Commentaria in Judices
Moreover, “Astaroth” is of the plural number, both for emphasis and for honour’s sake, that they might signify that this Goddess was the mistress of many, indeed of all things, because she could enrich men with all things, and hence God in Hebrew is called Adonai and Adonim, Elohim in the plural; and because the name of Astarte was transferred to any female Goddesses. For there was an Astarte of the Babylonians, whom St. Epiphanius, heresy 19, calls Diana; another of the Carthaginians, whom St. Augustine here, Question 16, asserts to have been Juno; another of the Edessenes, whom Lucian says was the Moon. For she, when full, multiplies the offspring of fishes, birds and sheep, and so enriches men. For the ancient Gentiles in the beginning, not knowing the true God, adored the Sun and Moon, from which all fertility on earth flows: whence the Romans called them Jupiter and Juno; the Egyptians Osiris and Isis; the Syrians Baalim and Astaroth. For because they saw fruitfulness on earth come especially from the Sun and Moon, through the heat and rain with which they moisten and fertilize the earth, they worshipped them as Gods: for these are the two chief stars flowing influence upon the earth. A third was added, namely the star of Venus or Lucifer, which after the Moon shines more brightly than the other stars. Hence the ancients said that Venus is the lesser Moon, and the Moon the greater Venus. Wherefore Herodian, book V, calls Astarte Astroarche, that is, primate and prince of the stars. And Philo of Byblus: Astarte, he says, placed on her own head as the emblem of rule the head of a bull, to signify the horned Moon. Hence also Astaroth, the city in which Astarte was worshipped, is surnamed Carnaim, that is, two-horned, from the two horns of the Moon: wherefore some suspect that this is the city which Pliny, book V, chap. 20, names Carne. This name Carnaim alludes also to the horns of rams and sheep, to signify the abundance of a horned flock, says Marinus in his Lexicon. For in Hebrew keren, that is, horn, as well as sak, that is, sack, has passed into very many languages of the nations.
Moreover “Astaroth” properly signifies sheep, as I said: if, however, you read it by diaeresis as ash-toroth, it signifies moth of laws, says Pagninus, because idols and idolatry, like a moth, consume all a man’s faculties, laws, virtues, wealth and strength. For the devil so mocks his worshippers as to promise them temporal things and take away eternal, yet to take away even the modest temporal things with which he has allured them. For he is a tyrant, and as he hates God most bitterly, so also does he hate the creatures of God, especially men, that he thirsts for nothing but their harm, hurt and destruction, both of body and soul.
Tropologically, “Astaroth” is to each man his own concupiscence; for, as Origen says, hom. 2: “Whatever each one worships above the rest, whatever he admires and loves above all things, that is his God.” So to the glutton “the belly is his God,” says Paul, Philipp. 3:19; and Virgil, book IX of the Aeneid:
Let each man’s dire desire be his god.
And another:
Ambitious honour, and wealth, and flattering pleasure. These three the world has for a threefold deity.
14. AND SOLD THEM TO THEIR ENEMIES.—The Hebrew and the Septuagint, and he sold, namely God, as if to say: God sold the Israelites as idolaters, that is, delivered them to their enemies, to vex them, spoil them, reduce them to servitude, and slay them. Our Vulgate for vayimkerem, that is, he sold them, read vayimkeru, that is, they sold them.
15. THE HAND OF THE LORD WAS UPON THEM.—“The hand,” namely avenging, vindicating and scourging, as if to say: The vengeance of God pursued them everywhere, harassed them and punished them grievously.
19. THE STUBBORN WAY,—because they were disobedient and stiff-necked: their stubborn way was therefore their impious and obstinate habit of worshipping idols and committing other crimes.
22. TO TRY ISRAEL.—That is, by experience I will show and make plain whether He frees and protects and prospers those who firmly persist in His worship, or who, penitent, return from the worship of idols to God.
To this sense the tropology which St. Gregory brings, book II of the Dialogues, chap. 14, at the end, aptly attaches: “The Lord,” he says, “kept the Chanaanites longer, that Israel might be tried in them, because sometimes, as was said, even to those to whom He gives great gifts, He leaves some small faults to be reproved, that they may always have something against which to wage war, and, great enemies having been conquered, may not lift up the mind, when even the least adversaries still weary them. And so it comes about that in a wonderful way one and the same mind both prevails in virtue and is wearied by infirmity, so that it is both in part built up and in part sees itself destroyed, that through the good which it seeks and cannot have, it may humbly keep that which it has.” Hence also St. Bernard: “The Jebusite,” he says, “willing or unwilling, dwells in your land (namely concupiscence in the flesh); it can be subjugated, but cannot be exterminated.”
God therefore permitted some Chanaanites, and willed that not all should be cut off from Chanaan by Josue, for various causes. First, that they might chastise by their oppression the apostasy and idolatry of the Hebrews. Second, that God might try whether by this affliction they would return to Him, or rather might as it were compel them to return. For the Chanaanites were like goads pricking the Hebrews and driving them to worship God and implore His help, that He might free them from the oppression of their enemies. Third, because the Hebrews were not sufficient to inhabit and cultivate the whole land of the Chanaanites. He therefore permitted a part of it to the Chanaanites, that they might cultivate it, lest it should be occupied by wolves and wild beasts to the harm and hurt of the Hebrews. This reason God gives, Exod. 23:29: “I will not cast them out from before thy face in one year, lest the land be brought into a wilderness, and the beasts multiply against thee.” A fourth cause he gives in the next chapter, verse 2: “That afterwards their children might learn to fight with their enemies and to be trained up to war,” that is, that they might avoid idleness, which is the cause of sloth and of all wickedness, and might grow accustomed to wars, which they were to have frequently with the neighbouring nations, as David had.
For a like cause, when it was once debated at Rome in the Senate whether Carthage, already as it were subdued, ought to be destroyed, and Cato urged and pressed that it should be destroyed, as so dangerous and hostile to the Romans, Scipio Nasica advised and persuaded that it should not be destroyed, for the sake of the exercise of war and of fighting, that Carthage might be the whetstone of the Roman youth, on which the Romans might learn to wage wars, grow accustomed to military service, and harden their hearts and bodies to endure cold, heat, hunger and every discomfort; and this rightly and wisely; for after Carthage was destroyed the virtue of the Romans languished and decayed in idleness, inertia and luxury. Hence Juvenal, Satire 6, gives this as the cause why the ancient Romans were chaste, sober and watchful:
Hannibal was near the city, and husbands stood on the Colline rock. Now we suffer the evils of long peace, luxury, fiercer than arms, has fallen upon us, and avenges the whole world.
Hence also the Spartans did not permit their king to destroy a hostile city, saying: “Do not abolish the whetstone of our youth.”
Hence conversely Lycurgus, as Plutarch attests in his Life, ordained that the Lacedaemonians should not fight long and often with the same enemies: lest, namely, they should teach them to handle arms, and so by their military art and industry at last overcome and subjugate the Lacedaemonians. The Turk has and observes the same principle, both military and political. Wherefore to Agesilaus king of Sparta, waging continual wars with the Thebans, and wounded in one battle, Antalcidas said: “You are carrying off a fine reward from the Thebans, whom you have taught to fight, unwilling and ignorant.” For the Thebans were never more warlike than while they were frequently attacked in war by the Spartans or Lacedaemonians.
A tropological cause is given by Abbot Daniel in Cassian, Conference 4, chap. 6, saying: “This conflict God, not grudging rest to Israel, nor ill-advising it, but knowing it to be most useful, reserved, that while it was ever kept low by the assault of these nations, it might never feel that it had no need of the help of the Lord, and on that account, ever persisting in meditation upon Him and invocation of Him, might neither be dissolved by idleness nor lose the practice of war and the exercises of virtue. For often those whom adversity could not overcome, security and prosperity have cast down.”