Commentaria in Deuteronomium
A like miracle God wrought for St. Abraham the Hermit, which St. Ephrem, who was familiar with him, tells in his Life: “His aspect,” he says, “was as a rose flower; for by divine grace he was sustained in all things, and enjoyed the pleasantness of spiritual joy. Nay, at the hour of his falling asleep he was seen with so beautiful a countenance, as though he had been surrounded by a company of angels. But another wonderful grace of God was seen in him, that through the whole fifty years of his abstinence he never changed the hair-cloth garment with which he had been clothed, and which so perseveringly served him to the end of life that others also afterwards shared in that same garment, which for him had already grown old with use.” The meritorious cause of this integrity of body and garments was the integrity and constancy of his mind. “For during all the time of his conversion he never swerved from the rule of his institute, nor did a day ever pass for him at any season without tears. Oil never approached his body, nor did he ever wash his face or feet with water. He bore himself in the struggle of his institute as though he were to die every day. In that wonderful abstinence of his, in constant watchings and floods of tears, lyings on the ground and maceration of the body, he never became slacker or feebler, nor wearied by sloth or any weariness: but as one hungering or thirsting, so his mind could never be satisfied with the sweetness of his institute.”
So St. Mary of Egypt lived in the desert 47 years, and for the first seventeen subsisted on two loaves (which she had carried there with her) and herbs, the remaining thirty she passed without food, and her garments being consumed, naked, scorched by cold and heat, so that she seemed an Ethiopian. Hence she herself to Zosimus: “The word of God,” she says, “is my food, drink and raiment; because not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.” And Job xxiv, according to the Septuagint: “Because they have no garment, they have put a rock about them.” And St. Paul the first Hermit, in the 113th year of his age, dying, said to St. Anthony: “Behold him whom thou hast sought with so much labour, his limbs decayed with age, covered with unkempt grey hair; behold thou seest a man soon to be dust; but because now the time of my falling asleep is at hand, and what I always desired, to be dissolved and to be with Christ, the course finished, there remains for me the crown of justice: thou wast sent by the Lord to cover my little body with earth, nay to give earth to earth.” So St. Jerome in the Life of St. Paul.
Among the Jews there is a tradition that their forefathers in Egypt did not change three things which they had received from their ancestors: namely names, language and garments. So our Serarius reports on Josue ii, Question XXV.
THY FOOT IS NOT WORN.—In Hebrew, did not swell, as if to say: Thy foot neither swelled, nor was hurt, or worn. For travellers are wont to contract swelling blisters on their feet, which are inflated before they are worn through: again by long walking they are wont to wear away the skin of the feet.
You will say: Numbers xi, 4, it is said that the people grieved on account of the labour of the journey.
I answer: That labour was moderate, namely some weariness, not a hurt of the feet. Add that this labour was not so much the cause as the pretext of the murmuring, as I said there. Finally, that was the labour of one single time or day; for on the other days thereafter we do not read that they laboured. So Abulensis; nay that all were strong and vigorous for the journey the Psalmist sufficiently signifies, Psalm civ, 37, when he says: “There was not among their tribes one that was feeble.”
Secondly: “Thy foot is not worn”; foot, that is, shoe, both because foot, that is, shoe, is opposed here to garment, and because Moses so explains himself, Deuteronomy xxix, saying: “Your garments are not worn out, neither are the shoes of your feet consumed with age.” So Exodus xxi, 3, the Hebrew gaph, that is, body, is taken for the covering of the body, whence our version translates, “with what raiment he came in, with such let him go out” (the Hebrew is gaph, that is, with what body). So Isaias xli, 3: “No path shall appear in his feet”: in his feet, that is, in his muddy and worn shoes. So saraballa in Chaldee signifies the legs, and leggings, as St. Jerome testifies on Daniel iii. So Sanchez, Prolegomena on the Canticle.
LO THIS IS THE FORTIETH YEAR,—since we came out of Egypt we have continually received these benefits of garments and of health from God.
9. THE STONES WHEREOF (of the land of Chanaan) ARE IRON,—as if to say: In Chanaan are iron mines, from which stones are dug, and reddish masses, from which iron is smelted.
10. THAT WHEN THOU HAST EATEN AND ART FULL, THOU MAYEST BLESS THE LORD.—The Jews even now at their banquets use a long blessing and thanksgiving, and so on feasts they bless the cup separately and the bread separately: nay at table, as often as anything new and sumptuous is brought in, they repeat the blessing, as when a more costly wine, or spices, or fruits of trees, etc., are brought in, they say: “Blessed be thou, O Lord our God, Creator, who art good and doest good to all, who hast created this savoury wine, these spices, these fruits,” etc., as is plain from their ritual book. Hence Christ also, both at other times and at the last supper, gave thanks and blessed both the cup and the bread. And the Apostle, 1 Timothy iv, 3, says that the foods which God created are to be received with thanksgiving. “For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” See what was said there.
15. WHEREIN THERE WAS, etc., THE DIPSAS.—The Chaldee translates, a place of thirst; recent writers translate, drought; but the Septuagint and the Hebrew agree with our Interpreter: tsimmaon is derived from tsimma, that is, from thirst: hence Isidore, Etymologies book XII, chapter iv: Dipsas, he says, is in Latin called situla, namely from thirst; for the most noxious serpents are called dipsades, because those bitten by them forthwith parch and burn with thirst: wherefore, drinking incessantly, they at length burst and split. Of these Solinus treats in the Polyhistor, chapter On Africa, and other historians, especially those who write of Cato’s army in Libya, where this kind of serpent lurks under heaps of sand: the same relate that a soldier bitten by a dipsas ran to the sea with insane impetus, and having drunk a great quantity of salt water, was suddenly killed. Great, therefore, was the providence and goodwill of God toward the Hebrews, that for forty years they were not hurt by these serpents, which abound in the desert.
16. AND AFTER HE HAD AFFLICTED AND PROVED THEE.—The Hebrew: that he might afflict and prove thee, and so at length do thee good. But the sense comes to the same, as if to say: First God afflicted and proved thee by thirst and hunger; but soon, by giving waters and manna, he had mercy on thee: this is plain from what goes before.
17. LEST THOU SHOULDST SAY IN THY HEART: MY OWN MIGHT AND THE STRENGTH OF MY HAND HAVE DONE ALL THESE THINGS FOR ME.—Seneca errs, therefore, in saying: “It is the gift of the immortal gods that we live, of philosophy that we live well”; and he who said to Jove: “Let him give strength, let him give riches, I shall provide an even mind for myself.”
Note: God permits his own to be reduced to straits, that he may teach them to distrust themselves and their own strength, and to trust in God; hence all Israel prayed, Holofernes threatening, Judith vi: “Shew, O Lord, that thou forsakest not them that trust in thee, and that thou humblest them that presume of themselves, and glory in their own might”; for, as is said in Proverbs xviii, 10: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the just runneth to it, and shall be exalted”; and Psalm xxxix, 5: “Blessed is the man whose trust is in the name of the Lord.” So Judas Machabeus, having invoked the Lord, overthrew Nicanor and the other enemies, 2 Machabees chapter xv.
St. Basil teaches, Institutes on the Perfect Life, that the servants of God are driven about by the devil with various temptations, but that those are conquered who trust too much in themselves; for, as Serapion says in Cassian, Conference V, chapter iv: “It is impossible for anyone to merit triumph over any passion until he has understood that by his own industry or labour he cannot once obtain the victory of the contest”; and Jeremias chapter xvii:
“Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm.” St. Augustine in the Soliloquies, chapter xv: “I believed,” he says, “that I should be something when I was nothing; I thought myself prudent, and was deceived; I said that I was rich, and needed nothing, and knew not that I was poor, blind, naked and miserable. But now I see that if there is any good, small or great, it is thy gift. I believed that I sufficed by myself, nor perceived that thou wast ruling me, until thou withdrewest thyself a little from me, and I fell at once.” Hence the prayer of David, Psalm xvii, 2: “I will love thee, O Lord, my strength, the Lord is my firmament, and my refuge, and my deliverer.” The holy Fathers in the desert followed this example of David, who, as Cassian testifies, Conference X, chapter x, at the beginning of any temptations or actions at once prayed: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.” The Church uses the same verse at the beginning of the canonical Hours: Cassian gives the reason in the same place. And St. Paul, Philippians ii: “It is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish”; and chapter iv: “I can do all things.” “But thanks be to God, who always maketh us to triumph in Christ Jesus”; and St. James, chapter i: “Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” And the Poet: “In him we live, and move, and are.” “For neither could the world,” as St. Augustine says, On Genesis according to the letter book IV, chapter xii, “stand for the twinkling of an eye, if God withdrew from it his governance (1).”