Latin original · 38 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 15:995–15:1032 (1391 verses in all)
Indeed, when they saw that they themselves bore no children at all, they gave their handmaids to their husband, that they might make those women mothers in the flesh, while they themselves became mothers by will. Now as for that which Faustus objected with a most lying accusation—that there was among them a contest as of four harlots, which of them should carry him off to intercourse—where he read this I know not, unless perhaps in his own heart as in a book of nefarious deceits, where he himself was truly playing the harlot, but with that serpent of whom the Apostle feared for the Church, whom he desired to present as a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ, lest, as the serpent had deceived Eve by his cunning, so also he might corrupt their minds by turning them away from the chastity of Christ.
For these men are so friendly to this serpent that they contend it did good rather than harm. He plainly persuaded Faustus, pouring seeds of falsehood into his adulterated breast, so that he brought forth these evilly-conceived calumnies with a most unclean mouth and even committed them to memory with a most audacious pen. For no one of the handmaids snatched the husband Jacob away from another, no one quarrelled with another over intercourse with him. Therefore there was the more order because there was no lust; and the rights of conjugal authority were kept so much the more firmly, the more chastely was the injury of carnal desire avoided. For where a man is even hired by his wife, there our true assertion is made manifest. There, on its own behalf against the slanders of the Manichees, truth itself cries out.
For what need was there that one should hire him, except because it was the other's turn for the husband to go in to her? For he would never have gone in to another unless she had hired him: but he went in to her by just turns, to whom he had begotten so many sons and whom he had obeyed even in begetting from her handmaid. And later he begot from her without her hiring him. But then Rachel had the night in the order, that he should stay with the husband; then in her lay that power of which the voice of the New Testament certainly did not keep silent, saying through the Apostle: Likewise the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife. Therefore she had already made a compact with her sister, to whom, having become debtor, she transferred her over to her creditor. For by this name the Apostle calls it:
The husband, he says, let him render the debt to his wife. To whom then the husband was debtor, she had already received from her sister what she had chosen by will, that she might give her that which she had in her power. But here indeed that man, whom Faustus, with closed or rather extinguished eyes, accuses as unchaste—if he were the servant of concupiscence and not of justice, would he not throughout the whole day burn with desire for that night in which he was to lie with the more beautiful woman? Whom certainly he loved more and for whom he had rendered fourteen years of unpaid labour. When therefore, the day now being done, he was going to her embrace, how would he be turned aside from it, if he were such as the Manichees, understanding nothing, suppose?
Would he not rather, despising the compact of the women, go in to his beautiful one, who owed him that very night not only by the custom of a wife but also by the right of the order? And would he not rather use marital power himself, since the wife also has not power over her own body, but the husband, and since then the alternation of their service made it so on his behalf? He would therefore have used conjugal power far more unconquerably, if he had been conquered by desire of her beauty. But the women would be found the better, if they contended for children to be conceived, while he for the pleasure of his own intercourse.
And so, a most temperate man, truly a man because he used women so manfully that he was not subjected to carnal delight but ruled over it, he attended more to what he owed than to what was owed to him; nor did he wish to abuse his own power for his own pleasure, but preferred to be the renderer of that debt rather than its exactor. Whence it followed that he should render to her whom she to whom the debt was due had chosen to receive it on her behalf: and this compact and agreement of theirs having been made known, when suddenly and unexpectedly he was called back from his most beautiful wife and summoned to the less comely one, he neither flared up in anger, nor was he clouded with sadness, nor did he, effeminately fawning, busy himself between the two that Rachel might rather render him the night;
but a just husband and provident father, since he saw that they bore the care for offspring, and he himself sought nothing else from intercourse, judged that he should comply with the will of those women who wished, each singly, for children—nothing being diminished for her to whom both were bearing. As though he said: Yield and concede among yourselves, as you will, which of you shall become mother; what should I contend, since to the child born from whichever side there will be no other father?
This modesty, indeed, this restraint of concupiscence, and in the intermingling of conjugal bodies this sole desire for human posterity, Faustus, keen as he was, would both have understood and praised in those writings, had not his talent, depraved by a detestable sect, both sought what to blame and reckoned as the greatest crime that one honourable thing of nuptial union, by which males and females are coupled for the sake of procreating children. Now then, the ways of the patriarch having been defended and the crime refuted,
which that nefarious error objected, let us search out, as best we can, the secrets of the mysteries freely, and knock with the piety of faith, that it may be opened to us by the Lord what things those four wives of Jacob figured—of whom two were free women and two were handmaids. For we see the Apostle understanding, in the free woman and the handmaid whom Abraham had, the two testaments. But there in the one and the one what is said appears more easily; here, however, there are two and two. Furthermore, there the son of the handmaid is disinherited, but here the sons of the handmaids together with the sons of the free women receive the land of promise: whence here without doubt something else is signified.
For although I judge the two free wives of Jacob to pertain to the New Testament, in which we are called into liberty, yet they are not two in vain; unless perhaps because—a thing which can be observed and found in the Scriptures—two lives are proclaimed to us in the body of Christ: one temporal, in which we labour, the other eternal, in which we shall contemplate the delight of God. The former the Lord declared by his passion, the latter by his resurrection. The very names of those women also admonish us to understand this.
For they say that Leah is interpreted "labouring," but Rachel "a beginning seen" or "a word, from which a beginning is seen." Therefore the action of human and mortal life, in which we live by faith, doing many laborious things, uncertain with what outcome they may turn out for the benefit of those whom we wish to counsel—this is Leah herself, the first wife of Jacob; and on this account she is also recorded to have had weak eyes; for the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our foresight is uncertain. But the hope of the eternal contemplation of God, having a certain and delightful understanding of the truth—this is Rachel herself. Whence she is also said to be of good countenance and fair form.
For every one who is piously zealous loves her, and for her sake serves the grace of God, by which our sins, even if they were as scarlet, are whitened like snow. For Laban is interpreted "whitening"; and Jacob served him for Rachel's sake. For no one turns himself, under the grace of the remission of sins, to serve justice, except that he may live in quiet in the Word, from which a beginning is seen, which is God. Therefore for Rachel's sake, not for Leah's. For who at last would love, in the works of justice, the labour of actions and sufferings? Who would seek that life for its own sake? Just as neither did Jacob love Leah, yet he embraced her when placed under him by night for the use of begetting, and experienced her fecundity.
For the Lord, because she could not be loved for her own sake, first caused her to be borne with, that one might come through to Rachel, and afterwards commended her on account of her sons. So indeed every useful servant of God, set under the grace of the whitening of his sins, what else has he pondered in his manner of life, what else has he carried in his heart, what else has he loved, than the doctrine of wisdom? Which very many think they will attain and receive at once, as soon as they have exercised themselves in the seven precepts of the law, which concern the love of neighbour, that no one be harmed—that is: Honour father and mother. You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet your neighbour's wife, you shall not covet your neighbour's goods.
When these have been observed as much as one can, after a man has, through various temptations as through the nights of this age, clung with the endurance of labour to the doctrine's most beautiful delight, coveted and hoped for—as though Leah, unexpected, has been joined to him for Rachel—he also endures her, that he may come through to that other one, if he loves perseveringly; and having received seven other precepts—as if it were said to him: Serve seven other years for Rachel—that he may be poor in spirit, meek, mourning, hungering and thirsting after justice, merciful, pure of heart, a peacemaker. For a man would wish, if it could be done, without any endurance of labour, which must be embraced in acting and suffering, to arrive at once at the delights of beautiful and perfect wisdom;
but this cannot be in the land of the dying. For this seems to signify that which was said to Jacob: It is not the custom in our place that the younger should marry before the elder—since not absurdly is she called the elder who is prior in time. But in the right instruction of a man the labour of doing the things that are just is prior to the pleasure of understanding the things that are true. To this purpose avails that which is written: You have coveted wisdom, keep the commandments, and the Lord will supply it to you: the commandments assuredly pertaining to justice; but justice which is from faith, which is engaged amid the uncertainties of temptations, so that by piously believing what it does not yet understand, it may attain also the merit of understanding. For how much avails that which I just now recalled to be written:
You have coveted wisdom, keep the commandments, and the Lord will supply it to you—so much also do I judge that other saying to avail: Unless you believe, you shall not understand—so that justice may be shown to pertain to faith, but understanding to wisdom. Accordingly, in those who burn with a mighty love of transparent truth, the zeal is not to be disapproved, but to be recalled to order, that it may begin from faith and strive by good morals to arrive at that toward which it tends. For in that in which it is engaged there is laborious virtue; but in that which it desires there is luminous wisdom. "What need is there," he says, "to believe what is not shown to me manifestly? Bring forth some word, by which I may see the beginning of all things.
For that is the thing toward which the rational soul, if it be zealous for the truth, most and first burns." To whom let it be answered: Beautiful indeed is that which you desire, and most worthy to be loved, but first Leah marries and afterward Rachel. Let this ardour therefore avail to this end, that the order be not refused, but rather endured, without which one cannot come through to that which is loved with so great an ardour. But when one has come through, there will be held together in this age not only fair understanding, but also laborious justice. For however keenly and sincerely the unchangeable good be discerned by mortals, still the body, which is corrupted, weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that thinks upon many things.
To one thing therefore we must tend, but on account of this many things must be borne. And so the two free wives of Jacob are both daughters of the remission of sins, that is, of the whitening, which is Laban. Yet one is loved and the other borne with. But she who is borne with is herself first and more abundantly made fruitful, so that, if not for her own sake, at least for her children's sake she may be loved. For the labour of the just has its greatest fruit in those whom they beget for the kingdom of God amid many temptations and tribulations by preaching the Gospel, and those for whose sake they are in labours more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths often, on whose account they have fightings without and fears within, they call their joy and their crown.
But they are born to them more easily and more copiously from that word of faith by which they preach Christ crucified; and whatever of his humanity is more quickly perceived by human thought does not disturb even the weak eyes of Leah. But Rachel, clear in aspect, passes beyond in mind to God, and sees in the beginning the Word, God with God, and wishes to bear and cannot, because who shall declare his generation? Accordingly the life which suits the zeal of contemplation, so that it may behold those things which are invisible to the flesh, understood not with the weak eyes of the mind through the things that are made, and may ineffably discern the everlasting power and divinity of God, wishes to be free from all business, and therefore is barren.
For, by affecting the leisure in which the studies of contemplation catch fire, it is not tempered to the weakness of men, who in various afflictions desire to be helped; but because it too is inflamed with the very charity of procreating—for it wishes to teach what it knows, nor to hold its way with wasting envy—it sees its sister abounding in children by the labour of doing and suffering, and grieves rather that men run to that virtue by which their weaknesses and needs are consulted, than to that from which something divine and unchangeable is learned. This grief seems figured in that which is written: And Rachel envied her sister.
Accordingly, because a limpid and pure understanding of that substance which is not a body—and therefore does not pertain to the sense of the flesh—cannot be expressed in words brought forth in the flesh, the doctrine of wisdom chooses rather to insinuate divine things somehow to be thought of through whatever bodily images and likenesses, than to cease from the office of teaching such things; just as Rachel chose to receive children from her husband and her handmaid rather than to remain wholly without sons. For Bilhah is said to be interpreted "grown old," and this one Rachel had as handmaid. For from the old life given over to carnal senses are conceived bodily images, even when something is heard concerning the spiritual and unchangeable substance of the divinity.
Leah also received sons from her handmaid, kindled with love of having more numerous offspring. But we find Zilpah her handmaid to be interpreted "a mouth going." Wherefore, when we notice in the Scriptures those in the preaching of the evangelical faith whose mouth goes and whose heart does not go, this is understood to be the handmaid of Leah. For it is written concerning certain ones: This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And to such the Apostle says: You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say a man should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? Yet, so that even through this conditional handmaid that free labouring wife of Jacob may receive sons as heirs of the kingdom, therefore the Lord says: What they say, do; but what they do, do not wish to do.
Whence in the labour of chains the apostolic life says: Whether in pretext or in truth Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice, yea, and I will rejoice—as if it too, the handmaid bearing, rejoiced over more numerous offspring. But there is a certain offspring of Leah brought forth by the benefit of Rachel, when she permits her own husband, who was to lie with her by the owed night, to lie with her sister, having received the mandrake apples from Leah's son. Now concerning this kind of fruit I know that some suppose that, taken as food, it produces fecundity for barren women; and on this account they think that Rachel by all means urged that she should receive this from her sister's son out of desire for bearing: which I would not judge, not even if she had then conceived.
But now, since after two other births of Leah subsequent to that night the Lord gave her offspring, there is no reason why we should suspect anything of the sort concerning the mandrake such as we have experienced in no woman. I will say therefore what I feel: perhaps the more learned will say better things on this point. For when I had myself seen these apples, and rejoiced that this had befallen me on account of this very passage of sacred reading—for it is a rare thing—I scrutinised their nature carefully, as much as I could, not by any knowledge more remote from common sense, which teaches the virtues of roots and the powers of herbs, but as much as sight and smell and taste reported to me and to any man whatever. Accordingly I found the thing beautiful and sweet-smelling, but insipid in taste;
and therefore why the woman coveted it so greatly, I confess I do not know, unless perhaps on account of the fruit's rarity and the pleasantness of its scent. But why holy Scripture was unwilling to keep silent about the very deed done—Scripture which would surely not take care to insinuate to us as something great such desires of little women, unless it were admonishing us to seek something great in them—I am able to conjecture nothing further than what is suggested to me from that common sense: namely, that by that mandrake apple I understand good fame to be figured: not that which is conferred when a few just and wise men praise a man, but that popular fame by which a greater and more illustrious repute is gained—not to be sought for its own sake, but most necessary to the intention of the good, by which they take counsel for the human race.
Whence the Apostle says: He ought also to have a good testimony from those who are without: who, though they be little wise, nevertheless for the most part render to the labour of those through whom counsel is taken for them both the splendour of praise and the fragrance of good repute. Nor do the first of those who are in the Church attain to that popular glory, except whosoever are engaged in the perils and labour of actions. Therefore the son of Leah found the mandrake apples going out into the field, that is, walking honourably toward those who are without;
but that doctrine of wisdom, which, most remote from the noise of the crowd, is fixed in the contemplation of truth with sweet delight, would not attain this popular glory, however small, except through those who preside amid the crowds by acting and persuading the peoples—not that they may preside, but that they may profit; because, while these active and busy men, through whom the utility of the multitude is administered, and whose authority is dear to the peoples, bear testimony also to the life which is at leisure for the sake of the zeal of seeking and contemplating the truth, in a certain way the mandrake apples come through Leah to Rachel;
but to Leah herself through her firstborn son, that is, through the honour of her fecundity, in which is all the fruit of laborious action, imperilled amid the uncertainties of temptations: which very many endowed with good talent and burning with zeal, although they might be fit to govern peoples, nevertheless avoid on account of turbulent occupations, and are borne with their whole heart into the embrace of the doctrine's leisure, as into that of the beautiful Rachel. But because it is good that this life too, becoming more widely known, should merit popular glory, yet it is unjust that it should attain it, if it detains in leisure its lover, apt and suited for the administration of ecclesiastical cares, and does not impart him to the governance of the common utility, therefore Leah says to her sister:
Is it a small thing to you that you have received my husband, that you also wish to take my son's mandrakes? By the one husband signifying all those who, since they are capable and worthy in the virtue of acting, to whom the governance of the Church may be committed for dispensing the sacrament of faith, being kindled with zeal for the doctrine and for wisdom to be searched out and contemplated, wish to remove themselves from all the troubles of actions and to hide themselves in the leisure of learning and teaching. So therefore was it said: Is it a small thing that you have received my husband, that you also wish to take my son's mandrakes? As if it were said: Is it a small thing that the life of studies detains in leisure men necessary for the labour of managing affairs, that it also seeks popular glory?
Accordingly, that she may justly acquire it, Rachel imparts the husband to her sister on that night, namely, that those who by laborious virtue are suited to the governance of peoples, even if they had chosen to be free for knowledge, may take up the experience of temptations and the burden of cares for the common utility, lest the very doctrine of wisdom, for which they had determined to be free, be blasphemed, and lest it fail to gain a good esteem from the more unlearned peoples—which those apples signify—and which is necessary for the exhortation of learners. But plainly, that they may take up this care, they are compelled by force. This too is sufficiently signified in that, when Jacob came from the field, Leah met him and, detaining him, said: You shall come in to me:
for I have hired you for my son's mandrakes—as if she said: Do you wish good repute to be conferred on the doctrine which you love? Do not flee the dutiful labour. Whoever will have noticed that these things are transacted in the Church, discerns it. We experience in examples what we understand in the books. Who does not see that this is transacted throughout the whole world—that all come from the works of the age and go into the leisure of knowing and contemplating the truth, as into the embrace of Rachel, and are caught crosswise by ecclesiastical necessity and ordained unto labour, as though Leah were saying: You shall come in to me? And to these, chastely dispensing the mystery of God, so that in the night of this age they may beget sons of faith, that life too is praised by the peoples.
Out of love for Him they were converted and forsook the hope of this world, and out of their profession of Him they were taken up to the mercy of governing the people. For this is what they labour at in all their toils: that the profession to which they had turned might be glorified more widely and more brightly, because it gave to the peoples such rulers—just as Jacob did not refuse the night of Leah, so that he might afterward possess Rachel, sweet-smelling and clearly shining with her fruits. And she too, sometimes by the granting of God's mercy, at last gives birth of herself—scarcely and hardly, indeed, because it is very rare—so that 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,' and whatever is said piously and wisely on this matter, may be grasped, even in part and to salvation, without any phantasm of carnal thought.
Let this suffice as what has been said against the calumnies of Faustus concerning the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose God the God whom the Catholic Church worships willed Himself to be called. Concerning the merits and piety of these three men, and the loftiness of prophecy far removed from the judgment of carnal minds, this is not the place to discourse; it was enough that in this present work of ours they be defended from those charges with which a slanderous tongue, an enemy of truth, assailed them, lest those who read the holy and wholesome Scriptures with a perverse and hostile mind should seem to be saying something against them, while with wanton reproaches they persecute those who are there proclaimed with such great honour.
As for Lot, Abraham's brother—that is, his kinsman—he is by no means to be compared with those of whom God says, 'I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,' nor is he to be reckoned in the number of those to whom that Scripture bears witness of righteousness even to the end. Nevertheless, although he lived piously and chastely among the Sodomites, and commended also by the merits of hospitality, he was delivered from the burning of that land, and land of possession was given by God's gift to his posterity for Abraham's sake, who had been his uncle. These merits are set before us in those books to be praised—not his drunkenness, not his incest; but when we find both a rightly-done deed and a sin of one and the same man written down, the one is suggested for imitation, the other for avoidance.
Furthermore, if the sin of Lot—to whom, before he sinned, the testimony of righteousness was given—not only does not tarnish the divinity of God or the truth of that Scripture, but rather commends it as worthy of praise and love, because like the sheen of a faithful mirror it shows of the persons brought before it not only what is beautiful and sound, but also what is deformed and vicious: how much more does the deed of Judah, that he lay with his daughter-in-law, bring nothing at all whereby the sacred authority might be blamed!
This Scripture, standing firm and founded in those books, by divine right scorns not only the calumnious quibbles of a very few Manichaeans, but even the dreadful hostilities of so many and so great peoples of the pagans—peoples whom, when almost all of them had turned from the wicked superstition of idols, it subjected to the worship of the one true God under a Christian empire, having tamed the whole world not by the violence of warlike contest but by the power of unconquered truth. For where in those writings is Judah praised? What good did that Scripture testify of him, except that in the prophecy of Christ, who was foretold as coming in the flesh from his tribe, he was, by his father's blessing, commended above the rest and stood out?
As for the fact that Faustus mentioned Judah as having committed fornication, we add another thing: that he sold his brother Joseph into Egypt. Do anyone's twisted limbs deprave the light that displays all things? So neither do anyone's misdeeds make the Scripture evil, by whose disclosure they become known to readers. For that eternal law—which bids the natural order be preserved and forbids it to be disturbed—when consulted, ordained that the intercourse of man be for no cause except the propagation of offspring, and this only within a socially ordained marriage which does not pervert the bond of peace; and therefore the prostitution of women, not for the raising up of offspring but for the sating of lust, is condemned by the divine and eternal law.
For the shamefulness of a thing put up for sale dishonours every buyer; and by this, Judah would have sinned more grievously if, knowing her to be his daughter-in-law, he had wished to lie with her—for since husband and wife, as the Lord says, are 'no longer two, but one flesh,' a daughter-in-law is to be reckoned no otherwise than a daughter—yet there is no doubt that, as far as lay in himself, he lay basely with a harlot. But she, who deceived her father-in-law, sinned neither from lust of his flesh nor from desire of a harlot's wages, but seeking offspring from that very blood, from which, having already been married to two brothers and denied the third also, she could not have it, she by a trick subjected her body to their father, her father-in-law, to be made fruitful, having received a pledge as payment, which she kept not for adornment but for testimony.