About the manner of the advance the heralds hand down three [things]. First, [that] to the priests carrying the ark let no one go before, but let the whole multitude follow those going before. “Follow,” says the text, “those preceding.” Perhaps [it] was written by our Interpreter: “Follow the preceding [one].” For in the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek copy it is: “Go after it” — namely, the ark. Yet there is no variation of the meaning, whichever way we read. For if we follow those who carry some object — for example, a standard [vexillum] — we shall follow not only these [men], but also that object [itself].
The second: [that] between those going before and these following there should be an interval of two thousand cubits. And from this the Rabbis say [it] came about [that], on the sabbath day — on which otherwise all work and journeying [was] forbidden (Exod. 16) — a walk of two thousand cubits was nevertheless permitted, as Rashi teaches on this and that place of Exodus, and the Chaldee Paraphrast [on] Ruth 1 v. 26, [and] Elias Thisbites under the word תְּחוּם [techum, “boundary”], and in the Talmud very many [Rabbis] in the tractate ʿEruvin, in several chapters. For if on the sabbath day anyone had wished to come to the ark, or the tabernacle, for the sake of sacrifice, he could not approach unless he completed at least those two thousand cubits by which he was distant from it — although, if he had been in the rear part of the camp, or elsewhere, [he] would perhaps have had to go somewhat more. So that, therefore, there might be a fixed measure of the space which [it] would be lawful to walk about on sabbaths, the ancient priests of the Jews, and the sages of the Sanhedrin, decreed these two thousand [cubits] — as Rambam explains at length, tome 1, tractate On the Sabbath ch. 17. And this, [in] Acts 1, is called “a sabbath [day’s] journey,” as Oecumenius, Theophylact, [and] Clement (Stromata bk. 5) say there, and from him Suidas. And to these clearly assents Josephus, bk. 20 ch. 6, when he says [that] the Mount of Olives was distant from Jerusalem not six stadia — as Baronius reads (tome 1, fol. 245) — but five. For, by common opinion, to one cubit is assigned a Greek foot-and-a-half [sesquipes]; and from Pliny (bk. 2 ch. 23) to one stadium there are 600 Greek feet, and therefore 400 cubits. Whence it comes about [that] five stadia have 2000 cubits, but 3000 Greek feet. About the magnitude of cubits, however, I have said more [at] Genes. 6; and about the sabbath journey [at] Acts 1, where I brought forward eight or nine opinions, and expounded either wherein they agreed or disagreed. Clavius, too, may be seen on these measures in the first [chapter] on the sphere, [and] in the book On weights and measures ch. 18 and following; [and] Io. Mariana; [and] Lipsius, century 3, epist. 59.
But of this their second announcement the heralds themselves add the reason: “that you may be able to see afar off, and to know by what way you may enter, because you have not before walked through it.” For that “before” [prius], in Hebrew and Greek it is “yesterday and the day before” [heri & nudiustertius], as below, ch. 4 v. 18; but our [Interpreter] expressed the force of these [words], just as Josephus [does] bk. 2 of the Antiquities at the end, and the Iliad bk. 2 in those [words] χθιζά τε καὶ πρωΐζα [chthiza te kai prōiza, “yesterday and the day before”]. But Rashi — and Vatablus, following him — explain this reason thus: [that] there was for the Israelites on the sabbath an open road to the ark, for the sake of prayer, unimpeded by any tents. But Abulensis refutes [this], quest. 1.
The third: “Beware lest you approach the ark.” For just as—
(col. 398)
—for just as, when the Lord had fixed certain limits for the people [who were] to receive the law, and had said (Exod. 19 v. 12): “Beware lest you go up into the mountain, nor touch its borders. Everyone who touches the mountain shall die the death” — so here, after he had commanded [that] between the ark and the people there be [a gap] of two thousand cubits as an interval [capedo], he now gravely enjoins [that] no one dare to approach nearer: lest [anyone] think it enough if he be distant from the ark by a thousand cubits, [or] by a thousand and five hundred, or [by] some other similar space; but [that] the distance which [was] appointed — that [is] to be wholly kept.