Commentaria in Numeros
First, Cajetan answers that this promise is of right, not of fact: for by right the priesthood was due to the family of Phinees for ever; but in fact it was transferred to Heli for a short time. Secondly, Dionysius the Carthusian answers that an eternal priesthood is promised here to Phinees, not absolutely but on condition, if his posterity follow their father’s piety and do not by their sins deserve to be deprived of the priesthood: but now the posterity of Phinees sinned, and therefore by their own fault fell from the priesthood for a time. Thirdly, it may easily be said that an eternal priesthood is promised here to Phinees in this sense, that he is not to be perpetually despoiled of it, as Heli was despoiled; but that the priesthood will cleave to that family until the end of the Synagogue of Judaism, even if for a short time it be interrupted and transferred to Heli and his posterity: for a little after it returned to the family of Phinees, and remained in it continually until Christ. So it is said in Genesis xlix, 10, that the sceptre shall not depart from Juda, till Christ come: yet it is certain that this sceptre failed in the first year of the reign of Herod, while Christ was born in the thirty-fifth year of Herod’s reign; therefore before Christ the sceptre had failed from Juda for thirty-five years. But Holy Scripture does not count or reckon so small a number in so great a multitude. So it does here also.
BECAUSE HE WAS ZEALOUS FOR HIS GOD, AND MADE ATONEMENT FOR THE WICKEDNESS OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL.—“He made atonement,” first, that is, he punished and avenged the guilty and wicked. For so judges, when they punish the guilty, as it were make atonement for their commonwealth before God and the whole world. For the just vengeance of crimes is the atonement of the commonwealth. Secondly, “he made atonement,” that is, he cleansed: because he brought it about that no one should henceforth dare to commit the like; thirdly, “he made atonement,” that is, he took away the wickedness of the negligence of the Israelites, whereby they neglected to correct and punish this crime; fourthly, “he made atonement,” because he offered the blood of Zambri, as an expiatory victim, to God for the safety of others. So Abulensis.
15. THE MADIANITE WOMAN, etc., WAS CALLED Cozbi, DAUGHTER OF SUR, A MOST NOBLE PRINCE OF THE MADIANITES.—In Hebrew it is, Cozbi the daughter of Sur: he was head of the peoples, and head of the family of his father in Madian. For in Madian five kings reigned, as is plain from chapter xxxi, verse 8, but petty ones, who therefore in Josue xiii, 21, are called Princes: among these five Sur was the most noble and chief, who here prostituted his daughter to the Hebrews, that by the counsel of Balaam he might in this way deceive them, and turn them away or overcome them. Such was the fear of them all, such the love of life and kingdom. For these Gentiles knew not the good of honour, modesty and virtue.
17. LET THE MADIANITES FEEL YOU AS ENEMIES, AND STRIKE THEM.—Here God commands the authors of the crime and fraud of Beelphegor, namely the Madianites, to be avenged by war; but the Moabites, who had been a great part and cause of the crime and the slaughter, He tacitly excepts, because He willed the Moabites to be preserved: and this partly for the merits of Lot, as is said in Deuteronomy ii, 9; partly on account of Ruth, from whom David (for David was the great-grandson of Ruth) and Christ were to draw their origin; for Ruth was a Moabitess, and was born in Moab: whence before Ruth was born the Hebrews had not made war on the Moabites; but after she was born, and migrated from Moab to the Jews, David wonderfully chastised and slew the Moabites, as is plain from 2 Kings viii, 2. So Abulensis. By the law of nature and of nations the Hebrews could have attacked in war the Madianites by whom they had been injured, but they waited for the command of the Lord; the Lord directed them in all other things, as leader of the people. Whence immediately after the crime of Beelphegor He commanded war to be made on the Madianites.
18. BECAUSE THEY ALSO HAVE ACTED HOSTILELY AGAINST YOU, AND HAVE DECEIVED YOU WITH SNARES (frauds, of which I spoke in verse 1) BY THE IDOL PHOGOR (that is Beelphegor, as I said in verse 3), AND BY COZBI, THE DAUGHTER OF THE PRINCE OF MADIAN, THEIR SISTER (that is their countrywoman; for Cozbi was a Madianite, and consequently was a sister of the Madianites, that is, a kinswoman and relation. She deceived Zambri, prince of the tribe of Simeon, whose example, as that of a prince, many of the same tribe, as will appear in the next chapter, verse 14, and of the other tribes followed. For the sins of princes and lords have many imitators), WHO WAS STRUCK (by Phinees) IN THE DAY OF THE PLAGUE,—for on the same day the plague, sent by God, was raging, verse 8; but after Phinees slew Cozbi with Zambri, straightway the plague ceased.
Morally: learn from this chapter how dangerous is converse with women, and how men ought to flee women, and women men. Eve seduced Adam, Bethsabee David, women Solomon.
Excellent is the saying of that old man in Sophronius, Spiritual Meadow, chapter cxix: “My little children,” he says, “salt is from water, and if it come near water, it is at once dissolved and fails: and a monk likewise is from woman; and so if he draw near to a woman, he himself is dissolved, and comes to this, that he is no longer a monk.”
All the saints have taught this both by word and example. St. Dominic remained a virgin even to death, so that he breathed virginity upon others also. Whence a certain zealous man, kissing his hand, drew from it so great a fragrance and grace that thereafter he was chaste in mind and body. And yet St. Dominic counselled those zealous for chastity to flee all women altogether, and so he himself also did, and besides afflicted himself with fasts and penances.
St. Francis asserted that converse with a woman is frivolous, save only confession or the briefest instruction.
St. Jordan, who succeeded St. Dominic next in the generalship, rebuked a certain Brother for having touched a woman’s hand; and when he replied: This woman is pious and devout, Jordan answered: “The rain is good, and the earth is good, and yet from the mixing of these mud is made.”
St. Thomas Aquinas, tempted by his brethren through a lascivious woman, drove her off with a firebrand, and, making the sign of the cross on the wall and praying there with tears and begging perpetual virginity, fell asleep, and saw two angels who girded his loins (so tightly that he cried out with the pain), saying: Behold, we gird thee with the girdle of chastity, which shall never be undone. Whence afterwards he was free from every sense of lust: and yet that same man ever afterwards dreaded and fled all women as serpents.
The Queen of Sicily, mother of St. Louis, Bishop, of the Franciscan family, wished to kiss him as her son after the French manner when he came to her at Naples; St. Louis refused; then she said: “Am I not thy mother?” and he answered: “I know it,” he said, “but thou art a woman, whom it is not lawful for a servant of God to kiss;” for, says St. Bernard: “A woman’s body is all fire.” So Joseph fled his wanton mistress, leaving his cloak in her hands. So St. Augustine, as Possidius testifies, would not have even a sister in his house.
So St. Bernard fled more than once, when, on account of his exceptional beauty, he was solicited to sin by impure women. Once he drove the same away by night, crying: Robbers! robbers! and at last, to withdraw himself from every temptation, he fled to the cloisters of the Cistercian monastery, doubtless, as the Wise Man says: “From garments cometh a moth, and from a woman the iniquity of a man;” and: “Better is the iniquity of a man than a woman doing a good turn.”
So, finally, fled that great St. John the Anchorite, who foretold victories to the Emperor Theodosius. For, as Palladius relates in the Lausiac History, chapter xliii, for forty years he saw no woman. And when he was ninety years old, being earnestly entreated by a Tribune that he would present himself to be seen by the Tribune’s wife, who was importunately asking it, he answered: “This night I shall be seen by her in dreams, and let her not go on to see my face in the flesh.” In dreams, therefore, he appeared to her by an apparition, nor did he suffer himself to be seen by her otherwise; and the same author, in chapter xliv, tells of the mournful fall of a certain hermit through a woman. I have brought more on Genesis, chapter xxxiv, verse 1.