Commentaria in Josue
The Septuagint for oak translate terebinth, because the Hebrew word alah or elon signifies any acorn-bearing tree. Whence St. Augustine understands by it the cross of Christ, by which the new Testament and covenant was ratified. Hear him here, last Question: “Now that a stone was set up under the terebinth signifies that which was said of the rock, that water might flow forth, because neither here was the stone set up without wood. And it was set under, because it would not have been exalted on the cross unless it had been humbly subject: or because at that time when Jesus Nave did this it was still a mystery to be overshadowed. For the wood of the terebinth distils a medicinal gum, which tree is put in this place by the Septuagint interpreters, though according to other interpreters oak is read.”
You will say: God commanded, Deuteronomy 16:21, saying: “Thou shalt plant no grove, nor any tree near the altar of the Lord thy God”; how then was this oak in the tabernacle near the altar? I answer that God forbids a tree to be planted, but not a tabernacle and ark to be erected beside a tree already planted. Add that the tree is forbidden, that is, trees which make a grove or wood after the manner of the Gentiles. Whence the Hebrew and Septuagint have: Thou shalt not make of any tree, that is, of any kind of trees.
27. BEHOLD THIS STONE SHALL BE A TESTIMONY UNTO YOU, THAT IT HATH HEARD ALL THE WORDS OF THE LORD WHICH HE HATH SPOKEN TO YOU.—“Hath heard.” So it is to be read with the Hebrew, Septuagint and Roman. Wrongly, therefore, some smatterers have written “you have heard.” It is a prosopopoeia; for to the senseless stone, as a witness on account of the inscription, hearing is attributed for the sinew of the speech: in truth, however, nothing else is signified than that the stone, before which these things were done, is a witness and memorial of the covenant entered into. The sense, therefore, is as if to say: If the stone had sense, it would have heard this covenant and could testify; now, since it has no sense, it will be a witness in an empty manner, as if to say: If you do not hear the words of God, this stone will be a dumb witness that you heard these pacts and violated them. Whence the Chaldean translates: Behold this stone shall be to us as the two tables of the stone of the covenant; for we have made it for a testimony; for the words which are written upon it are from the mouth of all the words of the Lord which he spoke with us, and it shall be to you for a memorial. Hence it is plain that the words or signs of this covenant were inscribed or cut on the stone.
In like manner to pathos, to confound, sting and goad the hard and insensible Jews, Moses, Deuteronomy 32:1, invokes heaven and earth, that they, though insensible, may feel and hear the words of God, which the people, endowed with sense and reason, will not hear. “Hear, O ye heavens, the things I speak: let the earth hear the words of my mouth.” And Isaias, chapter 1:2: “Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children, and exalted them: but they have despised me.” And Jeremias 2:12: “Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and ye gates thereof, be very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people have done two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water,” etc.
29. AND AFTER THESE THINGS JOSUE THE SON OF NUN, THE SERVANT OF THE LORD, DIED, BEING A HUNDRED AND TEN YEARS OLD,—In which year of his leadership Josue died is uncertain; for chronologers vary. Serarius here recounts twelve of their opinions, of which two are more probable and better proved, and have more authors. The former gives Josue’s leadership seventeen or eighteen years, the latter twenty-seven; and both can be reconciled, if one say that Josue ruled precisely only eighteen years, and died in that year, but that the book of Josue extends to events after his death, namely here in verse 31, narrating that Israel served the Lord many years, namely as long as Eleazar lived, and the ancients who had seen the works and prodigies of God fighting for Israel, and that Eleazar at last died, which perhaps happened about the twenty-seventh year from the beginning of Josue’s leadership: although these years of the elders running on after the death of Josue are contained in the years of Othoniel, who succeeded Josue, as will appear in Judges chapter 1 and following.
A HUNDRED AND TEN YEARS OLD.—Hence the chronology of the deeds of Josue is plain. For if we suppose that he presided over the people eighteen years, this will be the series of years. Moses died in the year 40 from the going out of the Hebrews from Egypt, which was of the world 2494. In the same year Josue succeeded Moses, and led the people into the promised land, and then for seven years subdued Chanaan by war; after this he lived yet eleven years, namely to the eighteenth year of his leadership. He died, therefore, in the year 58 from the going out of the Hebrews from Egypt, of the world 2512, after the death of Joseph (whose equal in age he was: for Joseph also lived 110 years) 184.
Hence it follows that Josue was born in the year of the world 2402, which was the 92nd after the death of Joseph; wherefore he was twenty-seven years younger than Moses. For at the exodus from Egypt Moses was eighty years old, but Josue fifty-three. Josue was fifteen years older than Caleb; for Caleb, after the seven years of the war in which Chanaan was subdued, was eighty-five years old, as he himself says in chapter xiv, verse 10, whereas Josue was then a hundred years old.
Note the three parts, and likewise three states, of the years and life of Josue. For he was born in Egypt and lived there fifty-three years; then forty years in the desert, where in the second year he defeated Amalec (Exodus xvii, 10), and likewise Og, Sehon and the other enemies of Israel. Finally, entering the promised land and subduing it, he lived in it seventeen or eighteen years. The first period he spent in servitude, the second in wandering, the third in command, of which the first seven he passed in wars, the last ten in peace and in ordering the commonwealth, and in it he died in the 110th year of his age, which was before the birth of Christ
30. AND THEY BURIED HIM IN THE BORDER OF HIS POSSESSION IN THAMNATH-SARE.—In the Hebrew it is Thamnath Sarach, but the Septuagint and our own translator usually omit the last chech, because it is harshly pronounced; hence for Noach they render Noe, for Corach Core, for Terach Thare.
Now the Hebrews in the Seder Olam teach that Thamnath Josue, Serach, is put by metathesis for Thamnath Cheres, that is, temuna cheres, that is, the image or statue of the sun, because the Israelites set it up over the sepulchre of Josue, to preserve the memory of that prodigy by which he had made the sun stand still. The same is affirmed by R. Salomon, Masius, Arias, Cajetan, Magalianus, Serarius, Adrichomius and others.
Hence also in Judges ii, 8, it is called Thamnath Serach in the Hebrew, and in the Septuagint and some of the Latins Thamnath Chares, that is, the image of the sun. Pliny, book XXXIV, chapter vii, celebrates above all colossi the colossus of the sun. “Before all,” he says, “the colossus of the sun at Rhodes was held in admiration, which Chares of Lindus, a disciple of the above-mentioned Lysippus, had made. It was seventy cubits in height. This image, after fifty-six years, was thrown down by an earthquake, but even as it lies it is a marvel. Few can embrace its thumb. Its fingers are larger than most statues. Vast caverns gape from the broken limbs. Inside are seen great masses of rock, by whose weight he had steadied it as he set it up. They say it was finished in twelve years, at a cost of 300 talents, which they had gathered from the equipment of King Demetrius, who abandoned the royal custom.”
But this colossus is nothing, if it be compared with the standing still of the sun and this colossus of Josue.