This — as in other rivers — we can regard either ordinarily or extraordinarily. Who has handed down [its] breadth or depth in the former way, no one [that] I have read, except the most illustrious Duke of Olyka — who (epistle 2, folio 104) describes the Jordan, and says: “Scarcely does [it] grow to a breadth of thirty cubits, except where it flows into the Dead Sea, in which place it is also spread more widely.” Yet that [its] breadth was great is gathered from this — that Strabo (bk. 16), comparing it with the rivers of that region, says [it] is the greatest of all. But [there are] here in Strabo several errors. The first: that in Coele-Syria, between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, he places the Jordan. The second: that he adjoins to it the Lycus — which by Ptolemy is placed in Assyria, and is said to empty itself into the Euphrates. The third: that both the Lycus and the Jordan, he says, are filled [navigated] by the cargo-ships of the Aradians. But between Aradus and the Jordan, how much land [is] interposed? Above Tripoli and Lebanon is the island of Aradus, toward the North; and from Anti-Lebanon, toward the South, flows the Jordan. It is added [as a further point] that, ordinarily, [it] could not be crossed except through certain fords. But [that it] was extraordinarily sometimes wont to be greatly widened, so that it flowed out far and wide beyond [its] banks, [Scripture] indicates in this place (v. 15), when it says: “But the Jordan had filled the banks of its channel in the time of harvest.” Now [there] are several little questions about this.
1. How great was this extraordinary breadth? Radak, and sometimes Masius, assign to it about two thousand cubits — which agrees [with] 12—
(col. 423)
—[which agrees with 12] miles; which [breadth] the Syro-Chaldee [version], in that place where the Israelites crossed, [gives] (says p. 117) — as I show [on] Acts ch. 1. Yet I think this breadth [is] uncertain, on account of the magnitude and variety of the cause whence it [comes] — about which a little later.
2. Whether this extraordinary [breadth] was only at this time, when the Israelites were about to cross, or also at other times? Abulensis (before quest. 35) attributes to Lyranus the opinion [that] he thought [it] made only at that time — because [what] in our Latin is “in the time of harvest,” he [Lyranus] renders from the Hebrew “in all the days of harvest.” But to me, first, Lyranus does not seem to deny [that] this happens in other years too, but only [that] the sense of these words is [that] which he handed down. Secondly, if anyone should nevertheless deny [it], it can easily be proved from other places [that] this inundation of the Jordan is annual — as 1 Chron. 12 v. 15: “These are they who crossed the Jordan in the first month, when it is wont to overflow its banks”; [and] Eccles. [Sirach] 24 v. 36: “Who multiplies [wisdom] like the Jordan in the time of harvest.” Thirdly, this place is better expounded, from those other scriptures, [as] “in all the days of harvest” — that is, “at any harvest-time,” or “in any year while the harvest is going on” — [that] the Jordan is wont to overflow, rather than that it overflows during the whole time of two months. For this can neither be proved, nor will it appear afterward to happen, when the cause of this inundation is treated. And yet this same [view] seems to please Cajetan too.
Third little question. What [is] that harvest? In scripture [there] is a harvest spiritual and corporeal. And this [corporeal one] is either of wheat [tritici] (Gen. 30; Judg. 15 v. 1; 1 Sam. [Reg.] 12 v. 17), or of barley [hordei] (Ruth 1 v. 22; 2 Sam. [Reg.] 21 v. 9), or of myrrh (Cant. 5 v. 1). Abulensis (Judg. 6 quest. 24) seems to take [it] only [as] a barley-harvest. But Cajetan thinks [that] here both the barley- and the wheat-[harvest] are signified together. But [it] seems [that] only the wheat[-harvest] is to be taken. First: when no other name or circumstance is added to “harvest,” [it] is wont to be taken of the most proper and chief harvest, which is [that] of wheat. Secondly: expressly, in the 70, “the days of the harvest of grains” are placed — or, as St. Augustine has (quest. 3), “the days of the harvest of wheat.” Thirdly: the first month is not only Nisan, but is also called Abib [אָבִיב] (Exod. 13 v. 4, & Deut. 16) — that is, “the month of new fruits,” or “of the stalk and the new ear.” Nor does it avail [to argue], as some urge, [that] at Pentecost the firstfruit loaves [are] offered to God from the new wheat-harvest (Exod. 34:22; Lev. 23:15; Num. 28 v. 26). For that does not signify [that] the harvest then takes place, but [that it] took place—
(col. 424)
—[but that it took place] in the days of the wheat-harvest. This seems incredible to our regions. But there, as those who have known [it] report, in the beginning of spring is the wheat-harvest; and then that river is filled more fully than during winter. Pliny (bk. 18 ch. 18) hands down [that] the harvest in Egypt is begun a little before the Kalends of April, and finished or completed in May. And in Cassian (Conference 15 ch. 4), Abbot Abraham, for the sake of reaping, used to go from the desert to Egypt on the fiftieth day [i.e. in the Pentecost season, between Easter and Pentecost]. And John Leo [Africanus] (bk. 8), treating of the customs of the Egyptians, says: “Under [the beginning of] April they cut down the crops; the cut [crops] they at once thresh; nor do they leave an ear to be cut on the twentieth of May.” The Comic [poet], certainly — Aristophanes, in the Birds — says [that] the verpi (that is, the Jews, Phoenicians, and Egyptians) go out to the harvest when the cuckoo begins to sing. For thus he himself [writes]: κόκκυ ψωλοὶ πεδίονδε [kokku psōloi pedionde, “‘Cuckoo!’ — the circumcised [go] out to the field”]. Where his Scholiast says this [was] said “according to the proverb,” because, namely, among the Egyptians there were many “verpi” [circumcised] — so that the sense is: “when the cuckoo says ‘cuckoo,’ then the circumcised went out into the field”; or, “at the crowing of the cuckoo, they reaped”: [that is,] when the cuckoo sings, then the circumcised little fellows went out into the fields, and reaped the crops. And he understands, by the name ψωλοί [psōloi], the Phoenicians and Egyptians, who were wont to be circumcised. And therefore he had said a little before [the Greek line, to the effect]: “Of the Egyptians and Phoenicians the cuckoo is king … and when the cuckoo said ‘cuckoo,’ then all the Phoenicians reaped the wheat and the barley in the fields.” See below, ch. 5 quest. 31, quest. 4, at the fifth objection.
Fifth little question. What [is] the cause [that], at that time, the crops there are ripe? Oleaster wonders [at this] (on Lev. 23). But Abulensis answers here (quest. 35) [that there] is a greater nearness to the equinoctial circle, and therefore also a greater heat, than [that] which is in Spain, and much more [than] that which [is] in this our Germany. But in that way the crops of Egypt would ripen still sooner than [those] of Judea, because it is nearer to the equinoctial circle. But from what has been said [it] appears [that] the reason is the same. Nay, in all Africa the harvest ought to be quicker than in Judea. But that [it] is not [so], St. Augustine indicated above. I would therefore think [that] not this one cause only is to be considered, but with it also that [other] is to be coupled: the goodness of the air and of the soil. For “the [good] temperament, or the well-mixedness of the air [τὸ τοῦ ἀέρος εὔκρατον],” Josephus reviews (bk. 3 ch. 35). Whence Radak too says [that] that land is called (Isa. 13 v. 19) צְבִי [tsevi, “beauty, glory” — also “gazelle”] — tsevi, because, as the deer and the roe (which is called by the same Hebrew name, Deut. 14 v. 5) is swifter than the other animals, so the land of Israel, for ripening and maturing its fruits, is more apt and quicker than other lands — as will be said again below, ch. 13 quest. 3.
Sixth little question. Why does the Jordan overflow at that same harvest-time? Since this happens not in the whole year, but at that [particular] time of year, [there] must be a cause — not perennial, but [one] which exists then. And that would seem, first, [to be] the abundance of rains falling at that time of year. Abulensis denies [it] (quest. 36): 1. because [the rains] would not return every year at the same time; 2. because scripture indicates [it] to be a miracle [that] there were rains in that region then (1 Sam. [Reg.] 12) — and [there] can be added that [saying of] Prov. 26 v. 1: “As snow in summer, and rain in harvest: so glory is unbecoming to a fool.” Yet in the months of the spring season, rain [was] not only usual to Judea, but even desired—
(col. 425)
—[rain was even desired,] too, [it] seems to be proved from the rain which — malkos [מַלְקוֹשׁ] — is called in Latin serotina [the “late” rain], or also verna [the spring rain], as Genebrardus says in the Calendar of the Hebrews, where, on the 26th day of the first month, he notes [that] it is sought from God by prayers, because it is most suitable for the harvest soon to come. Just as the other kind of rain — which either softens the earth for conceiving the seed, or waters the [already-]sown crop, [and is called] Ioreh [יוֹרֶה, the “early/former” rain], by our Interpreter (Jer. 5) “the timely [rain]” — was sought on the 25th of Kislev, or November. And on Amos 4, Ribera says [that] that late [rain] begins toward the end of April; and as author of this opinion he praises St. Jerome on the same place. But in these words several [things] seem to be either errors or obscure. For, first, he says [that] to the fields of Palestine, and the thirsty ploughlands, the late rain is especially most necessary — so that, [otherwise,] when the grass swelled toward harvest, and the wheat brought forth, [it] would dry up from excessive dryness. But that rain is not necessary [in order] that the earth should dry up, but [in order] that it should not dry up — and therefore the place is to be emended, in one way or the other. 2. When, in the same Prophet Amos, the Lord says: “I withheld the rain from you, when [there] were yet three months remaining until the harvest,” the same St. Jerome comments thus: “[It] signifies the spring-time of the end of April.” And this [is] not faultily [said]. But there follows: “from which” (namely, the end of April) “up to the harvest of grain, [there] remain three months — May, June, July.” But those are not the words of Jerome himself, but of some other. For a little after, he refutes that exposition, saying: “[But] if we accept [it], [it is] altogether — according to all the regions of the East — both unusual and impossible. For we have never seen rains at the end of June, or in the month of July, in these provinces, and most of all in Judea.” And after the place [in] 1 Sam. [Reg.] 12 had been cited, he proceeds: “[It] would have been superfluous now to threaten the dryness of the month of July — in which the Lord himself had never given rains.” There is, therefore, between St. Jerome’s opinion and this [one] which he confutes, this difference: that [Jerome] would have the end of those three months — and thus that harvest — pertain to the end of April; whereas that [other] exposition makes the same end of April the beginning of those same three months, but places the end in July. 3. Before that refutation is placed a certain note about the 70 — that they rendered “vintage” for “harvest,” after their custom. But that note seems [rather] to be subjoined to the refutation itself — unless (what I reckon likelier to the truth) that refutation of that exposition is to be utterly thrust out of Jerome’s text, and then the same refutation of St. Jerome will be against the 70 themselves, [in] that [they] render “vintage” — which is wont to happen in the same Judea in July, as Burchard too shows, when he says [that] triple clusters are borne by the Judaic vine, and adds: “The first, in August, being brought to ripeness, require their [own] vintage; the second are gathered in September, and the third in October. Hence too it is that in the Holy Land you [may] find grapes for sale from the day of John the Baptist [June 24] until the day of St. Martin [Nov. 11].” For [it] seems [that] someone, when he saw mention of June and July being made by St. Jerome in that refutation, thought this to be referred to the wheat-harvest; and, so that this — which was not [being] said — might seem to be said more clearly, put that gloss in the margin, which afterward crept into the context of the Saint himself. But these [things] in St. Jerome being briefly either corrected or expounded, let us conclude that for whose sake I was led hither:—
(col. 426)
—[let us conclude] that there are rains in Judea in April — from the opinion indeed of St. Jerome himself, who himself inhabited those regions, and was inhabiting [them] when he wrote those [things], as [is] plain from what follows. Then [is there] rain there in [the] harvest [itself]? I answer [that there] is: both ordinarily, always a little before the harvest, and sometimes, in the first days of the time in which [the harvest] was wont to happen. But what Samuel said (1 Sam. [Reg.] 12 v. 17), “Is it not the wheat-harvest today?” can be explained either of a harvest already grown [ripe], or of a day which was pleasing and suited to the harvest — that is: “Is it not now clear and serene? Is [it] not such a day as you desire in [the] harvest?” So too Solomon says only [that] rain is not agreeable to harvest — just as the Poet [Virgil] said:
“Sad [is] the wolf to the folds, [and] rain to the ripe crops.”
For although in summer snow never falls — except perhaps by some miracle, as in the history of Blessed Mary of the Snows [Santa Maria Maggiore] — yet in harvest rain can be more frequent; and therefore some cause, why the Jordan swells at that time, and is carried more widely beyond its channel, can lie in the chance of that kind of late rains. And [there] is also another [cause]: that the snows — with which I said (ch. 1 quest. 7) Lebanon abounds — are then wont to melt, both in it and in the other mountains. For, as Naso [Ovid] says:
“Struck by the west winds and the suns, / the soft snows are dissolved in the warming spring.”
And again:
“And the snows perish, conquered by the warming sun.”
For thus we see, at the same time also, our own [rivers] — both the Main and the Rhine — grow, for the same cause. Thus Masius says the Euphrates and Tigris increase (from Ecclesiasticus 24:35). And when Caesar had once pitched camp between two rivers, the Sicoris and the Cinga, he underwent great danger of great calamity — because, as he writes (bk. 1 On the Civil War), the snow then flowed down from all the mountains, and overtopped the highest banks of the rivers, and broke all the bridges in one day. When the Scythians had harassed Nicaea, Cius, Apamea, and Prusa with incursions, they made for Cyzicus (says Zosimus, in [the reign of] Valerian); but, because the river Rhyndacus, swollen from the rains, rolled [down] a vast force of waters, they retreated. Burchard: “The Dead Sea swells from the melting of the snows from Lebanon, and from the rains falling in Galilee, on Mount Gilead, in the land of Moab, [of] Ammon, and [of] Seir — which waters all flow together into the Jordan.” Bellonius writes [things] agreeable to this (bk. 2, obs. ch. 86). Herodotus indeed wonders (bk. 4) why, when the Danube receives so many rains and snows, it nevertheless always remains equal to itself. Namely, he had not seen it, when it is often swollen, and — having overtopped its banks — floods over at its very beginnings, so to speak. But when Lord Radziwiłł says (epist. 2, folio 29) [that] the snows of Lebanon are never melted — although the heats there are far more vehement than in Italy — he means [that they are] not entirely melted, and [not] from absolutely all places, some of which, [being] very hidden or very shady, feed perpetual snows.
Seventh little question, and last. Whence, in so hot a region, [comes] snow? [It] is to be answered, says Abulensis (quest. 37), [that] in the level land of this region snow rarely occurs; but on the highest mountains, on account of the magnitude of the cold, [and] the small repercussion of the sun’s rays, and—
(col. 427)
—[on account of the cold, and] the great shades of the groves, the snows remain. “Wonderful to tell,” says Tacitus (bk. 5 of the Histories), “Lebanon, amid such [great] heats, [is] shady, and faithful with snows.” But that [there] are snows even in the level places at their [proper] time — namely in winter — is made manifest from 1 Macc. 13 v. 22, 2 Kings [Reg.] 23 v. 20, [and] 1 Chron. 11 v. 22; and can be gathered from Prov. 31 v. 21. Yet the three causes which Abulensis brings avail for this: that a more copious, denser, and more lasting snow is found in the mountains than in the more level places. And from these [things] this too is held: that at this time, on account of the abundance of the waters, the Jordan ran down with a very rapid force. For in rivers of this kind, water pushes water. And in this way it is thought by some [that] the Jordan is called ethan [אֵיתָן] (Psalm 72 [71]), that is, “strong and robust” — as Genebrardus notes in the same place.