The Lord gave strength also to Caleb, which remained with him to his old age: so that he entered upon the high places of the land, and his seed obtained it for an heritage:
Read Chapter 46
Rabanus Maurus
AD 856
What Caleb says, "As my vigor was then, so it is now," indicates that all the saints and the wise of heart have the same vigor in things present as in those past, in things recent as in those ancient, in the Gospels and in the Law. This is therefore what he says, the one who is vigorous now under Jesus as he was vigorous then under Moses, since a vigilant heart remains vigorous in the mysteries of both Testaments. But we also see the request made by the same Caleb, son of Jephunneh, to Joshua: "Give me this mountain, of which the Lord spoke in that day." The saint asks for nothing earthly or lowly, nothing that lies in the deep valleys, but asks for a very high mountain, a mountain on which there is a great, fortified city. He asks for it because he knew how to fight, as it is written, "The wise man storms a city of warriors and breaks down the stronghold in which it trusted." Hearing these words of Solomon, do you think his intent was to teach us that the wise man had taken a city and destroyed fortresses made of stone? Or rather, does he indicate that the cities and walls are the dogmas of the godless and the syllogisms of the philosophers by which they compose impiety and what is opposed to the divine law, as practiced by the pagans and barbarians? But it must be assumed that the fortified cities set on the mountains are those things that heretics base on the statements of the Scriptures, as on high mountains. The wise man will therefore destroy the cities, preaching the word of truth and overthrowing the lying fortresses with the battering ram of truth, as Paul also said: "Destroying arguments and every bulwark that raises itself against the knowledge of God." - "On Ecclesiasticus 10.11"
