Question LV. Did the inhabitants of the now-rebuilt city fall under the same imprecation?

They did not fall [under it], as is plain by the same argument I used in the previous question. To which this is also to be joined: that most holy men afterward inhabited that same city — such as Elisha, and very many sons of the prophets, of whom [we read] at 2 Kings ch. 2; and that CHRIST too honored [it] with miracles (Matt. 20:29; Luke 19:1). But if, as Zonaras above spoke concerning Carthage, Joshua had said, ἐπάρατος ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὃς κατοικήσει [eparatos ho anthrōpos hos katoikēsei, “accursed [be] the man who shall dwell (there)”], there would have been no excuse for its inhabitants. But now he said, as it is in the Seventy [LXX], ἐπικατάρατος ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὃς οἰκοδομήσει [epikataratos ho anthrōpos hos oikodomēsei, “accursed [be] the man who shall build”]. See St. Jerome, Epist. 17, to Marcella, against those who said Jerusalem was cursed, because it had drunk the blood of the Lord. And the reasoning is equal concerning those who, without walls and gates, should build some houses in the same place where Jericho once was, but not found a city. For in the formula of the devoting it is “this city,” as Abulensis not incuriously observes (qq. 62, 63, 65).