The day is indeed indicated [in] the preceding chapter, part 1, quest. 5; but a little later, in the following little question, it will be more fully established. Now [it is] to be said what time of day gave both a beginning and an end to this setting-out. Of the beginning, the opening of this third chapter has [it] thus: “Therefore Joshua, rising by night, moved the camp.” That “therefore” is in the Hebrew and Greek; but [it] is rendered very variously — and because here certain [matters] form a continuation with the preceding [ones] — about the former three-day preparation, and about the narrations of the sending and the return of the spies — [the connective] “Therefore” is rightly said. So much for “Therefore.” Now “night” here is the pre-dawn time, which is indeed the end of night, but still dark, and quite of the morning. For this two words import, which are in the Hebrew and Greek. One is הִשְׁכִּים [hishkim], which of itself, and without another adjunct, means “to rise early”; and it is nearly always rendered by the 70 by ὀρθρίζειν [orthrizein, “to rise at dawn”], by our [Interpreter] “to rise early,” and once (Luke 21 v. 38) “to be early [manicare]” — which Beza there calls a “barbarous word.” Erasmus (and from him Pagninus in the Thesaurus) [calls it] “unheard-of to Latin ears” — which, Erasmus says, “not even Augustine’s ears could bear.” But that holy Father speaks much more modestly, quaest. 46 on Judges, when he says only [that] “a Latin word does not occur to him.” Yet [one] who has more deeply ransacked the coffers of Latin antiquity, the most literate Justus Lipsius, in a certain letter to me at the end of August in the year [‘]49, proved [it] Latin, from an old Interpreter of Juvenal — about which [see] ch. 19 of Judges, quaest. 5, and elsewhere. And indeed, to these barkers-against our Interpreter, dormitio [sleeping], diluculatio [dawning], and the like are Latin, because they found these in some one [author], even if [now] obsolete. But that [word] which the old Interpreter preserved, from the authors he had read (even if today they perhaps are not extant, or certainly have not yet been read by us) — why do they cast [it] up with such disdain? The other [word] is בַּבֹּקֶר [baboker], that is, “in the morning” — so that, if [it] were to be rendered word for word, one would have to render those two words joined together, “he rose in the morning, in the morning.” But because this would be harsher, and by that conjunction of the words nothing is signified except (as I said) a time still quite of the morning, and, so to speak, before daybreak — therefore our [Interpreter] here, and [in] Genes. 22 v. 3, renders “to rise by night”; [in] Psalm 126 v. 2, “to rise before light”; sometimes “in the morning,” or “to rise at dawn” (Genes. 19 v. 27, Num. 14 v. 4, Exod. 8 v. 20, Job 1 v. 5, Isa. 5 v. 11); the 70, here and elsewhere, ὀρθρίζειν ἢ πρωΐ [orthrizein ē prōi, “to rise at dawn or early”]. If Masius had wished to consider these [things], he would, I think, have restrained this his [criticism]; why the Latin rendered baboker “by night,” I do not sufficiently understand. For “he moved the camp,” in Hebrew it is: “And they set out [were made ready].” Whence it is clear [that] Abulensis’s disputation (after quaest. 1) is empty — [namely] whether that “by night” is to be joined with “rising” or with “he moved,” so that by the former way a nocturnal time be signified, [and] by the latter, the morning, and the very dawn. [So] Joshua.
(col. 390)
For from what has been said it is clear [that] this is to be joined with the very verb “rising.” Meanwhile, however, [it is] certain [that] some little time was spent [placed] in the setting-in-motion of the whole army, and thus [that] all set out, the sky whitening, at dawn — especially if they had to gaze with [their] eyes upon the ark going before, and follow [it] with [their] feet: about which [more] below.
But the end of this journey was quite early, before midday — because, as [was] said above, the river [Jordan] was distant from Shittim only 60 stadia, that is, not [even] two whole German miles of ours. For although a great multitude of men and an army advances more slowly than one man or a few, yet all could most conveniently betake themselves thither before the eighth or ninth hour before midday. But here, with both hands (as [is] said), an excellent lesson is to be taken from the Rabbins’ Mechilta: [that] one is not to indulge in excessive sleep, but to rise briskly, early in the morning, for the duties worthy of a man. So once Abraham (Genes. 19); his steward Eliezer (ch. 24 v. 54); Jacob (ch. 32 v. 22); Moses (Exod. 8); Job (ch. 1); and other most holy men. “I will rise,” Psalm 107 [108, says] David, “at dawn” — or, as the Hebrew [words] can there be rendered, “I will awaken,” or “rouse up, the dawn”; as if he should say (as the Midrash notes on that place, fol. 46 b col. 2): “Never did the dawn find me sleeping; never did it wake me; but rather I awakened it, and roused [it].” How often does Homer inculcate this to princes, as [in] ch. 2 quest. 11 I noted? How often does our Solomon [inculcate it] to the whole race of men, Proverbs ch. 6 & 24? How often [are there] the exhortations of the Church, in the morning hymns? For example:
From St. Gregory:
“With torpors driven far off, let us all rise more quickly; and by night let us seek the holy [God], as we know the Prophet [did].”
From St. Ambrose:
“Drive out drowsiness, lest it overwhelm [us] as we grow sluggish.”
From Prudentius:
“The winged herald of day foretells the approaching light; now Christ, the rouser of minds, calls us to life. ‘Take away,’ he cries, ‘your sickly beds, torpid with sleep; and chastely, rightly, and soberly, watch now — I am at hand.’”
Shameful it is — when that [line] of the Satirist Persius is to be heard: “Are you still snoring? Now the bright morning enters the windows”; or that [line] of Virgil [Maro], bk. 4: “Aeneas, can you prolong sleep in such a crisis?… Are you not awake, O goddess-born Aeneas?”; or that [epigram] of Martial: “Rise; already the baker sells breakfasts to the boys, and the crested birds of dawn sound everywhere.” It grieved Demosthenes (as [it is] in Cicero, Tusc. 5) if ever the pre-dawn industry of craftsmen surpassed [him]; and will it not grieve us, if we are outdone by the vigilance of the same — and of any shopkeepers, or little servants, or maidservants?
(col. 391)
—[on] Esther ch. 6, quest. 14, I praised, from Plutarch (bk. To an unlearned Prince), that institution of the Persian Kings, by which one of his chamberlains used to enter his bedchamber and cry out: “Rise, O King, and attend to the affairs which Mesoromasdes (that is, the Sun) willed you to attend to.” Let us suppose (which in truth happens, but without a bodily form and sound) [that] at morning, when we awake, a good Angel is present to us and cries out: “Rise, O man, and attend to the studies and affairs which the eternal God, JESUS CHRIST, your Lord and Saviour, willed you to attend to.” For thus too the Apostle, Rom. 13 v. 11: “It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. The night has advanced, but the day has drawn near.” [It is] an old and well-worn saying: “The dawn [Aurora] is a friend to the Muses.” I add: and to prayers, and to all cares and thoughts — nay, even to all labours and exercises of the body. Let it be permitted to alter a little [what] someone [Ovid] said to an over-sleepy [man]:
“Foolish one, what is sleep but the image of cold death? Long times of rest the grave will give.”
[Something] which Homer expressed excellently by one word, when he wrote of “long-woeful [ταναηλεγής, tanaēlegēs] death,” Odyssey 2 (as Eustathius there explains); and Hesychius, who interprets [it] μακροκοίμητον [makrokoimēton, “long-sleeping”].