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Verse 6. It repented him that he had made man on the earth. And being touched inwardly with sorrow of heart, and forewarning for the future, etc.1
Vers. 6. Paenituit eum quod hominem fecisset in terra. Et tactus dolore cordis intrinsecus, et praecavens in futurum, etc.
Declarant haec verba inenarrabilem Dei erga hominem amorem et pietatem, simulque adversus eius scelera iram et indignationem. Tanta enim fuit eius temporis enormitas scelerum humani generis ut, ad eam exprimendam, Moses dixerit paenituisse Deum quod...
These words declare the unspeakable love and tenderness of God toward man, and at the same time his anger and indignation against his crimes. For so great was the enormity of the crimes of the human race in that time that, to express it, Moses said that it repented God that…2
...quod hominem fecisset, eumque induxerit tristitia, dolore ac velut furore incitatum ad perdendum hominem. Non cogitat Deus sicut homines, inquit Ambrosius, ut aliqua ei nova succedat sententia, neque irascitur quasi mutabilis; sed ideo haec leguntur ut exprimatur peccatorum nostrorum acerbitas, quae divinam meruerit offensam, tanquam eo usque increverit culpa ut etiam Deus, qui naturaliter non movetur aut ira aut odio aut passione ulla, provocatus videatur ad iracundiam. Chrysostomus quoque, ponderans illud verbum paenituit, sive (ut ipse legit) recogitavit vel animo retractavit: Vide, inquit, verbum crassum et nostrae parvitati accommodatum. Paenituit, inquit, Deum. Non quod paenitentia cadat in Deum, absit, sed iuxta humanam consuetudinem loquitur nobis Deus; quod enormia illorum hominum peccata misericordem Deum indignari fecerunt. Quasi diceret: Non ad hoc produxeram hominem ut, tanta ruina lapsus, sibi ipsi perditionis fieret auctor, sed propterea eum tanto honore insignivi et tantam eius curam me habere declaravi ut, virtuti vacans, alienus a perditione fieret. Quoniam autem misericordia mea abusus est, satius posthac fuerit malos eius conatus impedire.
…that he had made man, and that it impelled him, stirred by sadness, sorrow, and as it were fury, to destroy man. “God does not think as men do,” says Ambrose, “so that some new resolve should come upon him, nor is he angry as one mutable; but these things are written in order to express the bitterness of our sins, which has deserved the divine offense — as though guilt had grown to such a point that even God, who by nature is moved by no anger, hatred, or passion, should seem provoked to wrath.” Chrysostom too, weighing that word “it repented,” or (as he reads) “he reconsidered” or “turned over in his mind”: “See,” he says, “a gross word, accommodated to our littleness. ‘It repented God.’ Not that repentance falls upon God — far from it — but God speaks to us after the human manner; for the enormous sins of those men made the merciful God indignant. As if he were to say: I had not produced man for this, that, fallen by so great a ruin, he should become to himself the author of perdition; but I marked him with so great honor, and declared that I had so great care of him, that, being free for virtue, he might be a stranger to perdition. But since he has abused my mercy, it will henceforth be better to hinder his evil endeavors.”3
Verum dicet aliquis: Paenitentia repugnat praescientiae omnium futurorum quae est in Deo; tristitia vero et dolor atque ira infinitae simplicitati atque immutabilitati naturae divinae adversantur. Unde vere legimus primi Regum 15: Triumphator in Israel non parcet, et paenitudine non flectetur, neque enim homo est ut agat paenitentiam; et Numer. 23: Non est Deus quasi homo ut mentiatur, neque ut filius hominis ut mutetur. Apud Deum enim, ut Iacobus dixit, non est transmutatio nec vicissitudinis obumbratio. Sed hoc facile solvitur. Paenitentia enim, dolor, ira, furor, tristitia et huiusmodi alia dicuntur de Deo non secundum proprietatem, sed secundum similitudinem; nec secundum affectum animi, sed effectum operis, quia Deus talia facit qualia facere solent homines paenitentia vel ira vel furore correpti. Paenitudo Dei (inquit Eucherius, id mutuatus ex Augustino lib. 15 de Civitate Dei cap. 25) est mutandarum rerum immutabilis ratio. Et interlinearis Glossa: Videtur, inquit, Deum paenitere dum opus mutat, voluntate tamen et dispositione immobili permanente. Et Rupertus: Huiusmodi, ait, dictum de paenitentia Dei non impassibilis Dei mutabilem, sed fixam eius indicat sententiam, ad prioris facti destructionem vel valde necessariam eiusdem meliorationem. Et Hugo: Paenituit eum, scilicet mutando quod videbatur incepisse in Paradiso, ubi dixerat hominibus: Crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram.
But someone will say: Repentance is repugnant to the foreknowledge of all future things which is in God; and sadness, sorrow, and anger are contrary to the infinite simplicity and immutability of the divine nature. Whence we truly read in First Kings 15: “The Triumpher in Israel will not spare, and will not be bent by repentance, for he is not a man, that he should do penance”; and Numbers 23: “God is not as a man, that he should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should be changed.” For with God, as James said, “there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.” But this is easily resolved. For repentance, sorrow, anger, fury, sadness, and other such things are said of God not according to propriety, but according to likeness; nor according to the affection of the mind, but the effect of the work, because God does such things as men are wont to do when seized by repentance or anger or fury. “The repentance of God,” says Eucherius (borrowing it from Augustine, bk. 15 of The City of God, ch. 25), “is the immutable plan for changing things.” And the Interlinear Gloss: “God seems to repent while he changes his work, yet his will and disposition remaining immovable.” And Rupert: “Such a saying about the repentance of God indicates not a mutability of the impassible God, but his fixed sentence, for the destruction of the former deed, or its very necessary improvement.” And Hugh: “‘It repented him’ — namely, by changing what he seemed to have begun in Paradise, where he had said to men: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.”4
Nec horum dissimilia sunt quae in eam ipsam sententiam praeclare scripsit Iustinus martyr, respondens ad trigesimam sextam quaestionem Orthodoxorum, quae erat de paenitentia Dei super unctione Saulis in regem et super eversione civitatis Ninive: Deus, inquit, quia semper idem est et quia semper facit quod ipsum decet, omnino immutabilis est. Sed cum ii quos curat mutantur, mutat ipse res prout eis expedit quos curat; ideoque et ad ignoscendum et ad non ignoscendum immutabilis est. Ignoscit enim immutabiliter his qui delicta sua corrigunt; his vero qui a malo revocari...
Nor unlike these are the things which, to this same effect, Justin Martyr admirably wrote, answering the thirty-sixth question of the Orthodox, which was about the repentance of God over the anointing of Saul as king and over the overthrow of the city of Nineveh: “God,” he says, “because he is always the same, and because he always does what befits him, is altogether immutable. But when those whom he cares for are changed, he himself changes things as is expedient for those he cares for; and therefore both in pardoning and in not pardoning he is immutable. For he pardons immutably those who correct their faults; but those who from evil cannot be…”5
...non possunt, immutabiliter non ignoscit. Quod ergo dixit de unctione Saulis, Paenitet me, ostendit eius immutabilitatem in non ignoscendo; quod vero de Ninive excidio eum paenituit, ostendit eius immutabilitatem in ignoscendo. Est enim immutabilis Deus, semperque perseverat in his quae ipsum facere decet, nec unquam admittit mutationem ad ea facienda quae ipsum dedecent. Sic Iustinus.
“…revoked, he immutably does not pardon. What, then, he said of the anointing of Saul, ‘It repenteth me,’ shows his immutability in not pardoning; but that it repented him of the destruction of Nineveh shows his immutability in pardoning. For God is immutable, and always perseveres in those things which it befits him to do, nor ever admits a change toward doing those things which would misbecome him.” Thus Justin.6
Ceterum particulatim expendenda est haec sententia Mosis. Paenituit. Hebraice est verbum nacham, proprie significans consolari; consequenter autem significat etiam paenitere, seu culpae seu poenae, quod paenitens videatur consolatus super malo facto. Septuaginta verterunt enethymēthē, id est cogitavit seu recogitavit, quemadmodum legit Augustinus 15 de Civitate Dei cap. 24. Aquila tamen expressit vim Hebraei verbi, transferens metemelēthē, id est paenituit; quod verbum hoc loco vult Procopius Gazaeus idem valere quod pareklythē, id est revocavit se.
But this sentence of Moses must be weighed in detail. “It repented.” In Hebrew the word is nacham, properly signifying “to console”; but consequently it also signifies “to repent,” whether of guilt or of punishment, because the one repenting seems consoled over the evil deed. The Septuagint rendered enethymēthē, that is, “he thought” or “reconsidered,” as Augustine reads in book 15 of The City of God, ch. 24. Aquila, however, expressed the force of the Hebrew word, translating metemelēthē, that is, “he repented”; which word, in this place, Procopius of Gaza holds to mean the same as pareklythē, that is, “he called himself back.”7
Equidem miror cur Septuaginta tam dissimiliter Hebraicae lectioni hoc loco verterint, Cogitavit; nec minus miror cur S. Hieronymus tam diversam Septuaginta versionem ab Hebraica non annotaverit in suis Traditionibus Hebraicis in Genesim, ubi diversitatem lectionis Hebraicae et translationis LXX Interpretum in hoc libro Geneseos subtiliter, curiose ac diligenter solet persequi.
For my part, I wonder why the Septuagint rendered this place so unlike the Hebrew reading, as “He thought”; nor do I wonder less why St. Jerome did not note so divergent a Septuagint version from the Hebrew in his Hebrew Traditions on Genesis, where he is wont to pursue the diversity of the Hebrew reading and of the translation of the Seventy in this book of Genesis subtly, carefully, and diligently.8
Illud praecavens in futurum nec Hebraice est, nec Chaldaice, neque Graece; cur autem id Latinus interpres adiicere voluerit, equidem nescio. Rectam tamen et commodam habet sententiam: Praecavens in futurum, ne scilicet mala illa, impunita hominum libidine, plura in dies et graviora exsisterent; et volens Deus impedire ne mala multiplicarentur, volens etiam malitiae hominum obicem opponere, volens denique flagitia hominum, quando sanari alio remedio non poterant, mortis supplicio finire. Dicitur autem Deus praecavisse in futurum, ut interpretatur Hugo, non quod per imprudentiam modo ad hoc venerit quod non ante putaverat, quem nihil latet, sed quia tam praecavet qui prohibet ne fiat, quam cui prohibetur, et sollicite id vitat. Vel illud praecavens in futurum significat voluisse Deum ut hoc diluvii supplicium, quo universum pene genus hominum et animalium interemptum est, documento esset posteris, ut ex eo discerent quantum Deo peccatum displiceat. Vel quia Deus totum mundum quasi unum hominem susceperat erudiendum; homo autem dum puer est, metu poenae cohibendus a malo et in bono continendus est, ne sibi permissus, praeceps et effrenis ruat in scelera. Percute, inquit Salomon, filium tuum virga, et liberabis animam eius. Idcirco Deus provide atque utiliter recentem mundum, proterve petulantem atque lascivientem, tanquam stultum puerulum corripuit, tali percutiens verbere quod per totam suam aetatem non posset oblivisci.
That phrase “forewarning for the future” is in none of the originals — neither in the Hebrew, nor the Chaldee, nor the Greek; why the Latin translator wished to add it, I do not know. Yet it has a right and convenient sense: “forewarning for the future” — namely, lest those evils, the lust of men going unpunished, should become more numerous day by day and graver; God wishing to hinder the evils from multiplying, wishing also to set a barrier against men’s wickedness, and finally wishing, when men’s crimes could be healed by no other remedy, to end them by the punishment of death. And God is said to have forewarned for the future (as Hugh interprets) not as though through imprudence he had only now come to that which he had not thought before — he from whom nothing is hidden — but because he both forewarns who forbids a thing to be done and he against whom it is forbidden, and carefully avoids it. Or that “forewarning for the future” signifies that God wished this punishment of the Flood — by which almost the whole race of men and animals was destroyed — to be a lesson to posterity, that from it they might learn how greatly sin displeases God. Or because God had undertaken to educate the whole world as one man; and man, while he is a boy, must be restrained from evil by fear of punishment and kept in the good, lest, left to himself, he rush headlong and unbridled into crimes. “Strike thy son with the rod,” says Solomon, “and thou wilt deliver his soul.” Therefore God, providently and usefully, seized the young world — wantonly insolent and frolicsome — as a foolish little boy, striking it with such a blow that it could not forget it throughout its whole age.9
Quod vero sequitur, Et tactus dolore cordis intrinsecus, Graece est dienoēthē, quod significat recogitavit potius quam paenituit; et ita etiam legi in nonnullis codicibus Latinis testificatur Augustinus in Quaestionibus in Genesim...
But as for what follows, “And being touched inwardly with sorrow of heart,” in Greek it is dienoēthē, which means “he reconsidered” rather than “he repented”; and that it is so read in some Latin codices, Augustine testifies in the Questions on Genesis…10
...quaest. 5, et ita citat ipse hunc locum in lib. 15 De Civitate Dei cap. 24. Hebraice autem sic est: Doluit Deus ad cor suum, vel in corde suo, seu contristavit se Deus, vel angustia affectus est ad cor suum. Nam verbum Hebraeum hatsab significat comprimere, angustiari seu angi, et inde etiam dolere seu contristari. Hoc autem dictum est de Deo non proprie, sed ad similitudinem hominis qui, gravissima iniuria offensus ab his quos maxime diligebat maximisque beneficiis affecerat, valde tristatur et dolet quod eos meritis poenis plectere debeat. Non est dolor, inquit Hugo, nisi de amissione eius quod amatur. Unde cum amittimus rem de qua non curamus, dicere solemus: Istud non tangit cor nostrum. Quanto igitur profundior erat amor, tanto altius tangebat dolor. Hic autem agitur de rei dilectae destructione, et ideo merito dolor dicitur adesse magnus. Hoc igitur modo loquendi insinuavit Moses hominum illius temporis multitudinem magnitudinemque scelerum non posse verbis satis exprimi. Palam etiam hinc esse voluit Deum quodammodo invitum punire, cum voluntatis eius sit potius benefacere; quocirca dicitur tactus dolore cordis intrinsecus venisse ad puniendum hominem. Totum porro hunc locum Mosis paraphrasis Chaldaica Latine ad verbum reddita sic expressit: Et paenituit Dominum in verbo suo quod fecisset hominem in terra; dixitque per verbum suum ut frangeret fortitudinem eorum iuxta voluntatem suam.
…q. 5, and so he himself cites this passage in book 15 of The City of God, ch. 24. In Hebrew it is thus: “God grieved unto his heart,” or “in his heart,” or “God saddened himself,” or “he was affected with anguish unto his heart.” For the Hebrew word hatsab means “to compress, to be straitened or distressed,” and hence also “to grieve or be saddened.” And this is said of God not properly, but after the likeness of a man who, offended by a most grievous injury from those whom he most loved and on whom he had bestowed the greatest benefits, is greatly saddened and grieves that he must punish them with deserved penalties. “There is no grief,” says Hugh, “except over the loss of what is loved. Whence, when we lose a thing we do not care about, we are wont to say: This does not touch our heart. The deeper, therefore, the love, the higher did the grief touch.” But here it is a matter of the destruction of a beloved thing, and therefore the grief is rightly said to be great. By this manner of speaking, then, Moses intimated that the multitude and the magnitude of the crimes of the men of that time could not be sufficiently expressed in words. He wished it also to be plain from this that God punishes, as it were, unwillingly, since it is rather of his will to do good; wherefore he is said to have come to punish man “touched with sorrow of heart within.” The whole of this passage of Moses the Chaldee paraphrase, rendered into Latin word for word, expressed thus: “And it repented the Lord, in his word, that he had made man on the earth; and he said, by his word, that he would break their strength according to his will.”11
Non possum ipse mihi hoc loco imperare ut in praeteritis relinquam tres nobilium scriptorum super his verbis sententias: unam B. Augustini, Theodoreti alteram, tertiam Ruperti; adeo enim sunt ad id quod a Mose dictum est de paenitentia et dolore Dei explanandum atque illustrandum accommodatae ut fas non sit eas silentio supprimi. Sanctus igitur Augustinus libro 15 De Civitate Dei cap. 25, tractans hunc locum Mosis, ita scribit: Ira Dei non perturbatio animi eius est, sed iudicium quo irrogatur poena peccato; cogitatio vero eius et recogitatio (sic vocat Augustinus, secutus LXX Interpretes, quod Latinus interpres vertit paenitere Dei) mutandarum rerum est immutabilis ratio. Neque enim, sicut hominem, ita Deum cuiusquam facti sui paenitet, cuius est de omnibus rebus tam fixa sententia quam certa praescientia. Sed si non utatur scriptura talibus verbis, non se quodammodo familiarius insinuabit omni generi hominum, quibus vult esse consultum, ut et perterreat superbientes et excitet negligentes et exerceat quaerentes et alat intelligentes; quod non faceret nisi se prius inclinaret et quodammodo descenderet ad iacentes. Sic Augustinus.
I cannot command myself, in this place, to leave behind three sayings of noble writers upon these words: one of the blessed Augustine, a second of Theodoret, a third of Rupert; for they are so suited to explaining and illustrating what was said by Moses about the repentance and sorrow of God that it would be wrong to suppress them in silence. The holy Augustine, then, in book 15 of The City of God, ch. 25, treating this passage of Moses, writes thus: “The anger of God is not a disturbance of his mind, but the judgment by which punishment is inflicted on sin; and his thought and reconsideration (so Augustine calls it, following the Seventy Translators, what the Latin translator renders ‘the repenting of God’) is the immutable plan for changing things. For God does not, like a man, repent of any deed of his, whose sentence about all things is as fixed as his foreknowledge is certain. But if Scripture did not use such words, it would not, in a manner, more familiarly insinuate itself into every kind of men, for whom it wishes to provide — so as both to terrify the proud, and rouse the negligent, and exercise the seekers, and nourish the understanding; which it would not do unless it first stooped, and in a manner descended, to those lying low.” Thus Augustine.12
Theodoretus vero in Quaestionibus in Genesim ponit hanc quaestionem (quae est numero quinquagesima): Cur diluvio multitudinem hominum deleverit Deus? Ad quam respondet his verbis: Delere sobolem Cain voluit Deus, et quia piorum tribus illi permixta erat, ob id supplicii particeps fuit. Non autem Deus (ut ferunt quidam) ira et paenitentia ductus hoc fecit; sunt enim huiusmodi passiones humanae, a quibus natura divina prorsus est libera, praesertim cum paenitentia conveniat eis qui, periculo facto, antea consultam conditionem didicerunt: ignorantes enim quod futurum est, tum periculo facto discentes quod non recte deliberaverint, paenitentia ducuntur. Deus autem perinde videt ea quae multa post secula futura sunt ac si iam evenissent; hinc fit ut, tanquam praevidens et praesciens, omnia dispenset. Quomodo ergo paenitentia cadet in eum qui sua praescientia regit universa? Quare paenitentia Dei nihil aliud est quam mutatio dispositionis eius. Paenitet me, inquit, quod constituerim Saul regem — pro eo quod est, statui illum deponere et alterum creare regem. Sic et hoc loco: Paenitet me fecisse hominem — hoc est, Decrevi perdere humanum genus. Haec Theodoretus.
Theodoret, in the Questions on Genesis, poses this question (it is the fiftieth): Why did God destroy the multitude of men by the Flood? To which he answers in these words: “God willed to destroy the offspring of Cain, and because the tribe of the pious was mingled with it, on that account it shared the punishment. But God did not (as some say) do this led by anger and repentance; for such passions are human, from which the divine nature is wholly free — especially since repentance befits those who, after a danger has happened, have learned a course previously to be considered: for, ignorant of what is to come, and then, after the danger has happened, learning that they did not deliberate rightly, they are led to repentance. But God sees the things that are to be many ages hence just as if they had already happened; hence it comes that, as one foreseeing and foreknowing, he dispenses all things. How, then, will repentance fall upon him who by his foreknowledge governs all things? Wherefore the repentance of God is nothing else than a change of his disposition. ‘It repenteth me,’ he says, ‘that I made Saul king’ — which is as much as to say, ‘I have resolved to depose him and create another king.’ So too in this place: ‘It repenteth me that I made man’ — that is, ‘I have decreed to destroy the human race.’” Thus Theodoret.13
Nec minus pia, gravis et erudita est, ad eandem pertinens sententiam, Ruperti oratio in libro quarto Commentariorum in Genesim capite 15, quae sic habet: Laborat hic sermo divinus, et quasi in versanda nimiae magnitudinis mole pene confringitur, dum illud intellectui nostro planum facere intendit quod satis explicare nullus homo sufficit: videlicet quomodo Deus sine motu saniat, sine crudelitate occidat, quomodo salva pietate ultionem agat et cum tranquillitate habeat furorem. Paenituit, inquit, eum quod hominem fecisset in terra, et praecavens in futurum, et tactus dolore cordis intrinsecus: Delebo, inquit, hominem, paenitet enim me fecisse hominem. Qui per prophetam suum dicturus erat, Sicut parturiens loquar, utique iam parturiens locutus est. Nam quemadmodum parturiens illud quod concepit non sine sensu doloris emittit, et tamen dolere mavult quam non emittere quod concepit, sic Deus non sine sensu pietatis profert sententiam iudicii, et tamen victa pietate miserias malorum mavult videre quam non proferre quod iustitia dictante concepit. Quare? quia videlicet utilius est morbo ferramentum altius imprimere quam palpando putredinem fovere. Itaque quod paenituisse dicitur et tactus esse cordis dolore intrinsecus, pietatis est; quod autem non victus eo dolore dixit, Delebo hominem quem creavi a facie terrae, severi iudicii vel severitatis iudiciariae est illud edictum. Tale quid et alibi dicit: Paenitet me quod constituerim Saul regem super Israel. Sane huiusmodi dictum non impassibilis Dei mutabilitatem, sed fixam eius indicat sententiam ad prioris facti destructionem vel necessariam eiusdem facti meliorationem.
No less devout, weighty, and learned, pertaining to the same matter, is Rupert’s discourse in the fourth book of the Commentaries on Genesis, ch. 15, which runs thus: “Here the divine word labors, and is, as it were, nearly broken in turning over a mass of excessive greatness, while it strives to make plain to our understanding what no man suffices to explain sufficiently: namely, how God heals without movement, slays without cruelty; how, with his tenderness unharmed, he takes vengeance, and with tranquillity holds fury. ‘It repented him,’ he says, ‘that he had made man on the earth, and forewarning for the future, and touched inwardly with sorrow of heart’: ‘I will destroy,’ he says, ‘man, for it repenteth me that I have made man.’ He who was to say through his prophet, ‘I will speak like a woman in labor,’ has indeed already spoken as one in labor. For just as a woman in labor brings forth what she has conceived not without the sensation of pain, and yet prefers to grieve than not to bring forth what she has conceived, so God brings forth the sentence of judgment not without a sense of tenderness, and yet, his tenderness overcome, prefers to see the miseries of the wicked than not to bring forth what, justice dictating, he has conceived. Why? Namely, because it is more useful to press the surgeon’s iron deeper into the disease than to foster the rottenness by stroking it. And so, that he is said to have repented and to have been touched inwardly with sorrow of heart, is of tenderness; but that, not overcome by that sorrow, he said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth,’ this decree is of severe judgment, or of judicial severity. Something like this he says elsewhere too: ‘It repenteth me that I made Saul king over Israel.’ Indeed, such a saying indicates not the mutability of the impassible God, but his fixed sentence, for the destruction of the former deed or the necessary improvement of that same deed.”14
Translator’s notes
- Genesis 6:6–7a (Vulgate lemma; the original labels it ‘Vers. 6’). ↩
- §151 (continues on p. 134): these words declare God’s love for man and his wrath against sin; cut off mid-sentence. ↩
- §151 (continued from p. 133): God does not ‘repent’ as men do — Ambrose and Chrysostom on the human idiom. Margins: Ambrose, On the Ark and Noah, ch. 4; Chrysostom, homily 22 on Genesis. ↩
- §152 (continues on p. 135): how repentance is attributed to God, who is immutable and foreknows all. Margins: ‘How repentance is attributed to God’; ‘the solution’; Eucherius (from Augustine, City of God 15.25); the Interlinear Gloss; Rupert (on Genesis, bk. 4, ch. 14); Hugh of St. Victor; 1 Kings 15; Num. 23; James 1. ↩
- §153 (continues on p. 135): Justin Martyr to the same effect (on the repentance over Saul and over Nineveh). Margin: Justin Martyr. ↩
- §153 (continued from p. 134): the close of Justin’s answer. Margins: 1 Kings 13; Jonah 3. ↩
- On the word ‘paenituit’ — the Hebrew nacham, the Septuagint, Aquila, Procopius. Margins: the translation of the Seventy; Procopius of Gaza; Augustine. ↩
- §154: Pererius’s puzzlement that the Septuagint rendered ‘he thought,’ and that Jerome did not note the divergence. ↩
- §155: ‘forewarning for the future’ is in none of the originals — yet its sense is sound (God as the chastiser of the world-as-child). Margins: Hugh, Annotations on Genesis; Prov. 23. ↩
- §156 (continues on p. 136): ‘touched inwardly with sorrow of heart’ — the Greek and the Hebrew hatsab. Margin: Augustine. ↩
- §156 (continued from p. 135): the Hebrew sense ‘he grieved in his heart’; God punishes as if unwilling; the Chaldee paraphrase. Margins: Hugh, Annotations on Genesis; the Chaldee paraphrase. ↩
- §157: three notable patristic sayings — Augustine first. Margin: ‘Three excellent sayings of Augustine, Theodoret, and Rupert.’ ↩
- §158: Theodoret’s 50th question — God acted not from passion but from foreknowledge. Margin: 1 Kings 15. ↩
- §159: Rupert — how God can punish ‘without disturbance,’ like a woman in labor. Margins: Rupert; Isa. 42. ↩