Three responses [Tria responsa] are [made] to him [Joshua, v. 16–18]. The first, the deferring [rendering] of the highest obedience — simply and comparatively. Simply, bipartitely: 1. that [they will do] all which Joshua had already said and admonished: “All which thou hast commanded us, we will do.” 2. as to other [things], still more: “And whithersoever thou shalt send us [miseris], we will go” — that is, to whatever place (as the 70 render [it]), or to whatever thing and business, as—
(col. 311)
—[the] Hebrew [words] also can be taken [thus], unless one would wish the same thing to be said otherwise; and yet the force [of the phrase] would be greater, at least in the repetition. Comparatively [Comparate] indeed: “Just as we obeyed in all things Moses, so will we obey thee also.” But indeed often they had not obeyed [him], as so many murmurings declared, and Moses himself [testified], Deut. 31:27. It can be said: 1. [that] those who had not obeyed were long ago removed from the midst by various deaths [exitus] through the wilderness; but these, who speak these [things], were truly always modest and compliant [morigeri]. If you press the cited place of Deuteronomy — in which the discourse is about the living and present [generation] — [it is] to be responded [that] there account is had of the people, which [is] one and the same, and by reason of the brief delay of interjected time is morally esteemed [as one]; and [that] it [was one thing] in which [they] were unruly [immorigeri] and contumacious, together with the compliant and obsequious, and [another] in which, those [rebels] being extinguished, these now are alone. 2. They speak in respect of that obedience which they had rendered to Moses. For although that [obedience was] sometimes even less than fair [aequo minor], or altogether none, yet more often and more constantly some [obedience was rendered], and great. For how otherwise would they have endured so many years in the peregrination, and at last arrived hither, at [this] place and boundary? Nay, [it] can even be esteemed [that] there was no disobedience [inobedientia] —
—because by repeated punishments it seems ever expiated; and therefore neither is there now any memory or vestige of it. 3. The better and saner part of the people speaks — signifying both what has been done by itself, and what by all is to be done; and indeed [that they will do] this readily [reapse] hereafter, diligently and alacritously. But while I flee Scylla, I am carried into Charybdis. Do these [men] praise themselves? Do they boast their own obedience? “We have obeyed,” they say, “in all things Moses.” This [is] indeed some praise, but not empty [inane] — indeed [with] no boasting. For [it is] a modest confirmation of future obedience, from the past [obedience], and from the notable equiparation [comparison] of the leaders themselves. For it could seem [that] Moses’s authority had prevailed among them, so that they obeyed his mandates, but that Joshua himself would not be of so great [authority] among the same. “Not so,” they say, “is it. But if we obeyed Moses, we will obey Thee also. Equal [is] the command of both of you; equal, from GOD, [is] the authority in the principate. Equal, therefore, will be also our obsequy. Nothing less is to be expected by thee from us than by him.” These [things], since they are right and modest, and since from our text they are expressed — what is that which Masius says? “Here the Israelites boast nothing of obedience, which the Latin translation, faultily [mendose] indeed,
(col. 312 [printed 313])
—expressed”? Where — and what, I ask — [is] the fault [mendum]? For word for word [verbo tenus] in the Hebrew is: “According to all, just as [prout] toward Moses we were hearing [audientes fuimus], we shall be and shall [do] to thee.” In the 70: “According to all things, just as we obeyed [obtemperavimus] Moses, we will obey [obtemperabimus] thee.” What between these and our Interpreter — if you regard not the order of words, but the thing and sense — [is] of difference? What does our [version] differ from that very [Hebrew-based] version which from the Hebrew has thus: “Wholly [Omnino], as we hearkened [auscultavimus] to Moses, [so] will we hearken to thee”; from the Greek thus: “In all ways [Omnibus modis], just as we obeyed Moses, so will we obey thee”?
The other [thing], which is the [second] response: “Only let the Lord thy GOD be with thee, as he was with Moses.” Of which words the sense can be twofold — exceptive [exceptiva] the one, votive [votiva] indeed the other. Exceptive: “In all things indeed we will obey Thee — provided [modo] thou command [things] consonant to God, [and] repugn nothing to His law.” Votive: “O, may the Lord will to be present to thee! We wish [optamus], and we ask [rogamus] him, that just as with Moses, so he may be with thee.” And the same bipartite exposition has place in the last words of the response: “Only be strengthened [confortare], and act manfully [viriliter age].” And the prior indeed — that exceptive [reading] — pleases more the Rabbis David Kimhi, Levi Gersonides, [and] the Talmudists ch. 13 of the tractate Sanhedrin; but to Masius, and to me, the latter [posterior, votive] is more optative. First, because when to a Prince — especially [a] new [one] — [who is] speaking or admonishing something, the people assents [annuit], they are wont frequently to interweave [intexere] vows of this kind, as “Long live the King! [Vivat Rex] Long life to the Prince! May GOD help our Lord!” and the like. Second, because in so great [and] so prompt a signification of an obedient will, [it] would have been little aptly placed just now — that which among all peoples, even barbarous [ones], [is] most clear and most received, which the judgment of human reason prescribes to all, which in every covenant, pact, and promise is understood — unless, namely, it be against GOD, against right [fas], and [against the] fair [aequum]. For they would seem too much to distrust the Prince himself, who in a public — as it were — congratulation and applause should acclaim this condition, which [condition], in written contracts [syngraphae] also and codicils, where all things are more exilely [minutely] and to the quick [ad vivum] pared down, is scarcely appended —
—[though] on account of the evidence and necessity of the matter it is never esteemed [to be] absent. For that [phrase] “up to the altars” [usque ad aras] — not in friendships and societies only, but in all [things], as I said, of pacifying, promising, and obeying kinds — has place, although [it be passed over] in silence [verbo taceatur]. But they say “the Lord thy GOD,” rather than “ours [noster],” so that they may augment the mind and authority of Joshua himself, as if GOD be very propitious and friendly to him — [and that] he in turn [contra] may cultivate and revere Him greatly.
The third [response] is the penalty [poena] which of their own accord they establish, for the disobedient, among themselves: “Who shall contradict thy mouth, and shall not obey all the words which thou shalt have commanded him, let him die [moriatur].” [Those] who violated Moses’s precepts, they [were] almost always punished not by Moses, but by GOD himself. But these [men] will [it], and decree [it] against their own selves — [so] that if any one [of them] had not, in all and single [things], borne [rendered] the will [morem] toward Joshua, against him — even if divine vengeance, which is often deferred, were not present — yet by death he should be animadverted [punished]. Now among other nations the kinds of penalties were various. For they afflicted either the fortunes, or the body; and that either by prison, or by blows and stripes, or by death. To the fortunes pertains ζημία [zēmia, “a fine”] — that is, “a fine [mulcta] in the faculties [goods]” — Ezra [Esdras] 1, ch. 7. To prison [pertains] παράδοσις [paradosis, “a handing-over”], in the same place. To stripes [plagas] and blows [pertains] παιδεία [paideia, “chastisement/discipline”] — that is, chastisement [castigatio] — in the same place. Where, however, “exile” [exilium] is converted [rendered] from our [text]. Which [is] not to be taken of that [exile] by which men are compelled to go among the [foreign] nations and certain other places (for this kind of exile Josephus denies [existed] among the Jews, in [his] book against Apion), but of that by which [they went] into certain other Israelite cities [which] were, so to speak, [cities] “of refuge” [refugii] — as [Deut.] 21 confirms; Sigonius bk. 6 On the Jewish Republic, ch. 8. “A mountain” [Mons], finally, is placed in that same passage of Ezra; and [it is] indeed the first of all. [It is] pleasing, therefore, now to marvel [Mirari libet] [that] for the disobedient not any fine of whatever kind, not prison, not beatings, but the sum of penalties — death — is established to be inflicted. So great, namely, was the ardor of obeying. But did Joshua approve this? [It is] not clear [Non liquet]. Yet, [given] his goodness, clemency, and imitation of Moses, I think [that] in fact he did not approve [it] — unless perhaps in certain most grave matters [gravissimis]—
(col. 313)
—[most] grave [matters], and of greatest moment, as below, in [the case of] Achan, we shall see: and thus in duty [officium] he would contain all [men] more by that reverence than by the fear of the imposed penalty.