Commentaria in Deuteronomium
11 and 12. IF THOU SEE IN THE NUMBER OF THE CAPTIVES A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, AND WILT HAVE HER TO WIFE, ETC., SHE SHALL SHAVE HER HAIR, AND PARE HER NAILS.—These rites were prescribed, says Cajetan, that the harshness and unseemliness of the deed might be softened, namely that a Gentile woman should be taken to wife among the people of God; and it was fitting that she should be sanctified by these, as it were, purifications, and so be mingled with the holy people, forgetful of her nation and kindred.
Tropologically, it is lawful for Christian teachers to take a Gentile woman to wife, that is, to appropriate to themselves what they find learned or elegant among the Gentiles or heretics, provided they cut off what is noxious and superfluous. So St. Jerome, epistle to Magnus, ciii, Rupert and Rabanus, who however more fittingly take this as a figure of the soul, translated from heathenism to Christianity, that is, from sin to grace; for, as the Gloss says after him, this Gentile woman is the sinful soul, which is beautiful because it was created to the image of God, but is a captive on account of crime: this woman Christ courts as his spouse, that this may be, let her shave her hair, that is, lay aside past vices by contrition; and cut her nails, that is, the occasions of sin: she is allowed, however, to mourn her father and mother for a short time, because the newly converted soul grieves to be torn from former friendships and pleasures; but this grief being wiped away, she is joined to the Spouse Christ. So Cyril in the Glaphyra, and St. Ambrose, book xxxv, epistle to Irenaeus.
SHE SHALL PARE (in Hebrew, shall make, that is, shall fit by paring) HER NAILS.—The Rabbis wrongly explain “shall make” as “shall let her nails grow,” that she may become deformed, and so the desire of the conqueror toward her, since she is a Gentile, be extinguished or diminished.
14. IF SHE PLEASE NOT THY MIND,—if she be not pleasing to thee.
THOU HAST HUMBLED HER,—thou hast chastised her.
17. AND SHALL GIVE HIM A DOUBLE PORTION OF ALL HE HATH.—For the firstborn received a double portion of the inheritance. So Joseph obtained a double tribe, namely Ephraim and Manasses, and consequently a double inheritance in Chanaan, in place of Ruben, the firstborn of Jacob. For “double” the Hebrew is pi shenayim, that is, the mouth of two, that is, a double portion; just as if the firstborn had two mouths, the other brothers one each, to be fed and filled by the hereditary portion of the parents. So 4 Kings ii, 9, Eliseus asks of Elias, who was being taken up, for his double spirit. The Hebrew is: Let there be, I pray, in me the mouth of two of thy spirit; as if to say: I am as the firstborn among thy disciples, that is, I am the first whom thou hast received into thy school and discipline; give me therefore, as thy firstborn, to obtain a twice greater force of thy spirit than my fellow-disciples and comrades. He desires, therefore, to surpass in spirit not Elias his master, but his fellow-disciples. Or rather, as if to say: Because I am thy firstborn and at the same time thy only-begotten (for thou hast no other disciples and ministers than me), grant that I may succeed to both of thy spirits, namely of prophecy and of miracles. Hence Ecclesiasticus xlviii, 13, it is said that in Eliseus the spirit of Elias was fulfilled; so Abulensis and Cajetan explain there.
19. THEY SHALL BRING HIM, ETC., TO THE GATE OF JUDGMENT.—For in the gates, to which strangers first came, as in certain public praetoria and tribunals, judgments were of old held, as is plain from chap. xx, 15; Job xxxi, 21; Proverbs xxxi, 23. “It was the custom of the ancients,” says St. Gregory, book xix Morals, xiii, “that the elders should sit in the gate, and judge the causes of those entering, that the people of the city might be so much the more peaceful, as it was not permitted to enter it in discord.” 21. THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY SHALL STONE HIM,—namely after the examination and sentence of the judges.
22 and 23. WHEN, ETC., HE BE HANGED ON A GIBBET ETC., IT SHALL BE BURIED THE SAME DAY; FOR HE IS ACCURSED OF GOD THAT HANGETH ON A TREE,—the Hebrew is, because he that is hanged is the curse of God; Symmachus, because he is hanged for a blasphemy of God; others, because he that is hanged on a tree is the reproach of God. Thou wilt ask why?
The Jews fable that before the burial of the corpse the soul cannot come to its rest, nor be led by the angels into the chamber of God, but meanwhile is vexed and afflicted by troops of demons. But these are their dreams. Andreas Masius, therefore, on Josue viii, 29, answers first that the hanged body is to be buried at once because it is reckoned to pollute the land, in that men, the inhabitants of the land, are shaped by this spectacle to a most impious and pernicious opinion of the mortality of the soul, seeing human bodies in the place of beasts. But this reason is more acute than genuine.
Secondly, Abulensis: To hang malefactors, he says, because it is an act of justice by which the guilty is punished, redounds to the glory of God: but if the corpse of the hanged remain on the cross, the hanged man is no longer punished, as being already dead, but his body only, which bears some image of God in the human and erect countenance. The image of God alone, then, remains to be punished: but this turns to the injury and dishonour of God; wherefore the corpse of the hanged is to be buried at once. But this reason too is more subtle than solid: and it fits not only the hanged but any dead and corpses whatever.
I say therefore with Cajetan that “accursed” is here taken for execrable. For God wished that the wicked (whose punishment was hanging) should be wholly destroyed from the earth, so that not even their corpses should remain for punishment, as is wont to be done with those who are given to the flames. Moreover that clause, “that the land be not defiled,” as the Chaldee intimates, is an explanation of the preceding. For as Scripture says everywhere that the land is defiled by wicked men, so while anything of them remains, such as their corpses, the land is still deemed unexpiated and defiled.
Hence Christ hanged on the cross is called by the Apostle, Galatians iii, 13, “accursed,” because, as Rupert says, God transferred the curses of the human race to Christ, namely when he undertook for us the infamous, execrable death of the cross, “that Christian liberty, unlike Jewish servitude, might fear not only no death, but no kind of death,” says St. Augustine, book Against Adimantus, chap. xxi, and book xiv Against Faustus, chap. xi, and Tertullian, On Patience, chap. viii: “The Lord himself,” he says, “is accursed in the law, and yet he alone is blessed. Let us servants therefore follow the Lord, and be patiently cursed, that we may be able to be blessed.”
Thus was Christ accursed for us: so Eucherius in his Questions here; see what is said on Galatians iii, 13.
Note: This law was judicial, and therefore is now abrogated by the law and death of Christ. Hence now the hanged are not accursed beyond other offenders, nor are they buried on the same day; but they hang for days, months and years on the gibbet, to the terror of other wrongdoers. Where, however, note that this law properly speaks of malefactors, not of the innocent, as is plain.