Commentaria in Deuteronomium
…as clear as the light of midday; he speaks of blindness of mind, as is plain from what follows. For blindness of mind is the punishment of sin, and a great one, as St. Augustine teaches on Psalm lvii: “Is the darkening of the heart and the blinding of the mind a small punishment? If a man who committed a theft had at once lost an eye, all would say that God was present and had avenged it: he has lost the eye of the heart, and is it thought that God has spared him?” Now the Jews and the impious grope at midday, both of old and now. Is not the light of Christ’s law, and the doctrine that enlightens the Christian world, the light of midday? In this light the blind grope; they see not eternal things, and cling to fleeting and perishing things, which flow away in a moment of time. “Even until this present day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart,” says St. Paul, 2 Corinthians iii.
AND NOT MAKE STRAIGHT THY WAYS.—In the Hebrew, thou shalt not prosper thy ways; as if to say: Thy actions shall be unfortunate, and all things shall turn out ill for thee.
Vers. 31. LET THY OX BE SLAIN (let thy ox be killed by thy enemy or adversary) BEFORE THEE, AND THOU NOT EAT THEREOF.
…to deliver thy sons and daughters from the hand of the enemy.
Vers. 33. WHICH THOU KNOWEST NOT—which thou hast not known.
Vers. 37. AND THOU SHALT BE LOST.—The Hebrew and the Chaldee have, thou shalt be a desolation, a proverb and a byword, so that all peoples shall sharpen their tongues against thee.
Vers. 43. THE STRANGER, etc., SHALL RISE UP OVER THEE.—In the Hebrew, the stranger shall rise up over thee higher and higher: and thou shalt go down lower and lower; that is, the stranger shall be far above thee, and thou shalt be far beneath him.
Vers. 49. THE LORD WILL BRING UPON THEE A NATION FROM AFAR, etc., LIKE AN EAGLE—which, like an eagle, shall fly upon thee most swiftly, most speedily and most violently, to plunder thee. The dominion of the Babylonians and of Nabuchodonosor is here indicated, who in Ezechiel xvii, 3, is compared to a great eagle; for he overthrew the Jews. Note: Kings and tyrants, and especially Nabuchodonosor, are called an eagle, by Jeremias xlviii, 40, by Ezechiel xvii, 3, by Daniel vii, 4, and by Osee viii, 1. So Ajax was surnamed the eagle, and king Pyrrhus wished to be called the eagle, and the son of Charlemagne was called Arnulph, that is, the eagle’s help; for the eagle is a symbol, first, of kingdom and empire: for it is itself the king of birds; second, of invasion and of fierce, swift and impetuous fighting; third, of rapacity and savagery; fourth, of victory: for it overcomes and lays low all birds, and even serpents and stags, by throwing into their eyes the dust which it gathers with its wings. Hence the Romans and the Gentiles often took an omen of victory from eagles, and observed them even to superstition.
Anacreon, a most ancient author, writes that Jupiter, about to set out against the Titans (others say against the giants), made a sacrifice to heaven on the island of Naxos, where he was first brought up as an infant, and that eagles appeared to him while he was offering the sacrifice, and held out a weapon to him. Having seen them, he took it as a good omen, a sign of victory; and when victory followed, he is said thenceforth to have borne a golden eagle as his own warlike ensign, as Aglaosthenes and others testify.
Cyrus, king of the Persians, also conceived great hope from the following augury, which Xenophon relates in book 2 of the Cyropaedia in these words: “As Cyrus was setting out against the Armenians, a hare at once started up in the first field; and an eagle flying on the right, looking down on the fleeing hare, both swooped upon it and struck it, and bore it off seized, and having carried it to the nearest hill, made use of its prey at pleasure.
Cyrus, therefore, beholding the augury, rejoiced, and adored Jupiter the king, and said to those present: The hunting will be fine, if it please the god.” And elsewhere of the same Cyrus: “While they were discoursing thus,” he says, “they had come to the borders of Persia, and an eagle appeared on the right and became their guide on the way; and praying the gods and heroes who dwell in the land of Persia to help them kindly and graciously, they thus crossed the borders.” Hence the military standard of Cyrus and the Persians was a golden eagle with outspread wings on a long spear, as Xenophon says in Cyropaedia, book 7, at the beginning: whence the Romans took the same standard, namely an eagle, but of silver, holding a thunderbolt in its talons, raised on a spear.
Aristander, from the augury of an eagle, pronounced Alexander victorious as he crossed against the enemy before the battle; and when the eagle advanced from the fleet to the mainland and settled there, it was an augury that the Persians were to be conquered by land, not by sea, by Alexander’s own interpretation also, contrary to what Parmenio thought.
And in that most difficult battle which was fought with the Darians at Arbela, than which none fiercer was ever fought among them, an eagle, flying gently a little above Alexander’s head, could be frightened neither by the clash of arms nor by the groans or cries of the dying, but for a long time stayed about the king’s horse, more like one hanging than flying, foretelling or rather showing how the matter would end. Not unlike is what Tacitus, book 1, writes as offered to Fabius Valens: when he was leading out his army to war, on the very day of departure an eagle with gentle flight went before as the column advanced, like a guide of the way, and for a long distance, not frightened by the shouts of the rejoicing soldiers, who took the augury and bade the bird hail, it so continued the journey that it undoubtedly gave an omen of a great and prosperous undertaking.
Suetonius also testifies to something of the kind in Domitian: “For on the very day on which the battle was fought,” he says, “a remarkable eagle encircled the statue of Domitian at Rome and uttered the most joyful cries with its wings; and a little after, the killing of Antonius (the author of the war) became so widely known that many maintained that his head was even brought in.”
50. A MOST SHAMELESS NATION.—In the Hebrew, a nation strong of face, that is, of brazen forehead, barbarous, bold and inhuman.
Ver. 53. AND THOU SHALT EAT THE FRUIT OF THY WOMB.—This came to pass in the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus. The other slaughters and calamities which God here threatens to the Jews were sent upon them by Him, partly in the same destruction under Titus, partly in the siege by the Assyrians, namely Salmanasar, Theglathphalasar and Sennacherib, etc.; partly by Nabuchodonosor and the Babylonians, partly by Alexander and the Macedonians. So Theodoret, Question XXXIV.
65. FOR THE LORD WILL GIVE THEE THERE A FEARFUL HEART.—The Jews now have this curse, says Abulensis, both because God inflicted it on them as a punishment, and because from tender age they learn to fear Christians, since Christians begin to persecute them, plunder and strike them while still children. For boys who are broken in everything have a fearful, ignoble heart, unfit for arduous things, especially towards those who break them; for even lions that have grown used to the rod of their tamers are afraid of their countenance, but do not fear other men. Hence boys are to be so trained that their anger and passions are at times chastised, lest they grow insolent, and at times are allowed to follow their passions, lest their spirit be broken, and so they may become manly and spirited to defend themselves and the commonwealth. Tertullian, in his book Against the Jews, chap. xi, reads: “The Lord shall give thee a fainting heart and a pining soul.”
AND FAILING EYES,—that is, that thine eyes may grow dim and fail with tears.
Verse 66. AND THY LIFE SHALL BE AS HANGING BEFORE THEE (that is, thy life shall be placed in peril, and as it were suspended in doubt, nay) THOU SHALT NOT BELIEVE THY LIFE—that is, thou shalt not trust in thy life, or that thou canst live, but shalt despair of life. Otherwise St. Augustine, book xvi Against Faustus, chap. xxii, Procopius here, and St. Leo, sermon 8 On the Passion, take these words, as though he said: Christ is thy life, O Judah, who was hanging on the cross, and yet thou didst not believe in him. But this sense is symbolic. So also Tertullian above, who also reads: “Thy life shall be hanging on the wood, before thine eyes, and thou shalt not believe thy life.”
68. THE LORD SHALL BRING THEE BACK INTO EGYPT IN SHIPS.—Ver. 68.
That this was done under Titus Josephus teaches, book vii of the Jewish War, chap. xvi, where he says that the Jews taken by the Romans who were under seventeen years of age were led into Egypt and sold there for burdens and labours, and in such numbers that buyers could scarcely be found.
Note the word ships: for hence it is plain that in the time of Moses there were fleets and ships. Moses here sets them before the Hebrews as things well known and names them; whence it appears how much more ancient the history of Moses is than the history of the Gentiles and Poets, for these hold that the first ships were those of Jason and the Argonauts, who lived a little before the Trojan war, about the time of Jephte, judge of the Hebrews.