Commentaria in Deuteronomium
which many explain thus: God set over individual peoples and nations angels as guardians and as it were rulers. For as each man, so each nation has its angel, or archangel, as guardian and ruler. So Origen, hom. 11 on Numbers, where he adds that these angels at Babel divided the tongues and assigned to each nation its own; of which matter I spoke on Genesis x and xi; so also explains Ruffinus in his Exposition of the Creed, in Cyprian, tom. III; Chrysostom, hom. 3 on the epistle to the Colossians; Procopius and Severus in the Catena on the Canticles of Scripture, which Caraffa edited. Again Origen, in the place cited, adds another sense: “At the beginning of the world God divided the sons of Adam in one way, and will divide them again in another; so that those who could not be so clean of heart as to see the Lord Himself, and be the portion of the Lord, like Israel, may see the holy angels, and be according to the number of the Angels of God.” But this sense, as it is new, so is it rash and erroneous. Secondly, others explain it of individual men: God created as many men as He assigned to them guardian angels; for to each man He gave his angel. Thirdly, St. Gregory, hom. 34 on the Gospel, explains it thus: “That heavenly city,” he says, “consists of men and angels, to which so many of men ascend as of angels remained there;” so also Rabanus.
But this is uncertain. For others, equally probably, think that as many men will be saved as demons fell from heaven: for their ruin is to be repaired by men. Now the demons seem to be fewer than the angels: for Lucifer drew with him only a third part of the stars, Apoc. xii, 4. It is certain that the version of the Septuagint here is not literal, nor genuine: for the children of Israel are not literally angels of God; wherefore the former sense of our Interpreter is genuine, as is plain from the Hebrew and Chaldee, likewise Aquila and Symmachus, who all have of the children of Israel; whence in the Septuagint too, for “of the angels of God,” I think should be read “of the children of Israel,” as some of their copies have, as Origen testifies, hom. 28 on Numbers, and others.
9. BUT THE LORD’S PORTION IS HIS PEOPLE: JACOB THE LOT OF HIS INHERITANCE.—From the Hebrew you may better render, for the portion, etc.; so the Chaldee; as if to say: It is no wonder that God so loved the children of Israel as to fix the bounds of the peoples according to their number, because Jacob, that is the Israelites, are His people, and as it were an hereditary portion, which is here called a cord, because formerly they were wont to measure it out with cords and divide it among brothers, as is plain from Amos vii, last verse: whence the cord is taken for the inheritance itself, as in Psalm xv, 6: “The lines are fallen to me in goodly places;” which, in his own manner, he explains, adding: “For my inheritance is goodly to me.” Like are Psalm lxxvii, 55; Sophonias ii, 5, and elsewhere.
10. HE FOUND HIM (God found His people, or appeared in the pillar of cloud to Israel, when he wandered in the desert, and there began to lead him to the promised land. Now He says that He found him in the desert, because in Egypt Israel served idols and was joined with the Egyptians; but in the desert, namely at Sinai, he was enrolled into a people and Church).
HE KEPT HIM AS THE APPLE OF HIS EYE.—See how great is the solicitude, care, providence and guardianship of God towards His own, as great, namely, as that of a man about the dearest, tenderest and most precious thing, the apple of his eye.
Hence that self-love of the Jews, so that R. David dares to say that God has no care or providence of other nations, save so far as they in some way pertain to Israel; that is, that God does not punish other nations, except so far as they harm or wrong Israel: nor does He do good to them, except so far as they have helped Israel in some matter. But this madness of his is as stupid as it is blasphemous.
11. AS THE EAGLE ENTICING HER YOUNG TO FLY, the Hebrew text, nor is it itself to be corrected; but rather seems to regard the most ancient tradition of the Jews, that God in the division of the nations assigned to each people and region an angel to have care of them, except the Israelite people, whose care God Himself took immediately upon Himself. As an eagle, so God roused Israel, as it were His young, by various signs of providence in Egypt, to go out thence and fly forth, For “in a place of horror,” the Hebrew has “in the desert of the howling of wild beasts,” namely of those assembling at the springs by night. For “taught,” others render the Hebrew, “took care of him,” comparing the Arabic to consider something more carefully.
and him, now preparing to go out, as in the outspread wings of His providence took up, protected and bore, both by Himself and by an angel, the guide of the way, and by the pillar of fire and cloud.
Note: The eagle is a symbol of God: first, because she is the queen of birds; secondly, because she is fruitful and long-lived; thirdly, because she is an image of the sun: for she gazes upon it with eyes uncovered and unmoved; fourthly, because while other birds rise by an oblique path, the eagle alone flies straight up on high: hence by the Poets the eagle is called the bird of Jove, as “the winged bird bore up the empire of Jove to heaven;” fifthly, God is here properly and aptly compared to an eagle for her singular love of her young, of which St. Jerome thus writes on Isaias lxv: “Among all other living creatures the love of eagles for their young is greatest; they place their nests in high and inaccessible places, lest the snake should harm the brood. They write also that an amethyst stone is found among her young, by which all poisons are overcome. If this is true, the affection of God towards His creatures is rightly compared to eagles, who with all zeal protects His children, lest the dragon and the old serpent, the devil, harm the new brood, that at the name of the stone which is laid in the foundations of Sion all the snares of adversaries may be broken.”
Beautifully, learnedly and piously St. Ambrose, book II On Solomon, chap. ii, compares Christ the Saviour to an eagle, by four other analogies; first: “As the eagle, like a mother of the nest, belongs always to one nest, and for the bringing forth of offspring seeks no other bed at any time; secondly, when first the brood within has burst forth in due time from the warm eggs, she leads out her unfledged young and sets them against the face of the burning sun, so that whichever, sickly and weak, lowers the sight of its eyes at the flash of the rays, condemned by the mother’s judgment, is separated from the company of its brothers and cast to the ground; thirdly, as the bird is the enemy of serpents, which, bearing them up in the air by the oarage of her wings, she tears and rends with hooked beak and with her feet armed like weapons, and when she devours them, by her inner heat she extinguishes that noxious poison: so, first, Christ the Lord loves one Church, as the eagle her nest, which He defends from the heat of persecution with His wings; secondly, so too He casts out of the Church those in whom the light of faith is weak, who, stained with worldly vices, cannot bear the fiery light of the Gospels; thirdly, as the eagle devours serpents and digests their poisons with her inner heat: so also Christ our Lord, the dragon being struck, that is, the devil torn, when He took to Himself a human body, extinguished that sin which held man liable, as a deadly poison, as the Apostle says: ‘And of sin hath condemned sin in the flesh;’ and elsewhere: ‘Him who knew no sin, for us he hath made sin.’” And below he adds fourthly: “The eagle, when she wishes to seize something, does not walk the earth on foot, but chooses a high place: so also Christ, hung high on the cross, with thundering noise and terrible flight made an assault upon hell, and seizing the saints returned to the heights.” Add fifthly: as the eagle flies highest, so Christ ascended above all the heavens; whence that of Proverbs xxx: “Three things are hard to me, etc., the way of an eagle in the air,” which St. Ambrose in the place cited understands of Christ ascending into heaven. And sixthly, the eagle is liberal, and shares the prey she has taken with other birds: so also Christ shares the prey of eternal beatitude with the Saints. Seventhly, the eagle excels in keenness of sight, and sees afar things remote: so Christ our God beholds the lowly in heaven and on earth, who dwells on high.
13. HE SET HIM UPON HIGH LAND.—In Hebrew, He made him ride upon the high places of the earth, because the promised land is high and mountainous. Note: prophetically here and in what follows the past is put for the future; He set, that is, will shortly and surely set, and in His predestination and foreknowledge has already set.
Israel will have such plenty of honey that even in the rocks bees will of their own accord make honey.
AND OIL OUT OF THE HARDEST STONE,—that is, that even among the stones olive trees may wonderfully bear fruit, and produce abundantly olives, which either of their own accord drop oil, or, when pressed, send it out and pour it forth.
Add that olive trees and olives love stony ground, and in it, by the wonderful providence of nature and of God, better and more of them grow up, as we see done at Tibur; for Tibur, set on a mountain and rock, abounds in the best olive trees and olives: whence Tiburtine oil is celebrated throughout all Italy.
The rock, he says, that is Christ, gave honey, that is, showed to the disciples the sweetness of miracles; and gave also the holy oil of unction, when after the resurrection He sent the Holy Spirit upon them.
And Ambrose, book II On Solomon, chap. ix: By honey, he says, was signified that God would give the sweetness of His Gospel; by oil, that He would give the Holy Spirit by the anointing of chrism.