Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
First, the Tower of Babel is built. Second, at verse 7, languages are divided and nations are dispersed. Third, at verse 10, the genealogy of Shem is traced down to Abraham, who migrates from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran and Canaan.
Vulgate Text: Genesis 11:1-32
1. Now the whole earth was of one lip and of the same words. 2. And when they set out from the East, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt in it. 3. And one said to his neighbor: Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire. And they had bricks for stones, and bitumen for mortar. 4. And they said: Come, let us make for ourselves a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven; and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered into all lands. 5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of Adam were building, 6. and He said: Behold, the people is one, and all have one lip: and they have begun to do this, nor will they desist from their designs until they complete them in deed. 7. Come therefore, let Us go down and there confound their language, so that no one may understand the voice of his neighbor. 8. And so the Lord divided them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. 9. And therefore its name was called Babel, because there the lip of the whole earth was confounded: and from there the Lord scattered them over the face of all regions. 10. These are the generations of Shem: Shem was a hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad, two years after the flood. 11. And Shem lived after he begot Arphaxad five hundred years: and he begot sons and daughters. 12. Now Arphaxad lived thirty-five years and begot Sale. 13. And Arphaxad lived after he begot Sale three hundred and three years: and he begot sons and daughters. 14. Sale also lived thirty years and begot Heber. 15. And Sale lived after he begot Heber four hundred and three years: and he begot sons and daughters. 16. And Heber lived thirty-four years and begot Phaleg. 17. And Heber lived after he begot Phaleg four hundred and thirty years: and he begot sons and daughters. 18. Phaleg also lived thirty years and begot Reu. 19. And Phaleg lived after he begot Reu two hundred and nine years: and he begot sons and daughters. 20. And Reu lived thirty-two years and begot Sarug. 21. And Reu lived after he begot Sarug two hundred and seven years: and he begot sons and daughters. 22. And Sarug lived thirty years and begot Nachor. 23. And Sarug lived after he begot Nachor two hundred years: and he begot sons and daughters. 24. And Nachor lived twenty-nine years and begot Thare. 25. And Nachor lived after he begot Thare a hundred and nineteen years: and he begot sons and daughters. 26. And Thare lived seventy years and begot Abram, and Nachor, and Aran. 27. And these are the generations of Thare: Thare begot Abram, Nachor, and Aran. Now Aran begot Lot. 28. And Aran died before his father Thare, in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29. And Abram and Nachor took wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nachor's wife was Melcha, daughter of Aran, father of Melcha and father of Jescha. 30. And Sarai was barren and had no children. 31. And so Thare took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Aran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram his son, and he led them out of Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan; and they came as far as Haran, and dwelt there. 32. And the days of Thare were two hundred and five years, and he died in Haran.
Verse 1: Now the Earth Was of One Lip
That is, of one speech, namely Hebrew; it is a metonymy. For that Hebrew was the first and common language of all men, both before the flood and after it up to the building of the Tower of Babel, is clear from the etymologies and meanings of the names Adam, Eve, Cain, Seth, Babel, Phaleg, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others, which Scripture itself records in Genesis: for the origin and meaning of these names cannot be derived from any language other than Hebrew. And this is the opinion of St. Augustine, book XVI of The City of God, chapter 11, Origen, Chrysostom, Diodorus, Jerome, and the rest, except for Theodoret alone, who falsely thinks that the first language was his own Syriac (for Theodoret was a Syrian, having been born at Antioch in Syria, and later Bishop of Cyrus in Syria); but that Hebrew began later and was first delivered by God to Moses. For it is established among the learned that Syriac is a dialect of the Hebrew language, born from its corruption: just as French, Italian, and Spanish descend from corrupted Latin.
Goropius Becanus maintains that the first language of the world was Cimbrian, or Flemish, and from it he derives all the names of Sacred Scripture, such as Adam, Eve, Cain, Methuselah, etc. Adam, he says, is called, as it were, had dam, that is, hatred of the embankment. Adam therefore is the same as an embankment set against the waves of envy. Eve is called, as it were, eu vat, that is, vessel of the age, because in Eve the beginning of all ages was conceived. Abel is called, as it were, hat belg, that is, hatred of war, namely that inflicted on him by his brother Cain. Cain is called, as it were, kaet ende, that is, bad end. Methuselah is called maet u salich, that is, save yourself, namely from the approaching flood. Enoch is called, as it were, eet noch, that is, the oath (of God with men) still, namely, endures, etc. But these do not correspond to the etymologies that Scripture gives; for those suggest an entirely different meaning and origin. Therefore in these etymologies so laboriously fetched from the Flemish language, Goropius shows nothing other than the sharpness of his own wit, which one wishes he had applied to more solid and useful matters. Hence a learned man judged this work to be merely a game and sport of the intellect.
Verse 2: And When They Set Out from the East
From Armenia which lies to the east of Babylon, where the ark had come to rest when the flood ceased: there therefore Noah with his family seems to have remained immediately after the flood. So say Epiphanius, at the beginning of his book On Heresies, Pererius, and others.
Noah was followed by his grandsons and descendants: and this Josephus and Plato note, in book III of the Laws, that out of fear of the flood they first dwelt on mountains, then as the fear gradually departed, they descended into valleys and plains.
They Found a Plain in the Land of Shinar. Note: All men who then existed (though Cajetan denies it), having gone out from Armenia, seem to have come to Shinar, that is, to Babylon, in hope of greater and better soil, and because of its more convenient location, since from there they could more easily disperse in every direction, so as to remain near and neighboring to one another on all sides. Hence Abulensis rightly thinks that Noah, who was still alive then, was present at the building of the Tower of Babel, and perhaps even helped it; for some built it with a good purpose, others, and far more, with an evil one: for all men were then in Babel; whence also the languages of all were there confused and divided: so also think Pererius, Delrio, and others.
Note: This place was not then, but later called Shinar by its inhabitants, just as it was also called Babel, from the event. For Shinar in Hebrew means the same as the shaking out of teeth; because the toothed, that is proud, men building Babel were there deprived of their teeth, that is their language, says Rupert, and St. Gregory writing on the fourth Penitential Psalm, at the penultimate verse: "Deal favorably, O Lord, in Your good will with Zion"; and he adds a tropological meaning: "In Shinar, he says, dwell the toothed, who lacerate their neighbors with the bites of detraction: God knocks out their teeth, when He confounds their deeds and words together. For of Him it is written: You have broken the teeth of sinners; and again: The Lord will crush their teeth in their mouths."
Verse 3: And They Had Bricks for Stones
Because, as Theodoret reports, in Babylon there was a great scarcity of stones. Some add that they did this out of fear of a flood of fire, by which they understood that the world would someday burn again: for bricks, when they have been thoroughly baked, resist fire most powerfully; but stones are dissolved by fire into lime. If they thought this, they thought foolishly; for just as nothing could resist the flood of water, so nothing will be able to resist the flood of fire at the end of the world, which will be far more powerful.
Verse 4: A Tower, Whose Top May Reach to Heaven
A tower that would be extremely tall: it is a hyperbole. Concerning the height of this tower, St. Jerome has marvelous things to say in his commentary on Isaiah chapter 14, namely that it had a height of four thousand paces, which make one great, or German, mile. Josephus adds that the followers of Nimrod planned to build this tower to such a height that the flood, if it returned, could not reach it. See the foolishness of men! The remains of this tower survived until the times of St. Jerome and Theodoret, as they themselves attest.
Note that this tower was in the city of Babel itself, as the Hebrew text indicates in verse 9: although others think it was not in Babel, but in the neighboring city of Chalanne.
Second, the author of this construction was not Noah, who was still alive, but Nimrod. So say Josephus, Augustine, and others.
Let Us Make a Name for Ourselves. Abulensis excuses these builders of Babel from sin, not only mortal but even venial, first, because they built this tower only as a watchtower, both active and passive, so that it could be seen from afar by all those dwelling round about, so that at appointed times all could return and assemble in Babel to transact affairs both private and public and common: for which reason towers are still built to this day; second, even granted that they wished to celebrate their name by this tower, this was not evil; for it is lawful to seek fame and glory, provided the thing from which glory is sought is not evil, but good, and does not detract from divine honor. Furthermore, among these builders was Noah, a holy man, the chief and father of all, who would not have permitted this tower to be built for an evil purpose: so says Abulensis.
But St. Augustine, Chrysostom, Josephus, and others more correctly judge that these builders sinned through vanity and pride; for what else does so tall and insane a tower reaching to heaven signify, and this construction, lest they be prevented by death or dispersion, and hindered from completing it?
Second, when they say, "Let us make a name for ourselves," what else do they indicate than that the end and aim of their wicked effort and labor was an ambitious desire to immortalize their name? Third, that this work was displeasing and hateful to God is clear from the fact that He Himself impeded it and punished the builders with the dissonance and diversity of languages, so that they could no longer understand one another. St. Augustine adds a fourth point, book XVI of The City of God, chapter 4, that Nimrod built Babel to be a stronghold of his tyranny and impiety. Hence from this construction was born the fable of the giants waging war against heaven, about which I spoke in chapter 6, verse 4, as Alcimus Avitus teaches, and the Sibyl indicates in book III.
Noah was present at this construction, but did not preside over it, because he could not prevent it: for Nimrod with his followers prevailed; if Noah helped it, he helped it with a good purpose and to avoid a greater evil.
Note however that God permitted this sin, and this building of the tower for a time and to a certain height, because on this occasion He intended to bring about a great good, namely to disperse men through all the provinces, so that the whole world would be filled and cultivated by men, which was a great ornament of the whole world, as well as a benefit.
Morally, St. Chrysostom here in homily 30 says that those who build splendid houses, baths, and porticoes for the purpose of immortalizing their name in them are like these builders of Babel. And he adds: "But if you truly love eternal memory, I will show you the way, namely, if you distribute this money into the hands of the poor, leaving behind stones and splendid buildings, villas and baths. This memory is immortal, this memory produces innumerable treasures for you, this memory relieves you from the burden of sins, this memory gains you great confidence before God." He proves this from Psalm 111: "He has dispersed, he has given to the poor, his justice (that is, his almsgiving) endures forever and ever. Do you see a memorial that extends through every age?"
Before We Are Scattered. So also the Septuagint. Whence the Hebrew pen naphuts means, "lest we be scattered," understand: before any monument to the memory of our name and glory has been left behind. For they knew that they would soon be scattered, and so they anticipate and hasten this monument of themselves, and this construction, lest they be prevented by death or dispersion and hindered from completing it.
Verse 5: And the Lord Came Down
Not by changing place (for He is everywhere), but by closely inspecting, impeding, and punishing, says Cajetan. For Scripture speaks of God in an anthropopathic manner, as if to say: God exactly, seriously, slowly, and deliberately inspected and considered this tower, and the insane and intolerable pride of these men building it, in order to impede and punish it, just as if He had descended from heaven to the land of Shinar, as a man or an angel-judge would do. So says St. Augustine.
Hence Delrio rightly notes, following Philo and St. Chrysostom, that when Sacred Scripture wants to indicate that God proceeds with slow steps toward judgment and punishment, it says that He descends, that is, approaches us, so that He may know the whole matter more clearly, and afterwards deliberately punish the guilty. So He descended upon Sodom, Genesis 18:21, and upon Judea, Micah 1:3.
Which the Sons of Adam Were Building -- who, sprung from adama, that is earth, since they are earth-born, now proudly endeavor to ascend to heaven by their construction.
Verse 6: Lip
Speech and language, as I said at verse 1.
Verse 7: Come Therefore, Let Us Go Down and There Confound Their Language
These are the words of God, as it were deliberating, and abhorring the insane machination and pride of men. Some think that God here speaks to the angels; for the angels assisted in this confusion of languages. So St. Augustine, book XVI of The City of God, chapter 9, Philo, Cajetan, and Pererius. But it is more truly the case that God the Father here speaks, not to some other God, as Julian the Apostate objected, but to His Son and the Holy Spirit. Just as He also did in chapter 1, verse 26, and chapter 3, verse 18. For just as there creation was not the work of angels, but of God alone: so equally here this confusion of languages was His work also; for it was not the angel-guardian of each people who implanted its language (as Origen holds in his commentary on Numbers chapter 11), but God. For just as God alone by His omnipotence can enter the mind, so also He alone can implant in the mind the habits of knowledge and of languages. So say St. Chrysostom, Procopius, Rabanus, Rupert, and others generally.
Therefore the knowledge of Sacred Scripture, or even of the Hebrew or Greek language, which the devil suggests to certain Anabaptists, previously unlearned and ignorant, upon their drinking the cup and receiving the symbol of Anabaptism, is not habitual or permanent, but only actual, as a kind of suggestion and inspiration: for the demon assists them and suggests all these things, just as we, when others are declaiming publicly, secretly suggest to them the verses or the things that are to be declaimed; indeed sometimes it is not they themselves who speak, but the demon speaks through them, so that they appear to be, and indeed truly are, possessed by the demon rather than merely seeming so. That this is so is clear from the fact that as soon as they return from heresy to sound faith and right mind, abandoned by the demon, they immediately lose all such knowledge.
Let Us Confound. "To confound" does not mean here to put to shame, but to mix together: just as wine is "confounded" when water is mixed with it; and the voice of the nightingale is "confounded" when the strident voices of magpies and jackdaws are mixed with it; for this is what the Hebrew word balal signifies, from which by crasis comes bal; then by doubling the letter beth in onomatopoeia, babel is formed. Hence our Germans seem to have derived their word babbelen; and the French, babiller.
Thus therefore God here mixed up the languages, so that in place of one Hebrew language, which all knew, He might implant in each group its own distinct language: so that when men conversed, one would speak Greek, another Latin, a third German, a fourth Slavonic, etc.: which was indeed a great mixing and confusion of languages and voices, about which I will speak again at verse 9.
Note first: In this confusion, God created only the mother languages and implanted them in men: for from these all the others later sprang. Thus Hebrew is the mother and parent of Syriac, Chaldean, Arabic; and Latin of Italian, Wallachian, French, Spanish; Greek of Doric, Ionic, Aeolic, Attic; Slavonic of Polish, Bohemian, Muscovite; Germanic of Swiss, Saxon, English, Scottish; Tartar of Turkish, Sarmatian; Abyssinian of Ethiopian, Sabaean, etc., says Genebrardus.
Note second, how vain are the thoughts of men before God; these builders thought they could be hindered by no one: God laughs at this foolish presumption of theirs, and in reality says: With a light breath I will scatter this work, I will use no siege engines; I will only confound the languages of the builders, so that when one asks for bricks, another offers mortar; when one requests a trowel, another hands him a basket; and so I will fill everything with confusion, so that mocking each other and growing angry at one another they may separate, and just as they are confused in language, so also confused and ashamed in mind they may depart and be scattered each to his own region. Marius Victor beautifully describes this in Book XXX on Genesis.
That They May Not Hear -- that is, that they may not understand one another, not indeed individual men (for then there would have been no human society at all), but individual kindreds. For there were as many languages as families or kindreds, namely 55, as I said at chapter 10, verse 32; for God willed to thus separate and scatter them throughout the world.
Note how the pride of the builders merited the division of languages, whose union at Pentecost the humility of the Apostles merited, says Saint Gregory, Homily 30 on the Gospels.
Let Us Go Down. You will say: Already at verse 5 God had descended; therefore He descends again here in vain. Saint Augustine and Pererius respond that this verse is a recapitulation, and that this verse should be placed before verse 6. But the word "therefore" does not support this interpretation, since it belongs not to one who recapitulates, but to one who infers and continues. I therefore respond that at verse 5 God had descended, but only in an initial and partial way, so as to view this tower from afar in heaven. Hence Moses says: "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower;" but here God descended further to the land of Shinar, namely so that by a new operation of His, He might confound the languages there; for He says: "Come, let Us go down," not in order that We might see (for We had already seen the tower), but "that We may confound their language."
Verse 8: And So He Divided Them
For when they saw that they could not understand each other, they withdrew, and each group was scattered to their own regions, as I have already explained. This punishment of sin was therefore useful to the human race, "so that a timely dispersion of a wicked assembly might give inhabitants to the habitable world," says Prosper, Book II, On the Calling of the Nations, chapter 4; "and that we might remember that pride was rightly condemned," says Cassian, Conference IV, chapter 12, "by which it came about that man giving orders to man would not be understood, he who did not wish to understand so as to obey God giving orders," says Saint Augustine, Book XVI, The City of God, chapter 4.
Verse 9: Its Name Was Called Babel, Because There the Language of the Whole Earth Was Confounded
That is, the language of all mankind. Tropologically, Saint Augustine in the Sentences, sentence 221: "Two loves," he says, "make two cities in the whole world: love of God makes Jerusalem, love of the world makes Babylon; let each one therefore examine himself, and he will find of which city he is a citizen."
Its -- namely, not of the tower, but of the city, as is clear from the Hebrew and the Septuagint. Therefore from the tower, in whose construction the builders were confounded by the division of languages, the entire city was called Babel, and from the city the whole region was called Babylonia, that is, confusion. Babel therefore received its name not from Belus, who was the first king and god in Babel, but from the root balal, that is, he confounded. Hence the Septuagint translate: and its name was called synchysis, that is, confusion. This city (as I said above) after 400 years Semiramis restored with incredible size and magnificence; but she did not raise the tower any higher, rather she enclosed it, wonderfully adorned, within the temple of Belus.
Because There the Language Was Confounded -- that is, because there the builders of Babel were confounded with shame, since they no longer understood each other, says Pererius. But the Hebrew word Balal, meaning to confound, signifies not to put to shame, but to mix together.
Second, Philo, in the book On the Confusion of Tongues, explains it thus, as if to say: The association of vices and impious men was confounded by God at Babel, when it was torn apart by schism, lest in its compacted state it overthrow virtue and good morals; for languages cannot be said to be confused, but entirely divided. For thus Philo says: "Moses teaches mystically that, just as the harmony of virtues is fostered by God, so the confounding of tongues means that the packed wedge of vices and impious men is divided, that all vices become mute and deaf, so that neither by speaking nor by mutually agreeing may they cause harm." But this is a mystical sense, by which Philo seems to overturn the literal meaning.
Third, Philastrius, in the book On Heresies, chapter 106, supposes that at Babel it was not the languages themselves, but the understanding of languages that was confounded and divided; for he himself thinks that before the building of Babel the languages of men had already been divided, as I said at chapter 10, verse 31.
But I respond: "God confounded," Hebrew Balal, that is, He mixed up the language of men -- that is, He divided the one language of all men into various ones, and intermixed them among themselves and among men, so that when several spoke at once, not one voice and language was heard, but the diverse and confused voices and languages of many, in the manner I described at verse 7.
To this add: The elements of the original language, namely the letters, remained the same among all peoples and languages, but combined and transposed in different ways: which is to confound and mix together. Likewise many syllables, and indeed even words, remained the same, but signify one thing in this language and another in that, as sus means pig to the Latins, horse to the Hebrews, and silence to the Flemish. Hence explaining this, Moses adds at verse 7: "That they may not hear," that is, understand, "each one the voice of his neighbor." Furthermore, in other languages many Hebrew words and phrases are intermixed, e.g. sac, that is, saccus [sack], and keren, that is, cornu [horn], borrowed from the Hebrews, which most peoples and languages still retain and use. Postellus and Avenarius collected a great many such examples; the latter in his Hebrew lexicon derives almost all Greek words from Hebrew, through a certain transposition, interchange, and mixing of letters. Likewise Adrianus Scrieckius in his Origins, and in Europa Rediviva, cleverly and ingeniously endeavors to show that many words from Celtic, or Belgian, are derived from Hebrew, and agree in their root or radical letters; and from Belgian etymologies of almost all proper names of nations in Europe, he strives to prove that the Celtic, or Belgian, language is merely a dialect of Hebrew, and that it was first given to the descendants of Japheth at Babel, and that therefore the ancient Greeks, Italians, Spaniards (who hence, he says, are called Celtiberians), Gauls, Britons, and all Europeans used it. But this is difficult to believe and more difficult to demonstrate, especially since the Greek and Latin languages are exceedingly excellent, refined, and artificial, as well as most ancient, as is clear from Greek and Latin writings, and therefore they seem to have been given by God in the confusion of languages, equally with Celtic, to certain descendants of Japheth. But to which ones, unless those who inhabited Greece and Latium? They therefore spoke not Celtic, but Greek and Latin. I would believe that the Belgian language is most ancient, and one of the first given by God at Babel. Moreover, that it possesses not a few words derived from Hebrew, or similar and related to them. But who would persuade himself that it differs from Hebrew only in dialect, who has examined the dissonance and diversity of both? For Belgian seems to differ from Hebrew as much or more than Latin differs from Greek or Hebrew.
Saint Augustine notes (Book XVIII, The City of God, chapter 39), along with Origen, Jerome, Tostatus, Cajetan, Oleaster, Genebrardus, and others passim, that in Heber alone and his posterity, together with the true faith, religion, and piety, the original Hebrew language remained. In all the rest, therefore, God erased the acquired habit of the Hebrew language (so that men seemed to themselves not so much to have forgotten it, as to have lost all memory of the Hebrew language as if they had never known or heard anything of it), and He implanted a new and most ready habit of a new language, a different and distinct one for each nation, namely of another and proper language. So Abulensis, Pererius, and others.
Hence second, Epiphanius, at the beginning of his book Against Heresies, and Suidas under the word Serug, think that these builders of Babel were called in Greek meropes, as if "voice-divided": for merizo means the same as "I divide," and ops means the same as "voice": whence also one of the giants who attempted to cast Jupiter from heaven was called by the poets Merops, from whom the island of Cos is thought to have been called Meropis: although Homer's commentator holds that men are called meropes because they use distinct and articulate speech; or, as others say, because each person has a voice different from everyone else's, just as he has a different face -- two things in man that Pliny marvels at.
Finally, these events occurred around the year 170 after the flood, as I said at chapter 10, verse 25. Epiphanius and the Sibyl add, as does Abydenus (cited in Josephus and Eusebius, Book IX, On the Preparation for the Gospel, final chapter), that God cast down this tower with storms and winds, and overwhelmed the builders themselves with its ruins.
Verse 10: These Are the Generations of Shem
Moses traces only the genealogy of Shem, and that only in the direct line to Abraham, because the other descendants of Noah, despite his resistance, turned from God to idols; and because from Abraham arose the Jews (for whom Moses writes these things) and Christ.
Shem Was a Hundred Years Old. Therefore Shem was born not in the year 500, but in the year 502 of Noah, as I said at chapter 10, verse 21; for since this precise number is expressed here -- namely that two years after the flood Shem was 100 years old -- which is not expressed at chapter 5, verse 32: hence Moses seems to be precisely recording the years of Shem here rather than at chapter 5.
Verse 12: Arphaxad Begot Shelah (The Cainan Problem)
So the Hebrew and Chaldean texts read both here and at 1 Chronicles 1:18 and 24. But the Septuagint both here and there insert Cainan; for they read: "Arphaxad begot Cainan, and Cainan begot Shelah." Saint Luke follows the Septuagint, in chapter 3 of his Gospel, verse 36, whence Lipomanus, Melchior Cano, Delrio, and others think that this Cainan must absolutely be inserted, and that 30 years must be given to him as to the others before he begot Shelah, and consequently that these thirty years must be inserted into the chronology.
You will ask, which should be followed here -- Moses who omits Cainan, or the Septuagint version which inserts Cainan. I respond that Moses should rather be followed as the original autograph. For Moses here traces both the chronology and the history of the world: therefore he did not omit the 30 years which according to the Septuagint must be given to Cainan; for this would be an enormous fault and error in chronology, indeed in history. And so it is almost equally dangerous to say that Moses is here mutilated, as to say that Luke is superfluous; or to say that the text of Sacred Scripture has been truncated here, as to say that in Luke it is redundant regarding Cainan: for in equal measure the history as well as the chronology is corrupted and rendered false.
Second, because the Hebrew, Chaldean, and Latin Bibles consistently, both here and at 1 Chronicles 1, omit Cainan; third, because the Hebrews, Philo, Josephus, and other ancients omit Cainan; fourth, because the rule of Saint Augustine, Book XV, The City of God, chapter 3, states: "If a translation disagrees with the original, that language should rather be trusted from which the translation was made into another through interpretation;" therefore Moses in Hebrew should rather be trusted than the Septuagint version.
Fifth, that an error crept into the Septuagint version here is clear, first, because a manifest error in numbers crept into them here, and indeed in this very Cainan: for they say that Cainan was 130 years old when he begot Shelah, although no one, even among those who accept Cainan, assigns him more than 30 years; second, because the Septuagint edition corrected by the Romans and published by the authority of Pope Sixtus V expunges Cainan at 1 Chronicles 1. For in recounting the series of generations from Arphaxad to Abraham, it traces it thus: "Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, Abraham;" where they clearly agree with the Latin Vulgate edition at verse 24. If in the book of Chronicles, in the series of genealogies, Cainan must be expunged from the Septuagint according to the Roman correction, then he must likewise be expunged from them in Genesis 11. For the same series of generations is written in both places. This is indeed a strong conjecture, and raises great suspicion that Cainan was intruded into the Septuagint in Genesis.
The suspicion is increased by the fact that in the Septuagint in Genesis, exactly the same numbers of begetting and age are given to Cainan as are given to Shelah, whereas in all others they always vary. Hence those numbers seem to have been given by the Septuagint to Shelah alone, and to have been repeated for Cainan by someone who intruded him.
Third, because Epiphanius, Heresy 53, reciting the series of generations from Abraham up to Shem according to the Septuagint version, omits Cainan; therefore Cainan was not then in the Septuagint, but crept in later. The same is clear from Saint Jerome, Questions on Genesis, where he absolutely omits Cainan; for he reads thus: "Arphaxad begot Shelah, Shelah begot Eber." But if the Septuagint had then contained Cainan, surely Saint Jerome would not have concealed it; for there and elsewhere he studiously notes wherever the Septuagint disagrees with the Hebrew. Therefore in the time of Saint Jerome and Epiphanius, Cainan had not yet crept into the more correct copies of the Septuagint.
You will ask, who then inserted Cainan into the Septuagint and into Luke? I respond: It is likely that some Greek reader of the Septuagint, reading Cainan in Saint Luke (which Luke seems to have taken from the archives of the Hebrew nation), when he did not find him in Genesis, added Cainan to Genesis; and then other copyists did the same; so Pererius and others. These are probable and commonly held views.
Saint Augustine, Book XV, The City of God, and Jerome, Tostatus, Cajetan, Oleaster, Genebrardus, and others teach that it is doubtful whether Cainan in Luke also is genuine, and that someone may rather have added him there after finding him in Genesis.
Briefly, I consider that the chronology must be established here in conformity with the Hebrew text. For although it is most probable that some errors crept here and there into the Septuagint version, nevertheless the constant and ancient practice of the Church is that the authority of the Seventy interpreters in historical and chronological matters should not be lightly esteemed.
Especially since a greater argument compels and almost necessitates it here. For first, Moses expressly and precisely asserts here that Arphaxad, in the 35th year of his age, begot Shelah. But this is absolutely false if we insert Cainan from the Septuagint: for according to them, Cainan was begotten by Arphaxad in that very 35th year of his. But Shelah was begotten thirty years later by Cainan, not by Arphaxad. For it seems harsh and forced, and a falsehood in the chronology, what some respond -- that Shelah was begotten in the 35th year of Arphaxad, not in himself, but in his father Cainan.
Second, Moses carefully and professedly, and he alone, writes here the history, genealogy, and chronology of the world: therefore it is incredible that he would have omitted 30 years of Cainan's life. For those thirty years disturb and vitiate the entire chronology. Who would dare say that Moses truncated, and consequently corrupted, the chronology by thirty years?
Third, no probable reason can be given why Moses omitted Cainan; for that which is brought forward by some -- namely, that he wished to reduce the generations before and after the flood to two sets of ten -- that reason, as Pererius rightly says, neither can be proven, and is light and futile, nor is it of such weight that Moses should have had to disturb and confuse the chronology on account of it.
Wherefore if we wish to defend the reliability, integrity, and chronology both of Moses and of the Book of Chronicles and of the Vulgate edition, we are compelled, even unwillingly, they say, to assert that Cainan crept into the Septuagint. For it is better, and of lesser risk and danger, to impute this error to copyists and scribes, than to the Seventy themselves as most wise men; just as St. Augustine, Book XV of The City of God, chapter XIII, imputes the error found here in the numbers in the Septuagint to those same copyists, where he also asserts that this is an ancient corruption, committed by the earliest and first scribes, which therefore pervaded all subsequent copies of the Septuagint, and from them immediately into all copies of St. Luke.
Pererius above all others inclines to this view. So also Bede (though timidly), Ado as well, Isidore, Abulensis, Lucidus, Eugubinus, Genebrardus, Jansenius, and Cajetan omit Cainan. Indeed most interpreters of Luke III, 36, in practice agree. For in expounding that passage about Shelah: "Who was Cainan," they explain thus: "Who was," namely not a natural son, as the others in Luke, but either a brother, or a legal son, or even that very "Cainan" himself; which explanations, because they are forced, actually strengthen our position, since besides it no other solid explanation or reconciliation that would satisfy a prudent man can be given; and in fact they remove Cainan from the series of the genealogy and chronology, which is the one thing we are arguing for and requesting here. For it suffices for us that the history and the series of the world's years of Moses, as a sacred and divine historian and chronologist, remain whole and intact, since apart from it we have no other.
You will say: therefore Cainan must be erased from the text of the Septuagint and St. Luke, as the heretics erase him, saying he was fabricated by the Seventy. I reply: I deny the consequence, both because Greek and Latin manuscripts everywhere contain Cainan -- hence his erasure would offend many. For this reason the Romans, who corrected the Vulgate edition by the command of Sixtus V and Clement VIII, say in the preface: "In this widely circulated reading, just as some things have been deliberately changed, so also other things which seemed to need changing have been deliberately left unchanged, because St. Jerome more than once advised that this should be done to avoid giving offense to the people," etc. Wherefore it is better and sufficient for learned men to note these things in their commentaries. Also because perhaps some other secret and divine mystery lies hidden here, which God wished men not to know, as Bede hints.
Note: As I said at chapter V, in the genealogy from Adam to Noah, the numbers in the Septuagint are corrupted, so also here they are corrupted: for here the Septuagint adds a hundred years both to Arphaxad and to the others, which the Hebrew and our version do not have; hence according to the Septuagint, thus corrupted, it follows that from the flood to Abram 1,172 years elapsed, when according to the Hebrew truth only 292 elapsed.
Verse 13: And Arphaxad Lived Three Hundred and Three Years
So read the Latin, Roman, and Royal Bibles, and the Greek Septuagint from the Caraffa edition. But the Hebrew, Chaldean, and Septuagint from both the Complutensian and Royal editions, and many old Latin Bibles, read 403, and this better agrees with the lifespan of that age: for Shelah and Eber, who were descendants of Arphaxad, lived 400 years and more.
Note: Before the flood men lived 900 years, soon after the flood only 400, and then 300; whence it is clear that the long life of the earlier people, namely up to 900 years, befell them not from the force of nature and natural causes, but rather from a gift of God; for not immediately in the first or second generation could human life naturally decrease to 500 or 600 years.
Verse 20: Serug
Epiphanius and Suidas make him the inventor of images, that is, of fashioning pictures and statues in which princes and other illustrious men might be represented, worshipped, and adored, as though idolatry then began. But I said above that the author of idolatry was Nimrod, or Belus. Serug therefore was not its author, but its propagator through his sculpture and painting. Suidas again errs here when he places Serug among the descendants of Japheth.
Verse 26: And Terah Lived Seventy Years, and Begot Abram, and Nahor, and Haran
Note: Terah's first son was Haran, the second Nahor, the third Abram; therefore Abram was the youngest. This is clear: for Abram had as wife Sarah, who was the daughter of Haran, and she was only ten years older than Abram. But Haran, when he begot Sarah, was at least twenty years old: therefore Haran was at least ten years older than Abram. Yet Abram is placed here before his brothers, though younger, because Moses intends to follow the lineage, faith, and deeds of him alone henceforth.
The meaning therefore is: Terah lived 70 years, and by that time had already begotten Haran and Nahor; but Abram himself he begot precisely in the year 70. So Pererius and others. Therefore some wrongly think that Abram was born in Terah's year, not 70, but 130; whose reasoning I will resolve at chapter XII, verse 4. For it is said here in express words that Terah begot Abram when he was 70 years old: and thus through this 70th year of Terah, Moses continues his chronology, which otherwise would be uncertain and doubtful, indeed false, if Abram had been born not in the 70th but in the 130th year of Terah.
Note second: Abram was born in the year 292 after the flood; and since Noah lived 350 years after the flood, it follows that Noah died in the 58th year of Abram. Abram therefore saw all his ancestors, nine in number, going back to Noah: namely he saw Terah, Nahor, Serug, Reu, Peleg, Eber, Shelah, Arphaxad, Shem, and Noah.
Verse 28: Ur of the Chaldeans
And He Led Them Out of Ur of the Chaldeans. "Ur" was a city of Chaldea which by another name was called Camirine, according to the testimony of Eupolemus cited by Eusebius, Book IX, Preparation for the Gospel IV. Moreover, the Chaldeans are named from the Hebrew and Chaldean Chasdim, with the letter "s" changed to "l," just as from Odysseus was formed Ulysses. Chasdim in the plural has in the singular Chassad, which some Hebrews think is shortened from Arphaxad: for the last three letters in each name are the same; for the Hebrews do not count vowels. Therefore they judge that the Chaldeans originated from and were named after Arphaxad, the son of Shem. Others think the Chaldeans arose from and were named after Chesed, son of Nahor, the brother of Abram, about whom see chapter XXII, 21. But this Chesed was later.
Note: Ur here signifies "fire"; whence it seems this city was called Ur because a sacred fire was kept and worshipped in it. For thus the Persians worshipped sacred fire as a deity in places which the historian Procopius calls pyreia ("fire-temples") in his Persian Wars. In like manner St. Jerome relates that the Chaldeans worshipped fire. Thus Ur seems to have been named from the cult of fire, just as Heliopolis was named from the cult of the sun. Perhaps Ur is the same as Uram, which Pliny, Book VII, chapter XXIV, places near the Euphrates.
Hence also our translator, in 2 Esdras (Nehemiah), chapter IX, 7, translates Ur, which is in the Hebrew, as "fire"; for he translates: "God, who chose Abraham, and led him out of the fire (Heb. out of Ur) of the Chaldeans." Where observe that Esdras clearly seems to allude to this passage of Genesis, as if to say: God, who led Abram out of the city of the Chaldeans, which in Hebrew is called Ur, that is, "fire."
Whence second, "fire" in Esdras can be taken figuratively, to signify tribulation; for fire is a symbol of this in Scripture, as is clear from Psalm XVI, 3; Psalm LXV, 12. For Josephus, St. Augustine Book XVI of The City of God, XIII, and others teach that Abram suffered many afflictions from the Chaldeans because he refused to worship fire.
Second, "fire" in Esdras can be taken literally; for the tradition of the Hebrews is that Abram was for this very reason literally cast into fire, as Esdras says, by the Chaldeans, but was miraculously freed from it by God: which tradition, although St. Jerome initially criticizes, he afterwards approves, and so, it seems, does the Church, which prays for the dying that God may free them from the anguish of death and from the fire of Gehenna, just as He freed Abraham from Ur, that is, from the fire of the Chaldeans.
Holy Scripture also indicates the same, when it celebrates this leading out and liberation of Abram from Ur of the Chaldeans as something great and admirable. Nor is it surprising that Josephus, Philo, and Paul (Hebrews XI) do not mention it, as Pererius objects, because they report almost only what is found in Holy Scripture, as Josephus frequently professes about himself. Moses also passed over this in silence because he briefly summarizes all things, the deeds both of Adam and of others up to the calling of Abram. For what do you find in Genesis about the acts of Adam, Seth, Enosh, Methuselah, and others during the 1,656 years before the flood? Yet observe that in this tradition some fabulous circumstances are mixed in by the Hebrews, such as that Haran, the brother of Abraham, was cast into the same fire and consumed by it, because he was not of as great faith as Abram; for Moses sufficiently indicates in verse 28 that Haran died a natural death. Again, that Nimrod, at the urging of Terah, Abraham's father (being an idolater), cast Abraham into the fire. For Nimrod, or Belus, died before Abram: for Abram was born in the 43rd year of Ninus, who succeeded his father Belus after his death, as I said at chapter X.
Third, it can be translated "from Ur," that is, from the "teaching" (of error and idolatry) of the Chaldeans; for thus our translator renders Urim as "teaching" in Exodus XXVIII, 31, and elsewhere.
Verse 29: Milcah, the Daughter of Haran, the Father of Milcah and the Father of Iscah
Abulensis and most others think that this Iscah is Sarah. For just as the first daughter of Haran, namely Milcah, was married to her uncle Nahor, so also the second, namely Iscah or Sarah, was married to her uncle Abram, as Moses hints in this verse, and more clearly in chapter XX, verse 12, where Abram calls Sarah his sister, that is, his niece through his brother Haran. For that Sarah was not a niece of Abraham through his brother Nahor, Moses sufficiently indicates here, when he records that Abram and Nahor married their wives at the same time.
From this chapter the chronology of the world is deduced, namely that from the end of the flood to Abram 292 years elapsed: this is clear, for two years after the flood Shem begot Arphaxad, Arphaxad when he was 35 years old begot Shelah, Shelah at 30 begot Eber, Eber at 34 begot Peleg, Peleg at 30 begot Reu, Reu at 32 begot Serug, Serug at 30 begot Nahor, Nahor at 29 begot Terah, Terah at 70 begot Abram. Total: 292 years. Therefore Abram was born in the year 292 after the flood, which was the year of the world 1949.
Verse 31: And Terah Took Abram His Son
Namely after Abram was called by God out of Ur of the Chaldeans, in the following chapter, verse 1. This is therefore a prolepsis or anticipation: for Moses wished here to weave together the life and death of Terah before beginning the deeds of Abram, even those which he performed while his father Terah was still living.
Note: Some think with St. Chrysostom that Terah in Chaldea initially worshipped idols, but was converted by his son Abram and abandoned them to worship the true God. They prove this from Judith, chapter V, 8; but that passage rather asserts the opposite, namely that he refused to worship his ancestral idols. They again prove the same from Joshua XXIV, 2.
From this passage they also infer that Abram initially, before he was called by God, worshipped idols -- so Philo in his book On Abraham, the Hebrews, Genebrardus, and Andreas Masius writing on Joshua XXIV. But the truer view is, first, that Abram never worshipped idols. First, because in Joshua XXIV, verse 2, not Abram but only Terah and Nahor are said to have served foreign gods. Second, because Abram is set before us in Scripture as the father of believers and the model of faith; therefore he was never unfaithful. Third, because so hold Josephus, Suidas, Pererius, Delrio, and very many others.
Second, the truer view is that Terah in Chaldea did not worship idols, but together with Abram worshipped the true God, and therefore, when he was harassed by the Chaldeans, at the urging and call of Abram, he departed from there and migrated to Canaan: but since Terah was now worn out by fatigue and old age, he stopped exhausted on the journey, namely in the Mesopotamian city of Haran, which is commonly called Carrhae, where the Roman general Marcus Crassus suffered defeat at the hands of the Parthians.
Third, the truer view is that Terah in Mesopotamia, namely in Haran, fell into idolatry, either from the custom of that people, or from the arrival of his son Nahor, an idolater, from Chaldea, or from the departure and absence of Abram himself, when he had journeyed from Haran into Canaan. This is clear from Joshua XXIV, 2, where it says: "Your fathers dwelt beyond the river from the beginning, Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, and they served foreign gods." Beyond the river, namely the Euphrates in Mesopotamia, not in Chaldea. So from St. Augustine and Tostatus, Pererius.