Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Tropologically, Moab signifies concupiscence, which is from the father, the devil, and also the carnal senses, which shall never enter the heavenly Church of God: so Origen, homily 5 on Genesis, Ambrose, Gregory and others.
8. THEY THAT ARE BORN OF THEM (the Egyptians or Edomites), IN THE THIRD GENERATION SHALL ENTER INTO THE CHURCH OF THE LORD.—This third generation was to be reckoned from him who had first been converted to Judaism, and from the Egyptians and Edomites had passed over to the Jews, dwelling in Judea.
9. WHEN THOU GOEST OUT TO FIGHT, THOU SHALT KEEP THYSELF FROM EVERY EVIL THING,—from thefts, plunder, fornication, perjuries, blasphemies and other vices with which soldiers and camps are wont to be infected. So Julius Caesar “desired in the soldier modesty and continence no less than valour and greatness of mind,” as he says himself, book vi On the Gallic War.
Scipio the younger, seeing in the camp much licence, wantonness, superstition and luxury, at once cast out the diviners with the panders; nay, he ordered all vessels to be removed, except a pot, a spit and an earthen cup. He decreed that the soldiers should take their dinner standing, a meal not cooked by fire; but should sup reclining, on bread or porridge alone, and roast or boiled meat. He himself, wrapped in a cloak, went about the camp, saying “that he mourned the disgraces of the armies.” So Plutarch in the Roman Apophthegms.
King Theodoric in Cassiodorus, book vii, thus ordains: “Let the soldiers committed to thee live with the provincials by civil law, and let not the mind that feels itself armed grow insolent, because that shield of our army ought to afford quiet to the Romans.”
Sergius Galba, in the gravest wars, kept his soldiers under the severest discipline; so that as soon as he came to the camp, that trochaic verse was at once noised abroad: “Learn, soldier, to soldier; it is Galba, not Getulicus.”
Alexander Severus, on expeditions, if anyone turned aside from the road into another’s property, beat him with ropes or rods; if he were a man of rank, sharply rebuked him: “Wouldst thou have this done in thy field which thou doest in another’s?” He cried out often, as often as he chastised anyone, by the herald, what he had heard from the Christians: “What thou wouldst not have done to thyself, do not to another.” So Lampridius.
The Emperor Aurelian, when he had received a letter from his lieutenant, in which he begged to be told in writing how matters should be conducted, at once wrote back thus: “If thou wishest to be a tribune, nay if thou wishest to live, hold in the hands of the soldiers; let no one seize another’s chicken, let no one touch a sheep, let no one carry off a grape.” So Vopiscus in the Aurelian.
Most excellently and most briefly St. John the Baptist, when soldiers asked, What shall we do that we may be saved? answered: “Do violence to no man, neither calumniate any man, and be content with your pay,” Luke iii.
Wherefore Valerius Maximus, book ii, rightly concludes: “Military discipline needs a harsh and severe kind of correction; for strength lies in arms, which, when they have departed from the right way, will crush, unless they be crushed.”
10. HE THAT IS DEFILED IN A DREAM SHALL GO FORTH OUT OF THE CAMP. … a dream, he says, is a hidden temptation. For the defiled to go out of the camp is, when labouring under a shameful assault, to despise oneself in comparison with the continent. He who is washed with water in the evening, when, seeing his defect, he turns to the lamentations of penance; but after sunset let him return to the camp, because, the heat of the temptation cooling, he must again take confidence toward the society of the good.”
12 and 13. THOU SHALT HAVE A PLACE WITHOUT THE CAMP, TO WHICH THOU MAYEST GO FOR THE NECESSITIES OF NATURE, HAVING A STAKE IN THY GIRDLE, etc., and that for the decency and cleanliness of the camp; whence it is said vers. 14: “Let thy camp be holy,” that is, pure and clean: for God, who is the fountain of all purity and a most pure spirit, is a lover of neatness both internal and external; secondly, for the health of the camp; thirdly, to avoid offence to the priests, who passed through the camp with the ark and the holy vessels. These inconveniences the Hebrews could meet in the land of promise; hence there in the cities they had their privies after our manner. Wherefore Abulensis thinks that this precept did not bind except in the desert: add, and in time of war, in camps. The Essenes, however, being most zealous for the law as well as for purity, strictly observed this law even in Judea, as Josephus teaches, book ii On the Jewish War, chap. vii.
Tropologically St. Gregory, Morals xxxi, xxii, and from him Rupert: “We ought to carry a stake under the girdle, that, ever girt for reproving ourselves, we may have about us the sharp goad of compunction, which may unceasingly dig up the earth of our mind with the sorrow of penance, and hide what breaks forth foul from us.” Hence also Cyril in the Glaphyra takes by the stake each one’s cross.
15. THOU SHALT NOT DELIVER UP TO HIS MASTER THE SERVANT THAT IS FLED TO THEE,—when, namely, the master unjustly wishes to afflict him, or hurt or kill him, as is plain from what follows, until he be appeased and reconciled to him; for then the servant is to be restored to his master.
17. THERE SHALL BE NO WHORE AMONG THE DAUGHTERS OF ISRAEL, NOR WHOREMONGER.—The law warns, first, daughters and sons to beware of fornication; secondly, parents not to allow them to fornicate, nor to prostitute their daughters; thirdly, the magistrate not to tolerate in his polity public fornication and brothels. For if an Israelite harlot is forbidden to the Jews, much more is a foreign and Gentile one, from whom there was danger of idolatry, as the event proved in the Madianites and Moabites, who led the Hebrews to worship Beelphegor; whence God raged against them, Numbers chap. xxv.
NOR WHOREMONGER AMONG THE SONS OF ISRAEL.—For “whoremonger” can be rendered, with Vatablus and Pagninus, a male prostitute, namely a catamite, or passive boy. For the Hebrew kadesh aptly signifies this. Our version elsewhere renders it effeminate; as its feminine kedeshah here and elsewhere signifies a female prostitute, or harlot. Others, however, rightly also render with our version “whoremonger.” The Septuagint after this verse add: There shall be no telesphoros among the daughters of Israel, which Tertullian renders: There shall be no tribute-payer among the sons of Israel; which sentence Judas the Galilean put forward as a pretext for his rebellion against the Romans, of whom Acts v. But this sentence is not found in the Hebrew or Latin text. Wherefore it seems to have been added by the Septuagint to explain the preceding sentence: “There shall be no whore among the daughters of Israel”; for telesphoros is here called a harlot who, consecrating herself to Venus or Priapus, pays him a tribute from her unchastity. So St. Cyril, book xv On Adoration. Whence St. Augustine, book x City of God, chap. ix, says that by this word teletae are signified certain theurgic consecrations, which would be truly deceitful rites of demons. The teletae seem therefore to have been impudent rites, by which women or men bound themselves to Venus or Priapus, bearing certain mysteries and gifts, as a part of their base gain, like the canephorae among the Athenians; and telesphoros appears clearly to be said of a woman: for it is joined, “of the daughters of Israel”; and it is added: And there shall be no teliskomenos, that is, initiated, of the sons of Israel. Where Theodoret, Question xxviii: “He calls telesphoros,” he says, “one who initiates into mysteries, but teliskomenos one who is initiated.” For such in Hebrew were called kedeshim and kedeshoth; such was Maacha the mother of King Asa, and the effeminate in the rites of Priapus, 3 Kings xv, 12 and 13.