How that part behaved with respect to the [other] part, and to the, as it were, line where the division was made, I said sufficiently [in] quest. 7. But now, since — from the very source of the Jordan, meanwhile, while the people crossed — more and more waters flowed down continually, two [things] about them are chiefly to be regarded. One, with respect to length: i.e., how they behaved along the straight line by which they had come. The other, with respect to breadth: i.e., whether, at the sides of the river, toward either — or at least one — bank, they poured themselves out into the fields or neighbouring lands. The former [is] thus described in the text (v. 16): “The descending waters stood in one place, and, swelling up like a mountain, appeared afar off from the city which is called Adom, as far as the place Sarthan [Zarethan].” But in those words, several [things] are to be inquired — both as to the thing signified, and as to their translation.
First, be it [asked]: What [are] the “descending waters” here? They are those which were descending from the very head of the Jordan up to the place of crossing; and therefore, in the Hebrew and Greek, they are called “the waters descending from the upper place.” Whence, namely, the river flows down, as I noted [on] Tobit ch. 1 fol. 10.
Second: What [is] “Adom” here? Luther, in his German version, will [have it] to be “men” — [namely] the inhabitants of some unnamed city, which is nevertheless near to Sarthan itself. He says: “Da stund das Wasser, das von oben herunter kam, aufgezogen über einen Haufen, sehr ferne von den Leuten der Stadt, die zur Seite Zarethan liegt” [German: “Then stood the water that came down from above, drawn up into a heap, very far from the people of the city that lies beside Zarethan”]. But that “Adom” is here the proper name of a city, not only our Latin text teaches, but also the Greek — and indeed even the Hebrew. For here it is either read without points, and then we understand [it] to be a city from the ancient interpreters (Greeks, Latins, and Chaldees); or, with points, and the two cametzin which are placed under [it] show [that it] is not a common noun which would govern the word “city” that is subjoined, but is [something] absolute and proper. Then all the Expositors, Christian and Jewish, old and new, agree.
3. How is the same city variously called? In certain copies it is written here Edom; in others Adam, as today in the Hebrew; in the corrected Roman [editions] Adom. But whoever knows the affinity of the cametz [vowel] with o sees here no repugnance or error. In certain Greek [copies] it is called ἀδαμί [Adami], as also in the Latin below (ch. 19 v. 33) — whether it be the same city or not; but in the Roman Septuagint it is entirely omitted.
4. Where, then, is that city situated? Adrichomius places it in the tribe of Reuben, not far from the eastern bank of the Jordan, a little beyond the more southerly inflow of the torrent Carith [Cherith] into the Jordan. But Masius will [have it] near to the pool of Tiberias. But about this matter, perhaps [more] below, ch. 19 quest. 9.
5. What sort of city [was it]? [It] seems to have been rather obscure, since it is described in Hebrew by the vicinity and respect of another city — which, however, [was] not also most noble.
6. What [is] the description? “The city which [is] at the side of Sarthan.” But this signifies [that] it was on the same side of the Jordan from which Sarthan is — namely the eastern — or [that it was] on the side of Sarthan itself. But since a city [is wont either to be round, or to have several sides]—
(col. 434)
—[since a city is wont] either to be round, or to have several sides, from what side [of it] was [Sarthan]? [It is] difficult to say — unless we say [that] “the side of the city” is [so] called with respect to those who were crossing the Jordan. For on their right side was Sarthan, and on the right side of this [Sarthan] likewise [was] Adom — or so that Adom was between the Jordan and Sarthan. And thus in the Chaldee it is said “beside Sarthan.”
7. What [is] Sarthan [Zarethan]? Adrichomius places it between the city Adom already mentioned, and Bethabara. But Masius and others [place it] far higher up, toward the North. St. Jerome indeed (in [his book] On the Hebrew Places) says: “Sarthan is at the root [foot] of Jezreel.” But Masius: “Sarthan was in the farthest borders of the Bethshanite or Scythopolitan field, which borders pertained to Tiberias.” And this is rightly proved from 1 Kings [Reg.] 4 v. 12 & ch. 7 v. 46; and the same [place] (Judg. 7 v. 22) seems to be called Tserera [Zererah], and, by the change of one letter, Tsereda [Zeredah] (1 Kings [Reg.] 11 v. 26). And Adrichomius indeed does not deny that latter Sarthan; but he establishes that other [one] too — yet without any foundation. But this I do not yet attain [understand]: why the Septuagint put, for that Sarthan, καριαθιαρίμ [Kariathiarim, Kiriath-jearim]. For, as will be said below (ch. 9), [Kiriath-jearim] is far distant from the Jordan toward the West — unless perhaps that [place] was called by two names, and [there] was a twofold Kiriath-jearim.
8. Now then, in what manner does the text say those waters behaved? Our text answers three [things] — namely, [that they] “stood,” “swelled,” [and] “appeared.” The Hebrew, two: “stood” and “rose.” The Greek, one: “stood” — for [it] says twice ἔστη [estē, “it stood”]. But the one [Greek word] has the signification of the two which [are] in the Hebrew. For it signifies עָמַד [amad]: “to stand by resting, and by not advancing further”; and likewise, “to stand by raising and lifting oneself up.” And that former state of rest is signified by the Hebrew עָמַד [amad]; but the latter, of rising and swelling, by the other Hebrew [word] קוּם [qum]. But the Latin added, for the sake of greater clarity, a third verb, which arises, as it were of its own accord, from that second [one] — namely, “the water appeared.” For [things] which rise up and stand out appear from farther off. Although the same Latin text is [rather] to be said not so much to have put three words, as to have explained the latter of the two Hebrew [words] by both a participle and a verb, when it says “swelling up, they appeared.”
9. How did those same waters stand “in one place”? That [phrase] “in one place” is absent from the Hebrew and the Greek, and [is] added only by the Latin — so that [it] might show [that] they stood by resting, and not by flowing further to another and another place, as they would have done, unless they had been bound and restrained by divine force — although [it] seems probable [that] they flowed back a little toward the source, from that part of the waters which now stood [still]. “The Jordan,” says St. Ambrose (bk. 2 of the Hexaemeron ch. 3), “the stream being turned back, returns to its own source. For water to cling [stop], when it glides [downward], [is] unwonted; and to return again to the upper [places] without any barrier is held impossible. But what [is] impossible to him who gave the power, to whom he willed? He gave the power to the weak, that the weak [one] may say: ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me’ (Phil. 4).”
10. How did they swell up “like a mountain”? This name “mountain” Masius bears ill, and yet confesses [that it] is in the Syriac text — nay, [he] says [it] is even in the 70; but “in no [good] sense,” he says. But, first, in the Roman Edition of the 70 it is not read. Then, wherever it is read, [it is] read neither “in no sense,” nor as he adds, [but] with some error. For, first, since the river, flooding, brought down from above the greatest force of waters, and those [waters], as if beaten back, at once stood still, and raised themselves upward — [it] was necessary [that]—
(col. 435)
—[it was necessary that they should be] like a mountain. Secondly, this same [thing] is also expressly asserted in the Hebrew. For the waters are said to have risen up [as] ned echad [נֵד אֶחָד, “one heap”]. But that word ned is interpreted in two ways. To Symmachus it is “a wineskin [uter]” — [and so] also to the 70 themselves, in Psalm 32 [33] verse 7 [and] Psalm 77 [78] verse 13. But to those same 70, in Exodus 15 verse 8, [it] is “a wall”; [and] to Radak, Pagninus, and Masius here, “a heap.” The Chaldee noun roukeba [רוֹכְבָא] has both notions, just as does the Hebrew. But whichever interpretation we follow, is not the raising-up and swelling of the waters, “like a mountain,” always signified? Of the former [the “wineskin”], thus [says] Theodoret (quest. 1): “The checked force of the waters swelled up like a wineskin, and was lifted into a peak; because the boundary set by the Maker, stronger than any adamantine wall, held it back.” Of the latter [the “heap”] [it] is clear enough. For since, on account of the perpetual inflow of the most abundant water, [there] was a huge heap, is it not rightly compared to a mountain? Of that greater, feigned Trojan horse the Poet [Virgil] said:
“Like a mountain they build the horse by Pallas’s divine art.” [Aeneid 2]
—and would the greatest masses of waters be unfittingly called “like a mountain”? Nay, another [poet], near in age to that same [Virgil] — [Ovid,] Tristia 1, elegy 2 — says: “How great mountains of waters roll! You would think they will now, now, touch the highest stars.” In Maximus of Tyre (oration 38): “There stand also, at Mount Atlas, waters, like walls.” And the Author of the Marvels of Sacred Scripture [Pseudo-Augustine], with a word indeed little used, yet not unfitting to this very thing, twice says the waters “mountained-up” [montasse]. Thomas of Cantimpré (bk. 2 ch. 53) relates [that it] happened about the year of the Lord 1205, that in the midst of the sea’s surge nine men were preserved by the relics and prayers of St. Catherine, when the foaming sea swelled and, with open [sky], poured down from above to forty cubits. And therefore utterly vain and ridiculous is that suspicion of Masius, which he put forth in these words: “Indeed I think [that] once, by a man no less rash than unskilled, ‘mountain’ was written in the margin — [a man] who thought the former syllable of the word [הָרִים / הָרָה] signified ‘mountain’ — [and that it] was at length, by the error of the copyists, brought into the order [text] of the sacred words.” But truly [it] seems to me great rashness so greatly to accuse the Syrians, Greeks, [and] all the Latins, without reason, of a fault and of corruption — since both from the thing itself, and from the Hebrew words themselves excellently (as [has] now [been] shown), that likeness of a mountain is expressed. Only [it] is to be noted [that] very often, among the Hebrews, the particle of likeness is indeed omitted, but [is] understood — as [is] permitted [here], though [it] be in the Hebrew: “The waters rose up, one heap” — [it] is to be understood “like one heap,” or “like [the] mass of some mountain.”
11. Where did the waters thus swell up and appear? [The] exposition is various. Some say [they] swelled up (in Abulensis, as [in] quest. 37) between Adom and Sarthan [Zarethan], so that those two cities are the two boundaries of the swelling. Abulensis, in the cited place, [says they swelled] at Sarthan only, but so that their swelling was visible from Adom. The Rabbis, [say they swelled] near the place of crossing, far from the city Adom itself, [and] near to Sarthan itself. For [waves] of this kind would otherwise have overwhelmed a town. Cajetan and Masius [place it] between the place of crossing and Adom — so that the same swelling was drawn out lengthwise from the crossing itself as far as Adom; or (what is the same) from Adom as far as the place of crossing. For—
(col. 436)
—for in the Hebrew we can take harchek [הַרְחֵק] as a gerund in hiphil [the causative], thus: “the waters rose up like one heap, removing themselves very far unto Adom, or from Adom” — so that the waters swelled lengthwise from the place of crossing as far as Adom.
12. As to the translation, moreover, what [of it]? Many [things] have already been said. Yet these remain. 1. In the Hebrew [it] is either, as I said, “removing [itself] very far,” or [it] is “far off, greatly.” And this adverb of intensity, [though] omitted in the Latin, [is] set down in all the Greek [copies]: μακρὰν σφόδρα [makran sphodra, “very far off”]; and indeed in the Roman [copies] twice: μακρὰν σφόδρα σφόδρως [makran sphodra sphodrōs, “very far off, exceedingly”]. 2. “From the city which is called Adom”: in the Hebrew it is either בָּאָרֶץ [read] as “in Adam” or “from the city Adam.” 3. “As far as the place Sarthan”: in the Hebrew, “which [is] at the side of Sarthan.” In the Greek, ἕως μέρους [heōs merous, “as far as a part”] — or ζαρθάμ [Zartham], or (as I said) καριαδιαρίμ [Kariadiarim, Kiriath-jearim] — that is, “as far as the part.” And Masius thinks [that] for עִיר [ir, “city”] the 70 read עַד [ad, “as far as”]; but rather [it is that] they accommodated that ἕως [“as far as”] of theirs to that which is in the Hebrew: “at the side.”
But the other [point], concerning the breadth, is not obscure. For [the fact] that the waters did not spread themselves onto either bank, that same great swelling of them shows — [the swelling] of which I have now spoken. And therefore, for either side of the breadth, the same force is to be posited which [was posited] on the side of the length: [the force] which, near the crossing, checked the waters themselves.