13. THE RANSOM FOR THEIR SOULS THAT THE PEOPLE: [Shall Give] When They Are Counted
BEDE: ON THE TABERNACLE
hand of God. Aaron makes intercession upon the horns of this altar with the blood of the sin offering and makes atonement upon it when the priests, who are praying on behalf of God's people or on account of their own ignorance and that of the people, are contident that they will be helped by [God's] only-begotten Son and saved by the sacrament of his passion, as the Apostle reminds us when he says, Through him, then, let us always offer a sacrlJice ofpraise to God, that is, thepuit of lips that confess his
It would also be appropriate to understand this as applying to all the elect members of the High Priest, who pray to the Father in spirit and in truth3
For that which was said, It shall be most holy to the Lord, is more applicable to him than to this altar, since when he was about to be born into the world the archangel spoke concerning him to the Virgin Mother: 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the one to be born will be holy; he will be called
Son of God. * Having described the making of the altar of incense to this extent, we still have to deal with the description of the bronze basin in which the priests washed their hands and feet when they were about to enter into the tabernacle. But first there is set forth one commandment of the Lord that it is fitting for us to touch upon briefly and to expound according to our ability.
13. THE RANSOM FOR THEIR SOULS THAT THE PEOPLE
[SHALL GIVE] WHEN THEY ARE COUNTED
There follows:
30: 11-13 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: When you take the sum of the children of Israel according to their number, they shall each give a ransom for their souls to the Lord, so that no plague may come among them. And this is what each one who is registered shall give: half a shekel according to the standard of the temple (a shekel is twenty obols), half a shekel shall be offered to the Lord. David forgot about this precept when he numbered the peo le, and thus he brought a plague upon those people by numbering them. In the spiritual sense, the sum of the children of Israel designates the sum of all the elect whose names are written in heaven6 They each give a ransom for their souls to the Lord when they
P 1 Mark 16:19
2 Heb. 13:15
3 John 4:23
4 Luke 1:35
6 Luke 10:20
5 2 Sam. 24:1-15
BOOK THREE
show him the obedience of diligent service in good works; otherwise, a plague will come among them when they have been counted, because eternal vengeance doubtless awaits those who belong to the number of the faithful in name only and refuse to offer the Lord the perfected works of faith. It is said of such persons that they will not give God their price, nor the ransom for the redemption of theirsouls. For, as Solomon says, a man s own wealth is the redemption of his soul;2 this might be temporal wealth which one distributes and gives to the poor so that one's righteousness may endure forever: or it might be spiritual wealth in the form of the righteousness that one has attained by taking pity on thc poor, or by doing other good things.
[ I 351 Now each one who is registered shall give half a shekel, which is ten obols. It is quite appropriate for us to understand th~s as as a reference to nothing else but the observance of the Decalogue of the law. For anyone who is able to understand it rightly has come to realize that it contains all the fullness of both faith and works, as well as the promise of a future reward. Accordingly, the first three [commandments] deal with the love of God, and the seven that follow deal with the love of neighbour, as the Apostle also bears witness: Love is thefullness of the law.4 But we should not fail to mention another sacrament which is also contained in the number ten. For among the Hebrews the first letter of the name Jesus is iofh, among the Greeks it is iota, and both of these peoples use that letter as the number ten. Those who believe in Jesus Christ offer ten obols as a ransom for their souls to the Lord because on their foreheads and in their profession they display the sign of his name, which begins with the number ten.5 And perhaps it was on account of this sacrament that the Lord declared in the gospel that not one iota could pass away from the law: because the rebellion of the unfaithful can destroy neither the power of the Decalogue which [that letter] contains, nor the faith in his name which it mystically signifies.
1 Ps. 49:7-8 (48:8-9) 2 Prov. 13:s 3Ps. 112:9(lIl:9) 4 Rorn. 13.10
5 Another reference tothe custom ofsigning candidates for baptism and the newly baptized with the sign of the cross of their foreheads; see Bede's comments above on Exod. 26:36-8 and 29:4-9 in De lab. 3,7; 3, 10 (CCX 119A: 113,797-8; 123, 1185-7). Presumably the sign of the cross was considered to be the sign of Jesus' name because it was oAen administered with the words, 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,' though it is possible that Bede is thinking here ofthe chi-rho monogram ofthe Greektitle 'Christ', which has the shape of a cross.
6Matt.5:18
BEDE: ON THE TABERNACLE
30:14 Each one who is reckoned among the number, from twenty years old and upward, shall give a ransom. The law was written in five books, the gospel in four, and four times five makes twenty. The number twenty, therefore, sigdies the joining together of the two testaments.
Consequently, those from twenty years old are reckoned among the number of the people, because the only ones worthy of the fellowship of the elect are those who are assisted by the grace of the gospel to fulfill the decrees of the law (spiritually understood) in accordance with their own measure and capacity, and who expect eternal rewards in heaven according to the promises of that same grace.
30: 15 The rich shall not give more than half a shekel, and the poor shall give no less, for the same law of the Decalogue, through which they love God and neighbour, is imposed upon all, whether they are perfect and have many merits, or immature and still making progress in virtue.
30: 16 And you shall take the money collected from the children of Israel and consign it to the use of the tabernacle of the testimony, so that it may be their memorial before the Lord, and he may have mercy on their souls. The money taken from the children of Israel is brought before the Lord as their memorial when our Creator and Judge eternally remembers every single good thing that we do, so that he may deign to have mercy on us for the sake of the fruits of those good works that we have offered to him. That same money is resewed for the use of the tabernacle when the good deeds of the righteous serve to strengthen the character and the conduct of the faithful who follow them in Christ; by asserting that they are all less important, they are acknowledging that they are the sort ofpeople who have learned how to reign with the Lord.
(1361 Perhaps we should note that the aforementioned money was not to be given according to the reckoning of the crowd but according to the standard of the temple. For the standard of the temple is the system of divine law, which the Lord commands to be kept in his Church and to be observed by evelyone to whom he promises eternal rewards in the future. Otherwise, if there are any who endeavour to serve God according to the principle of human will, their offering will be rejected and thrown away, for they have not offered the money of their devotion according to the standard of the temple, and they will be smitten with the plague of the ultimate punishment.