[Scaliger’s rendering] seems altogether distorted. 1. Because he neither renders — nor, if he were to render [it], could accommodate to the text — the particle ki [כי], or “because.” For what connection of things is this: “He called the name of it (the altar) My exaltation, saying: Because [there is] a triumphal monument [Cippus] on account of the thirtieth [day] of the month”? 2. Either that altar itself is that Monument, or [it is] not. If [it is] the same, he wrongly holds [it], and even proves from 1 Kings [Samuel] 15, v. 12, [that] it was a “trophy,” or a “triumphal arch.” If not, no cause can be imagined why the altar should be called “exaltation” by Moses saying “Because a monument.” 3. It would be ill said [that it is] a “monument on account of the thirtieth day,” but rather “on account of the victory,” or “on account of God’s benefit and exaltation,” which had happened on that day. 4. Since the other months too had a thirtieth day, it would be ineptly said, in general, “of the month,” and not “of this” or “of that” [month] — for example’s sake, “of the second,” in which these [things] happened. But if by excellence “the month” is said, as if it were the known [one] — as by “the orator” Cicero is understood, [and] by “the Apostle” Paul — certainly rather the first month would be understood, [as being] ennobled by so many and so great portents and by God’s benefits, whereas [it is] agreed [that] these [things], after the Egyptian exodus, were done in the second month. 5. It is also false [that] the thirtieth day of this month was [the day] when the Amalekites [were] conquered. For after the victory Josephus hands down — as we saw above, question 18 — [that] the Israelites remained several days in the same place, gathered spoils and stripped arms, [and] held banquets and feasts. But on the first day of the third month, as [it] seems to most of the Hebrews (or certainly on the 2nd day, as I discussed on Exodus), they came into the wilderness of Sinai, as is handed down at the beginning of Exodus ch. 19. Therefore, by Scaliger’s reckoning, on the day after — or the second day immediately after — the victory, they would have girded themselves for the journey, and reached it [Sinai]. For the thirtieth day of the second month is followed, with no other [day] intervening, by the first [day] of the third month itself — namely, the new moon [neomenia]. And, to leave aside Josephus’s authority: since on that day on which [they] fought with the Amalekites the battle stood [lasted] until sunset, as [was] said above, it would be necessary — on the prior opinion — [that] Moses, in that one night between the last [day] of the second and the first [day] of the third month, erected that altar, sacrificed, and immediately (the next day dawning) set out on the way with the Israelites. But how [could] Joshua — who all that day had struggled, with very many and most fierce enemies, with varying outcome, sweat, and much fatigue — how [could] his soldiers, and how [could] Moses himself (who from the whole day’s praying and lifting-up of hands had been utterly wearied) — [how could any of them] have scarcely taken any part of rest? How [could] that guide [the pillar] of the journeys through those wildernesses — moving itself by its own force, [as] a cloud — have suddenly forced those weary and broken [men] (as they are indeed said to have been, Deuteronomy 25:17[–18]) onto so great and so importunate a journey — when [there] was now no enemy to be pursued, nothing to be seized or forestalled; no adversary either behind or on the flank to be feared or fled? And when, indeed, would that monument have been built of stones, sculpted, and inscribed with that inscription which Scaliger fabricates? But on the latter opinion, the inconveniences would not indeed be altogether the same, but some [would be], and nearly the same. 6. But Scaliger holds this inscription to have been: WAR IRRECONCILABLE AGAINST AMALEK. But whence does he gather [that] these words were cut and inscribed on that pillar or monument?
(col. 90)
For [there is] no mention of a writing or cutting — or [only] through a single syllable. But grant [that] these were [indeed] inscribed and cut: whence does he gather [that it is] these only, and not also those prior [words] — “A TRIUMPHAL MONUMENT ON ACCOUNT OF THE THIRTIETH”? 7. Why, in his Greek, does he omit what is — after “war” — in the Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, and Latin text, [namely] the word “OF THE LORD”? Why also those [words] which [are] at the end, “FROM GENERATION UNTO GENERATION”? Why does he add [the word] ἄσπονδον [“implacable”], which is not in those same texts? It had come into [my] mind to suspect [that] — just as “mountains of God,” “trees of God,” and other [things] great and outstanding in their own kind, are wont, in the Scriptures, to be called “things of God” (as I said, for another reason, in my [work] on the Minerval addressed to him, book 1, ch. 3) — so what is in the texts, “the war of God,” is taken by the same Scaliger for a great, atrocious war, and one which could be composed [settled] by no treaty. And this would seem not ineptly said. But when I look at his Latin inscription, I see “war” called by him “eternal,” so that, namely, he might express what was set down, “from generation unto generation”: and thus that [word] “of God” [is] always omitted by him in the Greek. Yet in the Latin he perhaps wished it expressed, when he said, “between the people of God.” Which, however, is not “word for word,” as he was saying — just as neither [are] the rest, which have already [been] treated. 8. He variously alters the Hebrew text — as indeed [it] is today read in all the books, both among us and among the Jews, and as [it] was once read in the time of our interpreter. For, first, out of the two words CE SI AH, he makes one, CASIIAH. Then he invents other points, or vowels, and out of two makes three, and what was disyllabic he orders to be trisyllabic. For it ought to be כסא, as he said (and wrote for me with his own hand — a Rabbi not unknown to Scaliger, [one] of the Innovators). Finally, he coins a word which [is] nowhere else in any book, sacred or profane, seen or heard — so that [it is] to be wondered at [that] it is written by him: “In ch. 17 of Exodus, ‘Casiah’ [כסיה] is expressly had.” It would be another [matter] if he said at least Casiah [as] כסה. But I have spoken about the Hebrew as it both now is read, and was once read by the Latins, on account of the Seventy — about whom [see] above, question 25. Yet Scaliger cannot appeal to them. First, because they seem to have read cesuiah, [but] he casiiah. Then, that word of theirs agrees, in the usual declensions of Hebrew words, with [the participle] pa’ul [or] qal; but the Scaligerian [word] differs wholly from the rules and grammar. If he had at least read כסיה, he could be excused by similar [forms], in the benoni [active-participle] examples of qal — as [in] the Proverb [Proverbs], last chapter, v. 27, צופיה, “considering, looking.” But then it would signify “a covering, ruling” — the hand, namely — and instead of the [vowel] cholem [written full, ῥαῦ], it would be only cholem [written short]. Thirdly, they [the Seventy] rendered κρυφαίαν, that is, “latent and hidden”; [but] he [renders] τριακάδα, or ἐπὶ καὶ νέαν — that is, “the thirtieth of the month.” And this he repeats once and again (book 3 of the Isagoge, p. 223). Lastly, they [the Seventy] can render a good and constant cause of their version from the notion of the Hebrew word, since כסה is “to hide, to conceal.” But Scaliger is uncertain of his own [version], since he fetches it either from “numbering,” or from “ruling and being silent.” 9. Nor yet does he even do this rightly. For why from “numbering”? “Because,” he says, “beyond the thirtieth no number of months is admitted”: as if he said [that] the number beyond which one may not proceed in numbering anything is rightly called casiah. But who ever so called [it]? Or [is it] because in simple numbers we cannot proceed beyond ten, [that] therefore the ten [denarius is] Casiah? Or because the tribes of Israel [are] only twelve, [that] the twelfth [is] Casiah…
(col. 91)
…is that Casiah? Among the months of the year — because it was not permitted to the Hebrews to run beyond the thirteenth — was that Casiah? So one might inquire about the rest. If Scaliger were to concede [that] any last numbers whatever could be so called, he will now have made the reasoning of his Cippus [monument] very inept. For it would be “A monument on account of the last number beyond which it is not permitted to number.” Because not only, as I touched above, is it not added [that it is] the last of this or of that [month], but it was not even said [that it is] the last of a month, and not rather of a year, of a week, or of some [other] certain time — for example’s sake, of the feast of Passover or of Tabernacles, in that manner in which [in] John 7, v. 14 it is said, “the feast-day being half over, JESUS went up,” and v. 37, “On the last, great day of the festivity, Jesus stood.” But if indeed Scaliger denies [that] the last numbers of all things — within which one must stop — can be so called, a reason must be brought forward why not: since the etymology of the name bears it, and [so does] the cause which he himself gives in [the case of] the months. Or if the will of the ancients suffices for a reason — [those] who imposed this name, [and], though from its origin it could extend more widely, willed [it] to signify this one number only, and in signifying this one thing — [then] an index of that will of theirs must be brought forward: either some authority, or some example. But it will be brought “to the Roman New-Moon,” I believe — or, as [is said] in the more usual proverb, “to the Greek Kalends.”
From “ruling” and “being silent,” however, why does he want the thirtieth day of the month [so] called? “Because the Moon,” he says, “was covered and silent.” But often, even on the 29th day of the month — and sometimes even on the 28th — before its φάσις [phasis, appearing], in its conjunction [synod] with the Sun, [the Moon] is covered and is silent. 10. And, lastly, his arguments are very weak. But because, on a certain occasion, this had to be shown by me [on] Judith ch. 8, question 12, I shall now not do again [what has been] done. Yet I shall point out [that] Scaliger concludes this disputation of his with these words: “I am not unaware [that] to say these [things] is to declare war on the Grammarians — or rather [that] the Grammarians declare war on me.” But whom do you call Grammarians, Scaliger? For against you [are] all the interpreters, Christian and Jewish, Greek and Latin, Hebrew and Chaldee — even the Seventy themselves. But he goes on: “But let them use their own sense. Let them not begrudge me my own device [commentum].” Indeed — a “device.” But no one, as I think, will begrudge [it] — whoever shall see so great an emptiness of it.