Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Moses commands three cities of refuge to be designated as asylum for the involuntary homicide, to which three others are to be added as the people increase, verse 9; see the discussion at Numbers 35. The voluntary homicide, however, he commands to be dragged from the asylum and killed, verse 11. Finally, verse 16, he decrees the punishment of retaliation against a false witness.
Vulgate Text: Deuteronomy 19:1-21
1. When the Lord your God shall have destroyed the nations whose land He is about to deliver to you, and you shall possess it, and dwell in its cities and buildings; 2. you shall set apart for yourself three cities in the midst of the land which the Lord your God will give you in possession, 3. carefully preparing the road; and you shall divide the whole province of your land into three equal parts: so that whoever is a fugitive on account of homicide may have a nearby place to which he can escape. 4. This shall be the law of the fugitive homicide whose life is to be preserved: He who strikes his neighbor unknowingly, and who is proven to have had no hatred against him yesterday or the day before; 5. but to have gone with him simply into the forest to cut wood, and in the cutting of wood the axe slipped from his hand, and the iron slipping from the handle struck and killed his friend: he shall flee to one of the aforesaid cities, and shall live; 6. lest perhaps his kinsman, whose blood was shed, goaded by grief, pursue and seize him if the way be too long, and strike down his life, who is not guilty of death: because he is shown to have had no prior hatred against the one who was killed. 7. Therefore I command you to divide three cities of equal distance from one another. 8. And when the Lord your God shall have enlarged your borders, as He swore to your fathers, and shall have given you all the land that He promised them, 9. (if nevertheless you keep His commandments, and do what I command you today, that you love the Lord your God, and walk in His ways at all times) you shall add three more cities, and double the number of the aforesaid three cities: 10. that innocent blood may not be shed in the midst of the land which the Lord your God will give you to possess, lest you be guilty of blood. 11. But if anyone, having hatred against his neighbor, lies in wait for his life, and rising up strikes him, and he dies, and the slayer flees to one of the aforesaid cities, 12. the elders of that city shall send and seize him from the place of refuge, and deliver him into the hand of the kinsman whose blood was shed, and he shall die. 13. You shall not pity him, and you shall remove innocent blood from Israel, that it may be well with you. 14. You shall not take up and move the boundaries of your neighbor, which former owners fixed in your possession, which the Lord your God will give you in the land that you shall receive to possess. 15. One witness shall not stand against anyone, whatever the sin or crime may be: but by the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter shall be established. 16. If a false witness shall stand against a man, accusing him of transgression, 17. both parties whose case it is shall stand before the Lord in the presence of the priests and judges who shall be in those days. 18. And when after most diligent investigation they find that the false witness has spoken a lie against his brother, 19. they shall render to him as he planned to do to his brother, and you shall remove evil from your midst: 20. that the rest, hearing this, may have fear, and may never dare to do such things. 21. You shall not pity him, but shall require life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Verse 5: But Went with Him Simply into the Forest
5. BUT TO HAVE GONE WITH HIM SIMPLY INTO THE FOREST. -- Tropologically St. Gregory, Book X of the Moralia, chapter 9: "We go to the forest with a friend," he says, "whenever we turn with any neighbor to examine our beloved pursuits: and we simply cut down wood when we cut away the vices of sinners with pious intention. But the axe slips from the hand when the rebuke draws itself into harshness more than is necessary. The iron leaps from the handle when from correction a harsher word falls out, and striking the friend kills him, because the insult uttered slays its hearer from the spirit of love. This man must flee to three cities, because if, turned to the laments of repentance, he is hidden under hope, faith, and charity, he is not held guilty of the homicide he committed."
Verse 6: Lest Perhaps His Kinsman
6. LEST PERHAPS HIS KINSMAN -- namely the relative of the slain, who in Hebrew is called goel, that is, redeemer, because the right of redeeming the inheritance, if it had been sold, belonged to the nearest kinsman.
AND STRIKE DOWN HIS LIFE -- namely, his life: it is a metonymy; so "soul" is taken below in chapter 22, verse 26, and chapter 24, verse 6, and Acts 20:24: "I do not count my life (soul) more precious than myself."
Verse 13: You Shall Remove Innocent Blood
13. YOU SHALL REMOVE INNOCENT BLOOD -- that is, you shall take away the shedding of innocent blood, by killing, namely, the one who shed it. Hence the Chaldean translates: you shall remove the one shedding innocent blood from Israel. There is therefore here a double metonymy; the first, by which blood is put for the shedding of blood; the second, by which the shedding is put for the homicide.
Verse 14: You Shall Not Move the Boundaries
14. YOU SHALL NOT TAKE UP AND MOVE THE BOUNDARIES OF YOUR NEIGHBOR -- "Boundaries," namely of fields, so as to add something from another's possession to your own.
Verse 15: By the Testimony of Two or Three Witnesses
15. BY THE TESTIMONY OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY WORD SHALL STAND (that is, shall be confirmed) -- every accusation, every declaration, every matter.
Verses 18-19: The Punishment of the False Witness
18 and 19. AND WHEN THEY HAVE FOUND THE FALSE WITNESS, etc., THEY SHALL RENDER TO HIM AS HE PLANNED TO DO TO HIS BROTHER. -- The punishment of retaliation is here decreed against a false witness: for it is fitting that whatever punishment one wished unjustly to inflict upon another by false testimony, he himself should justly suffer. Thus the two elders who falsely accused Susanna of adultery, convicted of lying, were crushed with stones, Daniel 13.
Hear what the Fathers of the Eighth Ecumenical Synod, held at Constantinople in the year of the Lord 869, decreed against the Consul Leo and the Protospatharius Theodore, who at the instigation of Photius and the Emperor Michael had given false testimony against Blessed Ignatius the Patriarch: "We decree," they say, "and promulgate that these men undergo a seven-year penance (so is called the ecclesiastical penalty and censure): that they be for two years outside the church, and for another two within the church to hear the divine Scriptures up to the catechumens; not, however, to communicate in any way, but to abstain from meat and wine for four years, except on Sundays and the Lord's feast days: and for three other years to stand with the faithful, and to merit divine communion only on the Lord's solemnities, with almsgiving, prayers, and fasting, so that on three days of the week, namely Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they abstain from meat and wine."
Examples of Divine Punishment of False Witnesses
Gregory, Bishop of Agrigentum, falsely accused by Sabinus and Crescentius before a Roman Synod of 150 Fathers of debauchery with the maiden Eudocia, having brought forth 110 witnesses, repeated the psalm in a loud voice: "False witnesses rose up against me; they charged me with things I knew not: they repaid me evil for good."
When this was granted, immediately great darkness arose: and of the accusers, some appeared black on both cheeks, others on one cheek. And Sabinus and Crescentius had their lips stained with a dark color that could never afterwards be washed off. So the Life of St. Gregory of Agrigentum records, which is found in Surius, November 23.
Moreover, Gratian teaches that false witnesses are by the law itself infamous, Causa 3, Question 5, from Pope Eusebius, letter 3 to the Bishops of Tuscany, in these words: "We decree, together with all the Bishops who are with us, that murderers, sorcerers, thieves, sacrilegious persons, ravishers, adulterers, incestuous persons, poisoners, suspects, criminals, perjurers, and those who have committed abduction, or given false testimony, or who have resorted to soothsayers and diviners, and the like -- none of these are in any way to be admitted to accusation or testimony, because they are infamous and are justly to be rejected, because their voice is deadly."
The Emperor Constantine the Great had Fausta as his wife. She, seized with love for her stepson Crispus, having often tempted him to lust and being refused, reported to her husband that he had tried to force her. Constantine believed it, and therefore had his son Crispus killed. But after some years, when the truth was discovered, he punished his wife with death; so Eutropius reports, Book X of Roman History.
Eusebius relates, Book 6 of the History, chapter 12, that three witnesses falsely accused Narcissus, Bishop of Jerusalem, of an infamous crime; and the first swore that, if this charge were true, God should destroy him by fire; the second, that he should be struck with jaundice; the third, that he should lose his eyes. God the Avenger heard them; for the first, his house being caught by fire in the night, burned up together with his entire family in the avenging flames. The second was seized and consumed by jaundice from head to foot. The third, seeing these things, repented and confessed his crime, and wept over it with such tears that he lost his sight.
God Confutes False Witnesses through the Dead
Indeed, God not rarely confutes false witnesses among the living through the dead. Hear the examples. Stanislaus the Pole, Bishop of Cracow, gravely offended Boleslaus, King of Poland, because he had publicly reproved his notorious lustfulness. Therefore the king, in a solemn assembly of the kingdom, arranged by calumny for Stanislaus to be summoned to trial before him, as if he were occupying a village that he had purchased in the name of the Church. Since he could not prove this by documents, and the witnesses were afraid to tell the truth, the Bishop pledged that he would bring Peter, the seller of the village, who had died three years earlier, into the trial within three days. The condition being accepted with laughter, the man of God spent the entire three days in fasting and prayer. On the very day of the pledge, immediately therefore, after offering the sacrifice of the Mass, he commanded Peter to rise from the tomb, who straightway, restored to life, followed the Bishop going to the royal tribunal, and there, with the king and all the rest struck with amazement, gave testimony about the field he had sold, and the price duly paid to him by the Bishop, and then again fell asleep in the Lord: so Longinus records, and from him Surius, on May 8, in the Life of St. Stanislaus.
Blessed Aia, wife of Count Hidulph of Hainaut, as the History of Hainaut reports, Book 11, chapter 4, bestowed her inheritances or domains on the Church of Mons, which were afterwards claimed back by relatives as if by right of kinship; but the said Church, being harassed by the lawsuit, summoned St. Aia, though deceased, as a witness by many prayers: and she appearing, replied that she upheld her donation; whence whatever had been given peacefully remained given.
When Blessed Augustine was still staying in Milan, he reports that among other things this noteworthy event occurred relevant to this matter, in the book On the Care for the Dead, chapter 11: "For certain," he says, "when we were in Milan, we heard that, when a debt was being demanded from a certain man, the deceased father's bond being produced, which the father had already paid without the son's knowledge; the man began to be most gravely distressed, and to wonder that his dying father had not told him what he owed, since he had even made a will. Then, when he was exceedingly anxious, his same father appeared to him in a dream, and indicated where the instrument was stored by which that bond had been cancelled. When it was found and shown, the son not only repelled the calumny of the false debt, but also recovered his father's receipt which the father had not recovered when the money was paid by him. Here therefore the soul of the man is thought to have taken care for his son, and to have come to him while sleeping, so that by teaching him what he did not know, he might free him from great trouble."
Let us add to this the similar deed concerning Spiridon, the Cypriot Bishop. He had a daughter named Irene, who having served him well, died a virgin. After her death, someone came saying he had entrusted a deposit to her. The father had not known about the matter. A search was made through the entire house, but nowhere was what was sought found. Yet the man who had entrusted it persisted, and pressed with weeping and tears: he even testified that he would bring destruction upon his own life unless the entrusted items were returned. Moved by his tears, the old man hastened to his daughter's tomb and called her by name. Then she from the tomb: "What do you want," she said, "father?" "Where did you put his deposit?" he asked. And she, indicating the place: "There," she said, "you will find it buried." Returning to the house, he found the thing just as his daughter had answered from the tomb, and handed it over to the one demanding it. You see here how God is the patron of truth and true testimony.
Macarius, an Egyptian monk and disciple of St. Anthony, when someone had fled to his cave for the sake of seeking help, because the magistrate was pursuing him as a man guilty of a murder then committed (but he affirmed he was innocent), by the reverence of his name restrained the violence of the magistrates; and since only suspicion, not witnesses, pressed upon the man, in order that the truth might become public, he caused the one who had been killed to speak from the tomb, with all who were present hearing; and since the dead man affirmed that his murder had nothing to do with the one then accused of the crime, the magistrate, on Macarius's authority, acquitted the man he had been pursuing; when the magistrate desired to know the author of the murder, he asked St. Macarius to inquire: he replied that it was enough for him to have freed an innocent man. So it is reported in the Lives of the Fathers, Book 2, chapter 37.
God accomplished the same thing through infants. Gregory of Tours relates, Book 2 of the History of the Franks, chapter 1, that St. Brixius, Bishop of Tours, falsely accused of fornication, adjured before the people the infant recently born from her, to say whether he himself was its father. The infant replied: You are not my father; but when the people asked him to inquire from the infant who then was the father, Brixius replied: "That is not my concern; as far as what pertained to me, I was anxious: if you have anything further, seek it out for yourselves." And when the people attributed this to magic, he carried fire with his garment unharmed all the way to the tomb of St. Martin, saying: "Just as you see my garment unharmed by fire, so too my body is unpolluted by the woman's touch."
A similar miracle happened to Bishop Broon, who was a disciple of St. Patrick, in the year of Christ 521; but there the infant moreover revealed the father, as is found in the Life of St. Brigid of Scotland, February 1.
In the Life of St. Anthony of Padua, who lived in the year of the Lord 1232, it is narrated that while he was residing in Padua he was transported by an angel to Lisbon: for there his father was being falsely accused of having killed a boy. Therefore he himself questioned the slain boy whether his father had killed him; and the boy, raising himself up, replied that he had no part in this murder: and so the father was acquitted. In exactly the same manner an infant cleared Abbot Daniel, falsely charged with adultery, as Sophronius relates in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 114.