Joshua’s own prayer to God is described (v. 7 and following). All the others, indeed, prayed attentively, and — as is wont to happen in such a case and goad [of distress] — from the inmost feeling of the soul; but the special [prayer] of the Leader himself, and [his] piety and supplication, was [such], which is wholly pathetic [full of pathos], consisting first in a certain grieving expostulation; then in a sad and impossible wish; and finally in the reasonings of these words. The first expostulation is at verse seven: “Alas, O Lord God” — the Seventy: Δέομαι κύριε [deomai kyrie, “I beseech thee, Lord”], and almost similarly the Chaldee [Targum], “receive my prayer”; but in the Hebrew it is the particle אנא [ana], which the same Interpreter [Vulgate] renders at Jeremiah [1:6] by a threefold “a, a, a” [ah, ah, ah], because in that place it indicates a certain other feeling — as is noted by Abulensis, who adds this, “that thou shouldst deliver us,” to be taken either permissively — “that thou shouldst suffer us to fall into the hands of the Amorites, and to be destroyed by them” — or consecutively: “Because thou hast led us across the Jordan, behold, it has now come to pass that we are cast to the fury of the Amorites, and are slain and perish by them.” For neither did Joshua — sad and mourning though [he was] — will [to attribute] to God this end [purpose] set forth in leading the people to this side of the Jordan,
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this purpose in leading the people to this side of the Jordan — namely, that he might deliver it to the enemies, and would that it be conquered and destroyed by them. Yet, since in all promises of that kind this condition is always inherent — namely, if indeed nothing be done against God, [and] one does not deviate from His laws and precepts — Joshua could suspect and fear what was [the case]: namely, that something had been committed against God, [and] His laws and precepts violated; and therefore that God, perhaps angry, now willed to exact punishments from the Israelites. And this interpretation has [in it] a confession of the divine justice, and of that condition placed in the promises; and at the same time an inquiry into a hidden sin, if perchance any has been committed by the people. As if he should say: “Behold, O Lord God, not relying on our own strength did we set foot into this land, but with thy great power as leader and protectress; and yet now we are terrified, cut down, put to flight. What is the cause? What fault? What crime of ours against thee? Not in vain dost thou strike us with these evils; not without cause dost thou send terror and flight upon us before these impure nations — [thou] who so magnificently, powerfully, and wondrously spread the dried channel of the Jordan beneath our feet. Has anything been done by us against the condition of thy promises? And if there is, what is it?” The Septuagint say: “Why did thy servant make the people cross the Jordan?” — because the Lord [used] Joshua himself, who [was] His servant, [employing] his work and ministry in this matter. Yet Josephus seems to think that Moses is meant. And, in the way now expounded, the expostulation, [thus] taken, [does] not [have] that atrocity of meaning which Masius shudders at, and on account of which he will not have it to be an expostulation (as the Rabbis teach in the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, ch. 6). And the “Amorites” can be taken either specifically here, or generally for the Canaanites, as was said above (ch. 1 and 5).
II. [Then comes] the wish: “Would that, as we had begun, we had remained beyond the Jordan.” Some render [it] from the Hebrew: “Would that we had willed to stay beyond the Jordan.” Masius: “Would that we had been content, [and] had remained on this side of the Jordan.” But our interpreter [Vulgate does] well: 1, because [the Hebrew] יאל [yaʾal] also means “to begin,” as at Gen. 4:26; 2, because in the Hebrew the particle “and” [ו] is interposed; 3, because it is most usual for the Hebrews to omit and [leave to be] understood the particle of similitude [comparison]: so that the sense is, “Would that, as we had begun, we had also remained beyond the Jordan.” But the Seventy [render]: καὶ εἰ κατεμείναμεν καὶ κατῳκίσθημεν παρὰ τὸν Ἰορδάνην [kai ei katemeinamen kai katōkisthēmen para ton Iordanēn, “and if we had remained and dwelt beside the Jordan”]. But the wish, as I said, is impossible, because a past thing, and a done deed, cannot be made undone — as when that [poet] said:
“O that Jupiter would give me back the years gone by!” [Virgil, Aeneid 8.560]
And of this kind are many wishes of those who repent of their past life. But [the Israelites in] Num. 14, who wished, “Would that we had died in Egypt,” sinned. Abulensis answers (q. 17): “Joshua’s word was [a thing] bad [in itself], yet it was tolerated, because he said it out of a great bitterness of heart — [he] who would not have said it, [if] remaining without bitterness in tranquillity; yet because he said it trusting in God’s goodness [piety], it was not imputed to him for evil — just as [in the case] of Moses, when, praying for the whole people, he said, ‘Either forgive them this fault, or blot me out of the book of life, in which thou hast written me.’ For that was a bad thing said, because he asked contrary to charity; yet because, kindled with zeal and remaining in grief, he said it, it is not imputed for evil. But that Joshua said [it] with a good mind is plain from what he did: because in this bitterness he had recourse to the Lord, prostrate before the ark. Yet if he did not trust in His goodness, he would not pray to Him. Likewise it is plain from his following words, which are the words of one praying and persuading, [and] not of one despairing.” But indeed in these words neither Moses nor Joshua said [anything] evil, or sinned. Of Moses it is shown in Exodus; of Joshua it is plain: because he was not even in the least reprehended by God, and because it is permitted to wish that an evil which is past had never existed — since this very [wish] has a certain aspect of good; and therefore it can be wished, just as one who is led by repentance for past things wishes that he had never sinned.
III. Three reasons, both of the expostulation and of this wish, are subjoined — namely, from the person of Joshua, of the enemies, and of God: but with great motion of a grieving and humbly-praying soul. The first reason (v. 8): “My Lord, what shall I say, seeing Israel turning their backs to their enemies?” For that “my Lord,” in Hebrew it is “in me, Lord” [bi Adonai] — a manner of speaking whose use in supplications is very great, and some will have [something] understood [with it]: “Attend”; others, “In me, Lord, be thine eyes and ears”; others otherwise. But our [Vulgate] best expresses the force. And “to say” embraces both the interior utterance of the soul, which is thought, and the exterior, which is made with mouth and sound. The second reason (v. 9). See the third in the same place. “And what wilt thou do to thy great name? Tell [me], therefore, I beseech, the sin on account of which thou art angry with us — on account of which thou makest us to be routed by those whom we ought to have routed: forgive us that very [sin] clemently. For if the sin be not expiated, and thou hast not shown thy accustomed care of us, we shall surely all perish: our name utterly — [the name] which arose from thy servant Israel — shall be utterly extirpated. But that the name of poor little men be extirpated is perhaps a small loss, or rather none, if it be regarded in itself; but that thy name, O God — which is truly great — [should] not be celebrated with due glory and honor, nay rather be contemned, and mocked, and cast off and exterminated, is of such a kind that nothing could be more harmful, more deadly, and more sorrowful. And yet so it will be, if thy wrath persist against us, and thou goest on — as thou now beginnest — to afflict us with fear, flight, [and] slaughter before the Canaanites. For the Gentiles will say, as [in] Num. 14:16: ‘Their God could bring the Israelites into the land; [but] in it he could not preserve and protect them. Our gods are stronger than he, greater, be-
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-ter [better]. Our exalted hand, and not the Lord, has done all these things” (Deut. 32:27). This prayer can not badly be used by Christians against the Turks — especially when they take cities, [and] profane altars and temples, as is now said to be done in Transylvania by a certain impious blind Moses [Cæculus Moyses], formerly a Calvinist, now an Apostate and a Mahometan. And indeed, if it is allowed to compare small things with great: while I daily hear so many and so slanderous tongues of so many and so malevolent [men] against the Society of JESUS — while I see and read so many and so virulent [libels], huge calumnies, sycophancies, and lies, which are minted now at Paris by some Arnauld [I know not whom], now at Leiden of the Batavians and at Amsterdam and elsewhere, in Latin and in French — I cannot but pray, with Joshua, to JESUS, our Lord and Saviour, and, most of all, insist upon that last clause: “What wilt thou do, O good JESUS, to thy great name?” Great, and truly great, and (as the Hebrew article indicates) eminently, above all other names, great is the name JESUS — a saving name, the name of the Saviour. From this thou didst will the Society of JESUS to be named. This [Society], for more than 40 years led out of Egypt by thee, governed [by thee], and brought into the lands and cities which thou didst will, has declared war on the spiritual pleasures and vices of the Jerichoites; it has assailed the mound and city of the heresies, [the] Ai; but behold, it [the Society] itself is overthrown, put to flight, [and] torn and mangled with every kind of reviling and insult. How the heretics exult! With how great joy do they dance! How often do they boast among themselves that it is all over with the ancestral religion, with the holy Roman Church, with the whole Catholic faith — in which, and through which alone, thy great name is celebrated and sanctified on earth? How often do they glory that their hand [is] exalted, that truth stands with them, that they are masters of a purer and more reformed doctrine? These things indeed are false. For neither, the Jesuits being torn away, is the Christian faith — which rests on far other columns — pulled down as one; nor does truth, and the sincerity of doctrine, stand with the heretics — just as the Canaanites, too, would falsely have said their hand exalted, or God powerless to preserve the Israelites any longer. Yet these [are] the voices, the gloryings, the triumphs of those [men]. And what wilt thou do to thy great name, O CHRIST JESUS? “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to thy name give glory.” Let this thy very name be sanctified; and, for the sake of the same, “be propitious to my sin, for it is great” (Ps. 24[25]:11).