day.” So also Bredenbachius, Salignacus, Borchardus, Adrichomius, and of them Pineda on Job chap. i, verse 4, num. 27, relate that the land of Hus, or Ausitis, in which Job dwelt, was on the borders of Arabia and Idumaea, in the region of Trachonitis, near the Jordan, in the lot which was afterwards assigned to the tribe of Manasses, and that there a pyramid erected at the sepulchre of St. Job, in the manner of the ancients, is still shown near the city of Sueta.
Again, that St. Job died a little before the exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt is shown from Genesis, chap. xxxvi, 33; nay, others will have it that he died in this very year, as I said on chap. x, 14.
Verse 10. “And would have stoned them” (Caleb, namely, and Josue, who resisted the murmurers).
“The glory of the Lord appeared,” namely a bright and glorious cloud, signifying the presence and majesty of God: so the Septuagint and Josephus.
“Over the tabernacle of the covenant”: it is a synecdoche.
“Like bread.” A proverbial formula. So also the Greeks say to eat enemies raw for to slay them. Iliad IV, 35: “Thou wouldst have eaten Priam and Priam’s children raw.”
“How long will this people detract me?” that is, will provoke me; for this is what the Hebrew word means. “How long will they not believe me for all the wonders?” “In,” that is, through, or on account of all the signs and portents which I have shown them: for in Hebrew beth, that is, “in,” often signifies “through.”
Verse 12. “But thee I will make ruler over a great nation.” The Hebrew has only: I will make thee into a great nation, namely that a great nation may be born of thee; for so Abraham is said to have been made into a great nation, Genesis xii, 2; that is, I will appoint thee leader over a great multitude of Gentiles, who shall be better and stronger than these Hebrews of thine; for so our Interpreter renders it.
Verse 13. “And Moses said to the Lord: That the Egyptians,” etc. The sense is: If thou, O Lord, destroy the Hebrews, it will follow that the Egyptians, hearing it, will blaspheme thy name; whence the Septuagint and the Chaldee, for “that,” render “and”: it is an aposiopesis for pathos, to signify both God angry and Moses softening the anger of God by this brief and gentle suggestion. For those who burn with anger pour out torrents of words and threats, to which a prudent man will not directly oppose himself, but will gently interject here and there some little word which may mitigate it (1).
Verse 14. “That thou, O Lord, art among this people, and art seen face to face” (in Hebrew, eye to eye), namely that the Hebrews clearly enjoy thee and thy presence, while they continually behold the pillar of cloud, which represents thee, by which thou both showest them the way and shadest their camp when they set out, and protectest it from the heat, as I showed on Exodus xiii, 21.
Verses 13–14. Then truly the Egyptians will hear that thou by thy power hast brought this people out of their borders, 15. and will tell the inhabitants of this land, who have heard that thou, Jehovah, art in the midst of this people... 15. If, therefore, thou shalt slay this people all to one, they will say, etc. So from the Hebrew, Maurer.
Verse 17. “Let the strength of the Lord therefore be magnified.” To be magnified signifies two things: first, to become great; secondly, to appear great. The strength of God cannot become greater: for it has in itself all possible and imaginable strength, nay beyond what anyone can imagine, because in itself it is immense and infinite: the strength of God, therefore, is magnified only when it appears great, or greater, to us; as if he said: Show, Lord, to us and to the whole world thy great strength, by leading thy people into the land of Chanaan, the Chanaanites being expelled;
secondly, “strength” here can be taken for clemency, says Abulensis. For he who conquers anger, and pardons an offence to an enemy whom he can punish and has in his hand, is of a great, strong and lion-like spirit; for this sense seems to be required by what follows: “As thou hast sworn, saying, The Lord is patient and full of mercy,” etc. But better, according to the former and proper sense, by aposiopesis, you will expound these words thus, that these words are understood: “And therefore show thyself to us clement and propitious”; as if he said: Show, Lord, thy strength, by bringing us into Chanaan, and therefore be not angry, nor destroy us; but show thyself such as thou hast sometimes said thou art, nay sworn, saying in Exodus xxxiv, 6: “The Lord is patient and full of mercy,” etc. For in pathetic prayers many things are said abruptly out of feeling, and many are left unsaid and kept in the heart, while the feeling carries the speaker elsewhere, things which must be supplied by the hearer.
Let Princes and Prelates learn here from Moses how ungrateful, fickle and rash the people subject to them often are, and how they ought to tolerate and excuse its faults. Scipio Africanus, who conquered Hannibal, being at length driven into exile by his own Romans on account of calumnies, and asked “how one ought to behave toward an ungrateful fatherland,” answered: “As a son behaves toward a sick mother.”
Themistocles, expelled by his own Athenians, fled to Artaxerxes, whom he had formerly fought against, and said to him: “Use my fortune rather to prove thy virtue than to satisfy thy anger: for thou wilt preserve thy suppliant, and destroy an enemy of the Greeks”; but when Artaxerxes sent him against the Greeks, he, rather than attack his country, preferred to meet death by drinking bull’s blood, being 65 years old.