Annotatio CXXIX

”When you shall have entered into the land of Canaan, it shall be bounded by these limits.” — Numbers 34:2

Jerome, in the epistle to Dardanus, explaining the bounds of the holy land comprehended in the present chapter, indicates that he was unjustly condemned by a certain inept heretic,¹ [on the charge] that he took away the historical truth of the promised land — teaching that those things which God promised concerning the land of promise in the sacred letters pertain most especially to the naked allegory, that is, are to be referred to that land of the living only, which is in heaven; since the whole region of the Jews is so narrow in circuit² that it scarcely has a length of a hundred and sixty thousand paces, and a breadth of forty [thousand]; and in these [bounds] too — though the regions, places, cities, and towns are very many — [they were] never occupied by the Jews, but only held out by the divine promise. And in book 13 [of the commentary] on Isaiah, writing things consonant to these, upon that [passage] of Isaiah 49, “And Sion said, The Lord hath forsaken me,”³ etc., he says: “From which we learn that Jerusalem is by no means to be sought in the region of Palestine — which is the worst of the whole province, and is roughened with rocky mountains, and suffers a penury of water, so that it uses the rains of heaven, and consoles the scarcity of springs by the building of cisterns — but in the hands of God, to whom it is said, ‘Thy builders have made haste,’” etc. To this calumny Jerome, at the close of that same epistle, meets [the accuser] with these words: “Neither do I say this in disparagement of the land of Judea, as the heretic sycophant lies, nor that I take away the truth of the history — which is the foundation of the spiritual understanding — but that I may strike down the haughtiness of the Jews, who prefer the straitnesses of the Synagogue to the breadth of the Church. For if they follow only the killing letter, and not the life-giving spirit, let them show [me] the land of promise, flowing with milk and honey.”