Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Chapter the Eighteenth
He ordains that the priests and Levites have no portion in Chanaan, except the victims, tithes and oblations. Secondly, vers. 10, he forbids consulting diviners and sorcerers; but commands that the Prophet, whom he promises them in vers. 15, be heard.
1. The priests and Levites, and all that are of the same tribe, shall have no part nor inheritance with the rest of Israel, because they shall eat the sacrifices of the Lord, and his oblations, 2. and they shall receive nothing else of the possession of their brethren: for the Lord himself is their inheritance, as he hath said to them. 3. This shall be the priests’ due from the people, and from them that offer victims, whether they sacrifice an ox or a sheep, they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the breast, 4. the firstfruits of corn, of wine, and of oil, and a part of the wool of the shearing of the sheep. 5. For him hath the Lord thy God chosen of all thy tribes, to stand and to minister to the name of the Lord, him and his sons for ever. 6. If a Levite go out of any of thy cities out of all Israel, wherein he dwelleth, and have a desire to come to the place which the Lord shall choose, 7. he shall minister in the name of the Lord his God, as all his brethren the Levites do, who shall stand at that time before the Lord. 8. He shall receive the same portion of food as the rest, besides that which is due to him in his own city by succession from his fathers. 9. When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee, beware lest thou have a mind to imitate the abominations of those nations, 10. neither let there be found among you any one that shall expiate his son or daughter, making them to pass through the fire; or that consulteth soothsayers, or observeth dreams and omens, neither let there be any wizard, 11. nor charmer, nor anyone that consulteth pythonic spirits, or fortune-tellers, or that seeketh the truth from the dead. 12. For the Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these wickednesses he will destroy them at thy coming. 13. Thou shalt be perfect, and without spot before the Lord thy God. 14. These nations, whose land thou shalt possess, hearken to soothsayers and diviners: but thou art otherwise instructed by the Lord thy God. 15. The Lord thy God will raise up to thee a prophet of thy nation and of thy brethren like unto me: him thou shalt hear. 16. As thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the assembly was gathered together, and saidst: Let me not hear any more the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see any more this exceeding great fire, lest I die.
17. And the Lord said to me: They have spoken all things well. 18. I will raise them up a prophet out of the midst of their brethren like to thee: and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him; 19. and he that will not hear his words, which he shall speak in my name, I will be the revenger. 20. But the prophet, who being corrupted with pride shall speak in my name things that I did not command him to say, or in the name of strange gods, shall be slain. 21. And if in silent thought thou answer: How shall I know the word that the Lord hath not spoken? 22. Thou shalt have this sign: What that prophet foretelleth in the name of the Lord, and it cometh not to pass, that thing the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath forged it by the pride of his mind: and therefore thou shalt not fear him.
3. THIS SHALL BE THE PRIESTS’ DUE FROM THE PEOPLE,—as if to say: This shall be the right, or revenue, which the priests shall receive from the people by their right.
WHETHER THEY SACRIFICE AN OX OR A SHEEP,—namely, as a peace-offering.
THEY SHALL GIVE TO THE PRIEST THE SHOULDER AND THE BREAST,—For in the holocaust only the skin fell to the priest; in the victim for sin, all the flesh; but in the peace-offering only the shoulder and the breast were given to the priest, as is plain from Leviticus.
Note: For “the shoulder and the breast” the Hebrew is: the shoulder, the cheeks and the maw. So also the Chaldee and Septuagint. But by “cheeks” are here understood fleshy parts which, when the shoulder has been cut from the fourth part of the animal, are usually left on either side in the breast. Wherefore the shoulder, the cheeks and the breast is the same as the shoulder and the breast, which are the fourth portion of the animal; for by the law of Exodus xxix, 28, and Leviticus vii, 31, where these are exactly described, nothing else of the peace-offering fell to the priest than the shoulder and the breast. So Abulensis. Wherefore it seems a fiction what the Hebrews say, that these three are given to the priest on account of Phinees: namely that the shoulder, or arm, is given because Phinees in the strength of his arm struck Zambri with the Madianitess, Numbers xxv; that the maw is given because Phinees struck them in the belly, namely in the genitals; that the cheeks are given because the priests move them while they pray for the offerer: for these were assigned to the priest before the deed of Phinees, Exodus xxix, 28.
5. FOR HIM HATH THE LORD CHOSEN, TO STAND (the Septuagint: to stand by before the Lord, namely as a servant ministering continually; whence it follows) AND TO MINISTER TO THE NAME OF THE LORD,—that is, to the Lord, by calling upon him by his name, honouring and invoking him.
Note: To stand signifies both service and the permanence of it;
whence in Micheas v, 4, it is said of Christ:
Christ will abide with Christians continually, and strongly feeding them; he will not pass from them to other nations, as he passed from the Jews to the Christians. So St. Jerome there.
6. IF A LEVITE GO OUT, ETC., AND HAVE A DESIRE TO COME, Vers. 6.
DESIRING THE PLACE WHICH THE LORD SHALL CHOOSE,—as if to say: If a Levite, led by devotion, and desiring, apart from his turns, to minister to God in the tabernacle for the rest of his life, as Samuel did.
8. HE SHALL RECEIVE THE SAME PORTION OF FOOD (of the offerings) Vers. 8.
AS THE REST,—who minister to God by their turns.
BY SUCCESSION IS DUE TO HIM,—namely, except the tithes, which he would receive in his own city; for these are, as it were, the inheritance of the Levites, and they have no other. So Abulensis.
10. NEITHER LET THERE BE FOUND AMONG YOU ANY ONE THAT SHALL EXPIATE HIS Vers. 10.
SON,—in the Hebrew: that shall make his son pass through the fire, that is, burn his son with fire, which the worshippers of Moloch did, as I said on Leviticus xviii, 21, or expiate him through fire. For some took care that their sons should quickly pass through this fire, because they were persuaded that those who were superstitiously purified in such a way by fire would not die before their day, says Rabbi Moses Maimonides.
Note: To purify (lustrare) is to expiate; hence a lustration was an expiatory sacrifice by which men or fields were expiated; such as Virgil describes, Aeneid vi, when he says:
Thrice likewise he carried round his comrades with pure water, sprinkling them with light dew and a branch of fruitful olive, and purified the men and spoke the last words.
and which they afterwards left to their sons, of which
Such a lustration was that by which they sacrificed their sons to Moloch or Saturn, to avert a public or private calamity, as I said on Leviticus xvii.
13. THOU SHALT BE PERFECT, AND WITHOUT SPOT BEFORE THE LORD THY GOD,—that is, that thou turn away from the idols, rites and crimes of the Gentiles, and worship one God, and obey him in all things; “for he that keepeth his commandments, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected,” says St. John, epistle 1, chap. ii, vers. 5. So was David perfect, Psalm lxxxviii, 21, and elsewhere: “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man according to my own heart, who shall do all my wills.” And Noe, who was “a just and perfect man in his generations,” Genesis vi, 9. So God commanded Abraham: “Walk before me, and be perfect,” that thou mayest love God in all things, worship, obey, relish and know him, and say with St. Augustine: “Every abundance that is not my God is want to me.”
Excellently Cassian, book iv, last chapter: “Hear,” he says, “in few words the order by which thou mayest ascend without labour to the highest perfection. The beginning of our salvation and wisdom is the fear of the Lord: from the fear of the Lord is born salutary compunction: from compunction of heart proceeds renunciation, that is, nakedness and contempt of all possessions: from nakedness humility is begotten: from humility is generated the mortification of the will: by the mortification of the wills all vices are rooted out and wither away: by the expulsion of vices the virtues bear fruit and grow up: by the budding of the virtues purity of heart is acquired: by purity of heart the perfection of apostolic charity is possessed.”
15. THE LORD THY GOD WILL RAISE UP TO THEE A PROPHET OF THY NATION, ETC.—The literal sense here, as far as vers. 20, is, as it were, twofold, as Abulensis and Cajetan rightly teach. The first, that these verses be understood of common Prophets, whom God in turn and in succession after Moses sent to the Hebrews, to announce to them and inculcate the law of God, so that “prophet” is taken for “prophets.” And this sense agrees best with what precedes and follows; for it was said before that recourse is not to be had to soothsayers and diviners, and that the Hebrews were otherwise taught by God, namely that God promised he would send them his true Prophets, that they might have no need to recur to diviners; and according to this promise of God, the Jews almost always until Christ had prophets sent by God; whence the Psalmist, Psalm lxxiii, 9, complains as of a great calamity and desertion, saying: “Our signs we have not seen, there is now no prophet, and he will know us no more.”
The latter sense, and it is the chief, is that these verses be understood of Christ. That they are to be understood of Christ is plain from Acts 3:22, Acts 7:37, and John 1:45; and therefore here in the singular he calls him a prophet, namely by excellence; again, he calls him like to Moses, namely as to the leading of the people and the giving of the law: so St. Augustine, book XVI Against Faustus, chap. xv; secondly, because, as Moses delivered the people out of Egypt, so Christ delivered men from the servitude of sin into liberty; thirdly, Moses led us into Chanaan, Christ led us into heaven; fourthly, as Moses did, so Christ did many miracles, and inflicted plagues, not on Pharao, but on the devil; fifthly, God spoke with Moses mouth to mouth, familiarly: so also with Christ, and far more excellently; for Christ was intimately united to the Word of God, and to God.
Moses therefore here signifies that God will send true Prophets, to instruct the Hebrews and to bring them the words of God; and because Christ excels among them, he is chiefly the Prophet of whom these words are to be understood; as if to say: I, Moses, a Prophet, am a type and forerunner of Christ, the supreme Prophet: behold, I die, I send you over to Christ, I hand him the torch; hear him, follow him. That one passage can have several literal senses, especially when one is subordinate to the other, I have shown from St. Augustine and St. Thomas on Canon 36.
Moreover, although Abulensis denies that there was in Christ a true and properly so-called gift of prophecy, because he thinks obscurity of knowledge is required for it, which was not in Christ, and therefore that Christ is called a Prophet only according to the estimation and appellation of the common people: yet the contrary is far truer, namely that Christ was truly and properly a Prophet, though he had a clear foreknowledge of future things; for obscurity of knowledge is not required for prophecy, as Francis Suarez shows at length, part iii, Question vii, disputation xxi, section 4.
15 and 16. HIM THOU SHALT HEAR, AS THOU DESIREDST OF THE LORD THY GOD IN HOREB.—For on Sinai, Exodus xx, 19, the Hebrews, terrified by the voice of God, asked that God should speak to them not himself, but through Moses, as a Prophet. As they then asked for a Prophet to bring them the words of God, and the words of God are needed not only then but also in future times, they tacitly asked not only Moses then, but others after him as Prophets; for these were as necessary to them as Moses, that through them they might consult and learn the will of God. So Abulensis.
the day on which all Israel was gathered together to hear the voice of God; hence those are called preachers (concionatores) who speak to the whole assembly (concio), that is, to the whole people: and so Solomon is called in Hebrew Coheleth, in Greek Ecclesiastes, in Latin the Preacher.
18. AND I WILL PUT MY WORDS IN HIS MOUTH,—I will teach him my words, that he may speak them, so as to be my interpreter.
These words of God, which he himself taught us through Christ, St. Cyprian embraces in his treatise On the Lord’s Prayer in that golden sentence which would that Christians inscribed on their hearts, and temples, and houses! for it is itself a compendium of Christian life and perfection: “The will of God,” he says, “which Christ taught and did, is, first, humility in conversation; secondly, steadfastness in faith; thirdly, modesty in words; fourthly, justice in deeds; fifthly, mercy in works; sixthly, discipline in morals; seventhly, not to know how to do injury; eighthly, to be able to bear injury done; ninthly, to keep peace with the brethren; tenthly, to love God with the whole heart; eleventhly, to love in him that he is a father; twelfthly, to fear in him that he is God; thirteenthly, to prefer nothing whatever to Christ, because neither did he prefer anything to you; fourteenthly, to cling inseparably to his charity; fifteenthly, to stand strongly and confidently by his cross; sixteenthly, when there is a contest about his name and honour, to show in speech the constancy with which we confess; in the trial, the confidence with which we engage; in death, the patience by which we are crowned: this is to wish to be a co-heir of Christ, this is to do the commandment of God, this is to fulfil the will of the Father.”