Commentaria in Judices
2. AND THE LORD SAID: JUDA SHALL GO UP.—“Juda” here is the proper name not of a man and leader, as some suppose, but of a tribe, as if to say: The tribe of Juda shall begin to fight. For it was the strongest of all, the most noble, the most illustrious and the most famous, and in the camp of Israel it held the first line of battle: whence Jacob promised it the sceptre and the kingdom, Gen. 49:10, and that because from it Christ was to be born, leader, king, triumpher over and vanquisher of demons, sins, death and hell. Moreover, the tribe of Juda created Caleb as its leader of the war, as appears, whose fortitude, prudence, virtue and authority were well known.
3. AND JUDA SAID TO SIMEON HIS BROTHER,—that is, the Jews said to the Simeonites, or the tribe of Juda said to the tribe of Simeon. They are here called brothers by a particular reason, namely because the tribe of Simeon had received its lot within the tribe and bosom of Juda, Josue 19:1; otherwise all twelve tribes were brothers, because sprung from the twelve Patriarchs the sons of Jacob, who were brothers to one another.
5. ADONIBEZEC.—This is different from Adonisedec: for this one was king of Jerusalem, that one king of Bezec, a city in the tribe of Juda; this one was slain by Josue, that one by the Jews; this one in Hebrew signifies lord of justice, that one lord of lightning: for bezec is lightning, a flash. Fittingly, therefore, Adonibezec, like lightning, surpassed all in his strength and cruelty, so that he had cut off the extremities of the hands and feet of seventy kings. So the Poet says of both the Scipios:
The two thunderbolts of war, the Scipiads.
So James and John are called by Christ “Boanerges,” that is, sons of thunder, namely thunderbolts; for these leap forth from the thunder, as sons born of a father.
6. HIS HANDS AND FEET CUT OFF AT THE EXTREMITIES.—For “extremities” the Hebrew has behonoth, that is, thumbs, as the Chaldee, Lyranus, Vatablus, Pagninus, Cajetan and our Vulgate render it, Exodus 29:20, and elsewhere passim. Our Vulgate and the Septuagint here translate “extremities,” because the thumbs are the highest and chief part of the hand. Hence the thumb (pollex) is so called from prevailing (pollere), “because it prevails in strength among the other fingers,” says Isidore. Hence also in Greek it is called antikheir, because, set opposite the other fingers of the hand, it is as it were equal in power to them. The Jews therefore cut off the thumbs of the hands and feet of Adonibezec, by the just judgment and instinct of God, to render to his pride and cruelty the punishment of retaliation; for he himself had cut off the thumbs of seventy kings.
Moreover, in this punishment, besides the pain, there were two things, says Serarius. First, that those who were thus maimed could neither handle arms thereafter, nor escape by their feet, as Suetonius shows of Augustus, chap. 24, when he relates: “A Roman knight cut off the thumbs of two young men, to avoid taking the military oath.” Cicero, book III Of Duties, says that the Athenians cut off the thumbs of the Aeginetans: “So that a people powerful in fleet,” says Valerius Maximus, book IX, chap. 1, “could not enter with them into a contest of maritime strength,” and, as Aelian adds in book II of his Various History, “that it might not be able to bear a spear.”
Second, that there might be for them a kind of reproach of cowardice, because they had been slack in hand and fugitive in feet. Hence among the Italians, French and Belgians, vile, idle and cowardly men are called poltroons, as if thumb-maimed or mutilated. Hear Pliny... that strength and powerful vigour are signified by the thumb, if it is raised while the other four fingers are pressed down into the palm. For for that reason it is called antikheir by the Greeks, because it contends with equal strength against the whole rest of the hand, and serves in the place of the other hand, as Galen interprets. Among the Latins, however, it has its name because it especially prevails (pollet): for it rules in the hand, and does not cease even in the left, though that is wholly sluggish, and is no less than the whole hand always at its task. Indeed the ancients too understood that this one excels the others. They called it hallus, because alone of all it leaps upon the backs of the rest: for you will find an aspiration put by the ancients in place of the letter s, and conversely s for the aspirate. But it is simpler to derive hallus from the Greek hallesthai, for that is to leap. Those who wish to show a man useless in war make a hand with the thumb cut off: for this finger removed renders a man useless for actions and especially for war. And for that reason you may read that severe punishment was inflicted on some who, to avoid war, voluntarily cut off their own thumbs; elsewhere he speaks of Votienus. Those men the ancients called murci. The Talmudists in Sufha, chap. 10, note five men who were struck and punished in that very thing in which they excelled: namely, first, Samson in his strength; second, Saul in his lofty neck; third, Absalom in his hair; fourth, King Sedecias in his eyes; fifth, King Asa in his feet. So the rich glutton burned in the tongue which had burned with gluttony.
In like manner, the hands are cut off of covenant-breakers and forgers, who corrupt royal letters or the coinage with their hands. Whence Tertullian, book V Against Marcion: “As to cutting off the hands of the heretic,” he says, “I do not wonder if he takes away syllables, when he takes away whole pages.” St. Valerian, in his sermon On the Good of Discipline, when he says: “When no one sees a sound right hand, let him not judge that punishments were by due right granted to one guilty of falsehood.” In the army deserters were punished by the same mutilation. For of Avidius Cassius Vulcatius Gallicanus says: “He cut off the hands of many deserters; of others he cut the legs and hamstrings, saying that the example of a criminal living in misery was greater than of one slain.” And afterwards, from Aemilius Parthenianus: “He cut off the hands of many.”
7. SEVENTY KINGS (petty kings, that is, princes; for every city had its king, as we saw Josue 13:9 and following) HAVING THE EXTREMITIES OF THEIR HANDS AND FEET CUT OFF, GATHERED UP THE LEAVINGS OF THEIR MEAT UNDER MY TABLE.—Namely, he had cut off their thumbs, that they might not be able to rebel or flee; but out of pride he cast to them, as to dogs, the leavings of his meat under the table; and therefore the Hebrews inflicted on him the punishment of retaliation. So the Emperor Valerian, while trampling on the Christian rites, was seized by Sapor the Persian, and as often as he mounted a horse was trampled upon, according to Eusebius, book VII of the History, chap. 9. The same befell Bajazet, Emperor of the Turks, who was the saddle and the dog of Tamerlane. For when Tamerlane questioned him, already captured: If I had come into your power, as you have come into mine, what would you have done to me? He said: I would have made a cage of iron—You have pronounced your own sentence, said Tamerlane. And so there befell him what he himself would have done, and he was in a cage until the day of his death.
The Emperor Alexander, as Lampridius testifies, ordered a certain impostor to be suffocated with smoke from burning straw, while the herald cried: “He who sold smoke is punished by smoke.”
AS I HAVE DONE, SO HATH GOD REQUITED ME.—This is what is ordained in Wisdom 11:17: “By what things a man sinneth, by the same also he is tormented.” To this belongs that sentence of Christ, Matt. 26:52: “All that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” And Apoc. 13:10: “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth by the sword must be killed by the sword.” And Genesis 9:6: “Whosoever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed,” etc. And Habacuc 2:8, God addresses the king of Babylon: “Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the rest of the people shall spoil thee.” Finally the law of retaliation stands in Exodus 21:24: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,” etc. So the Emperor Constantine had his eyes put out by his mother Irene on the same day on which he himself five years before had blinded his uncle Nicephorus as aspiring to the empire, as Zonaras relates, tome III, who adds a like thing of the Emperor Leontius, that he was mutilated in the nose and driven from the Empire by Apsimarus, because he himself had stripped Justinian Rhinotmetus of the Empire by cutting off his nose.