Neither shall you build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days you shall dwell in tents; that you may live many days in the land where you are sojourners.
Read Chapter 35
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Days. The reward of dutiful children, Exodus xx. 12. These are models of those Christians who follow the rule of some virtuous person, in order to be at a greater distance from any transgression of the law, and to observe it with more perfection. (Calmet)
"If a father could lay such an injunction on his descendants, and they receive commendation for observing it, why may not the fathers of the Church enjoin things which are not of themselves necessary, but. Useful to avoid the occasions of evil, or to advance in virtue? "says Grotius, a Protestant, after St. Jerome, (Ad Paulin.) St. Augustine, in Psalm lxx.) (Haydock) Jonadab exhorted, and prescribed this rule, but it was not properly a command, being too arduous. (Tirinus)
The sons of Jonadab, we are told, drank neither wine nor strong drink and dwelled in tents pitched wherever night overtook them. According to the Psalter, they were the first to undergo captivity; for, when the Chaldaeans began to ravage Judah, they were compelled to take refuge in cities.
Others may think what they like and follow each his own bent. But to me a town is a prison and solitude paradise. Why do we long for the bustle of cities, we whose very name speaks of loneliness? To fit him for the leadership of the Jewish people, Moses was trained for forty years in the wilderness. And it was not until after these that the shepherd of sheep became a shepherd of people. The apostles were fishers on Gennesaret before they became “fishers of people.” But at the Lord’s call they forsook all that they had, father, net and ship, and bore their cross daily without so much as a rod in their hands. - "Letter 125.7–8"
