Commentaria in Josue
Holy Josue therefore commands the heavens, and as a king fixes laws for them, and by his voice alone and his command wonderfully holds back and reins in the sun and moon in mid-course, as with bridles. So the saints command life and death, heaven and hell, when they raise the dead and, by converting souls given over to Gehenna, transfer them to heaven. For he whom the Creator obeys, him the angels, and demons, and men and all creatures must obey. See here how great is the power of prayer, which makes God obey us. Whence Jacob, wrestling with God in prayer and conquering him willing to be conquered, was called “Israel,” that is, “prevailing with God,” Genesis 32:28. Praying, therefore, man becomes Israel, and prevails over God. See what is said on James 5:16 and following. Whence the Chaldean here translates: that the prayer of a man might be heard before God, because by his word the Lord fought for Israel. So also Masius, Pagninus, Arias and Vatablus. Let St. Jerome be heard on chapter 28 of Isaias: “In the confidence of God dwelling in him, Jesus said: Stand, sun.” St. Ambrose, book 1 On Duties, chapter 40: “Jesus Nave, when the battle arose against the Gabaonites, and he feared lest night should hinder the victory, with greatness of mind and faith cried out: Stand, sun; and it stood until this victory was completed.” St. Bernard, in the author of his Life, book 2, chapter 6, when he urged that against the schismatics of Leo one must act constantly and pray ardently: “Josue,” he says, “fights, and that the day may suffice for the completion of the victory, he not so much prays as commands the sun to stand, and faith deserves both the obedience of the sun and the victory over the prostrate enemy.”
15. AND JOSUE RETURNED, WITH ALL ISRAEL, INTO THE CAMP (into the place fortified for a camp) OF GALGAL,—“He returned,” namely the war being altogether ended, in which God fought miraculously for Israel by staying the sun until all the enemies were slain, as it went on. This verse is placed here by anticipation and inserted as if in parenthesis; for in its proper place it would have to be set in the last verse of the chapter. So Masius; or more plainly and with better connexion with the following verse, as if to say: “He returned,” that is, Josue began to return, because the five kings, the leaders of the enemy, had fled, and seemed to have escaped; for they had hidden themselves in the cave of Maceda: which when Josue heard, he turned back on his way, and commanded the cave to be guarded, until his men should pursue and slay the rest of their followers, as follows. Whence Vatablus translates: and Josue was preparing his return.
16. FOR THEY HAD FLED,—according to the sense already given.
Masius and others translate: but they had fled, so that this verse is joined to verse 13, and verse 14 inserted by way of parenthesis.
19. PURSUE AFTER THE ENEMY.—Hear what the Emperor Leo ordains about pursuing fleeing enemies, in his Tactics, chapter 20, number 202: “When victory has been granted thee by God, pursue them not at once tumultuously and confusedly, but in pursuing take care lest they turn and attack thee again; for an effusive and intemperate pursuit makes those who pursue exposed to attack.”
And Vegetius, book 3, last chapter: “He who pursues rashly, his own men being scattered,” he says, “wishes to give the victory to the adversary that he had received.” Whence Josue here commands that the whole body of the Hebrews pursue the enemy.
21. IN MACEDA, WHERE THE CAMP THEN WAS.—For Josue had commanded his men to guard the five kings hidden in Maceda, and to pitch camp there, until one part of the army should pursue and slay the fugitives, which part, this done, returned to the rest at Maceda. The camp here, therefore, is the name for the stronger and better fortified portion of the army. From Maceda, afterwards, the five kings being slain, they returned to the former and full camp situated at Galgal, as is plain from the last verse.
AND NO MAN DURST MOVE HIS TONGUE AGAINST THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL.—In Hebrew, no man whetted his tongue against the children of Israel. Masius: not even a dog would have whetted its tongue against any of the children of Israel, as if to say: Israel suffered no evil, and was formidable to all the nations round about; wherefore no one dared even to bark at it, not even a dog, an animal otherwise most irritable, but to be feared for its teeth, not its tongue; for dogs that bark much with the tongue scarcely bite with the teeth. It is a proverb.
24. SET YOUR FEET UPON THE NECKS OF THESE KINGS.—This was not of an insolent mind, or one elated by victory. For Josue knew well that saying of Aristides, volume 2, oration 9 On Peace: “An honourable use of victory brings no less praise than the victory.” He commanded his men, therefore, to tread on the necks of the kings: first, to give his men confidence and courage for conquering the other kings of the Chanaanites, and to show that God fulfils his promises through Moses, Deuteronomy 33, last verse:
“and thou shalt tread upon their necks.”
Second, that he might inflict deserved punishments on most impious tyrants. Third, that he might the further withdraw his men from their abominable crimes and from communion with the wicked Chanaanites, since they would see them trodden down, slain, and when slain hanged on the cross and exposed, as much by the vengeance of God as by the sentence of Josue. Allegorically: “This was not cruelty, but humanity,” says Origen, homily 11, “signifying the sacrament of Christ, which the Lord Jesus, foreshadowed before by the son of Nave in single cities, now fulfils in truth in single souls of believers: that those souls which were possessed by the worst kings, according to the prince of this world, these being expelled and destroyed, he may deign to make a dwelling of faith and a temple of the Holy Spirit.”
Symbolically St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian, takes the five kings to be the five senses which reign in man, but are overcome by Jesus fighting. “It is signified,” he says, “that before the Lord led his people out of Egypt and circumcised them, sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch reigned, and all things were subject to these as to princes, whom Jesus, as they fled to the cave of the body and to a dark place, that is, entered the very body, slew, that they might be slain by that by which before they reigned.”
34. FROM LEBNA HE PASSED TO LACHIS.—See verse 31.
Josue wisely used his victory, and the kings being slain, took all the cities in consternation and swept through them like lightning. Hannibal erred in this matter; for if, after the Romans had been cut down at Lake Trasimene, he had marched on Rome, he would have taken it. Whence it was said of him: “Hannibal knows how to conquer, but he knows not how to use victory.”
37. AND TOOK IT.—Josue therefore took Hebron, but by flying through. Whence some giants occupied it again, whom Caleb afterwards destroyed in it, as is plain from chapter 15:14, of whom in the following chapter, verse 21.
AND DESTROYED IT WITH THE EDGE OF THE SWORD,—that is, with the sharp edge of the sword; which the French say, au fil de l’épée. By this phrase it is signified that all were slaughtered with the sword; for what the mouth is to a man, the edge is to a sword. For as a man devours the food which he takes into his mouth, so a sword consumes whatever it strikes with its edge.
THE KING ALSO THEREOF,—namely he had already before smitten with the sword, and having smitten him had hanged him on a gibbet, as he said in verse 26. For he repeats the slaying of the king because he recounts the slaughter common to his city, although the king was slain not in Hebron but in Maceda.
40. HE SMOTE, etc., ASEDOTH.—Thus it is to be read with the Romans, not Aseoth. So also the Septuagint retained the Hebrew name as the proper name of a region, both here and in chapter 12:8, and chapter 13:20; and Eusebius also, in the Hebrew Places, asserts that Asedoth is the proper name of a city. Masius and others, however, take this name not as proper but as common, and translate it outpourings, or out-of-the-way places and valleys, where mountains or hills stretch out and pour themselves into valleys and plains. Our version, Deuteronomy 4:49, translates it the roots of the mountain, and Numbers 21:15, translates it rocks, which stretch out and pour themselves into a river.
HE PUT TO DEATH ALL THAT COULD BREATHE.—In Hebrew, every soul, that is, every man who enjoyed breath and life, “he slew”: for that the cattle were not slain, but driven off as spoil, is plain from the following chapter, verse 14. For nowhere did God command cattle to be slain except in Jericho, chapter 6:21, because it had been set apart as an anathema. So Abulensis, Question 98.
41. FROM CADESBARNE EVEN TO GAZA.—See here the strength, fortitude, happiness, swiftness and victories of Josue, by which, flying through like lightning, he laid low and subdued everything, however strongly fortified, such as Gaza was, the strongest city of the Philistines, so that Alexander the Great besieged it for two months before he took it, Diodorus being witness, book 17. Hence it also took its name from strength. For Gaza in Hebrew is Azza, or Gaza (for the letter ain is often pronounced as g: whence amorah is Gomorrah, etc.). But this name was afterwards confirmed to it for another reason by Cambyses, son of Cyrus, which Pomponius Mela relates, book 1, chapter 11: “In Palestine,” he says, “there is a great and well-fortified city, Gaza. The Persians call the treasury by that name. And hence the name, because when Cambyses was seeking to conquer Egypt by arms, he had brought hither the resources of war and money.” Hence also, a little after Josue’s passage, the giants recovered Gaza, and made it still stronger, as is related in the following chapter, verse 22.