Commentaria in Numeros
18 and 19. STAND, BALAC, AND HEARKEN, etc.: GOD IS NOT AS A MAN, THAT HE SHOULD LIE; NOR AS THE SON OF MAN, THAT HE SHOULD BE CHANGED.—as if to say: Thou shalt not make me retract the former blessing of Israel which I received from God: for God, who rules my mind and tongue, is not one who is changed. He is not one who repents, that is, who revokes and changes His sayings and promises. For He is by essence immutable, “and abiding stable, gives all things to be moved,” as Boethius says. Whence it follows:
HATH HE SAID THEN (God, namely, that I should not curse Israel), AND WILL HE NOT DO?—as if to say: He will altogether do what He said, namely He will bring it about that I do not curse Israel.
Note: Man is wont to deny a promise from four causes: first, when he promises something deceitfully and lies; secondly, when he repents of the promise itself; thirdly, when he is offended by him to whom he promised something; fourthly, when it is not in his power to fulfil the promise. These are very far from God. For first, He does not lie like a man; secondly, He does not repent like the son of man; thirdly, He regards not the merit or demerit of man, but His own goodness, and His promise and fidelity; fourthly, He has strength like the rhinoceros, therefore He can perform what He promises; and because He can, He actually performs it.
20. I AM BROUGHT TO BLESS, THE BLESSING I AM NOT ABLE TO HINDER.—He rightly says, I did not come, but I am brought; for he himself came with the mind to curse. But God brought him to bless. Our interpreter reads, as also the Septuagint, passively, in the Pual, lukkachti, that is, I am taken, I am brought; now in the Chaldee they read lakachti, that is, I have received. Whence Vatablus translates word for word: behold, I have received a blessing, and He hath blessed, namely God, I will not revoke it, namely the blessing; but the sense comes to the same.
THE BLESSING I AM NOT ABLE TO HINDER.—Not as though Balaam, compelled, said these things against his will, and God formed these words in his mouth against his will, as Abulensis will have it; but that his mind was so enlightened by God, and his will so inclined to the praise and blessing of Israel, that he could curse them only with difficulty and pain, nay could scarcely fail to bless. See what was said on verse 7.
21. THERE IS NO IDOL IN JACOB, etc., THE LORD HIS GOD IS WITH HIM, AND THE NOISE OF THE VICTORY OF THE KING IN HIM.—The Chaldee renders this beautifully and clearly: I behold that there are none serving idols in the house of Jacob, nor working falsehood (false gods, that is, images of false gods) in Israel. The word of the Lord their God is for their help, and the majesty of their king is among them. Note: idols and images are here called in the Hebrew, as often by the Prophets, aven and amal, that is, sorrow and labour, or iniquity and labour, because they are the cause of the greatest labours and sorrows to their worshippers. From this place it is plain that the Hebrews at this time, namely in the fortieth year from the departure out of Egypt, did not worship idols, at least publicly. For before that they had worshipped in Egypt and in the desert the golden calf and other idols.
AND THE NOISE OF THE VICTORY OF THE KING IN HIM.—He alludes to the two silver trumpets, made by the command of the Lord, at whose sounding God had commanded the Hebrews to go to war, and had promised that He would then be with them, and would give the victory, chapter 10, verse 9; as if to say: Israel is unconquerable and invincible, as one who carries victory with him; for he has God for leader, in the leader a king, in the king a strong one, in the strong one victory. God, therefore, is their king, who, the trumpets sounding, gives them victory (3).
See here how God scatters the counsels of impious princes, and turns them back upon their own head, and that through the very men whom they tried to draw to their impiety. For those who are faithless to God are also faithless to men. Wherefore Theodoric, king of the Goths, though an Arian, prudently, when he loved a certain orthodox deacon, and the latter, to please the king the more, became an Arian, presently ordered him to be beheaded, saying: “If thou hast not kept faith with God, how shalt thou keep a sincere conscience toward man?” So Theodore the Reader relates in his Collectanea, book II. So by the will of God Balaam, solicited by Balac to unfaithfulness, was unfaithful to him and his adversary, and prophesied victory against him for his enemies the Hebrews.
22. GOD HATH BROUGHT HIM OUT OF EGYPT, WHOSE STRENGTH IS LIKE TO THE RHINOCEROS.—The Chaldee, Rabbi Solomon and Eugubinus translate: whose strength is exalted and lofty. For they read ram, that is, lofty, not reem; but our version with the Septuagint here and elsewhere reads reem, that is, rhinoceros; or, as the Septuagint translate, monoceros, that is, as our version elsewhere translates, unicorn. And although Tertullian, book Against the Jews, chapter 10, St. Gregory, Moral. XXXI, Isidore, Etymologies XII, and Bede on Job 39 teach that both are the same animal, and say that it is an animal having one horn in the middle of the forehead, four-footed, so sharp and strong that whatever it assails it tosses or pierces, yet it is more true that the rhinoceros, or nose-horn, is distinguished from the monoceros or unicorn. For Pliny distinguishes them, and from him the naturalists; for the rhinoceros, as Pliny teaches, book VIII, chapter 20, is of a box-wood colour, and has a horn standing out from the nose, not straight but bent back and hooked, and hence it is called rhinoceros, from rhis, that is, nose, and keras, that is, horn, and by it is most strong, and fights with the elephant, to whom it is almost equal in length, but has much shorter legs; it prepares itself for the fight by sharpening its horn on rocks, and in the fight aims especially at the belly, which it understands to be softer, and having pierced it, at once overcomes the elephant (1). So Emmanuel, king of Portugal, in the year 1515, gave at Lisbon a notable spectacle of an elephant fighting with a rhinoceros, in which the elephant succumbed. Hence the rhinoceros is a symbol of strength, and consequently of God, who is most strong. Again, the rhinoceros is a symbol of going slowly, but terribly. For he needs great provocation, but when he has begun to be angry, he is most fierce: so also is God. He compensates the slowness of punishment by its gravity; whence the proverb: The gods have feet of wool, but hands of iron. Wherefore the first who led a rhinoceros into the arena against a bull and a bear, the Emperor Domitian, at the dedication of the amphitheatre, ordered a coin to be struck with the effigy of a rhinoceros, to signify that he was, like a rhinoceros, first, magnanimous, and endowed with royal strength; secondly, that he was slow to anger, but implacable when it was roused. This Martial, who was Domitian’s favourite, explained in a double epigram. In the former he explains the incomparable strength of the rhinoceros, tossing a bull in a duel like a ball, and says:
“Caesar, the rhinoceros displayed through all the arena performed for thee the battles which it had not promised.
Oh how terrible, bent forward, he blazed into wrath! How great was the horn, to which a bull was a ball!”
In the other he teaches that he is slow to anger, but when he is angry “While the frightened keepers provoke the rhinoceros, and the great beast long gathers his wrath, the battles of the promised Mars were despaired of: but yet that fury, known before, returned. For with double horn he so lifted the heavy bear as a bull tosses the balls laid upon it to the stars.”
The monoceros, however, says Pliny, book VIII, chapter 21, is a very savage beast, in the rest of the body like a horse, with the head of a stag, feet of an elephant, tail of a boar, a deep bellow, one black horn in the middle of the forehead, two cubits in length; this beast, they say, is not taken alive. Aelian has like things, On Animals book XVI, chapter 20, and book XVII, chapter 44, who makes the monoceros dusky in mane and hair, swift of foot, with a black horn, gentle toward other beasts, fierce with its own kind. This Pierius, in the hieroglyph of the rhinoceros, calls the halicorn, and thinks it to be that which the Septuagint here translate monoceros, our version elsewhere unicorn. For the Hebrew word reem signifies as well the monoceros as the rhinoceros, as also most other names of animals are common to several among the Hebrews. The monoceros, therefore, says St. Gregory and Isidore, is of such strength that it is taken by no art of hunters; but, as the naturalists affirm, a virgin girl is set before it, to whom as she comes it opens its lap: in her lap, all ferocity laid aside, it lays down its head, and so lulled, as if unarmed, is taken.
The same is related by Rupert and Pierius above, and Albert the Great, book XXII On Animals, which story, if true, makes Christ fitly the monoceros; whence Rupert: “The strongest of spirits, God, taken as the unicorn, that is, of singular power, God incomprehensible and of invincible virtue, drawn by the odour of the virginal womb, was enclosed in it, and from it alone could be comprehended and slain.” Hence also Tertullian, Against the Jews, book X, and Justin, Against Trypho, page 354, understand that saying of Deuteronomy 33:17: “The horns of the unicorn (for so the Septuagint have, for the rhinoceros), his horns,” as said of the horns of the cross of Christ, allegorically, namely; for the horns of Christ, that is, his strength and fortitude, with which he tossed the demon and pierced sin and death, was the cross.