Commentaria in Josue
The Septuagint, in the first Roman edition, adds: “There they placed with him in the tomb in which they buried him the knives of flint with which Jesus had circumcised the children of Israel in Galgal, when he brought them out of Egypt, as the Lord had commanded; and there they are to this present day.” Cyril of Alexandria, weighing this narrative, in book IV on John, chapter v, says: “Not without cause were the knives laid in that same place with him, but that we may learn that the grace of spiritual circumcision (which is the herald of heavenly goods to us) was fixed to the death of the Saviour.”
Gregory of Tours adds, in book I of the Miracles, or For they produce fruits in the manner of gourds, having hard shells around them, but inside they are full of wool. And of these they say that garments were wont to be made for Jesus Nave himself. Even today they yield such wool; we have seen some of it brought by certain persons, and we marvelled at its whiteness and its fineness.”
ON THE NORTH SIDE OF MOUNT GAAS.—St. Jerome, Masius, Adrichomius and others assert that Mount Gaas is a part or offshoot of Mount Ephraim. Hence also the Hebrews in the Seder Olam teach that Josue died on the 26th of Nisan, which almost coincides with the 25th of March, on which Jesus Christ, his antitype, died on the cross for the salvation of the world; although in the Roman Martyrology Jesus is read as entered among the saints on the first of September.
The Hebrews teach in the Seder Olam and in the Midrash Ruth the Great that, when Josue was buried on Mount Ephraim, an earthquake occurred, and that from it the mountain was called Gaas, that is, of commotion and trembling; for gaas signifies to be moved and to tremble. Masius laughs at this as a fable, but Serarius defends it as history, and says that in this matter Josue was a type of Jesus Christ, at whose death “the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent,” Matthew xxvii, 51.
Moreover, there is no doubt that the Hebrews mourned the death of Josue, as that of Moses, with solemn pomp; yet no mention is made here of any mourning, which the Fathers refer to a mystery, namely, that it is signified thereby that in the old law under Moses the dead were to be mourned, because they descended into hell, to the limbo of the fathers; but in the new law there is cause for rejoicing at the death of the faithful, because Jesus by dying has opened heaven to them, that they may ascend to where he first entered and went before them on the way.
Finally, no mention is made of the children of Josue, because he himself was unmarried and a virgin, as I said in the preface from St. Ignatius, Chrysostom and others. Hear St. Jerome, book I, Against Jovinian: “Jesus,” he says, “is buried in Thamnath-Sare, that is, in the most perfect principality, or in the number of the new covering, to signify that the flocks of virgins are covered by the help of the Saviour; on Mount Ephraim, that is, on the fruitful mountain; on the north of Mount Gaas, which is interpreted commotion. For Mount Sion, the sides of the north, the city of the great King, which has always been envied as one set in opposition, says in each temptation: ‘But my feet were almost moved.’” And below: “Wherefore also Moses when dying is mourned by the people of Israel, but Jesus, as one who was to live, is not mourned. For marriages end in death; virginity begins to be crowned after death.”
Moreover, the Rabbis in their book Juchasin tell marvellous and pleasing things of the war which Josue waged with forty-five kings of Armenia, Persia and Media, which Serarius here recounts at length, and then refutes as fabulous, Question XIII.
31. AND ISRAEL SERVED THE LORD ALL THE DAYS OF JOSUE.—namely because Josue held them in the worship of God and in piety by word and example. Hear Tully, book I, epistle to Lentulus: “These things are written divinely by our Plato: that such as the rulers in a commonwealth are, such the rest of the citizens are wont to be.”
AND OF THE ANCIENTS WHO LIVED A LONG TIME AFTER JOSUE.—These ancients were Eleazar the High Priest, Caleb and the rest who at the time of the spies of the Holy Land had not yet reached the twentieth year of their age, and had not murmured; for all the others died in the desert on account of their murmuring, and did not see Chanaan, Numbers xiii and xiv.
32. THE BONES ALSO OF JOSEPH, WHICH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL HAD TAKEN OUT OF EGYPT, THEY BURIED IN SICHEM.—For Joseph had commanded that he should be buried not in Egypt among the unbelieving and impious, but in Chanaan among the faithful and pious, with his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, the Patriarchs; especially because he knew that Christ would be born, suffer and rise again in Chanaan, and hoped that he himself would rise with him and through him, which it is likely also came to pass. There was also another reason, namely that Joseph might encourage the Hebrews to the exodus from Egypt and to the entry into the land promised by God. See what was said on Genesis xxiii, at the end, and Genesis l, 23, and Exodus xiii, 19, where Moses, fulfilling Joseph’s last wishes, carried his bones with him as he went out of Egypt.
In like manner Noe religiously took the bones of Adam into the ark, and after the flood distributed them among his three sons, and gave to Sem, whom he preferred to the other two, the skull of Adam, and with it Judea, as James Orro Haita, or of Edessa, who was the master of St. Ephrem, relates, and from him Masius, who translated his book into Latin. So great among the ancients were the care and honour of the sepulchre, on account of the faith they had in the immortality of the soul, and the hope of the resurrection through the merits of Christ, who was to live and die in Chanaan.
IN A PART OF THE FIELD WHICH HE HAD BOUGHT.—See what was said on Genesis, chapter xxxiii, 19.
AND IT WAS IN THE POSSESSION OF THE CHILDREN OF JOSEPH.—that is, it fell to the Ephraimites, who were born of Ephraim, son of Joseph. See what was said on Genesis xlviii, 22.
33. ELEAZAR ALSO, THE SON OF AARON, DIED, AND PHINEES HIS SON BURIED HIM IN GABAATH, WHICH WAS GIVEN TO HIM ON MOUNT EPHRAIM.—Whether Gabaa was first given to Eleazar, as Masius and Abulensis hold, or to his son Phinees, as Vatablus holds and St. Jerome suggests in the Epitaph of St. Paula, is uncertain. It is certain that Gabaa was surnamed that of Phinees, whether because he dwelt in it for a very long time, or for some other reason. Moreover, Eleazar the High Priest directed Josue, and consulted God for him in doubtful matters, as God had commanded by Moses in Numbers, chapter xxvii, verse 21; hence Eleazar in Hebrew is the same as the help of God; for this he himself afforded to the prince Josue and to the whole camp of the Hebrews. Phinees, a man of great zeal, succeeded his father Eleazar in the pontificate, as is clear from Numbers xxv, 11.
ON MOUNT EPHRAIM.—From this it is clear that Gabaa was in the tribe of Ephraim; it is therefore strange that St. Jerome, or rather Eusebius, in the Hebrew Places, places it in the tribe of Benjamin; for although most of the cities assigned to the Levites in chapter xxi were in the tribe of Juda or Benjamin, yet Gabaa was given out of the usual order to Eleazar and Phinees, both on account of their merits, and that Eleazar the High Priest might be near the prince Josue, who dwelt in his own tribe of Ephraim, and might assist and direct him with counsels and every help.
Finally, the Septuagint in the Roman edition adds some things, which Theodoret also acknowledges, and the Syriac (whence you may gather that the Syriac was translated from the Greek of the Septuagint, not from the Hebrew, as I have noted elsewhere), according to Masius. They are these: “On that day the children of Israel, taking the ark of God, carried it round among themselves (the Syriac has, in Israel), and Phinees performed the priesthood in place of Eleazar his father until he died, and was buried in Gabaa, which was his. But the children of Israel departed, every man to his place and to his city. And the children of Israel worshipped Astarte and Astaroth, and the gods of the nations that were round about them. And the Lord delivered them into the hands of Eglon king of Moab, and he ruled over them eighteen years.”
But these things seem to have been transcribed here from the book of Judges, where we shall hear them. Hence also the Syriac says that these words are marked with an obelisk, as additions. For in the Hebrew, Chaldee, Latin, Septuagint, … and Regius they are lacking in this place.