Our text (v. 18): “Raise,” he says, “the shield [clypeus], which is in thy hand.” For the sake of a better explanation, [I] will put here, as it were word for word, the Hebrew: “Extend the cidon [kidon] which [is] in thy hand, toward Ai itself, because I will give it into thy hand. And Joshua extended the cidon which [was] in his hand, toward the city itself.” It must be known, first, [that] that [word] cidon is expounded quite variously. For the Chaldee Paraphrast renders [it] romcha, that is, a lance or spear: the 70 here [render it] γαῖσον [gaison]; Job 39:23 [render it] μάχαιραν [machairan], as it seems; ch. 41:19, πυρφόρον [pyrphoron]; 1 Sam. 17:6, ἀσπίδα [aspida]; Jer. 6:23, ζιβύνην [zibynēn]; ch. 50:42, ἐγχειρίδιον [encheiridion]. Our [Vulgate], here indeed, [renders it] “Clypeum” [shield]; Job 39 and 41, “hasta” [spear]; in each place of Jeremiah, “scutum” [shield]. The same our [Vulgate], and the Greeks, in Ecclesiasticus [Sirach] ch. 46, v. 3, [render it] “rhomphaeam” [a great sword]. For thus these [have it]: “What glory did (Jesus [Joshua] son of Nun) obtain, in raising his hands, and casting against the city the rhomphaea?” but our [Vulgate], by an enallage [change of number], “rhomphaeas” [swords]? Now indeed all the Rabbis say [that] here a lance was raised by Joshua, and with it a banner [vexillum]. Abulensis (q. 10) grants [that] a lance [was] raised, but [says] that from it a shield, not a banner, hung. But Junius and Tremellius interpret [it] “banner”: “Extend that banner which is in thy hand,” and, “Joshua extended the banner.” And (v. 26): “Joshua did not draw back his hand, which he had extended with the banner.” Masius, in [his] Commentary, does not define whether it was a shield or a spear.
I say, therefore, first, [that] it ought not to be understood [as] a banner. 1. Because the Hebrew word nowhere signifies that, as [is] clear from all the places adduced and the interpretations of the Greeks. 2. Because in battles the same [men] are not wont to be both leaders and standard-bearers. But Joshua was the leader; and he already had the cidon in his hand. He would therefore have been at once both leader and standard-bearer. 3. Because that [notion] about the banner was invented by the Rabbis, so that a signal might thus be given by Joshua to the ambush — which [notion] was, in the previous question, [shown] less proved.
Secondly: The Hebrew cidon seems to signify every kind of weapon which one, holding [it], either wounds an adversary or defends himself from him; and so it is rendered now “sword,” now “spear” and “shield.” For in Job and Jeremiah it is distinguished from javelins and arrows, which one does not hold, but casts at the enemy. And rightly cidon accedes to the Hebrew cid, which signifies (Job 21:20) “affliction,” and, as it were, “slaughter” [caedes] — from which perhaps it is even derived by name — and likewise “cado” [I fall] and “occido” [I kill]. Eusebius of Emesa expounds [it] “lance,” and cites Diogenianus, who says it is ἐμβόλιον ὁλοσίδηρον [embolion holosidēron, “an all-iron point”], and others who would have [it] be κόντιον [kontion, “a small pike”] — for which, in Procopius, the Interpreter reads ἀκόντιον [akontion, “a javelin”].
Thirdly: More rightly here is cidon rendered “shield” [clypeus], because Symmachus renders [it] ἀσπίδα [aspida], and (as indeed is read in Theodoret) Josephus [does]. 2. So [does] our old Interpreter [Vulgate]. 3. “Because there is [a place],” says Masius, “where the 70 called a shield γαῖσον [gaison].” And so the difficulty which St. Augustine tries to explain (bk. 6 of the Locutions) would easily cease. For when the Latin and the 70 version had: “Extend thy hand with the geson, which is in thy hand, against the city” — and he then followed this version — “This locution,” he says, “would not be to be noted, except on account of the name which is obscure to those in whose usage it is not. For what ‘geson’ may mean is not easily understood: this the interpreter Symmachus is reported to have called a ‘shield.’ But the Seventy Interpreters, according to whom we treat these [things], who put ‘geson’ — I wonder whether in the Greek tongue too they wished a Gallic spear or lance to be understood: for those [things] are called ‘Gaesa,’ of which Virgil too makes mention, when he says of the Gauls painted on the Aenean shield:
“Two gaesa each brandishes in [his] hand.” [Virgil, Aen. 8.661–662]
Fourthly: When the Hebrew says “extend in [the] cidon,” [it] is understood — the hand [being extended] with the shield — thus: “Extend thy hand upon [holding] the shield.” For this v. 26 openly signifies, when it says: “he did not draw back the hand which he had extended on high”; or, as [it is] in the Hebrew, “he did not lead back his hand which he had extended.” And clearly the 70: ἐκτείνειν τὴν χεῖρά σου ἐν τῷ γαισῷ [ekteinein tēn cheira sou en tō gaisō, “to extend thy hand with the geson”].
Fifthly: When the same Hebrew says “extend the hand upon the shield,” [it] can be understood in two ways. 1. That Joshua may extend [his] hand together with the shield. 2. That he may lean, as it were, on that cidon of his, and so hold [his] hand extended — as Moses [did] (Exod. 17), and as in the Poet:
“As, weary, [the shepherd] leans upon [his] staff, and sits on a rock, / the Shepherd soothes [his] sheep with a reed-song.”
The former sense seems apter. 1. Because Joshua’s shield, or boss, would have to have been quite big and high, on which he might conveniently hold [his] hand leaning and extended — unless perhaps he had first placed it upon some rock, that it might be higher. 2. Because our Interpreter signifies this, when for the same [thing] he takes “to raise the shield” and “to raise the hand upon the shield.” For if the hand [is] to be raised or extended with the shield, the shield surely [is] to be raised. 3. So [do] other Interpreters, even the Innovators. 4. Because the Hebrews’ “in” is put for “with,” their Grammarians teach, from Is. 7:24, Exod. 15:19.
Sixthly: Joshua seems to have been bidden to extend [his] left hand, because it is said, “extend in [the] cidon, which [is] in thy hand”; but the shield is wont to be in the left [hand]. And then, with [his] right hand, he either signaled to his men what needed to be done — namely, that they strike by cut and thrust, [and] spare no one — or rather he extended [his] right [hand], like the left, holding in it a sword or spear. And perhaps both these [things were] signified by the cidon, which was in each hand: but in the right [was] a sword or spear, in the left a shield. And therefore indeed it is said: “extend the hand” — namely, each [hand] — “in [the] cidon,” that is, “in [the] arms,” which are in each of thy hands. And certain Interpreters explained one kind of weapon, which [was] in one hand; others the other, which [was] in the other. Whence it appears [that] Joshua’s posture was either [that] of a man praying, with both hands extended, or [that] of one fighting, who with one hand casts a shield against the enemy, [and] with the other aims a sword.
Seventhly: But to what end was Joshua bidden to raise the shield in that manner, and turn [it] toward Ai? Cajetan and Masius answer generally: to the signification of some thing. For it is not from nothing that the Leader of the army, at the time of battle, thus
(col. 935)
keeps holiday, as it were fixed in one place, [and] stays — but what [is] that thing [signified]? First: That Joshua might show God to be [the one] who waged the war against Ai, and destroyed them. Secondly: That in this war — the first of all in Canaan waged by the Israelites hand-to-hand with the enemy — the memory of the first [war], which was waged with the Amalekites, might be renewed: in which [Amalek war] Moses conquered with hands raised to heaven; but here Joshua conquers also with hands extended. Thirdly: That the true JESUS, victor of this world, might be indicated — who overcame Ai (that is, this vast and impious world) and its King the devil, not only with hands extended on the cross, but by extending his own arms too toward Ai — persuading the cross to his followers in every part of the earth, and at every time; protecting them with it, [and] finishing off all enemies with it. I cited (bk. 1, ch. 3, [q.] 14) some words of St. Augustine from Sermon 93 on time, which it will be worth the labor to repeat here. Eighthly: The place where Joshua now extended the shield, the Author of the Chronicles thinks to be the “threshing-floor” [area], on which the unhappy Uzzah touched the pushed and tottering ark, and it is called (1 Chron. 13:9) “the threshing-floor of Chidon” [area chidon]. But of this again [in] 2 Sam. ch. 6.