Commentaria in Josue
9. THEN BALAC THE SON OF SEPHOR KING OF MOAB AROSE, AND FOUGHT AGAINST ISRAEL.—“Fought,” not in effect and with arms, for seeing himself inferior and unequal he abstained from war, but in will, attempt and counsels, and by magical arts, intending destruction through Balaam the soothsayer. For Balaam, at Balac’s request, wished to curse the Hebrews, which curse, if it had obtained its effect, Balac would have attacked and destroyed them; but seeing God turn the curses of Balaam into blessings, terrified, he did not dare to assail the Hebrews. See Numbers chapter 23, verse 11. Somewhat otherwise St. Augustine: “The fight,” he says, “was an armed defence.”
See here how the words of the Hebrews often signify an act not perfected but begun, indeed only the will and attempt, not the effect. So in verse 11 the men of Jericho are said to have fought, that is, to have prepared themselves for battle against the Hebrews. So Amos 9:3 it is said: “If they hide themselves from my eyes,” that is, if they try to hide themselves; for in fact no one can hide himself from the most bright eyes of God. Psalm 33:4: “O magnify the Lord with me.” Luke 1:46: “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” that is, is eager and desires to magnify; for in truth we cannot magnify or exalt God.
12. AND I SENT BEFORE YOU HORNETS: AND I DROVE THEM OUT FROM THEIR PLACES, THE TWO (the Septuagint, Roman, have dodeka, that is, twelve, but the Complutensian and Royal have duo, that is, two, namely Sehon and Og), KINGS OF THE AMORRHITES, NOT WITH THY SWORD, NOR WITH THY BOW,—that is, not by the strength and virtue of thy sword and bow, but of the hornets sent before by me. For they so wore down the Amorrhites that the Hebrews following easily slew them with their swords and pierced them with arrows.
15. YOU HAVE YOUR CHOICE: CHOOSE THIS DAY THAT WHICH PLEASETH YOU, WHOM YOU WOULD RATHER SERVE,—as if to say: It is in your own judgment to choose the true God or the false gods of the Gentiles; but if you choose these, the sure and bitter vengeance and punishment of God will receive you; if, however, you choose God, he will heap you with all good things. Wherefore Josue here does not concede to the Hebrews a true option of choosing God or gods, he who in the preceding chapter drove them to the true worship of the one God; but he uses a rhetorical artifice, and brings forward so many advantages of the worship of the true God and so many disadvantages of the worship of idols, that none but a madman would, neglecting the true God, choose false gods for himself to worship.
19. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SERVE THE LORD.—He aggravates the difficulty of serving God, that he may the more incite the Hebrews to serve him, as if to say: God wills to be worshipped alone, and to be served exactly and constantly with the whole heart; but you are prone to idols and vices, and are of a changeable and inconstant mind; wherefore you will not be able to serve him unless you put on new, great and constant minds to reject idols and vices, and to love God holily with the whole heart, and worship him continually: put those on, therefore. This is plain from the reason he adds:
FOR HE IS A HOLY GOD.—In Hebrew ki elohim kedoshim hu, that is, because he is the holy Gods. The word holy is in the plural number. He uses a plural adjective, both to hint the plurality of persons in God and the Holy Trinity, as many will have it; and because the name of God, elohim, among the Hebrews is plural; and because the plural number in this place is more suitable for comparison with the many gods of the Gentiles; as if you should say: The gods of the Gentiles are impure and wicked, but ours are pure and holy (for our God, namely the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, loves holiness, hates crimes); and finally to signify the all-embracing and most absolute holiness of God. For the holiness of God embraces all the holiness of all the Angels and men, and immeasurably transcends it. See Ribera on Micheas chapter 5.
23. PUT AWAY STRANGE GODS FROM AMONG YOU.—St. Augustine, Question 24, thinks there were then no idols among the Hebrews, and gathers this from verse 31, where it is said: “And Israel served the Lord”; wherefore by strange gods or idols St. Augustine understands thoughts alien to God and the majesty of God, namely vain phantasms which one forms for himself about God, when he imagines God to be more alien than he really is. So tropologically the idol of the avaricious is gold, of the proud honour, of the gluttonous delicacies, of the lustful Venus. But Josue seems to speak altogether of idols properly so called, whether such as were then among the people, or such as their descendants were a little after to erect; for Josue directs these words also to posterity. Finally, although in the time of Josue there was no public idol, which is signified in verse 31 by the words already cited, yet that the Hebrews worshipped idols privately, even in the desert, is plain from Amos chapter 5, verse 26, and Acts chapter 7, verse 43. See what is said there. So Masius, Serarius and others.
25. SO JOSUE MADE A COVENANT THAT DAY.—This covenant was that the people should promise to worship one God, and keep his laws given by Moses, as we heard in verse 21. Josue, on the other hand, on the part of God, promised the people that the Lord would be their God, that is, protector, provider, and promoter, and would preserve, feed and exalt them in the promised land.
Moreover I have recounted the rite of ratifying a covenant on Genesis chapter 15, verses 17 and 18, Exodus chapter 24, verse 6 and following. For the covenant was ratified by federal victims which were then slain and sacrificed, and hence were said to strike or smite a covenant; because they smote the victim, tacitly imprecating a like smiting on him who should violate the covenant. Whence that saying:
They stood, and a slain sow confirmed the covenants.
Wherefore it seems that in this covenant also victims were certainly sacrificed; for this was a solemn covenant, by which Josue, about to die, bound the whole people to God.
AND SET THE PEOPLE A STATUTE AND ORDINANCE,—that is, he caused to be read by the priests from Deuteronomy the precepts of God, moral and ceremonial as well as judicial, to refresh and inculcate the memory of them in the people.
26. AND HE WROTE ALL THESE THINGS IN THE VOLUME OF THE LAW OF THE LORD.—Josue wrote the rite and manner of this covenant, ratified on both sides in set words, in the book of Deuteronomy, namely at the end of the book; for Moses had commanded this book to be placed at the side of the ark, Deuteronomy 31:24 and 26, because this book contains all the precepts of God, which are the condition of the covenant between God and the people made through Moses, and here renewed through Josue.
AND HE TOOK A GREAT STONE,—to erect it as a sign and perpetual monument of the covenant entered into, which should continually admonish the Hebrews and strike their eyes, that they might holily keep this covenant and observe the precepts.
AND SET IT UNDER THE OAK THAT WAS IN THE SANCTUARY OF THE LORD,—which was in the court of the tabernacle, which with the ark Josue had caused to be transferred from Silo to Sichem by the priests and Levites, that before it, as before God residing in it, this covenant might be ratified. The Hebrews, whom Masius follows, think this holm-oak or oak is the same as that under which Jacob buried the idols, Genesis 35:4, indeed the same as that beside which God first appeared to Abraham and promised him this land, Genesis 12:6, so that where Abraham had been appointed heir of the land by God, there the Hebrews, now possessing the land, might renew the covenant with God, and that this place is therefore here called the sacrarium, or sanctuary of the Lord; because, namely, in it Abraham first consecrated an altar to God, where Jacob and others afterwards invoked God.
You will say: That oak could not have lived so long and survived; for from Abraham to Josue 545 years elapsed, but oaks commonly live only three hundred years; for in the first hundred years they grow to their due height and thickness; in the second hundred years they strengthen and harden in it and in their robur; in the third hundred years they gradually fail and die. I answer: This is commonly true, but nevertheless some oaks are older and live longer; for they have very hard wood, whence they are also called robora. Add that this oak was an oak-grove, as the Chaldean translates, which lasts always, while one oak dying propagates itself by acorns falling to the ground, that from them another oak may spring, and from this another and another, so that they perpetually endure.