Commentaria in Judices
2. AND ALL THE CORNERS OF THE PEOPLE,—that is, all the peoples dwelling in their places, as in corners. So today the Cantons are called, that is, the Corners of the Swiss. Again, and rather, all the corners, that is, all the chiefs, prefects and leaders of the peoples, all the princes of the tribes, says our Salian, who hold the people in union and duty, as corners bind and hold together the whole house. Hence a corner is taken for a prince, as when Christ is said to be “made the head of the corner,” and to be “the corner stone,” that is, the pillar, base and prince of the Church, Psalm cxvii, 22, and Matt. xxi, 42; and when Isaias says chap. xix, verse 13: “They have deceived Egypt, the corner (that is the prince) of the peoples.” And Zacharias, chap. x, verse 4: “Out of him the corner,” that is, out of Juda shall come forth the prince, namely Judas Machabeus. Like are Sophonias,
12. AND THEY SENT MESSENGERS TO ALL THE TRIBE OF BENJAMIN,—through all the cities and kindreds of the Benjamites.
15. AND THERE WERE FOUND TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND OF BENJAMIN.—The Hebrew and Chaldee have 26 thousand, with which Lyranus and Abulensis agree. But the Septuagint as well as the Roman Latin constantly read 25 thousand: and with these the number plainly agrees, and easily the Hebrew chamissa, that is five, could have been corrupted into shesha, that is, and six.
16. WHO (the inhabitants of Gabaa) WERE SEVEN HUNDRED MEN, MOST VALIANT, FIGHTING WITH THE LEFT HAND AS WELL AS WITH THE RIGHT, AND SLINGING STONES SO SURELY THAT THEY COULD STRIKE EVEN A HAIR.—It is a hyperbole, that is, that they hit the mark with certainty. So Lyranus, Abulensis, Cajetan. Such also were the inhabitants of the Balearic islands, who from tender years were exercised in the casting of the sling, so that boys could not take breakfast, unless they had brought down the breakfast placed at a distance with the sling, as Strabo testifies. Hear what Herodian writes of the Emperor Commodus: “Stags and fallow deer, likewise other horned animals except bulls, running alike himself and pursuing, he attacked, and, outstripping their flight, laid them low with the surest strokes.
But lions and panthers, and other noble animals of the kind, running in a circle above, he pierced with javelins, so that no one saw a second weapon, nor a wound but a deadly one. For as soon as the beast had roused itself, he at once wounded it either in the forehead or in the heart, using no other mark, nor directing his weapon at any other part of the body, so that it was despatched together with the wound itself.” More examples of such skilled archers I have recounted on Lament. iii, verse 12.
18. LET JUDA BE YOUR LEADER.—“Juda,” that is, the tribe of Juda, and its prince.
23. MY BRETHREN.—They call enemies brethren, to show that, although they are to be punished for vice, yet by nature they are to be loved, says Lyranus. Hence an enemy was once a guest; whence the Italian hoste.
AND HE ANSWERED THEM: GO UP AGAINST THEM, AND JOIN BATTLE.—A wonderful ordering of God: for he commands the eleven tribes, once slain by the Benjamites to the number of 22 thousand, verse 21, to attack them again, and by them again to be slain to 18 thousand, verse 25, and yet that war was just and pious.—Why this? The first cause was, that he might chastise their past sins, and namely that they had permitted the idol of Michas: also the worship of Baalim and Astaroth, chap. ii and x. So the Hebrews, Lyranus and Abulensis. The second cause is intimated verse 22, namely that they trusted too much in their strength and number: that they might learn that victory is God’s, and that he often gives it to the few and the weaker against the many and the powerful. The third, that he might purge the camp of the eleven tribes, in which there were many wicked men, of its dregs; and so make them worthy to be granted victory: and that he might prove and rouse their faith and obedience, which indeed was great here; for although defeated a second time, yet at God’s command they renewed the war a third time, and therefore came out victors. Hear St. Gregory, book XIV Moral. chap. xiii: “What is this, that Israel is inflamed to the avenging of a crime, and yet is first laid low by it: unless that those by whom the faults of others are smitten must themselves first be purged; that they may come already clean through the vengeance, who hasten to correct the vices of others?” He confirms it by the example of the adulteress, to whose accusers Christ the Lord says: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” John chap. viii, 7, as if to say that those who were going to punish sins, and had left their own. They are called back therefore within to conscience, that they may first correct their own, and then reprehend those of others.” Finally, that he might show himself the supreme Lord of death and life of all; and so strike all with sacred fear and reverence of himself, as in fact was done. See Origen, homily 14 on Numbers; St. Augustine, book V On the City of God chap. xxi and xxiii; Salvian, book On Providence; St. Gregory, book XXI Moral. chap. iii; St. Ephrem, tom. I, sermon On For like causes God permitted Josias, the most pious king of Juda, to be slain in the war undertaken against the unbelieving Pharao; and Ladislaus king of the Hungarians by Amurath Emperor of the Turks in the disaster of Varna; and St. Louis king of France, wishing to recover the Holy Land, to be taken by the Sultan of Egypt, and in the second expedition to die of the plague, that he might sharpen his wonderful patience, and show it to the whole world, and soon crown it in heaven, which patience I admire and venerate above his other heroic virtues. So St. Bernard before St. Louis, at God’s command, stirred up Christians to undertake the same expedition to the Holy Land, which nevertheless turned out ill, the Christians being slain. Whence St. Bernard was called an impostor by many; but he defended himself, and showed by miracles that this was the will of God, as he himself, citing this twofold disaster of the Israelites, narrates in book II On Consideration to Eugenius, near the beginning.
It is plain that the Hebrews were accustomed in fasting to fast until evening. From this custom flowed the superstitious observance of the Saracens, Turks and later Jews; who, when they fast, are not wont to take food before they have seen the star of Venus or Hesperus (for the Saracens worship this); as St. Jerome relates of the Jews, book II Against Jovinian, and Tertullian, book Against the Psychics, near the end. Of the Saracens the same is plain from chap. ii of the Alcoran.
Christians also formerly fasted until evening: whence in memory of this thing even now Vespers in the fast of Lent are recited before dinner; as though the dinner which then follows were not so much a dinner as a supper.
37. WHO WHEN SUDDENLY.—The order and series of the history here is intricate, but you may unravel and arrange it so with Lyranus and Abulensis. The Israelites divided themselves into three bands or parts, unequal however: one was of the ambush, which was placed behind the city of Gabaa, that, the Benjamites having gone out to pursue the Israelites, it might enter the city itself and set it on fire. The second band was of ten thousand, which drew the Benjamites out of the city, that the first band of the ambush already mentioned might be able to seize the city, and which led them by feigned flight to the third band, or most numerous line of all the rest of the army, standing at the two paths, until the sign of the city taken was given by the first band through smoke: which done, they turned, and all the bands or lines attacked the Benjamites, and slew of them 25 thousand; and over and above, a hundred men.
48. FROM MEN TO BEASTS.—Hence it is plain that little children and women were all slain, both in Gabaa and in all the other cities and villages of Benjamin, and this is clearer in the Hebrew. They made therefore the tribe of Benjamin an anathema, such as is commanded to be made in the crime of public idolatry, Deuter. xiii, 15. And although here the eleven tribes exceeded the bounds and measure of that law and of just vengeance by slaying women and innocent little ones; yet by divine providence it was permitted to punish the Sodomitic and unbridled lust of the Gabaonites, and at the same time the bold and rash rebellion of the one tribe of Benjamin against the other eleven.