Commentaria in Numeros
Epaminondas, who raised Thebes to empire, when he had kept the army and command beyond the time appointed him, the republic so requiring, being accused and demanded for death by his own people, said: “Kill me, but write on my tomb what I have done for my country, both at other times and in this very cause”; Plutarch is witness in their Lives.
The faithful were more illustrious. The Emperor Theodosius never avenged himself on any of those by whom he had been injured; when someone wondered at this, he said: “Would that I could call back to life those who died long ago!” To another who reported nearly the same, he said: “It is nothing new if a man, being a man, departs from life; but it belongs to God alone to call back to eternal life, by penance, him who has once died.” So Nicephorus.
St. Bernard, struck with a fist by a certain man, when others wished to fly at him, restrained them, saying: “He must forgive others, who is so often forgiven by God.” The author of the Life is witness, book III, chap. vi.
“As thou hast sworn,” as thou hast testified, as thou hast surely and firmly affirmed: for God is not properly read to have sworn this, but only to have said it, Exodus xxxiv, 6. For God’s saying is virtually and implicitly swearing: because to swear is nothing other than to call God, who is infallible and the first truth, to witness. And this first truth speaks when God speaks: when God speaks, therefore, he himself in fact bears witness to his own words, and so calls himself, as it were, to witness, and consequently swears implicitly, because he is the witness of his own words, nay their author and confirmer. So “to swear” is taken for to assert and promise constantly, Psalm lxxxviii, 4: “I have sworn to David my servant: for ever will I prepare thy seed”; for in the books of Kings or Paralipomenon God is not read to have sworn this, but only to have promised it to David; and Psalm cxviii, 106: “I have sworn, and (that is) determined, to keep the judgments of thy justice.”
“Leaving no man clear.” All men are guilty and sinners, both are and are esteemed so before thee: all therefore need thy mercy. It could be said, secondly, that “innocent” here, as in Exodus xx, 7, signifies unpunished, so that the Hebrew word here, as elsewhere, has a double literal sense, and the former the Interpreter expressed in Exodus xxxiv, 6, the latter here. See what I said on Exodus xxxiv, 6.
“Who visitest the sins of the fathers upon the children.” Not that Moses desires this, since he asks the contrary; but because God in Exodus xxxiv, 6, gave himself these epithets, and willed to be named by them when invoked, and this to press down, humble, and strike with fear of God the hard people of the Jews.
Verse 21. “As I live” (that is, I swear by my own life): “and (that) the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord,” namely that the glory of God, which appeared in the wonderful and mighty bringing of you out of Egypt, and in the continual governing and protection of you in the desert, in giving perennial manna and a perpetual pillar as guide of the journey; this glory of God, I say, shall not afterwards be diminished, but shall continue with you until the entrance into the promised land: and so all the earth hearing it will glorify my name, that is, my goodness, fidelity, strength, etc., in performing promises, when, namely, this glory, this glorious leadership of mine, shall be spread through the whole earth.
Verse 22. “Yet.” In Hebrew it is ki, that is, that, because, for. Whence Vatablus joins this to what precedes, in this sense, as if to say: The glory of the Lord shall fill the whole earth, which is, or rather will be, that all these who have seen my signs, and yet murmured against me, shall die in the desert. But this is not glory, that is, glorious clemency and benevolence of God toward the Hebrews, as is plain from verse 20, but rather the terror and terrible vengeance of God. Better, therefore, our Interpreter renders “yet.” For the Hebrew ki is at times taken adversatively, and is a note of exception, as Forster proves in his Hebrew Lexicon.
“That have seen my majesty,” not in itself, but through signs and portents, which are indicators and mirrors of my majesty.
“And have tempted me now ten times.” The Rabbis count these ten temptations of God by the Hebrews thus: the first was at the Red Sea, when Pharaoh was pressing them, Exodus xiv, 11; the second was at Mara, for want of water, Exodus xv, 24; the third in Sin, when food failed, Exodus xvi, 3; the fourth, when against the precept of God they kept manna until the morrow, ibid. verse 20; the fifth, when they sought manna on the sabbath, against the command of the Lord, ibid. verse 27; the sixth, when in thirst they asked for water at Raphidim, Exodus xvii, 2; the seventh, at Horeb, when they made the golden calf, Exodus xxxii, 4; the eighth, when they murmured on account of the labour of the journey, Numbers xi, 1; the ninth, when they demanded flesh and the delicacies of Egypt at the Graves of lust, ibid. verse 4; the tenth here, when they murmured on account of the report of the spies. But it can be said more easily and plainly that this is a familiar manner of speaking in Scripture, putting a certain number for an uncertain, as if to say: “Ten times,” that is, oftener, has this people already murmured.
Verse 24. “My servant Caleb, who being full of another spirit,” a good one, namely of obedience, magnanimity, faith and hope, to hope for the promised land and to trust in the goodness and power of God who promised it; whereas the others were full of the evil spirit of disobedience, pusillanimity, unbelief and despair.
“Hath followed me.” In Hebrew, he hath filled up after me, that is, he followed me fully, in that he believed and trusted my promises in all things, and, against all the others, asserted and maintained the greatness of my power to destroy the Chanaanites and to bring the Hebrews into Chanaan. For by these acts of faith, hope and charity we worship and follow God, as St. Augustine testifies.
Verse 25. “For the Amalecite and the Chanaanite dwell in the valleys. To-morrow remove the camp, and return.” Already before, in Exodus xvii, the Hebrews had fallen in with the Amalecites: but because the land of Amalec extends lengthwise from the land of Chanaan toward the Red Sea, the Hebrews, going from Egypt into Chanaan, often fell in with the Amalecites, or rather the Amalecites fell upon the Hebrews; but the Chanaanite people who is here named was not of the nations dwelling in Chanaan, but another, different from them, dwelling for the most part in the valleys near the desert in which the Hebrews were encamped, whose king was Arad, with whom the Hebrews fought in the desert, as will appear in chap. xxi, 1. Here God commands the Hebrews to withdraw because of the Amalecites and Chanaanites, since these would attack the Hebrews and overcome them, as being unworthy of God’s help, and consequently destined to fall before their enemies: that it so happened is plain from verse 45.
“And return into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.” The Hebrews had now come to Rethma and Cades, and were near the promised land, and only the mountains of Idumaea lay between it and them. But because the Lord, punishing them for their murmuring, willed that they should wander for forty years and die in the desert, he commands them to return to the solitude, by a way which by another route would lead them again to the Red Sea; whence in the thirty-second station they came at length to Asiongaber, on the Red Sea. Adrichomius describes this graphically in his maps and sets it before the eyes.
This solitude, as I said above, was most vast, trackless, waterless, barren, unploughable, rough, steep, parched, and covered with deep, clinging and slippery sand: in this, as their penance, inflicted by God for their murmuring, the Hebrews wandered for 38 years.
See here what murmuring and rebellion deserve, and how much they displease God; and fear lest, as so many hundred thousand Hebrews, for a single murmuring, were shut out of the promised land, and perished and were buried in this desert, so likewise thou, if thou murmur, and be disobedient to God and his vicars, be shut out of heaven and buried in gehenna.