Moses removes from him the false [notion] about the shout, or the suspicion, and teaches what kind [it] truly is. Now a twofold shout is wont to be raised in battles. One, at the beginning, from both lines, to one and the same end — namely, that they may rouse and inflame themselves, but terrify and strike down the enemy. The other, in the very course of the battle; and this [is] well-nigh double. For those who conquer and overcome utter glad voices, or of [victory] pressing on, or of [victory] now full; [but] those who are conquered and overcome [utter] sad, wild, and discordant wailings — while some are wounded, some now at the last gasp, some are being trampled under the feet either of their own or of the enemy; or certainly [some], still living and not yet hurt, while they betake themselves to flight, and in it [flight] call others this way and that, sometimes even thrust [them] forward. But both shouts Moses said were absent from the camp. “It is not,” he says, “the cry of those exhorting to battle, nor the shout of those compelling to flight.” For so our [translator] rightly rendered what from the Hebrew is variously given. For R. Kimchi, the [other] Rabbis, and the Chaldee paraphrast [render it] thus: “It is not the voice of those crying mightily, nor the voice of those crying feebly”; or [thus]: “Neither of the strong, who conquer, nor of the weak, who are conquered, is [this] the cry.” Oleaster: “It is not the voice of those answering in strength” — i.e., of those boasting their forces unto victory — “nor of those answering in cutting-down” — i.e., [of those saying] they are cut down. R. Solomon [Rashi], in [his] commentary: “This voice is not [that] of men shouting ‘Victory! Victory!’; nor the voice of the weak crying out ‘Woe! Woe!’, or ‘Flee! Flee!’” But the Seventy: οὐκ ἔστι φωνὴ ἐξαρχόντων κατ’ ἰσχύν, οὐδὲ φωνὴ ἐξαρχόντων τροπῆς — that is, as it is rendered in Pagninus’s Thesaurus: “It is not the voice of those leading off [the war-song] for battle, nor the voice of those leading off for flight.” Of what kind, then, is the voice? “But the voice,” he says, “of singers I hear.” The Chaldee paraphrast: “the voice of players”; the Seventy: φωνὴν ἐξαρχόντων οἴνῳ — “the voice of those leading off in wine.” Truly, indeed, they all express the voice which was in fact then [there], and which is signified by the Hebrew word. But it will not be beside the point to consider what that [word] is, and why it was imposed upon those sporting, wanton, and bacchic outcries. But that word is annoth [ענות], which could be rendered “voice of affliction, humiliation, and misery” — not only because, with other points, it could be read anoth [עֲנוֹת], as it is in Psalm 21 [22], v. 24 [25], but also with those which are set [there] retained. For it is an infinitive in place of a noun — as [is] often [the case], both among the Hebrews and among the Greeks and Latins. And in the preceding [it] had been twice put in the negations, but with an addition; so that the sense here would be nearly this: “It is not the voice of affliction which the force and strength of the conquerors brings on; nor the voice of affliction which those who are conquered endure, and querulously bewail groaning — a weakening or dissolution: but simply, it is a voice of affliction.” O wondrous thing! The song of those feasting, dancing, carousing, [and] running wanton seems most festive, most glad, most delightful — and yet truly it is nothing other than a voice of affliction; and of an affliction not of this or that [kind], but simply, one which, namely, is far greater and more crushing than can be in any battle, even the most unhappy. For the voice of the utmost affliction is the voice of weeping, and of the everlasting gnashing of teeth. “They hold,” says Job (ch. 21, v. 12), “the timbrel and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in good things, and in a moment go down to hell.” But one may with reason wonder whence, in that wilderness, these wretches had wine, that they might so revel. Abulensis doubts (after q. 16) whether they had wine, or used only water; but since it is written, in the same ch. 32 of Exodus, “the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play” — and so [far] that, as follows afterward, [they] “danced and made choirs” — who would not think wine was present? “For no one,” says Cicero (Pro Murena), “dances sober.” And the Seventy expressly mentioned wine, as we saw; and he himself…
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…and Philo himself (On the Laws in Particular), [describing] those Israelites as “drunk with a double drunkenness — the one of impiety, the other of wine”; and (book 3 On Moses): “having gorged themselves on unmixed [wine], they were held by a double drunkenness — the one from wine, the other also from folly.” And therefore whence they had wine is rather to be asked. But what does the belly not procure? What region [is there] from which gluttony alone, and dainty [appetite], does not try to buy up delicacies? (See Pliny, book 9, ch. 17 and 26; book 19, ch. 4; book 36, ch. 1.) The Chaldee [Targum] indeed says (Canticle 1, v. 14) [that] the Israelites brought wine into the desert from the vineyards of Engaddi. These impious calf-worshippers, then, must be reckoned to have taken care that a great supply of wine be brought in from neighboring places. But as for Moncaeius (book 2 On the Calf, ch. 6, p. 2, 84) wanting these cries to have been sacrificial — such as [in] Aeneid 10, when “the curved pipe proclaims the choirs of Bacchus,” and Philumenus argues — this excuses the Jews in nothing at all. Nor does he prove [that] those outcries were joined with the sacrifice only, and were not also [continued] after it; and he cites Philo’s book 2 On the Life of Moses wrongly, since these things are in the cited book On the Special Laws; and mention of them is made in the book On Drunkenness, [and] some [things] twice in book 3 On Moses — none in the second [book].