Some (in Abulensis, ch. 32, q. 25) will have [it that] he returned into the camp — but [that], as to whether Moses would return, [Joshua] was wont daily to explore more diligently, watching the roads and going forward to the mountain’s foot. Yet it must be said [that] he remained on the mountain altogether just so long as Moses remained there. For he ascended with him (as [was] seen hitherto from Exodus ch. 24, v. 13), and with the same [Moses] afterward descended (the same book, ch. 32, v. 17). Nor is it permitted to suspect [that] he in the meantime descended and again ascended. For, first, Moses signified well enough [that Joshua] would remain with him there always and continually, when he said to the elders (ch. 24, v. 14): “Wait here till we return to you.” Next, Joshua was Moses’s minister. He could therefore not go away thence except when bidden — lest, if Moses happened to need him, he should, like a worthless servant, have slipped away from his master and done other things. Finally, if he had descended from the mountain before Moses, when, I ask, would that have been? Once only? Or oftener? And how…
(col. 121)
…[often, and] for what cause? To what place? For if he had come into the camp (nor yet do I see whither else he would rather go), he would himself have learned something of the people’s apostatic murmuring, the fabrication of the calf, the proclamation of the festal celebration, and other like [things]. But that he knew nothing of these is clear from this — that he indicated none of them to Moses (ch. 32, v. 7); nay, when he heard the shouts of [those] playing the Bacchanals and leaping, he suspected nothing sinister at all, but rather [thought it] a warlike outcry and Martial battle-songs (ibid., v. 17). They could also easily have asked about Moses himself — [those] who dared to say (ch. 32, v. 1), “As for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has befallen him.” And truly, even if he had gone out daily to the roots of the mountain, he could still have been deceived, because Moses would descend at another hour of the day than he had supposed; or certainly he would have had to await him whole days on the road. But why not rather on the mountain? Now, how long Moses himself remained on the mountain, there is a double opinion. One gives him 40 days, the other 46. In the former are the Jews, because (Deuteronomy 9, v. 9) it is said: “I continued in the mount forty days and forty nights.” And Abulensis thinks this likelier (Exodus 24, q. 21). For otherwise, when Moses — to bend the Hebrews’ hard neck a little — had begun to set forth his labors and troubles for their sake, he would rather (which was more useful to that end) have said that he continued on the mount 46 days and as many nights, than 40. Nevertheless, I reckon [it] more consonant to the text, and indeed to the truth itself, if 46 days and nights be assigned to his stay on the mount. For (Exodus 24, v. 15) it is said: after Moses had ascended the mount, “a certain cloud covered the mount, and Moses himself, and that for six days”; but after these, God called Moses within the same cloud — but now affected in another place, state, and manner. For then he entered the midst of the cloud itself, which was on the loftiest peak of that mount, and indeed like a burning fire. But afterward is subjoined: “And he was there forty days and forty nights.” If, then, the whole time in which he was on the mount be taken — that is, as much in the lower as in the highest part [of it], as much in the cloud (but outside its midst) as within the midst — the days necessarily come to 46. Nor does that heightening of the labors in Deuteronomy stand against the reckoning. Because he says not simply that he was on the mount 40 days and nights, but “neither eating nor drinking” [40 days]. But in the six earlier days he ate and drank something — of which afterward. And that is far more, and fitter to the proposed end, than if he should say he was there 46 days and nights and make no mention of that fasting or abstinence; or, if he did, should join it not to the whole number of those 46 days, but to a part of them only — namely 40. For this minuter fraction of the days would have broken the force and impetus of the speech, so that it had not so much of authority and weight. Furthermore, this opinion of mine is confirmed from the awkward numbering of those six days which is made by them [the Jews]. For the Jews indeed will have them begun from the very beginning of the third month, on which day Moses first ascended Sinai — but this was already removed above (qq. 6 and 7). But grant [it]: Moses ascend-…
(col. 122)
…ed on the first day of this month — yet not even then did the cloud begin to cover the mount. For afterward — that is, on the third or fourth day, by the very opinion of the Jews of which [I spoke in] q. 8 — the Lord said (ch. 19, v. 9): “Now I will come to thee in the darkness of the cloud.” And afterward — namely on the sixth day, ibid., v. 16 — “a most dense cloud began to cover the mount.” But (ch. 24, v. 16) Moses was covered and hidden by that cloud all those six days. Abulensis, however (in the cited q. 21), thinks that those six days are to be begun from the day after the Law’s giving, but to be included in the “forty” number which Scripture mentions. But it was just now shown [that] they are separated off from it by the Scripture itself. For outside the midst of the cloud he was six days. But on the seventh day, at the Lord’s own call, he entered into it. “And he was there,” says the text (v. 18), “forty days and forty nights.” And therefore our Joshua too clung to Sinai forty-six days: six indeed in the lower part, outside that midst of the cloud, together with Moses; then the remaining forty either in the same place, but with Moses now withdrawn higher into that inmost [part] of the cloud — or in the same higher and nobler station with Moses himself. For this must now be examined.