Question I. (marg.) Was the boy [puer] who told Moses that Eldad and Medad were prophesying — Joshua? or at least some one of Moses's ministers?

Because Joshua was above called a “boy,” someone might perhaps suppose him to be the same one who runs to Moses [and] reports those two new prophets. For here too [the runner] seems to have been not a boy in age at all, but a young man or stripling, as [Joshua] is seen to have been above (ch. 6, q. 1) — who by the Seventy is called neaniskos [young man]. But he is also another [person], as rightly seemed to Oleaster too. For after that one [the boy] had reported those things, Joshua is said to have followed upon his speech and at once to have said what is subjoined; and more openly, in the Hebrew and Greek, he is said to have “answered.” Now although in Scripture “to answer” is often taken simply for “to set about speaking” (as at Job 3:1, Matt. 11:25 and 22:1, Mark 9:38, and elsewhere), nonetheless here the one who reports about those prophets is another [person], [and] another the one who answers. For the former is called only a “boy”; but over against him, as it were, is set the exact description of Joshua — by his proper name and several other marks. Who that boy was — whether of Moses’s own household, or any other whatever — is not indeed established; but I would more readily believe [it was] one of Moses’s servants: 1. because he seems to have known that Moses desired to learn about these two, where they were and what they were doing, since they had not come to the appointed place of the tabernacle. For therefore he reports [it], and, to satisfy the Lord’s [Moses’s] desire and the duty of a diligent servant, he uses the utmost speed and runs. [2.] Then, what would move some other boy to report this? The novelty of the matter? But why should this be at heart to a boy rather than to any of the men and those more advanced in age? Why, before all the other boys, should this one alone run? Perhaps at the bidding of a father, or of the Lord [Moses] sending him to Moses? But there would, I think, have been some mention made of such a sender, so that greater authority and credit might be created for this boy’s report. Therefore he was rather some minister of Moses, and perhaps had been sent out by him — either before, or just now, when the other elders were present and Moses saw those two absent — to seek out and summon those [two].