The mode [of it] is such that he seems not to have carried even a foot out from there. For although one might take this whole [thing] morally — that is, that he rarely and scarcely ever went from there elsewhere, as at Judith ch. 8, q. 3 a like [passage] was noted — yet here no cause, as there, calls us away from the plain and proper understanding of the text. For [would he] go elsewhere to take food? But manna fell round about the tabernacles, and on Mount Sinai was present to him; and from the very camp, if it had been necessary, it could have been brought to him — and I am of the opinion that by then he had already fasted very much. Would he go out from there for sleep’s sake, and seek a bed elsewhere? — as though, forsooth, he did not know how to keep whole nights awake in prayer; or, when perhaps he must yield to this necessity of the body, [as though] there would be for him any bed more customary than the bare earth; or, if we want a softer couch, some little mat spread on the ground. What bed, I beseech [you], had he on Mount Sinai? what cot? “And Samuel slept in the temple of the Lord, where was the ark of God” (1 Kings [Samuel] 3, v. 3). The other necessities which arise for a man from the remains of food and drink either did not lead him outside the precincts [pomoeria] of his tabernacle, or certainly not far off. But now, why he was so assiduous in them [i.e. in those exercises] — the causes are several. First. That, as was treated in the prior question, he might satisfy his own religion toward God, his office toward those coming [to inquire], [and] his care and solicitude for the tabernacle itself. Second. That he might be an example to all who are one day going to do great deeds, [and] are going to enter upon great dignities and principalities — not ecclesiastics [only], but politicians too — [that they should] lay this most solid foundation of piety: that they gladly have leisure for prayers, [and] expend much honor and care on sacred buildings. A marvel [is that] which is handed down about that Scipio who, as St. Augustine says (bk. 3 On the City [of God], ch. 21), “was the conqueror of Hannibal and the conqueror of Carthage.” From the time when — says Livy (bk. 26) — “he took the manly toga, on no day earlier did he do any public or private business than [that] he went into the Capitol and, having entered the temple, sat [there] in thought; and for the most part he would spend the time alone, in secret, there. And this availed him greatly for the esteem of men and for the highest commands” — [and it would have] availed [him] also unto glory and everlasting felicity, if he had done this honor not to Jove but to the true God; nor [would] this youth of his have been, as the same [Augustine] says in the cited place, “given over to the gods, and nurtured in their temples,” but rather to the Lord and His tabernacle — as we now see done in Joshua. Third cause: that we might understand [this] to agree very well with the young also — which [thing] St. Luke praises (ch. 2, v. 37) in that holy aged woman, Anna the prophetess: “And she was a widow until eighty-four years, who departed not from the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers.” Fourth. That in a wondrous way in Joshua, JESUS, our Lord and Savior, might be expressed. He, when He was of twelve years, said (Luke 2, v. 49): “Did you not know that I must be about the things which are my Father’s?” He, from the polluted camp of the Jews, from the wicked synagogue, transferred the tabernacle of His Church; and He set it far from them, that it might be exposed not to the Jews only, but to all nations too, [and that] access to it might lie open to all. For from this He never withdraws — but “Behold,” says [He] (Matt. 28, v. 20), “I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world.” The Apostle cries out, finally (Heb. 13, v. 13): “Let us go forth to Him without the camp, bearing—
(col. 136)
—His reproach. For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one to come.*”