Commentaria in Josue
15. THE NAME OF HEBRON BEFORE WAS CALLED CARIATH-ARBE: ADAM, THE GREATEST THERE AMONG THE ENACIMS, WAS LAID.—He shows that the Enacim, that is, giants, were in Hebron, as he said in verse 12, from the fact that Hebron was once called Cariath, that is, the city of Arbe the giant.
Note first: This city was called Hebron; for of it it is said, Numbers 13:23: “Hebron was built seven years before Tanis, a city of Egypt.” Then Hebron was occupied by Arbe the giant with his posterity, and thence was surnamed Cariath, that is, city of Arbe, who was “Adam,” that is, man, “the greatest among the Enacim”; or who was by antonomasia surnamed Adam, because he was the greatest man among the giants, and had chosen in Hebron his seat and sepulchre. Whence from the Hebrew you may translate properly and clearly: Hebron was before called Cariath-Arbe, who had been the greatest man among the Enacim. So the Chaldean, Masius, Cajetan, Vatablus, Arias, Pagninus and others. That this is the genuine sense of this place is plain from the Hebrew, and from the fact that this Arbe was the father of Enac, as is said in chapter 15, verse 13, and chapter 21, verse 11. From Enac, moreover, the Enacim giants sprang. Hence Arbe is here called the greatest, both for vastness of body, and for primacy and command, and for the glory of his deeds, and for dignity, as one who was father, indeed patriarch, of the Enacim, from whom all this offspring of giants was propagated, and therefore his name was given to Hebron, in which these giants dwelt. The same is clear from the Septuagint, who translate: the name of Hebron was once the city of Arbe (wrongly some read Argob), the metropolis of the Enacim. St. Jerome interprets this otherwise, on Matthew 26 and in the Questions on Paralipomenon, and the Hebrews in Bereshith Rabba, that is, in the Greater Genesis, and Lyranus, Hugo, Dionysius the Carthusian and Abulensis follow them, namely as if to say: Hebron was formerly called Cariath-Arbe, that is, the city of four, namely of illustrious men, because in it were buried the four Patriarchs, namely Adam, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with their wives. Of the last three it is plain from Genesis 49:30, and elsewhere; of Adam it is plain from this place. For St. Jerome seems here to have retained the name Adam as proper to the first-formed man in order to indicate that he is buried in Hebron, and therefore expressed “was laid,” that is, was buried, which does not appear in the Hebrew, but may be understood. Moreover, though St. Jerome seems more inclined to this opinion, yet he does not plainly and fully assert it. Hear him in the Epitaph of St. Paula: “She went up to Hebron, that is, Cariath-Arbe, that is, the town of four men, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the great Adam, whom the Hebrews hold to have been buried there according to the book of Jesus Nave; though most think Caleb the fourth, whose memorial is shown at its side.” St. Jerome is followed by Isidore, Rupert, Marianus, Scotus and others already cited. The name Hebron favours this, which in Hebrew signifies fellowship, union, joining, because in it the four chief Patriarchs received fellowship of sepulchre.
Moreover, that John Lucidus, book 1 On the Emendation of Times, chapter 4, thinks Adam was a giant, from the fact that he is here called “Adam, the greatest among the Enacim,” is improbable: for so he would have been a monstrous man made by God, and a monster of nature. He is called, then, “the greatest among the Enacim,” not for stature but for dignity, because he was the first man created by God, and parent of all the rest, likewise endowed with great knowledge, wisdom and grace, and placed in paradise. But the words “among the Enacim” only signify that he was buried in Hebron among the Enacim. Again, St. Jerome took his opinion from the Hebrews, who in Bereshith Rabba write that the name Arba, which signifies four, was given to that city because in ancient ages four men dwelt there, Aner, Eschol, Mamre and Abraham; the same were circumcised there; four most renowned matrons also were buried there, Eve, Sara, Rebecca and Lia; and the four Patriarchs Adam, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and because from that place Abraham, pursuing the four kings, smote them. But as it is clear that very many things in those Commentaries are fictitious, so these must be little firm and probable.
Hear now Abulensis: This is the truer and more common sense, which almost all Catholics hold. For Adam is said to have lived near the city of Hebron, and there to have ended his days, and there he was buried with Eve his wife; there also, they say, he was formed by God. For it is established that he was formed outside paradise. But Eve was formed in paradise from the rib of Adam, Genesis 2; so also testify the nations which now dwell near the city of Hebron, which is called by the inhabitants the Valley of Tears, because Adam there mourned Abel, slain by Cain, for a hundred years. So Abulensis. The same is related by Saligniacus, Bredenbach, Borchard, and from them Adrichomius in his Description of the tribes of Juda, number 7, 90, and David reigned in Hebron, as in the ancestral city of fathers and forefathers, 2 Kings 2:3. There also was the house of Zachary, in which St. John the Baptist was born and brought up. Hence Masius also on chapter 15, verse 13, asserts that the cities neighbouring Hebron were named Dabir, that is, sacred inner shrine, and as it were oracle; Cariath-sepher, that is, city of letters, because in it, as in an archive, the monuments of the ancient Fathers were kept.
But all this seems taken from St. Jerome, whose authority later Latins have commonly followed. For the other, more ancient and more learned writers assert that Adam lived in Judea and Jerusalem, and there died and was buried, not in Hebron, but in Golgotha, or Mount Calvary, where Christ was crucified, indeed that the mount of Calvary took its name from the skull of Adam. So Origen, homily 35 on Matthew; St. Epiphanius, heresy 40, which is that of the Tatianites; St. Athanasius, tract On the Passion of the Lord; St. Cyprian, sermon On the Resurrection; Theophylact and Euthymius on Matthew 27; nay, St. Jerome himself, epistle 17 to Marcella; St. Cyril; Moses Bar Cepha, book On Paradise; St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople; Anastasius of Sinai, book 6 of the Hexameron; and others whom Suarez cites and follows, part 3, Question 46, article 10; and Sixtus of Siena, book 6 of the Library, annotation 432. These ancients are followed by more recent writers, namely Baronius, Pereira, Tornielli, Feuardent, who says that this is the constant opinion of the Church, Salianus and others.
Some try to reconcile both opinions, saying that Adam was first buried in Hebron, then in Golgotha. So Honorius of Autun in his Chronicle, Villalpando in the Apparatus, book 1, chapter 9, Delrio, and Serarius favours it: and that on account of the tradition of the inhabitants of the Holy Land, which Borchard, Adrichomius and others recount; but Genebrard, book 1 of the Chronology, says that Adam was buried according to the Hebrews in Hebron, but according to the Fathers in Golgotha. However this may be, it is certain to me that this is not signified of Hebron in this place. For Adam here is not a proper name, but a common noun, signifying man; and it denotes not the first-formed man, but Arbe the giant. So in 2 Kings 7:19 it is said: “This is the law of Adam (that is, of man), O Lord God.” And Osee 11:4: “I will draw them with the cords of Adam,” that is, of man, with which men are wont to be drawn, and often elsewhere, especially in the Hebrew. For Adam is derived from adamah, a word which signifies red earth, as homo from humus, Genesis 2. For it explains who Arbe was, namely Adam, that is, a man, the greatest, both in bulk of body and in power, dignity and authority. Whence it seems that Arbe is the same as rab, that is, great, powerful, prince, from the root raba, that is, much, that is, he was great, so that the aleph in Arbe is not radical, but a formative letter of the noun; unless you prefer to take Arbe properly, so as to signify four, and fourth or square, as if Arbe here were the fourth of the first giants and princes, or had himself been equal and equivalent to four others.
Moreover God, for the sake of Caleb, to whom he gave Hebron, so directed the lots in the casting of lots of the tribes that the lot of the tribe of Juda fell near Hebron, lest Caleb, possessing it, should be torn from his own tribe of Juda. Finally, St. Jerome, Adrichomius and others assign the sepulchre of Caleb near Hebron.
AND THE LAND CEASED FROM WARS,—This closing clause, after the Hebrew manner, is to be referred to what precedes, not proximately but remotely, namely to the wars finished by Josue, of which treatment was made in the earlier chapters, as if to say: The wars being ended and the Chanaanites suppressed, when their land was to be divided by lot among the twelve tribes of Israel, and when Caleb had asked and obtained from Josue his portion in it, that land rested from wars, as being now subject to the victorious Hebrews.