Exodus 32:29
And Moses said: You have consecrated your hands this day to the Lord, every man in his son and in his brother, that a blessing may be given to you.
Open Exodus 32:29 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et ait Moyses : Consecrastis manus vestras hodie Domino, unusquisque in filio, et in fratre suo, ut detur vobis benedictio.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Μωυσῆς Ἐπληρώσατε τὰς χεῖρας ὑμῶν σήμερον Κυρίῳ, ἕκαστος ἐν τῷ υἱῷ ἢ τῷ ἀδελφῷ, δοθῆναι ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς εὐλογίαν.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּ֣אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֗ה מִלְא֨וּ יֶדְכֶ֤ם הַיּוֹם֙ לַֽיהוָ֔ה כִּ֛י אִ֥ישׁ בִּבְנ֖וֹ וּבְאָחִ֑יו וְלָתֵ֧ת עֲלֵיכֶ֛ם הַיּ֖וֹם בְּרָכָֽה
Haydock's commentary
To you. Thus they merited the priesthood, and a blessing; (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 9.; Menochius) having been the ministers of God's just indignation, without sparing any of the most guilty. With these they could not be unacquainted. No external signs on their bodies were requisite to make the delinquents known. They had appeared too publicly. (Haydock)
The Levites acted with due authority and order, which their father, Levi, had neglected, Genesis xxxiv. (Worthington)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Answer to the Letters of Petilian, the Donatist, Chapter 87
191. Augustin answered: If God was unwilling that death should be inflicted on him who slew his brother, preferring that he should continue to exist in his murderer’s life, see whether this be not the cause why, seeing that the heart of the king is in the hand of God, whereby he has himself enacted many laws for your correction and reproof, yet no law of the king has commanded that you should be put to death, perhaps with this very object, that any one of you who persists in the obstinate self-will of his sacrilegious madness should be tortured with the punishment of the fratricide Cain, that is to say, with the life of a murderer. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Matthew X. 34
But if any think these things intolerable, let them be reminded of an ancient history. For in times of old also this came to pass, which thing especially shows the old covenant to be akin to the new, and Him who is here speaking, the same with the giver of those commands. I mean that in the case of the Jews also, when each had slain his neighbor, then He laid aside His anger against them; both when they made the calf, and when they were joined to Baal Peor. Where then are they that say, “That God is evil, and this good?” For behold He hath filled the world with blood, shed by kinsmen. Nevertheless even this we affirm to be a work of great love towards man.
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).