Judges 6:15
He answered and said: I beseech thee, my lord, wherewith shall I deliver Israel? Behold my family is the meanest in Manasses, and I am the least in my father's house.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Qui respondens ait : Obsecro, mi domine, in quo liberabo Israël ? ecce familia mea infima est in Manasse, et ego minimus in domo patris mei.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτὸν Γεδεών Ἐν ἐμοί, κύριέ μου, ἐν τίνι σώσω τὸν Ἰσραήλ; ἰδοὺ ἡ χιλιάς μου ἠσθένησεν ἐν Μανασσή, καὶ ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ μικρότερος ἐν οἴκῳ πατρός μου.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֵלָיו֙ בִּ֣י אֲדֹנָ֔י בַּמָּ֥ה אוֹשִׁ֖יעַ אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל הִנֵּ֤ה אַלְפִּי֙ הַדַּ֣ל בִּמְנַשֶּׁ֔ה וְאָנֹכִ֥י הַצָּעִ֖יר בְּבֵ֥ית אָבִֽי
Haydock's commentary
The meanest in Manasses, &c. Mark how the Lord chooses the humble (who are mean and little in their own eyes) for the greatest enterprises. (Challoner)
Hebrew and Septuagint literally, "My millenary is poor, or lowly," &c. This term means a great family, from which many others spring, or a city inhabited by such. Bethlehem was of this description in Juda, Micheas v. 2. Ephra and the family of Abiezer were not the first in Manasses. Grotius observes, that Gedeon and Cincinnatus were called to the highest offices, when they least expected it.
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 On Christian Doctrine, Examples of the Various Styles, Drawn from the Teachers of the Church, Especially Ambrose and Cyprian
46. St. Ambrose also, though dealing with a question of very great importance, the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son, employs the subdued style, because the object he has in view demands, not beauty of diction, nor the swaying of the mind by the stir of emotion, but facts and proofs. Accordingly, in the introduction to his work, we find the following passage among others: “When Gideon was startled by the message he had heard from God, that, though thousands of the people failed, yet through one man God would deliver His people from their enemies, he brought forth a kid of the goats, and by direction of the angel laid it with unleavened cakes upon a rock, and poured the broth over it; and as soon as the angel of God touched it with the end of the staff that was in his hand, there rose up fire out of the rock and consumed the offering. …