The former [question] is proposed in the text itself, v. 6: “Take up the ark of the covenant, and go before the people”; and [it] has been sufficiently expounded hitherto (quest. 4 and following). But the latter — because of [the things] which, against Abulensis’s twelfth and 16th question, were disputed in this place [in] bk. 1 ch. 9, quest. 32 & 33 — may be seen more readily [there]. For it was for him [Joshua] to obey the priests, and especially the chief [priest], not to command [them]. “Rightly,” you will say, “in sacred [matters] — not in political affairs. But what is now commanded — is it not political? Is it not [the part] of a commander, when a hostile land is to be entered, to prescribe the time, manner, and order of the going?” Thus indeed the whole question would easily be dispatched, unless certain sacred and divine [matters] — in which a political prince has no right — had intervened. For we said before [that] it was the part of the Levites alone to carry the ark, not of the priests; [and] that the order even of those [priests] had been appointed by God, [namely] that they be, with the ark, in the middle of the camp, whether standing or advancing. To change these two [things], then — is [it] political? or [is it] not rather contrary to the sacred law? I answered once, in the Joshuan booklet, ch. 3 num. 42, in these words:
“But someone may perhaps wonder why a political Prince commands this order of advancing and going far ahead. Does he dance the chorus outside his office [i.e. overstep his role]? Has he a right and command over the priests themselves? That, of a most modest and most religious Commander, no one would suppose; on this, in political [matters], all agree. But there was something else, which made both him command and these obedient [priests] obey — namely, prophecy: in Joshua [there was] the [prophetic] spirit. For God — as [was] also touched above — spoke not only through the Urim and Thummim, as it were through the priests themselves, but sometimes also ἀμέσως [amesōs, “immediately, without an intermediary”], with no mortal [as] go-between. Whence that [word], ‘The Lord said to him, Command the priests’; and this is plain from the very nature of the commands, which were above the measure of human prudence. For of what [merely human] counsel would it have been to tear away — so far, and [these] the sacred things of the whole nation, hedged about by no garrison of military men, [and now] in hostile [territory], amid dangers — [these] from the rest of the army? What reason would have commanded that the very high-priests should cast themselves into the midst of the waters — [where] the rivers stood in wide-spreading pools, where neither bridge, nor rafts, nor any ford presented itself? But, as I said, these [things] flowed from a higher mind.”
To us, moreover — who are priests — [it] is said even today, by our great prophet and true Joshua and Lord: “Take up the ark of the covenant, and go before the people.” [This,] though it may easily be understood from quest. 8, and from [the things] which will be said below (ch. 4 & 5), is nevertheless to be noted briefly, and as it were ἐν παρόδῳ [en parodō, “in passing”]: [that] there is no [reason] why superiors [maiores] should bear [it] ill, if — when the honour and glory of God requires [it] — [they take up] some burden which they were not otherwise wont to bear; nay, [a burden] which was imposed on others, and indeed [on] inferiors. [If] it is to be undertaken, again all priests must give their effort, that for the people—
(col. 407)
—always by good example, and by the carrying of the ark of the covenant, [the priests] may go before [the people].