Widely current in the schools of letters is the fable which they relate as a kind of history in the Libyan affair — Apianus, [and] Justin in bk. [18] of [his] Epitome — [that] Dido bought from Taurus, in Africa, only as much ground as a bull’s hide “could enclose with [its] back” (as [Virgil says], Aeneid 1). And when that seemed some small [amount], [she] nonetheless — by cutting the whole leather of that hide into the tiniest strips — encompassed the greatest space for building the new city, beyond everyone’s expectation. So (v. 3) the Lord seems to give the Israelites a greatest and almost boundless place, when He says: “Every place which the sole of your foot shall tread, I will hand over to you” [Josh. 1:3 / Deut. 11:24]. For, first, [starting] from Egypt, in the manner in which
(col. 268 [printed 269])
they had come through the longest stretches of the wildernesses, so they were able to advance still further toward the West and the North.
-
Joshua was able to divide so many thousands of men into fixed companies, and to send some hither, some thither — so that, just as in the time of Peleg (Gen. 10) the earth was divided, so it might now be divided by the Israelites too, and be entered by division.
-
He could dispatch individuals even to the outermost regions of the world; and then the foot of the Israelite would have trodden those places, and so they would have come into their power by divine donation.
-
What of it, that no time is fixed for this treading, but [it is] as though it were to be everlasting? — so it is said: “every place which he shall have trodden” — not at this first entry, or this year, or a following [one], but [that] the sole of your foot “shall have trodden [it]” infinitely, ever, namely — “I will hand it over to you.” But what shores of the now almost-old world, what nation, what land so unknown, whither some footstep of the Jews may not have reached? The whole world, therefore, once known, was handed over by God to them. So indeed think their Rabbis, the Talmudists, whom R. Simeon ben Yohai cites in his Siphre and Zohar (and against them, Abulensis quest. 22). But it was fair to attend them to those things which v. 4 delivers.
For who and where all that place is which — if they had pressed [it] with footsteps, God handing [it] over — they would obtain, is [there] explained, and its certain bounds and limits are circumscribed, of which [the] following question [treats]. But what our interpreter renders “vestigium” [footstep], in the Hebrew is a noun which is applied [both] to hands and to feet, and [means], in them, the vola and palma [the hollow / palm and sole]; and sometimes, by synecdoche, it is wont to be turned “hand” — Ezek. 6:11, ch. 12:14; 1 [Sam.] 5:4; 2 [Sam.] 22:1, ch. 9:34; 3 [Kings, i.e. 1 Kings] 18:43; Lam. 2:19; Ps. 25:5; Ps. 43:20; Lev. 9:17; Num. 5:18; Exod. 4:4; Prov. 6:1, ch. 31:7 & 19; Ps. 23:4. In these [places] planta [sole] and, synecdochically [συνεκδοχικῶς, synekdochikōs, “by synecdoche”], pes [foot] — below, ch. 3 v. 13; Ezek. 1:7; Gen. 8:8; Lev. 11:27, where our [interpreter] put “hand” — in the way in which some of the Greeks and Latins too called the feet of brute animals “hands,” as Oppian treating of bears, and about the same Pliny bk. 8 ch. 36 [and] on apes bk. 11.44, and likewise Galen bk. 6 of the Anatomy ch. 1.