Commentaria in Numeros
Joseph, a convert to Christianity from Judaism, in the year of the Lord 327, dispelled the magical illusions of the Jews by blessed water, as Baronius relates from Epiphanius.
St. Marcellus, Bishop of Apamea, put to flight with blessed water the demon who hindered the demolition of the temple of Jove at Apamea, and cast down the temple, as Theodoret relates, bk. v, chap. xxi, and Baronius, in the year of Christ 389.
Hear what St. Hubert, Bishop of Liège, thought of this water, in the year of Christ 700: “Go,” he says, “water, which by priestly consecration, with salt mingled, has been blessed, and by the power of prayer made fit to drive off the wickedness of the enemy; and let the liquid, likewise once blessed by apostolic authority, be carried in; by the sprinkling and anointing of which the venomous phantoms of the enemy shall presently be so driven hence that he shall no more dare to bring in his devices.” So has his Life, which is extant in Surius, 2 November.
The Emperor Leo VI wrote a book On the Apparatus of War, where in chap. xiii he writes thus: “On the day before that on which battle is to be joined, the leader of the army ought to see to it that the whole army be purified by a priest with holy water”; Baronius relates this in the year of the Lord 911. In this age, in the Indies, wonders have been and are wrought by this water. In Japan the sick are everywhere cured when they have drunk this water, as is plain from the Japanese letters.
10. THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, etc., SHALL HAVE THIS FOR A HOLY ORDINANCE FOR EVER.—“Holy,” that is, firm and inviolable, as a law established by perpetual right; plain from the Hebrew.
Verses 11 and 12.—HE THAT TOUCHES THE CORPSE OF A MAN, AND ON THIS ACCOUNT HAS BEEN UNCLEAN SEVEN DAYS, SHALL BE SPRINKLED WITH THIS WATER ON THE THIRD DAY AND ON THE SEVENTH, AND SO SHALL HE BE CLEANSED.—Why was he unclean seven days? Why was he to be purified on the third day and the seventh? Aben Ezra answers: because in seven days the moon makes a quadrature with the sun, at the time of the purification. For the moon completes its course in twenty-eight days, and returns to the sun from which it had withdrawn; and the fourth part of twenty-eight is seven; again, three is as it were the half of this quadrature, namely of seven: because the moon is the mother of moist things, and this sprinkling was done in water, which is moist, God willed that the moon should then flow into the same, so that this sprinkling might be effective. But these are trifles and the inventions of a lunatic mind. The true cause was the will of God, ordaining it so; and the fitness lay in this, that the number seven is a symbol of perfection, in the midst of which, namely on the third day, and at the end, namely on the seventh, God willed the unclean to be purified, that the purification might be reckoned full and perfect.
The Gentiles imitated this purification: for as many as had waited at the pyre during a funeral and the burning of the corpse, until, the remains being gathered and laid away, the funeral was ended, did not depart from this mournful duty before they had been purified three times with water, on account of the pollution contracted from the funeral. Virgil, most learned in rites, teaches this in the funeral of Misenus, Aeneid V:
“And Corynaeus covered the gathered bones in a brazen urn. He likewise bore pure water thrice around his comrades, sprinkling them with a light dew and a branch of fruitful olive.”
Here he also mentions the sprinkler, which was made of sea-dew and fruitful olive.
13. EVERY ONE THAT TOUCHES THE DEAD BODY OF A HUMAN SOUL (the corpse), AND IS NOT SPRINKLED WITH THIS MIXTURE (that is, with this water of purification, mingled with the ashes of the red heifer), SHALL DEFILE THE TABERNACLE OF THE LORD (as far as lies in him, namely if he enters while unclean and defiled, before he has purified himself with this water of purification; hence, for the violation of the sanctuary) AND SHALL PERISH OUT OF ISRAEL—that is, he shall be put to death by the judges, if the matter is established; but if it is hidden, he shall fall into sudden death, I being the avenger. So Abulensis.
14. THIS IS THE LAW OF A MAN (concerning a man, regarding a man) THAT DIES IN A TENT: ALL THAT GO INTO HIS TENT, AND ALL THE VESSELS THAT ARE THERE, SHALL BE POLLUTED SEVEN DAYS.—From this place the Jews took up the custom that, when someone dies in a house, they pour out of doors all the water that was in the house in vessels, because they judge it to be unclean. Others, more simple, do this also because they suppose that the soul, freshly departed from the body, is washed in the water of the house and infects it by its touch. Others add that the angel of death, that is, Satan, washes again in that water his sword, with which he has slain that man. But the latter two notions are ridiculous; the former is sound, and is to be done by this law, if the vessel was not covered; for then it was defiled, as is said in verse 15; but if it was covered, it was not defiled by the death of the man, and therefore there was no need for the water contained in it to be poured out. So Abulensis.
15. THE VESSEL WHICH HAS NO COVER, NOR BINDING OVER IT, SHALL BE UNCLEAN.—For, as St. Gregory explains morally, Moral. XXIII, chap. 9: “The covering of the lid, or the binding, is the censure of discipline; and whoever is not restrained by it is condemned as an unclean and polluted vessel (1).”
16. IF ANY MAN IN THE FIELD TOUCH THE DEAD BODY, etc., OR HIS BONE, OR HIS SEPULCHRE, HE SHALL BE UNCLEAN SEVEN DAYS.—Among the Jews the greatest uncleanness was that of corpses, so that those who touched sepulchres were unclean seven days. Hence they had their sepulchres not near the temple, nor in the cities, lest by running into them they should be defiled, but outside them (as is plain from Luke 7:19 and John 19:44 concerning the sepulchre of Christ) in fields and separate places. Hence also King Josias, wishing to profane the temples of the idols and to take away all religion from those places, brought the bones of the dead into them, 4 Kings 23:14.
So also the Gentiles buried their dead not in the city but outside it, both that the air in the city might not be corrupted by the stench of corpses, and “that the sacred rites of the state might not be made funereal,” as Paulus says, book II of the Sentences, title 21; and “that the sacred law of the municipalities might not be polluted,” as Diocletian and Maximian say in their rescript on this matter: for the Romans and other Gentiles thought that whatever was sacred to the gods above was defiled by the mere sight or touch of a funereal thing. Nor was it lawful to sacrifice when polluted by a funeral; wherefore if both had to be done by someone for a grave cause, “he labored to finish the sacred rites before he took notice of the funeral. Whence also Horatius Pulvillus, at the dedication of the Capitol, when his enemies announced that his son was dead, said: Let the corpse be cast out; and he would not take notice of the funeral until he had dedicated the temple,” says Servius on book X of the Aeneid. The rite of the Greeks was similar, as is plain from Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess.
Finally, it was an inauspicious omen if anyone chanced to fall upon sepulchres. Hear Livy, book XXX: