Commentaria in Judices
AND HE COMMANDED SILENCE,—not to the servants or courtiers, but to Aod himself. For in Hebrew it is, hush, as if to say: hush the secret which thou hast, lest the courtiers hear it, but wait till I send all the bystanders out, and so I alone shall receive it from thee. So the Interpreters. Abulensis, however, understands by silence the withdrawal of the attendants.
20. I HAVE A WORD FROM GOD TO THEE,—namely because God commands me to slay thee, the oppressor of Israel. So St. Augustine. He says this that the king might rise from his throne, as if to receive reverently the oracle and command of God, and so he could more easily and secretly strike and slay him mortally, as I said. And so it came to pass, for Eglon “forthwith rose up from his throne,” to show reverence to God and to His ambassador Aod, as we rise at the Gospel when it is read. So Balaam says to king Balac: “Stand, Balac, and hearken,” Num. 23:18. “So the messenger,” says Pliny, book XVIII, chap. 3, said to Cincinnatus, naked and ploughing: “Cover your body, that I may deliver the commands of the Senate and Roman people.” Moreover God chastised the Emperor Valentinian, because through the wickedness and persuasion of his Arian wife he had not risen at the coming of St. Martin. “For fire covered the royal seat, and a blaze scorched the king himself on that part of the body on which he sat.” So, says Sulpicius, Dialogues, book I, chap. 6, “he is proudly cast from his throne and unwillingly rises to Martin: and having embraced much him whom he had before decreed to spurn, he confessed, amended, that he had felt the divine power.”
21. AND THRUST IT INTO HIS BELLY,—he struck him therefore by a thrust, not by a cut, as I said. He did this as a tyrannicide, not as a ruler of the people, says St. Thomas, book 1 On the Government of Princes, chap. 6.
Eusebius in his Chronicle relates that in the time of Aod, Tros founded Troy, Erichthonius reigned at Athens, Minos in Crete, Rhadamanthus in Lycia, Pelops at Argos, Cadmus at Thebes, and his grandson Bacchus in India. Wherefore then was the age of the Gods; for then flourished twelve illustrious men and women, and therefore were reckoned among the Gods, whom Cicero, Tusc. I, comprehends from Ennius in these verses:
Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo.
Then also flourished Zamolxis, lawgiver and god of the Goths in Scythia: Elissa the Libyan Sibyl, daughter of Jove and Lamia the daughter of Neptune. Danaus by the work of his fifty daughters slew as many sons of his brother Aegyptus, only Lynceus, who reigned after him, escaping: Crassus king of the Argives, under whom Calipias the son of Pyrans the first held the priesthood for the first time. Among the same, Hypermnestra, daughter of Danaus, holds the priesthood.
22. THE EXCREMENTS CAME OUT.—For it is natural that, when death is violently inflicted, from the anguish of the departing soul the belly is loosened and the filth is expelled by the bowels or bladder, as is plain in those who are hanged.
24. HE WENT OUT BY A POSTERN GATE.—Wrongly Lyranus reads, by the porch: the Septuagint render, the ordered ones; St. Augustine, Question 22, “soldiers keeping watch,” who, namely, are wont to keep guard before the king’s bedchamber. The Chaldee renders, exedra, such as are wont to be in the antechamber of Kings and Princes, where the other courtiers gather who are to approach the king, waiting till they are summoned by the king. But what follows plainly indicates that Aod went out not through the antechamber, for there he would have been seen by all, marked and seized, but secretly by a postern.
28. THEY SEIZED THE FORDS OF THE JORDAN WHICH LEAD INTO MOAB,—namely to slay the garrison of the king of Moab, which was on this side of the Jordan at Jericho, lest it should escape by the Jordan into Moab.
30. AND THE LAND RESTED EIGHTY YEARS,—that is, verse 30, until the eightieth year from the death of Othoniel, in which Aod, his successor, died. Wherefore within these 80 years are included the 18 years in which the Hebrews, subdued, served the Moabites. For who would believe that Aod presided over Israel 80 years, and for as many years there was no war in Israel? See what was said,
31. AFTER HIM WAS SAMGAR.—He was the third Judge in order, but of short time, and of a few months. Hence Samgar in Hebrew is the same as he sojourned, says Origen, or wonder of sojourners, says Pagninus. Whence in him it is clear how true is that of Eccles. chap. 10:11: “All power is of short life.” So of the Emperor Marius Trebellius says: “On one day he was made Emperor, on another day he was seen to reign, on the third day he was slain”; evidently: “The king is today, and tomorrow he shall die,” says Eccles. ibidem, verse 12. The same Marius as Consul held the suffect consulship for six afternoon hours; whence he was sprinkled by Cicero with such a jest: “We had a consul so severe and so censorious that in his magistracy no one dined, no one supped, no one slept.” So Trebellius, in his book On the Thirty Tyrants, chap. 8.
WHO SLEW (by himself alone, says Abulensis, not through companions, as Lyranus will have it) OF THE PHILISTINES SIX HUNDRED MEN WITH A PLOUGHSHARE.—So also the Septuagint, Origen and St. Augustine render, ploughshare; but the Chaldee, Pagninus, Vatablus and the Rabbis render, ox-goad. The ploughshare is the iron or point of the plough, by which the earth is cleft and broken up, and which makes furrows, and by undermining the earth on both sides as it were vomits it, and is thence called vomer. Samgar seems therefore to have been a husbandman, and, the Philistines rushing in, to have suddenly sprung from the plough to battle, snatching up the ploughshare, as the Hungarians still do when the Turks rush in, and as the Spaniards once did when the Moors were pressing: in sign of which even Spanish peasants, when they plough, go about girt with swords, as if ready to resist an enemy suddenly invading. So Samson with the jawbone of an ass slew a thousand Philistines, chap. 15, verse 16; evidently in a sudden affair whatever comes to hand is seized, when fury supplies arms, according to Claudian:
Whatever anger suggests is borne for a weapon.
In like manner from the plough to the Dictatorship were called the ancient heroes of the Romans, as Camillus, Curius, Cincinnatus, Fabricius, etc., who freed Rome from the Gauls, Samnites and other enemies. “The bravest men,” says Pliny, book XVIII, chap. 4, “and the most strenuous soldiers are born of husbandmen, and least of all harbour evil thoughts.” “The husbandman,” says Maximus of Tyre, oration 29, “is exercised in continual labour, lives in the open air, friend of the soil, familiar with snows, with limbs compacted, unshod; ready of hand, wakeful, swift of foot, robust to endure: whom if it were needful to fight, you would see a soldier trained in true labours, such as Darius experienced in the battle of Marathon.” Hence the old proverb: “Strike a blow from the plough, or drive in the ploughshare,” commonly said when one bids another fight strenuously, though without skill. Pausanias recounts its origin, book Eliaca 1: A certain Glaucus of Carystus, he says, when the ploughshare by chance had fallen from the plough as he was breaking the earth, picked it up and fitted it to his hand in place of a hammer. When his father Demylus saw this, he brought the youth to Olympia for the boxers’ contest. But when, ignorant of the art, he was already almost failing, afflicted with blows, his father cried out: “Drive in the ploughshare,” admonishing him so to attack the enemy as he was wont to wound the earth with the ploughshare. At this word the youth’s courage returned, and he conquered. The same afterwards conquered twice in the Pythian games, eight times in the Nemean, likewise eight times in the Isthmian: evidently the blows of peasants are strong and hard; for once men contended not with guns but with arms.
Tropologically the Gloss: The ploughshare, it says, is confession; because as the earth is opened and cleft by the ploughshare to receive the seed and bear fruit; so by confession the earth of our heart is broken up to receive the seed of the word and grace of God, and by it to produce the fruit of good works. By this, therefore, the Philistines are struck, that is, the falling ones, that is, the sins and vices which make us fall into the depth of Hell. Origen takes by the ploughshare a simple admonition, which also converts souls. The ploughshare also signifies the force of the word of God in the soul, by which the thorns of vices are rooted out and hardness of heart is softened. So St. Jerome on Isaias chap. 1. The ploughshare, thirdly, designates the tongue of preachers, Isaias 11:4. The ploughshares of God are therefore preachers and zealous men, who cleave and plough the field of the Lord with works of charity and with word and example, and who, as Tertullian says, soon to be cited, are workmen of good fruit. The ploughshare finally signifies the affection of twofold charity, or an upright sense and mind. So Tertullian, book IV Against Marcion, chap. 1. Likewise the study of peace, of modest concord. For with the ploughshare the earth is ploughed in time of peace, not of war. So Tertullian, book III Against Marcion, chap. 21.
Allegorically Samgar was a type of Christ, who with the ploughshare of the Gospel preaching struck the Philistines, that is, demons, idolaters and the impious, when he removed idolatry and impiety from the minds of men: