“Solarium” [flat-roof / sun-terrace] our Interpreter calls the place where Rahab hid the spies. But in twofold [manner] that name is taken. For either [it means] “solare” — or, as Pliny bk. 7, last chapter, inclines [to interpret], “a solarium [is] a horologium [sundial/clock],” [set] on a flat surface commonly, or a clepsydra [water-clock] — as Cicero, [in] the second [book] On the Nature of the Gods, says: “Who, when he sees a solarium — either a marked one, or [one working] from water — understands the hours to be shown by art, not by chance, but esteems the world (which comprehends both these very arts, and their artificers, and all [things]) to be devoid of counsel and reason?” Or [it] is a superior part of some dwelling, exposed to the sun, and therefore [it is] chiefly the roof [tectum] itself — as in Plautus, and so in this place, and often elsewhere, our Interpreter calls the Hebrew gag [גָּג], that is, “roof”; and the 70 call it δῶμα [dōma], here and Deut. 22:8, 2 Kings [2 Sam.] 11:2, Isaiah 22:1; and from them the Evangelists borrowed [it], as Acts 10:9, Matt. 10:27: “What is heard in the ear, preach ἐπὶ τῶν δωμάτων [epi tōn dōmatōn] upon the roofs.” And Matt. 24:17, likewise Mark 13:15, ἐπὶ τοῦ δώματος [epi tou dōmatos], “[he] who [is] upon the roof, let him not come down into the house.” For the roofs of those regions were, in the likeness of our pavements, flat, so that on them [it] was allowed to walk, to dwell, to banquet, and to do other [things] of that kind — as is gathered from the cited places, and [from] D. Jerome on Daniel 6, and [in his] epistle to Sunia [& Fretela]. Whence also Gribaldus took this, [in his] book On Buildings. You will see also, if [it] please, [things] which I noted [on] Tobit 3 fol. 50, and Judith 8 fol. 299. Josephus bk. 5 ch. 1 nevertheless said ἐπὶ τῆς στέγης [epi tēs stegēs, “on the roof”], for a reason to be explained [in] quaest. 20. But when [Quando] this was done, Abulensis disputes q. 26, and warns [that] they were hidden when the King’s ministers had knocked on the closed doors — before [it] was opened, or certainly before Rahab went to them.
But the manner [Modus] of hiding them was [this]. Rahab had, on the flat-roof of the house, flax, that it might be dried, spread out to the sun. Under this she bade those [spies] lie, and with it, [being] thicker, covered them. But there are here in the text a few [things] to be inquired. For in the Hebrew it is v. 6: “She hid them in the wood [ligno] of the flaxes, arranged by her upon the roof.” What, then, first is “the wood of the flaxes [linorum lignum]”? About the version I will speak first, then about the matter. 1. Vatablus [renders] “the stalks [culmi] of flax”; but our Interpreter says [it] to be “the stipula [stubble] of flax.” But this, says Masius, “can scarcely be borne. For [it] is not written pisthim, which the Latin rendered [as] ‘this is the wood of flax,’ but ‘the woods of flax.’ Nor indeed are the barks [cortices], [when] beaten off, wont to be laid up, but to be thrown into furnaces and ovens, as Pliny says bk. 19 ch. 1.” Yet Masius ought to have remembered two [things]. One is, [that] the same [thing] is “the wood of the flaxes” and “the woods of flax.” For [it] is wont, as Radak notes in [his] commentary, sometimes among the Hebrews [that] two substantives are so joined that either can govern or be governed. For, for example, Exod.
(col. 350)
—25:3 [it] is called “vermiculus cocci [scarlet grain-worm],” and by the same signification Levit. 14:4 “coccum vermiculi [the scarlet of the worm]”; 2 Thess. 1:8, the Latin “in the flame of fire,” the Greek “in the fire of flame”; and [so] could be rendered “linum ligneum [wooden flax]” or “lignum lineum [flaxen wood].” The other is, [that] “stipula” [is] a name sometimes taken for “calamus [stalk/reed],” as when the Poet said:
“—to spend a wretched song upon the stubble [stipula].”
And thus [that] which our [Interpreter] says “the stipula of flax,” the 70 say in the same manner λινοκαλάμην [linokalamēn, “flax-stalk”], as [Masius] himself in his own version of the Greek text acknowledges, and Masius retains; nay, even in their own from-the-Hebrew version, the Innovators [Novatores] Tremellius and Junius [do so]. But Josephus bk. 5 ch. 1 [says] λίνου ἀγκαλίδας [linou ankalidas, “bundles of flax”]. Nor indeed, as he [Masius] himself thinks, are the same [thing], in Pliny, “the barks of flax” and “the stipula.” Now, as to the matter, two [things] the same Masius brings [forward]. One, [that] perhaps that [is] the kind of flax which, [in] the cited place, Pliny called Xylinum — “from the shrub which some call gossypion [cotton], [and] more [call] Xylon.” And indeed from this [cotton] were made garments most thin and most white; and therefore [it was] most grateful [pleasing] to the Egyptian priests, whom Martialis bk. 12 epigr. 25 calls “linen-wearers [linigeri]” — Plutarch in [his] On Isis, [and] Apuleius Apol. 1. But because the 70 did not render [it] λίνον ξύλινον [linon xylinon, “cotton-flax”], but, as I said, λινοκαλάμην, I embrace the other explanation of Masius — so that [it] be “flax which [is] still crude [raw] and wooden [lignosum],” that is, because [it is] recently torn from the earth [and] dried, and by the tow-beating mallet not yet knocked out — which is what Ecclesiasticus 40 is called ὁμόλινον [homolinon, “raw flax”]. This [is] better understood from the second little-question, which is:
How was that flax arranged by Rahab herself? Nearly six preparations and dispositions of flax, [in] the cited place, Pliny indicates, which hodiernal [modern] experience too proves. “1. Torn up,” he says, “and gathered into hand-bundles, [it] is dried in the sun, hanging, with the roots turned upward, for one day. 2. Then, for five other days, with the tops of the bundles turned against each other, so that the seed may fall in the middle. 3. After the wheat-month [the month of the wheat-harvest], the rods themselves are immersed in water warmed by the suns, pressed down by some weight — for [to] none [is there] greater buoyancy. 4. And, turned about again as before, [they] are dried in the sun. 5. Then, dried out on a stone, they are pounded by a tow-mallet. 6. Finally, [it] is combed with iron hooks.” But Rahab had arranged [it] by the second disposition — as also that which was said “of wood”; and [the flax being] of the wheat-[season], which [wheat-harvest] was then not yet made [reaped], the harvest [messis] indicates. And that [was] indeed most opportunely [done]. For because that turning of the bundles avails not for drying only, but also for the catching of the falling seed, [there] was less suspicion in them [the drying flax looked ordinary], and less occasion of moving and knocking [them]. The same disposition the 70 signify, when they say [that] this flax [was] ἐστοιβασμένον [estoibasmenon], that is, “fitly arranged and composed,” like the beds [thori] from straw which [Plutarch] calls στιβάδας [stibadas] in [his] Lycurgus — in couch-like [fashion], as also the same 70 use that verb, or others, Ecclesiasticus 8:3 [and] Kings 12. But why she had flax and dried [it], someone will say [it] was done after the manner of women, whose works of this kind are. Rightly indeed — since [the discourse] is about honest and industrious women, such as Proverbs 31:19, 20, 21 describes. But [are] not harlots idle? [are they] not therefore harlots, because [they are] slothful? Yet of these most abandoned [women] was Rahab; and therefore she handled even feminine labors and works. Just as also, in Strabo bk. 8, that [woman] who was casting a reproach at another whore, ὅτι οὐ φίλεργος ἦν, οὐδ᾽ ἱστὸν ἥψατο [hoti ou philergos ēn, oud’ histon hēpsato — reading approximate], that is, “because [she] was neither work-loving, nor handled the loom”—
(col. 351)
—But the cause of this [flax-drying] was [something] which can be drawn from Josephus bk. 4 ch. 27: [namely] that, “on account of the greatest temperature [mildness] of the Jericho air, men were clothed in linens there even in winter, when in other parts of Judea there was snow.” But of all most [of all], [those] who had a venal [for-sale] body — women — as [in] quest. 5 I was saying.
Thirdly. Because v. 4 our [Interpreter] says, “The woman, taking the men, hid [abscondit] [them],” in the Hebrew it is “hid him [abscondit eum].” How “him,” and not “them”? Three [things] the Rabbins respond. The first, in [i.e. cited by] Lyranus, is [that] Phinehas was an angel (and therefore in [i.e. cited by] Abulensis too quest. 27, and Tanchuma), [and] that only Caleb was hidden — because Phinehas said [that] he himself was a priest, and priests, in the likeness of Angels, can, if they will, either be seen or not seen. The second, [of] Raschi [Rashi]: [that] thus the woman hastened, and [that] the narrow spaces of the flat-roof were [such] that she covered only the one [of them]. But [that] each of these [is] nugatory [trifling] — what need to prove [it]? The third, [of] Radach [Kimhi] and Ralbag [Gersonides]: [that] one was hidden in one part of the flat-roof, the other in the other part; otherwise, if [they] had been found together, an excessive heap of flax would have stood out prominent, and would have given occasion of suspecting and scrutinizing. [It is] to be said briefly, [that it] is customary to the Hebrews, [that] in the enumeration of several [persons], they speak of one — [what is] to be said of the singulars [distributively] — so that, namely, [it means] “Rahab hid this one and that one.” Add [that] the adjection [suffix] “no” [the pronominal suffix] is perhaps sometimes plural, just as “mo” is singular, Isaiah 53.