Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Thirdly, Abulensis: Sow not, he says, thy vineyard with divers seed, namely out of fraud and avarice, thinking that thou art bound to pay first-fruits and tithes from the same ground only once a year; and so, by giving them from the crops which are first gathered, thou mayest think that from the grapes that will follow thou owest nothing. Hence he says: “Lest both the seed, and the fruits of the vineyard be defiled together,” that is, believe not that the seed, that is the corn, and what grows from the vineyard, that is the grapes, are sanctified together; so that by paying and offering tithes or first-fruits from the one, it is paid from the other. So far the words of Abulensis. But this sense is more remote, and inverts the words: for it is one thing to be sanctified in fact, another to believe, and that falsely, that one seed is sanctified, that is, offered, through another.
Still more remote is the explanation of Theodoret.
I will that you sanctify to me such mixed seeds and crops, that is, offer them: do not therefore sow such, lest you be forced to offer them to me.
10. THOU SHALT NOT PLOUGH WITH AN OX AND AN ASS TOGETHER.—The reason is that their strengths are unequal, and so the ass yoked with the ox would be more heavily burdened than the horse would be.
Tropologically St. Gregory, book i Morals, chap. xvi, as if he said: “Join not the foolish with the wise in preaching, lest through him who cannot fulfil the task thou hinder him who can.” So Plato, joining his two disciples, namely Xenocrates, who was of slower wit, with the keen Aristotle, said: “Ho! how shall I yoke an ass with a horse? the one needs the bridle, the other the spur.” So Plutarch in the Plato.
12. THOU SHALT MAKE STRINGS IN THE HEM.—Of these strings and fringes of the Jews I spoke on Numbers xv, 38. Moreover he commands these strings to be made “at the four corners,” that is, borders or extremities, “of thy cloak,” that is, of the outer garment; because, as Abulensis says, the cloaks, that is, the outer garments of the Jews, were open before and behind, and at the two corners of each opening hung two strings of blue, and so there were four strings. If anyone wishes to take “by the four corners” as four differences of position, so that these threads were on the fringes of the outer garment before and behind, to the right and the left, I do not oppose. For so today we see the servants of some princes sew their colours and arms on these four sides of the cloak. The Jews now in the synagogues cast over their shoulders a four-cornered garment to which these threads are sewn, as I said on Numbers xv.
14. LAYING TO HER CHARGE A VERY BAD NAME,—namely the crime of fornication, and as it were of adultery; for nothing worse or baser can be said of a woman, especially a virgin. So Abulensis.
I FOUND HER NOT A VIRGIN,—when she had represented herself to me as such before the betrothal, for otherwise I would not have wished to take her; so it was presumed here, from her own assertion, that the woman had fornicated after the betrothal, and was therefore guilty of death, as is said vers. 24. For she asserted herself a virgin when she was betrothed; and afterwards the bridegroom asserted that he had not found her a virgin; therefore it must needs be said that she had been corrupted between the betrothal and the marriage, and is therefore adjudged to death, vers. 21. For if she had sinned before the betrothal, she was not punished with death, as is plain here, and Exodus xxii, 16. The bridegroom, moreover, ought to have complained of the bride’s fornication immediately after the nuptials were celebrated; otherwise his accusation would have been presumed false, and only an occasion sought to put her away.
17. AND BEHOLD THESE ARE THE TOKENS OF MY DAUGHTER’S VIRGINITY.—By these tokens Abulensis and Lyranus understand the testimonies of matrons, who before the marriage had examined the bride’s virginity; for these, set down in writing, the bride’s parent had kept. But commonly other interpreters, and even Abulensis himself at last, understand by these tokens the garment, as is said vers. 17, that is, a linen cloth stained with blood, which physicians say flows from a virgin at her first intercourse, and not from the rupture of any membrane that is the guardian of virginity, as the common people suppose; but from the tearing of parts, or lips of the womb, which in virgins are bound together by a natural union, or growing together, and at the first intercourse are as it were violently torn and divided, and so the blood bursts forth. So Galen, book On the Dissection of the Womb, and Franciscus Valesius, On Sacred Philosophy, chap. xxv. This cloth, therefore, the bride’s father, in the presence of the bridegroom and witnesses, took and laid away; and if the bridegroom charged the bride with unchastity, he produced it before the judge, and so refuted the bridegroom’s calumny. For this is signified first by “they shall spread the garment before the ancients of the city”; secondly, in vers. 14, by “going in to her, I found her not a virgin.” For if the matrons had examined her before the marital union, and had said she was not a virgin but corrupted, the bridegroom would not have gone in to her, but would at once have repudiated or accused her.
24. THE MAN,—not he who betrothed her to himself, vers. 23; but he who humbled her, betrothed to another, that is, violated her, as follows.
25 and 26. BUT IF IN THE FIELD (note: A betrothed damsel, if she had suffered violation in the city, unless she had cried out and her cry had been heard, was held to have consented to the fault, and therefore to be guilty of death: for if she had cried out, the neighbours would have run up and delivered her; but in the field, if she cried out, even though her cry were heard by no one, she was held guiltless: because there was scarcely anyone there who could hear and help her; whence of her he says): FOR AS A ROBBER RISETH UP AGAINST HIS BROTHER, ETC., SO ALSO DID THE DAMSEL SUFFER,—in the Hebrew: for as one riseth up against his neighbour, and slayeth him with the soul, that is, with a stroke of the soul, or by which the soul is separated from the body, so this matter stands.
28. AND TAKING HOLD OF HER,—that is, doing violence.
The Septuagint renders, having overpowered her: for otherwise no law would be laid down here concerning those violently corrupted. So Tertullian, book iv Against Marcion, chap. xxxiv; he, therefore, who by violence had defiled an unbetrothed virgin is here commanded to marry her and keep her, and moreover to pay her father 50 sicles of silver.
30. NOR UNCOVER HIS COVERING,—in the Hebrew, thou shalt not uncover the skirt of thy father’s garment, that is, thou shalt not uncover the garment, or covering, by which the nakedness of the father was covered; the nakedness of the father he calls the private parts of the father’s wife, as I said on Leviticus xviii, 6.