Commentaria in Josue
Moreover Josue here carefully keeps the military precepts which Vegetius assigns, book iii On Military Matters, last chapter, saying: “An army improves by labour, grows old in idleness. Never bring the soldier to a public battle, unless when thou seest him hope for victory. Sudden things terrify the enemy, familiar things grow cheap. No plans are better than those which the adversary shall have been ignorant of before thou carry them out. What thou art to do, treat of with very few and the most faithful, or rather with thyself alone.”
8. SOUNDED THE TRUMPETS.—By the blast of these, therefore, without catapults, without battering-rams, the walls of Jericho fell.
Learn here tropologically how weak, slight and vain Jericho is, that is the glory of the world, since it falls and vanishes at the mere blasts of trumpets. Hear St. Gregory, book xx of the Morals, chapter xxiv: “The glory of the present life is seen as if on high, but is established by no stability.” Hear also St. Chrysostom, homily 4 on the first Epistle to the Corinthians: “Do you not see boys, when in play they have drawn up a line and arrayed soldiers, and lictors and heralds go before them, and a boy walks in the midst in the place of the Emperor, how childish are the things that are done? Such are human affairs, and viler and more abject than these, so that what are today are not tomorrow.”
9. THE REST OF THE COMMON PEOPLE FOLLOWED THE ARK.—The Hebrew is meassaph, which properly means the same as gathering, or collecting, namely the preceding crowd, that is closing the line, as Masius, Vatablus, Pagninus and others render. The Septuagint, the rear, namely of the old men, servants, proselytes, boys, women, and the rest of the unwarlike common people, who followed the ark. For in the first line the warriors went before, in the middle were the priests with the ark and trumpets, in the last was this remaining crowd. Moreover the Chaldee renders, and the tribe of the stock of Dan went behind the ark. Nay Masius also, rendering, those closing the line, understands by these the Danites, Aserites and Nephthalites; for these three tribes were wont to close the line of the camp in the desert. But in the desert the ark was in the middle of the camp and the twelve tribes; for six tribes preceded the ark, namely Juda, Issachar, Zabulon, Ruben, Simeon and Gad; and six followed the ark, namely Ephraim, Manasses, Benjamin, Dan, Aser and Nephthali. Here, however, the armed fighters of all the tribes went before the ark, as is clear from this verse; the unwarlike crowd followed the ark. Wherefore Cajetan thinks less rightly that the tribes of Ruben, Gad and half Manasses preceded the ark, and that the other nine tribes marched behind the ark.
AND SOUNDED WITH TRUMPETS.—Hence gather that not only the priests but the rest of the people also blew their trumpets; but these were different from the trumpets of the priests, which were those of the Jubilee; those of the people were common and popular. For God willed that the people should not be idle, but should agree and co-operate with God and the priests in sounding, that the men of Jericho might be struck by the horrid-sounding blast of all. Masius, Lyranus and others deny this; but our Vulgate and the Septuagint clearly signify it here; and more clearly verse 13, where it is said: “The rest of the common people followed the ark, and blew the trumpets”; which words are so manifest that they cannot be wrested to the priests without violence. When, therefore, in the next verse Josue commands the people silence, it was of voice and shouting, not of trumpets and sounding. For he says:
10. YOU SHALL NOT SHOUT, NOR SHALL YOUR VOICE BE HEARD, NEITHER SHALL ANY WORD GO OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.—Behold no mention or prohibition of the sounding of trumpets is made here. Procopius and Chrysostom, homily On Penance, give the reason: He commanded, he says, the common people to follow in the tail, to teach that no one ought to desert the line of God, but, so far as in him lies, resist the opposing forces, whether they stand in the same line or follow while fighting.
UNTIL THE DAY COME (the seventh) WHEREIN I SHALL SAY TO YOU: CRY, AND SHOUT.—The Hebrew and Septuagint, shout, and then you shall shout; Masius, howl, and you shall howl; which our Vulgate renders more significantly in the same sense: “Cry, and shout,” as if exhorting one another to battle with the common voice of all, and as if about to invade Jericho with common spirits and arms. The Hebrew is hariu, which our Vulgate and others in the Psalms render Jubilate. Hence Vatablus here renders, Shout, then raise a jubilee, that is sing a triumph, as if sure of victory and the taking of the city. And Origen here, homily 7, renders, Jubilate. “Blessed is the people,” he says, “that knoweth jubilation. Wherefore the shouting of the people was a concordant and unanimous jubilation, and an acclamation of the victor in the manner of a hymn or thanksgiving, so that this people may deservedly be called blessed, as knowing how to jubilate.” And lower down: If you require the consent of jubilation of yourself, that is, if the people of thy thoughts and senses always bring forth a concordant and consonant voice, that thou be true and constant in words and deeds, and the spirit rule the flesh, send forth the voice of jubilation, because the world has been conquered for thee. This from Origen, more at length, but I have deliberately condensed many of his words.
11. SO THE ARK WENT ABOUT.—The Hebrew yassev in Hiphil, that is, made go round. But Hiphil is often taken for Kal; hence all here render, went about.
12. AND JOSUE RISING BEFORE DAY,—the Hebrew babboker, that is, at dawn, in the morning, or in the morning twilight when day was breaking, when night ends and light begins with day.
15. BUT ON THE SEVENTH DAY.—The Hebrews relate from the Babylonian Talmud, tract On the Sabbath, chapter i, that this seventh day was the sabbath, and on it the walls of Jericho fell (to persuade the people of the religion and observance of the sabbath) at the seventh going round of the city and the seventh blast; so that the first day of the circuit was the Lord’s day. So also Lyranus, Serarius and others. Hence Marcion blasphemed that the God of the Old Testament was contrary to himself, since he had commanded the Jews the rest of the sabbath, and yet here commanded them to go round the city on the sabbath. But Tertullian answers, book ii Against Marcion, chapter xxi, that God on the sabbath forbade human works only, not divine ones, or those done at God’s command, such as going round the city was here; for God was Lord of the sabbath, and could not only dispense in it, but abolish it, as he had instituted it. For the Jews, therefore, God fixed the law of the sabbath, not for himself, since he himself always worked even on the sabbath,
16. JOSUE SAID TO ALL ISRAEL: SHOUT.—The voice of Josue could not be heard by the whole people, as consisting of three millions of men. Hence “he said” means: he said it to the nearest, in heaven and on earth, all things whatsoever are generated and made. Moreover Josephus writes that the first day of the circuit was the day of the Pasch, or the fifteenth of Nisan. Seder Olam Rabba, that is the great Chronicle of the Hebrews, and Serarius think that it was the first day after the octave of the Pasch, which was the twenty-second of Nisan. But nothing can be settled here for certain, since Scripture says nothing of it. These said it to the next, and these to the following, and so on to the last.
Mystically Ambrosiaster (for it is clear that St. Ambrose is not the author, from the fact that he mentions the Lombards invading Italy, which invasion happened long after the death of St. Ambrose) on chapter i of the Apocalypse refers these seven circuits of Jericho to the seven ages of the Church and of the just: “For Jericho,” he says, “signifies the whole body of the reprobate, which is the city of the devil; by the children of Israel the elect are signified; by the priests, the preachers; by the trumpets, the doctrine of preaching; by the people who followed them are designated all the just, who followed their doctrine and imitated their acts; by the ark which they bore is understood Christ, who was carried dwelling in their holy hearts.”
And a little lower: “The first circuit therefore belongs to those just men who were before the flood, who also were called sons of God; they went round the city of Jericho as long as they kept themselves separated from the society of the reprobate.
The circuit of the second day belongs to those who were after the flood until Moses: who themselves also went round the city of Jericho, because they separated themselves from the iniquities of the reprobate.