Question LVII. What if the rebuilder of Jericho had had no children, or at least not so many?

Since — as the rule of Law said above — penalties are not to be extended, someone perhaps would judge that he who had no children, or certainly had only one or two, and yet should rebuild Jericho, would be either wholly, or at least in part, free and safe from this imprecation. But it is not so. Because this imprecation included two [things]. First: the prohibition of rebuilding Jericho. Then: a certain temporal penalty. In this way: “Let no one rebuild the destroyed Jericho. But if anyone should do the contrary, let the Lord punish him even in this age.” By reason of the prohibition, the rebuilder commits a deadly sin, whose companion is eternal punishment; by reason of the imprecation, he will incur some penalty in this life. And if he be childless, or certainly not blessed with several children, the Lord will afflict him with some other evil, which shall not yield to [i.e. be no less than] the loss of children. For this taking-away of children seems to have been expressed for this reason only: that there might be a certain congruity of the sin and the punishment. For that “cities are born, live, die, and come to life again,” Barnabé Brisson teaches, in his Observations on Divine and Human Law, bk. 1, on the law Omnes [in the Codex] On Festivals; and his friend Pierre Faber, bk. 1 of the Semestria, ch. 9. Whoever, therefore, should undertake to restore life and posterity to prostrate and dead Jericho, was worthy to be despoiled himself of life and posterity — at least as to his children. Yet meanwhile the Lord was not ignorant that he who would one day dare this would have several children born [to him].