Commentaria in Numeros
Verses 29 and 30. “All you that were numbered (chap. i, verse 2) from twenty years old and upward, and have murmured against me, shall not enter into the land.” Hence it is plain that all who were numbered, namely those who were of 20 years and upward, had murmured, and therefore all are here punished with death in the desert. So Abulensis. The Levites, and the women, and likewise the boys who were not yet twenty years old, are not comprehended in this sentence. For these were not numbered, as is plain from chap. i, verse 2, and chap. iii, verse 33; these, therefore, are not punished by this sentence and penalty, and could enter the promised land. Some gather that the Levites also did not murmur with the rest, from the fact that no explorer was sent from that tribe: so Andreas Masius, Josue last chapter, verse 4. Where, however, note: besides these numbered, all the others, whether female or male under twenty years, who murmured, died in the desert, equally with these numbered: for this is what is said in verse 23: “Neither shall any one of them that hath detracted me behold it.” So Abulensis. Yet this law is laid down only for the males who were of 20 years and upward: because this general sentence could designate and determine these alone.
Moreover, this sentence is understood of those who were twenty years old, not when this sentence was passed, but when the numbering was made, chap. i, verse 2: for this is what “numbered” signifies; so Abulensis. Finally, all these were condemned to temporal death, not to eternal; nay, by the present death they redeemed the eternal, as many as died penitent in grace in the desert, as is plain of Moses and Aaron, who were shut out from Chanaan, but for another cause, of which chap. xx.
Verse 30. “Over which I lifted up my hand,” that is, for which, with hand raised on high, I swore that I would give it to you, Genesis xv, 18.
Verse 27. Maurer most conveniently renders from the Hebrew: How long shall that brood (this is the force latent in the article) have this malice (a noun, as Osee x, 15) with which they murmur against themselves? Which interpretation what follows supplies, as it were, of itself. “Except Caleb the son of Jephone, and Josue the son of Nun.” These two, therefore, alone out of so many hundred thousands of armed men, entered Chanaan, because they followed God.
Tropologically, St. Gregory on the penitential Psalm, in the exposition of the fifth verse, at the end: “None,” he says, “will come to heaven unless he has first learned, through the love of the Spirit, to walk in newness of life. The two men, Caleb and Josue, designate the head and the body, Christ namely and the Church, who alone enter that land of the living.” For Caleb in Hebrew signifies “all heart,” says Procopius. Jephone signifies conversion, Jesus the Saviour; for those who have a whole heart toward God are sons of conversion, through Jesus dwelling with them.
Allegorically, as out of so many hundred thousands only Josue and Caleb entered the promised land, so out of so many hundred thousands of men few are saved, and go to heaven.
When St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, had departed this life, which happened in the year of the Lord 1153, indiction 4, on the 12th of the Kalends of September, in the 64th year of his age, a horrible vision was granted to the Bishop of Langres. For there appeared to him a certain dead hermit whom he had known when living, who, pierced with the fear of God some years before, when he was a rich and renowned Dean, despising all things, had entered a hermitage for the love of Christ. When he asked him about his state and the strictness of the divine judgment, he answered: “At the hour in which I departed from the body, thirty thousand men passed from this light. Of these, Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, who died at the same hour, flew up with me to heaven; three others were sent to Purgatory; all the rest, condemned by the sentence of the just Judge, were sent to hell for ever.”
St. Nilus the Abbot and others, in Baronius, tom. X, in the year of Christ 976, assert that of ten thousand scarcely one soul is saved.
Our Platus, from the annals of the Franciscans, book I On the Good of the Religious State, chap. v, relates that a certain Franciscan named Bertoldus, an eminent preacher, by the force and spirit of his speech brought a sinful woman to such contrition that she fell dead in the sermon; she, afterwards raised to life by his prayers, said: “When I appeared at the tribunal of God, there were brought thither sixty thousand souls who had departed from life throughout the whole world, and of these only three were assigned to Purgatory, all the rest condemned to eternal fire”; and she asserted that one of the Franciscan brothers, who had died at the same moment of time, had indeed passed through the place of Purgatory, but had not only not remained there long, but had even carried off with him to heaven a pair of souls that had been joined to him by special friendship. As thick, therefore, as flakes of snow fall from the air in winter, so thick a crowd of men daily descends to hell. O wonderful thing! O stupor of men! Who reading this would not be struck with dread? Who would not tremble in his whole body? Who would not resolve to live holily and piously, and to take thought for his salvation, and to make sure for himself, as far as he can, the entrance to heaven? especially when he hears that saying of Christ: “Enter ye in at the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who enter in thereby. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!” Matthew vii, 13; and again: “Many are called, but few are chosen”; think on this, think again on this, meditate on this continually.
Verse 33. “Your children shall be wanderers in the desert forty years.” Innocent children of guilty parents are here punished, as by an exile of forty years, for the sin and guilt of their parents. But this was less a punishment to the little ones than an advantage: for it served, first, that in the meantime they might grow to due age and strength, in which they might fight with the Chanaanites; second, that in the meantime they might increase in number, that they might succeed their dying parents and fill Chanaan. So Abulensis.
“Forty years.” Note first: from the exodus out of Egypt to the entrance into Chanaan not 42 years passed, as the Septuagint have it, Josue v, 6, and St. Augustine from them, but only 40, as is plain from Josue v, 6, in the Hebrew, Chaldee and Latin text. And this is further wholly proved by comparing Exodus with Numbers xxxiii, in that these 40 years were not even quite complete. For the Hebrews went out of Egypt on the 15th day of the first month, as is plain from Numbers xxxiii, 3. And they crossed the Jordan and entered Chanaan on the tenth day of the first month of the forty-first year from the exodus, as is plain from Josue iv, 19: there are lacking, therefore, 5 days to complete 40 years.
Whence note secondly: From this murmuring the Hebrews wandered through the desert only thirty-eight years and a half, or thereabouts. For this exploration, on account of which they murmured, took place in the second year from the exodus, in June, as I said on chap. xiii, verse 21.
You will say: How then are not 38, nor 39, but 40 years reckoned here? Some answer that these years are to be reckoned from the exodus out of Egypt. But I say they are to be reckoned from the sending of the spies and this murmuring, as is clear enough from this place and Psalm xciv, 10: for from then there were 38 years completed, and a 39th begun, which in the manner of Scripture are called 40, because Scripture is wont to express the perfect number, even if in the matter itself the number be somewhat greater or less. So the 70 disciples of Christ are called, though they were 72. See Ribera on Amos v, num. 64.