Commentaria in Isaiam
Note second: “The ox knew,” that is, is wont to know, “his owner,” and to show himself gentle and grateful to him by ploughing, threshing and carrying his burdens. So also “the ass his master’s crib,” that is, the master of his crib, or the master who feeds him in the crib (it is a hypallage), he acknowledges; and serves and obeys him, namely either by ploughing or by carrying him and his packsaddles. For “ox” the Hebrew is shor, the Chaldee tor (for the Chaldees change shin into thau), whence the Latin taurus. Hence Francis Forerius takes by shor the breeding bull, who goes before the herds as leader, and is wild and impatient of the yoke, as if to say: This bull, though wild, knows his master, and leads the herd of cows, which he precedes, back into his master’s folds. But Israel does not know me, its Lord, and even leads my flocks, that is, my people, away from me to idols. But the Hebrew shor signifies not only a bull but any tame and gentle ox, and Isaias seems to speak rather of this.
Do you want a nearly unique example of a beast recognizing and repaying a kindness to a man? Take what Gellius relates from Appion, an eyewitness, book 5, chapter 14, in his own words, which, to avoid prolixity, I shorten. At Rome in the circus a fight of men with beasts was being given; there was among the others a vast and terrible lion: “There was brought in, among many others, to the fight of the beasts, a Dacian, the slave of a man of consular rank. The slave’s name was Androdus (or rather Androcles, as Aelian writes). When that lion saw him from afar, suddenly, he says, as if in wonder, it stood still; and then gradually and quietly, as if recognizing him, it approached the man. Then it moves its tail, in the manner of fawning dogs, mildly and caressingly; and joins itself to the man’s body, and gently licks with its tongue his legs and hands, he being now almost lifeless with fear. Androdus, amid these caresses of so fierce a beast, recovers his lost courage; and little by little turns his eyes to the lion. Then, as if by mutual recognition, you would see, he says, the man and the lion joyful and congratulating each other. At this so wonderful thing he says the greatest shouts of the people were raised; and Androdus was sent for by Caesar, and the cause was asked why that most savage of lions had spared him alone; and Androdus told the wonderful story: I fled, he said, from my cruel master, and came into a cave, where I came upon a lion holding out his foot and asking help; there I pulled a huge thorn from his foot, pressed out the matter, and dried the wound; he, relieved of the pain in his foot, lay down and rested in my hands. And from that day for a whole three years the lion and I lived in the same cave and on the same food. For the beasts which he hunted, he brought me the fat portions at the cave, which I, having no fire, roasted in the noonday sun and ate. But when, he said, I was weary of that manner of life, the lion having gone off to hunt, I left the cave, and after traveling a way of about three days was seen and seized by soldiers, and brought from Africa to Rome to my master. He at once had me condemned on a capital charge and given to the beasts. But I understand, he said, that this lion also, then separated from me, was captured, and is now repaying me the favor of my kindness and medicine.” This Appion says Androdus related; and all this, written on a tablet and carried around, was declared to the people; and therefore, all asking for it, Androdus was released and freed from the penalty; and the lion was given to him by the votes of the people. Afterwards, he says, we saw Androdus and the lion, bound with a slender leash, going through the whole city around the shops, Androdus being given money, the lion sprinkled with flowers, and almost everyone everywhere meeting them saying: “This is the lion, the host of the man; this is the man, the physician of the lion.” A brute and wild lion acknowledges a kindness, spares him, fawns on him and serves him: and rational man does not acknowledge his Creator, does not obey him, does not serve him, to whom he owes his soul?
No less rare and wonderful is what is written, that a serpent saved Thoas in Arcadia: Thoas, he says, as a boy had nourished a serpent, which, when it had grown, fearing its nature and size, he carried to a wilderness; going away from there, when he fell into an ambush of robbers, he cried out; hearing his voice, and recognizing it to be that of its nurturer Thoas, the serpent ran up at once and snatched him from the hands of the robbers.
A like thing he relates in the same place from Demetrius the natural philosopher, of the panther, which is a most ferocious animal: when its cubs had fallen into a pit, and she alone was not able to bring them out, she lingered there until, seeing a man passing by, gently drawing him by the clothes with her claws, and by nods and gestures signifying the fall of her cubs, and asking his help, with his aid she took the cubs out of the pit. Whereupon the panther, rejoicing and returning thanks, accompanied the man with her cubs through the wanderings of the forests and groves until she brought him back to the road and to safety.
But what he records from Philarchus about the asp surpasses all. An asp, he says, reared by an Egyptian, having given birth in the house of her host, it happened that one of the young killed the host’s son by a venomous bite. The asp was at that time by chance away from home: on returning, thinking it unjust that the host’s son had been killed by her young one, in the host’s presence, lest she should seem ungrateful, indeed to punish an ungrateful one, she killed her own homicidal young.
To this refer the lion of the Abbot St. Gerasimus (the common people err in thinking it was St. Jerome, to whom painters on account of this error add a lion), who, because of the thorn drawn out of him by the saint, served him diligently all his life, and at his death died with grief, and by his own death rendered funeral honors to him, as Sophronius relates in the Spiritual Meadow.
Note third: This place speaks generally of any oxen, asses and masters. The ancients, however, such as St. Augustine Against the Jews, chapter 13, St. Ambrose, book 2 on Luke, chapter 2, Origen, tome 13, and others whom Leo Castrius cites here (whom Calvin here derides too wantonly and arrogantly, and calls fabulists and asses; so indeed the calf itself skips about), apply these words to the child Christ and Lord reclining in the manger between the ox and the ass, and recognized and adored by them, either by the ordinary and natural obedience of the ox and ass, or perhaps even by some extraordinary and miraculous reverence (as St. Bonaventure holds). For if the lamb of St. Francis bent its knees to the Holy Eucharist; if larks and birds by their silence and applause reverenced and honored St. Francis preaching to them; if wild beasts venerated Anthony, Paul, Hilarion and others who approached the primeval innocence of Adam; if bees more than once guarded the Holy Eucharist: why should it not be believed that the ox and ass in the manger honored the present and newborn Christ, most innocent, their Lord and ours, by some peculiar worship, serving him by bowing to him, covering him with hay, warming him with their breath, and in other ways? especially since not only the Angels and shepherds but also the star served him then, calling and leading the Magi to him in Bethlehem. Certainly in this way, literally, the Saints of Christ were reverenced and honored by oxen, horses and asses. Remarkable is what we read in the Life of St. Kilian, Apostle of Franconia: when, because he reproved the unlawful marriage of Gosbert, Duke of Franconia, with Geila, executioners had been sent against him by Geila his wife, he said: “You will fulfil the command, we shall finish our course.” Accordingly, when he had been slain by them, and Geila, to conceal the crime, had ordered a stable for horses to be made where the Martyr had been buried, the beasts staying in that stable neither dropped dung nor urine upon the Martyr’s tomb, as if showing honor to the Martyr; so that what the Prophet prophesied of the head was seen also in his members: “The ox,” says Isaias, “knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel hath not known me,” says the author of the Life of St. Kilian, which our Serarius published, and from him Baronius in the year of Christ 689.
This sense is accommodated. For literally Isaias speaks of oxen and asses, and equally of the Jews of his own time, as St. Jerome, Basil, Cyril and St. Thomas, or rather Thomas the Englishman, teach.