The [things] which the Angel said to Joshua are twofold. For some there are which the text certainly hands down that he
(col. 702 — right column; printed “711”)
said; some which are thought probably to have been said. In the former kind there are four, of which the prior two are handed down in this fifth chapter, and have already been sufficiently treated in the preceding question. One is, who and what he is that appears; the other, that Joshua be with bare feet. The two remaining are set forth in the following chapter, from verse 2 onward. For those who look more sharply into the whole matter see that there is only one vision, and one continuous conversation of the Angel with Joshua, in this and the following chapter, from verse 2 up to 6 — (for otherwise the Angel would have announced nothing) — and [that] the first verse of the following chapter is, as it were by way of parenthesis, interwoven by the writer into the narration of this vision, so that so much the better the words which follow may be understood, and the force and magnitude of the miracle now foretold may be more clearly perceived. So Masius, Cajetan, Abulensis (q. 78), and others; and for that cause the sixth chapter could conveniently have been begun from the beginning of this apparition — that is, from verse 13 of chapter five — or, certainly, chapter five [could] be extended to the sixth verse of chapter six, so that this would be the beginning of the sixth chapter: And Joshua therefore called [Josh 6:6]. Since, however, that little narrative about Jericho brings, as it were, a new breathing-space — an interposed brief narration — chapter six is not badly begun from it too, provided that be held which I have said: that it is the continuation of one and the same vision and discourse. And therefore Tremellius and Junius seem to me overly supercilious, who write so Aristarchically [i.e., in the carping manner of the grammarian Aristarchus] that “the end of chapter five [was] unskillfully torn away from the beginning of the sixth.” But those two [things] which — I said — the Angel certainly speaks in that same sixth chapter are these: the promise of a most certain victory, verse 2; and the manner of obtaining it, [verses] 3, 4, & 5 — that is, the occupation of the city of Jericho, and the manner of [its] being occupied. These very [things], moreover, were to be explained here — did they not so cohere with the execution [of them] that, together with it and in it, they might seem able to be explained better and more usefully. Let them therefore be deferred for a while — as also the other [things] which the context does not affirm the same Angel to have said, but which only probable conjecture reckons [he said] — in the same sixth chapter, verses 10, 17, 18, 18, & 26.
[End of CAPUT V — and END OF VOLUME 1. The original’s next leaf (PDF 377) is blank; the SECOND VOLUME (Tomus Posterior, “De Bellis”) begins at PDF 378 and is translated as a separate work.]