Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Chapter the Nineteenth. Synopsis of the Chapter
Moses commands three cities of refuge to be designated as an asylum for the involuntary homicide, to which three others are to be added as the people increase, vers. 9; see what is said on Numbers xxxv. The voluntary homicide he commands to be drawn out of the asylum and put to death, vers. 11. Lastly, vers. 16, he decrees the penalty of retaliation for the false witness.
1. When the Lord thy God hath destroyed the nations, whose land he will deliver to thee, and thou shalt possess it, and shalt dwell in their cities and houses; 2. thou shalt set aside for thee three cities in the midst of the land, which the Lord thy God will give thee in possession, 3. making plain the way; and thou shalt divide equally into three parts the whole compass of thy land: that he who for manslaughter is fled may have the nearer place to flee to. 4. This shall be the law of the manslayer that fleeth, whose life is to be saved: He that striketh his neighbour unwittingly, who is proved to have had no hatred against him yesterday and the day before; 5. but to have gone with him simply into the wood to hew wood, and in cutting down the wood the axe slipped out of his hand, and the iron slipping from the handle struck his friend and killed him: he shall flee to one of the cities aforesaid, and shall live; 6. lest perhaps the next kinsman of him whose blood was shed, being provoked with grief, pursue and overtake him, if the way be long, and strike him dead, who is not guilty of death, because there is no proof that he had any hatred against him that was slain. 7. Therefore I command thee to set apart three cities at equal distance one from another. 8. And when the Lord thy God shall enlarge thy borders, as he swore to thy fathers, and shall give thee all the land that he promised them, 9. (yet so if thou keep his commandments, and do the things that I command thee this day, that thou love the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways at all times) thou shalt add to thee three other cities, and shalt double the number of the cities aforesaid: 10. that innocent blood be not shed in the midst of the land which the Lord thy God will give thee to possess, lest thou be guilty of blood. 11. But if any man hating his neighbour lie in wait for his life, and rise and strike him, and he die, and he flee to one of the cities aforesaid, 12. the ancients of his city shall send, and take him out of the place of refuge, and deliver him into the hand of the kinsman of him whose blood was shed, and he shall die. 13. Thou shalt not pity him, and thou shalt take away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may be well with thee. 14. Thou shalt not take nor remove thy neighbour’s landmarks, which thy predecessors have set in thy possession, which the Lord thy God will give thee in the land that thou shalt receive to possess. 15. One witness shall not rise up against any man, whatsoever the sin or wickedness be: but in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand. 16. If a lying witness stand against a man, accusing him of transgression, 17. both of them, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the Lord in the sight of the priests and the judges that shall be in those days. 18. And when after most diligent inquisition they shall find that the false witness hath told a lie against his brother, 19. they shall render to him as he meant to do to his brother, and thou shalt take away the evil out of the midst of thee: 20. that others hearing may fear, and may not dare to do such things. 21. Thou shalt not pity him, but shalt require life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
5. BUT TO HAVE GONE WITH HIM SIMPLY INTO THE WOOD.—Tropologically St. Gregory, book x of the Morals, chap. ix: “We go to the wood with a friend,” he says, “as often as with any neighbour we turn to look at the things we love: and we simply cut down wood when with a pious intention we cut away the vices of offenders. But the axe slips from the hand when rebuke draws itself into harshness more than is needful. The iron leaps from the handle when a harsher word falls from the correction, and, striking the friend, kills him, because the insult uttered slays the hearer from the spirit of love. Such a one must flee to the three cities, because if, turned to the lamentations of penance, he is hidden in hope, faith and charity, he is not held guilty of the homicide committed.”
6. LEST PERHAPS HIS NEXT KINSMAN,—namely a kinsman of the slain, who in Hebrew is called goel, that is, redeemer, because the right of redeeming the inheritance, if it had been sold, belonged to the nearer kinsman.
AND STRIKE HIS SOUL,—namely his life: it is a metonymy; so “soul” is taken below, chap. xxii, “I do not make my soul (life) more precious than myself.”
13. THOU SHALT TAKE AWAY INNOCENT BLOOD,—that is, thou shalt remove the shedding of innocent blood, by putting to death the shedder. Whence the Chaldee renders: thou shalt take away from Israel him that sheddeth innocent blood. There is here, then, a twofold metonymy: first, by which blood is put for the shedding of blood; second, by which the shedding is put for the homicide.
14. THOU SHALT NOT TAKE NOR REMOVE THY NEIGHBOUR’S LANDMARKS.—“Landmarks,” namely of fields, so as to add something of another’s possession to thine own.
15. IN THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY WORD SHALL STAND (that is, be confirmed),—every accusation, every saying, every matter.
18 and 19. AND WHEN, ETC., THEY SHALL FIND THE FALSE WITNESS, ETC., THEY SHALL RENDER TO HIM AS HE MEANT TO DO TO HIS BROTHER.—The penalty of retaliation is here decreed for the false witness: for it is fitting that the punishment which a man wished unjustly to inflict on another by false testimony, he himself should justly suffer. So the two elders who falsely accused Susanna of adultery, convicted of the lie, were overwhelmed with stones, Daniel xiii.
Hear what the Fathers of the Eighth Ecumenical Synod, held at Constantinople in the year of our Lord 869, decreed against Leo the Consul and Theodore the Protospatharius, who, at the instigation of Photius and the Emperor Michael, had borne false witness against the Blessed Ignatius the Patriarch: “We define,” they say, “and promulgate that these shall have an epitimium (so an ecclesiastical penalty and censure is called) for seven years: that they be for two years outside the church, and for two others within the church, hearing the divine Scriptures as far as the catechumens; yet in no way communicating, but abstaining from flesh and wine for four years, except on Sundays and the feasts of the Lord; and for the other three years to stand with the faithful, and to deserve divine communion on the solemnities of the Lord alone, with alms, prayers and fasts, so that on three days of the week, namely Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they abstain from flesh and wine.”
Gregory, Bishop of Agrigentum, falsely accused by Sabinus and Crescentius before a Roman Synod of a hundred and fifty Fathers, of fornication with a girl named Eudocia, when 110 witnesses were brought, repeated aloud the psalm: “Unjust witnesses have risen up against me; they laid to my charge things I knew not; they repaid me evil for good.” Immediately therefore the girl fell down; Gregory commanded Satan to go out of the girl and to confess the truth, and taking her by the hand raised her up. She confessed that, corrupted by gifts from Sabinus and Crescentius, she had falsely accused Gregory. Gregory then before the Synod interceded for the witnesses and the accusers, and obtained peace for them. When it was granted, great darkness at once arose: and some of the accusers appeared black on both cheeks, others on one. But the lips of Sabinus and Crescentius were stained with a dark colour which could never afterwards be washed out. So has the Life of St. Gregory of Agrigentum, which is found in Surius, November 23.
Moreover, that false witnesses are by the law itself infamous, Gratian teaches, cause 3, question v, from Pope Eusebius, epistle 3 to the Bishops of Tuscany, in these words: “We ordain, with all the bishops who are with us, that murderers, sorcerers, thieves, sacrilegious persons, ravishers, adulterers, incestuous persons, poisoners, suspected persons, criminals, perjurers, and those who have committed rape, or given false testimony, or have resorted to fortune-tellers and diviners, and the like, be in no wise admitted to accusation or to testimony, because they are infamous, and are justly to be repelled, for their voice is deadly.”
Constantine the Great, Emperor, had a wife Fausta. She, taken with love of her stepson Crispus, when she had often provoked him to lust, accused him, on his refusing, to her husband, as having wished to do her violence. Constantine gave credit, and therefore put his son Crispus to death. But some years after, the cause being discovered, he inflicted capital punishment on his wife; so relates Eutropius, book x of the Roman History.
Eusebius relates, book vi of the History, chap. ix, that three witnesses falsely accused Narcissus, Bishop of Jerusalem, of an infamous crime; and the first swore that, if this crime of his were not true, God should destroy him with fire; the second, that he should be seized with leprosy; the third, that he should be deprived of his eyes. God the avenger heard; for the first, in his house, in the night, was caught by fire, and with all his family perished in the avenging flames. The second was seized with leprosy from head to foot and consumed. The third, seeing this, repenting and confessing his crime, bewailed it with such tears that he lost his sight.
Nay, God not rarely refutes false witnesses living by the dead. Hear examples. Stanislaus of Poland, Bishop of Cracow, gravely offended Boleslaus, king of Poland, because he had publicly reproved his notorious lust. Wherefore the king, in a solemn assembly of the kingdom, by calumny caused Stanislaus to be summoned to judgment before him, as if he were occupying a village which he had bought in the name of the Church. When he could neither prove it by documents, and the witnesses feared to tell the truth, the Bishop pledged himself to bring Peter, the seller of the village, who had died three years before, into court within three days. The condition being accepted with laughter, the man of God gave himself the whole three days to fasts and prayer. On the very day of the pledge, after offering the sacrifice of the Mass, he bids Peter rise from the tomb, who at once, restored to life, follows the Bishop as he goes to the royal tribunal, and there, the king and the rest being struck with amazement, gives testimony about the field sold by him, and the price duly paid to him by the Bishop, and again fell asleep in the Lord: so has Longinus, and from him Surius, May 8, in the Life of St. Stanislaus.
The Blessed Aia, wife of Hidulphus, Count of Hainault, as the History of Hainault relates, book xi, chap. iv, bestowed her inheritances or dominions on the Church of Mons, which were afterwards claimed back by her relatives as if by right of kinship; but the said Church, when harassed by the suit, called St. Aia, though dead, as a witness with many prayers: and she, appearing, answered that she held her donation as valid; whence whatever had been given peacefully remained given.
While Blessed Augustine was still staying at Milan, he relates that this memorable thing, among others, happened in this matter, in his book On the Care to be Had for the Dead, chap. xi: “For certain,” he says, “when we were at Milan, we heard that, when a debt was demanded by someone on the production of a bond of the dead father, which had already been paid by the father without the son’s knowledge, the man began to be most grievously troubled, and to wonder that his father on his deathbed had not told him what he owed, though he had even made a will. Then, as he was exceedingly anxious, his father appeared to him in sleep, and showed where the paper was laid by which that bond had been discharged. This being found and shown, the son not only repelled the calumny of the false debt, but also recovered his father’s handwriting, which the father had not recovered when the money was paid by him. Here, therefore, the soul of the man is thought to have taken care for his son, and to have come to him sleeping, that by teaching what he did not know he might free him from great trouble.”
To this let us add that similar deed of Spiridion, Bishop of Cyprus. He had a daughter named Irene, who, after serving him well, died a virgin. After her death a certain man came, saying that he had entrusted a deposit to her. The father had known nothing of the matter. Search was made through the whole house, and nowhere was found what was sought. Yet he who had entrusted it persisted, and pressed with weeping and tears: he even protested that he would bring destruction on his own life unless he recovered what he had entrusted. The old man, moved by his tears, hastened to his daughter’s tomb, and called upon her by name. Then she from the tomb: “What wilt thou, father?” she said. “That deposit of his,” he said, “where didst thou put it?” And she, pointing out the place: “There,” she said, “thou shalt find it buried.” Returning to the house, he found the thing as his daughter had answered from the tomb, and delivered it to him who demanded it. See here how much God is the patron of truth and of true testimony.
Macarius, an Egyptian monk, disciple of St. Antony, when someone had fled for refuge to his cell to seek help, because the magistrate was pursuing him as guilty of a murder just committed (but he affirmed that he was innocent), by reverence for his name checked the violence of the magistrates; and because only suspicion, not witnesses, pressed the man, in order that the truth might be made manifest, he brought it about that the man who had been killed spoke from the tomb, in the hearing of all present; who, since he affirmed that his death had nothing to do with him to whom the crime was then imputed, the magistrate, on Macarius’s authority, acquitted the man he was pursuing; and when the magistrate desired to know the author of the murder, he asked St. Macarius to enquire; he answered that it was enough for him to have freed the innocent. So it is related in the Lives of the Fathers, book ii, chap. xxxvii.
The same God brought about through infants. Gregory of Tours relates, book ii of the History of the Franks, chap. i, that St. Brice, Bishop of Tours, falsely accused of fornication, adjured before the people an infant lately born of the woman, to say whether he himself were its father. The infant said to him: Thou art not my father; and when the people asked him to enquire of it who then was its father, Brice answered: “This is not my business; what pertained to me I was careful about: if anything is within your power, enquire by yourselves.” And when the people attributed this rather to magic, he carried fire in his garment unharmed as far as the sepulchre of St. Martin, saying: “As you see the garment unharmed by the fire, so is my body unpolluted by the touch of the woman.”
A like miracle befell the Bishop Broon, who was a disciple of St. Patrick, in the year of Christ 521; but there the infant moreover betrayed the father, as is related in the Life of St. Brigid of Scotland, February 4.
In the Life of St. Antony of Padua, who lived in the year of our Lord 1232, it is told that while dwelling at Padua he was carried by an angel to Lisbon: for there his father was falsely accused of having killed a boy. Wherefore he asked the slain boy whether his father had killed him; who, raising himself, answered that he was not privy to this murder: and so the father was acquitted. In quite a like manner an infant cleared the Abbot Daniel, falsely charged with adultery, as Sophronius relates in the Spiritual Meadow, chap. cxiv.