Judges 2:3
Wherefore I would not destroy them from before your face: that you may have enemies, and their gods may be your ruin.
Open Judges 2:3 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quam ob rem nolui delere eos a facie vestra : ut habeatis hostes, et dii eorum sint vobis in ruinam.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- κἀγὼ εἶπον Οὐ μὴ ἐξαρῶ αὐτοὺς ἐκ προσώπου ὑμῶν, καὶ ἔσονται ὑμῖν εἰς συνοχάς, καὶ οἱ θεοὶ αὐτῶν ἔσονται ὑμῖν εἰς σκάνδαλον.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְגַ֣ם אָמַ֔רְתִּי לֹֽא אֲגָרֵ֥שׁ אוֹתָ֖ם מִפְּנֵיכֶ֑ם וְהָי֤וּ לָכֶם֙ לְצִדִּ֔ים וֵאלֹ֣הֵיהֶ֔ם יִהְי֥וּ לָכֶ֖ם לְמוֹקֵֽשׁ
Haydock's commentary
Ruin. Septuagint, "stumbling block," the occasion of ruin. (Menochius)
Thus by a false compassion (Calmet) and negligence, the Israelites brought upon themselves the most serious difficulties, while those whom they had spared, turned against them by a just judgment of God, and proved the ruin both of their souls and bodies, by drawing them into idolatry and then putting them to the sword. (Haydock)
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 A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter, The Occasion of Writing This Work; A Thing May Be Capable of Being Done, and Yet May Never Be Done
After reading the short treatises which I lately drew up for you, my beloved son Marcellinus, about the baptism of infants, and the perfection of man’s righteousness, how that no one in this life seems either to have attained or to be likely to attain to it, except only the Mediator, who bore humanity in the likeness of sinful flesh, without any sin whatever, you wrote me in answer that you were embarrassed by the point which I advanced in the second book, that it was possible for a man to be without sin, if he wanted not the will, and was assisted by the aid of God; and yet that except One in whom “all shall be made alive,” no one has ever lived or will live by whom this perfection has been attained whilst living here. …
St Augustine A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter, He Returns to the Question Which Marcellinus Had Proposed to Him
But I beg of you to advert to the question which you proposed to me, and to what we have made out of it in the lengthy process of this discussion. You were perplexed how I could have said that it was possible for a man to be without sin, if his will were not wanting, by the help of God’s aid, although no man in the present life had ever lived, was living, or would live, of such perfect righteousness. Now, in the books which I formerly addressed to you, I set forth this very question. …