If we regard today’s [system of] vowel-points, verse 4 seems to be read benau [בֵּינוֹ] in this sense: “let there be between you and them (namely, the arks) a space of 2000 cubits.” And thus Rashi reads and explains [it], saying [that] there were really several arks then — one indeed of the covenant of the Lord, the other in which the bones of Joseph were being carried, as [is] said below, ch. 24 v. 32. But 1. [it] is to be said [that] the Hebrew letters can be read so that [it is] not benau, but beno, that is, “between you and it [her].” And thus our [Interpreter] and the 70 read [it]. But the [vowel-]points, by which to-[day the Bibles are pointed]—
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—[the points by which] today the Bibles are pointed are the Rabbis’, as I showed in the Biblical prolegomena, and in [my] earlier Rabbinus ch. 12. 2. [Even] granted we read benau, that Rabbi [Rashi] will still not accomplish his purpose. [i.] Because in certain Bibles — as in Pagninus — a circle [circulus] is set above this word, which among the Hebrews is wont to signify [that] something is to be read otherwise, or corrected. [ii.] Because [it] would be permissible to render “between you and them,” namely the priests who carry the ark — so that benau stands for benehem, or benā, or “between you and their [thing],” namely the ark. For although in these [readings] something be lacking from the common rules of the Hebrews, [it is] nevertheless no more than in that Solomonic [= Rashi’s] interpretation benau. [iii.] We can refer that benau to the ark of them — not of the priests only [who are] carrying [it], but of God himself. For where, at v. 3, we have “the ark of the Lord your God,” [it] is read in Hebrew in the plural, elohecem [אֱלֹהֵיכֶם]; and therefore the plural relative could now rightly be referred thither — since both [in] Isa. 44 v. 2, [and] ch. 54 v. 5, [and] Hosea 12 v. last, [God as] “ruler and our Lord” is named in the plural number. 3 [sic — read 4]: other Rabbis say benau here is written, and to be taken, for beno — as Radak and the Masoretes, who note this [same thing] done once elsewhere in the same word. 4. It would be ridiculous to say “between you and them [f.],” since neither before nor after is there any mention of several arks. 5. Why should only two arks, and not more, be set up? For [Scripture] shows [that] not only Joseph’s, but also the other Patriarchs’ bones [were] carried back from Egypt — St. Stephen, Acts 7 v. 16, and St. Jerome in the Epitaph of Paula; but of this below, [in] the last chapter. 6. Abulensis brings other arguments against that Solomon [Rashi]. But both of these, and of many other matters pertaining to those bones, [it] will be spoken [in] the same last chapter. It suffices [that] these [reasons] which I have brought are ready [prompt] from this very text.
Yet I will add a little admonition about Masius. You [pl.] reckon [that], by these two arks, [are] signified the two [figures] whom, in tractate Sukkah ch. 5, the Talmudists hand down (and from them Galatinus reports, bk. 4 ch. 2) — [namely] the Messiah, or Christ. For they say [that] one [is] the son of David, and he most victorious and most powerful; the other, the son of Joseph, lowly and weak, who is to be slain by the enemies. But [this is] a contumely against Christ our Lord, who was the son of Joseph; I judge these [to be] their fabrications. And therefore I rather note this: from the opinion of that Solomon [Rashi], and of the Rabbis agreeing with him, [it follows that] the relics and ashes of the saints can be held in some honour. For if the dry bones of Joseph [were] carried in an ark, in a solemn manner, and indeed by the priests, and at so great an interval from the crowd of the people, and in a place equal with the ark of the Lord — why do they [the Protestants] turn [it] into a fault for Christians [that] the relics of the heaven-dwellers [the saints] are so greatly valued by them?