Commentaria in Judices
Moreover, Adonibezec seems, humbled by this punishment, to have come to himself and changed his mind and heart; for he both confessed his former cruelty and proclaimed the equity of God. Penitent, therefore, he acknowledged the just vengeance of God upon him, and therefore calls Him Elohim, that is, just judge and avenger, and Him one and alone, not many; whence also he was led into Jerusalem, that is, into the suburban field of Jerusalem, says Josephus, and therefore into the city of Jerusalem itself, after the Jews had stormed it, says Hugh Victorinus, and there died: and this by a fitting symbol, as though he had been led over from sins to penitence, from impiety to the worship of the true God, from the blindness of idolatry to the vision of faith and peace, from pride to lowliness, from blasphemy to the praise of God; and therefore the Hebrews pardoned him his life, says Magalianus. Wherefore Adonibezec, that is, lord of lightning, from lightning became Adonisedec, that is, lord of justice, and of just patience and penitence. Symbolically the demon, says Serarius, is truly Adonibezec, or lord of lightning: first, because of him the Saviour says, Luke 10:18: “I saw Satan like lightning falling from heaven.” Secondly, because lightning rightly signifies pride and vainglory, which sheds a little brightness, but so that it suddenly passes away, vanishes in a moment, and is often the beginning of thunderbolts and very grievous tempests. And indeed “Satan is king over all the children of pride,” Job 41:25. This Adonibezec takes kings captive, and indeed seventy, that is, very many. They are those who excel others in power, dignity, authority, learning.
9. THEN THE CHILDREN OF JUDA, BESIEGING JERUSALEM, TOOK IT.—Jerusalem had been taken before by Josue, chap. 10:1, who also slew its king Adonisedec; but afterwards the Jebusites, holding the citadel of Sion, recovered the city. Hence the Jews here stormed it again, except the citadel of Sion, which long after David first wrested from the Jebusites, 2 Kings 5:7.
Moreover, Jerusalem properly belonged to the tribe of Benjamin; yet here it is said to be stormed by the tribe of Juda, because the latter had a part in the city; and because the Benjamites, distrusting their own strength, handed it over to the Jews to be stormed, as I said on Josue chap. 15.
SETTING THE WHOLE CITY ON FIRE,—because, subdued by Josue and the Jews, it had rebelled against them, and because God willed the city to be purged by fire from idolatry and crimes, and to be wholly renewed, in which He had determined to place the temple and the head of the Commonwealth as well as of the Church. So He ordered Jericho, Hai and some other cities of the Chanaanites to be burned.
10. CARIATH-ARBE.—This and what follows up to verse 16 we have heard in Josue 14:12, and chap. 15, verse 13 and following, where I explained them.
16. NOW THE CHILDREN OF THE CINITE, THE KINSMAN OF MOSES, WENT UP FROM THE CITY OF PALMS, WITH THE CHILDREN OF JUDA, INTO THE DESERT OF HIS LOT, WHICH IS AT THE SOUTH OF ARAD, AND THEY DWELT WITH HIM.—“The children of the Cinite,” that is, the children of Hobab, who was the son of Jethro the father-in-law of Moses; for Moses had taken Sephora the daughter of Jethro to wife; hence Hobab, the brother of Sephora (called by another name Cin and the Cinite, say Hugh Victorinus and Serarius), and his posterity the Cinites, kinsmen, that is, relatives of Moses, clung to Moses as to a kinsman, and having become proselytes followed the camp of the Hebrews through the desert, and with them entered into the promised land. For to this Moses had invited them, promising them what was best in it, Numbers chap. 10, verse 32. Wherefore there was given to the Cinites by the Hebrews the city of Palms, that is, Jericho, abounding in palms and palm-groves, as well as in balsam and in plenty of all things, not as though Jericho, levelled to the ground by Josue, had been so quickly rebuilt, but because the city here, as in chap. 3, is taken for the site of the city and the field near the city.
But why did the Cinites, leaving Jericho so pleasant and fertile, migrate thence into the barren desert of Juda? The Rabbis give as the cause, that they might join themselves to the tribe of Juda to learn the law; but this was rather to be learned from the high priest Phinees and the Levites. Wherefore Serarius more probably believes that, as Salianus also says, they were divinely moved by a desire of solitude, and laid the foundations of monastic and anchoretic life, which was afterwards in some way propagated among the Rechabites, Jerem. 35, where among other things they are said to have dwelt without a house in tents, which is also said of Haber the Cinite in chap. 4 of Judges. The Cinites, therefore, were pious and religious men, whence their posterity were the Rechabites, so praised by Jeremias, chap. 35, and then the Essenes, almost the first professors of monastic life, so greatly celebrated by Philo, Josephus, Eusebius and St. Jerome, as I taught on Numbers 10:29. These, then, despising the delights of the flesh in Jericho as enervating the rigour and vigour of mind and spirit, and loving poverty, sought desert and solitary places, where they might more freely and conveniently give themselves to contemplation, the exercise of virtues and divine things. Hence the Cinites; in Hebrew kinim are lamenters, namely sighing toward heaven from this exile. Hence the Lamentations of Jeremias are called kinoth. They therefore were the forerunners of Elias, Eliseus and the sons of the Prophets, who lived before Christ, and of the Anchorites and Monks, who after Christ in the same places led the solitary or monastic life, dwelling with God and the Angels, like earthly angels and heavenly men.
18. AND JUDA (the tribe of Juda) TOOK GAZA WITH ITS CONFINES, AND ASCALON AND ACCARON.—So also have the Hebrew and the Septuagint. The Complutensian has Azotus. Wherefore it is strange that in the corrected Roman Septuagint the contrary is read: And Juda did not possess Gaza, nor Ascalon, nor Accaron. Worse, Josephus, book V of the Antiquities, says that the Jews took Ascalon and Azotus, but not Gaza and Accaron, because these two, situated in the plain, abounded in war chariots; but Scripture here asserts the contrary. Wherefore the Jews here took these cities and satrapies of the Philistines, but soon the Philistines recovered them, and waged perpetual wars with the Jews, as we shall hear in chap. 13. Moreover, Accaron belonged to the tribe of Dan, yet Juda here stormed it with the connivance of the Danites, because it was bordering on and hostile to his lot, so that unless he took it he could not dwell in quiet in his own lot.
19. BECAUSE THEY ABOUNDED WITH CHARIOTS ARMED WITH SCYTHES,—which, namely, armed with scythes, mowed down all that met them, as I said on Josue chap. 17:16. So also have the Septuagint and the Complutensian. Whence it is strange that in the Roman it is read, because Rechab stood in their way; so Theodoret reads, who explains thus, as if to say: Hobab the son of Jethro, called by another name Rechab, persuaded the Jews not to attack in war the inhabitants of this valley adjacent to the sea, because he feared that the Jews, if they possessed the sea-coast, would be perverted by them through commerce by ships with the nations. Evidently he read in place of rechab, that is, chariots, with another pointing Rechab, as the proper name of a man. Moreover, the Jews did not sin in thus permitting these Chanaanites; because they saw them so armed that they despaired of being able to subdue them; but the other tribes sinned, in that when they had subdued the Chanaanites they did not kill them, as the Lord had commanded, but made them tributaries.