CAPUT II. De desiderio justitiae, et ejus proprietate
The Love That Makes Us Just
The desire for justice, when perfectly embraced, already renders one just—a truth that differentiates it from the mere love of wisdom.
Do we say the same about justice? Don't we all equally want to be just, and yet perhaps we cannot be? On the contrary: everyone certainly could have been just, if they had fully wanted to be just. For to love justice perfectly is already to be just. You can love wisdom deeply and still go without it. Absolutely, and without a doubt: the more fully you love justice, the more just you'll be.
Why Leah Is Scorned and Rachel Loved
The demands of perfect justice are so severe—including love of enemies and renunciation of all possessions—that the world despises those who embrace them, calling her weak-eyed and laborious, yet she discerns rightly while the world's judgment is mistaken.
But let's look now at what true justice requires, and we'll find why people so thoroughly detest marriage to Leah.1 For we have to ask why almost everyone so strongly recoils from marriage to Leah, while they sigh so deeply for Rachel's embrace.2 Perfect justice commands us to love our enemies, leave our parents and everything we own, patiently bear the wrongs done to us, and refuse glory wherever it's offered.✦✦3 But among those who love this world, what's thought more foolish or more burdensome? That's why they both consider Leah weak-eyed and call her laborious.4 Because Leah is taken to mean 'the laborious one.'5 Because rejoicing in trouble, and fleeing the world's good fortune as if it were a plague, seems to them a great labor—and no less a mistake.✦ But because she doesn't refuse the world's plenty when it's needed, and doesn't let it in for pleasure, they call Leah weak-eyed, not blind—the one they think is wrong in her judgment of things.6 If, then, Leah is understood as the desire for justice, and Rachel as the pursuit of wisdom, the reason is clear why Leah is scorned by almost everyone, or why Rachel alone is so loved.
Read the original Latin
Nunquid de justitia similiter dicimus. Nunquid aeque justi omnes esse volumus, sed justi forte esse non possumus. Imo omnes utique justi esse potuissent, si esse justi perfecte voluissent. Justitiam enim perfecte diligere, est jam justum esse. Sapientiam et multum amare potes, et ipsa carere potes. Omnino, et absque dubio, quanto amplius justitiam dilexeris, tanto justior eris. Sed videamus nunc quae sint instituta verae justitiae, et inveniemus cur homines tantum detestantur connubia Liae. Quaerendum namque est, cur fere omnes conjugia Liae tantopere abhorreant, qui in amplexus Rachel tantum suspirant?
Perfecta justitia jubet inimicos diligere, parentes; propria quaeque relinquere, illata mala patienter ferre, oblatam gloriam ubique declinare. Sed ab hujus mundi amatoribus, quid stultius, quid laboriosius esse reputatur. Hinc est quod ab eis Lia, et lippa creditur, et laboriosa vocatur. Lia namque laboriosa interpretatur. Magnus namque labor, sed non minor error videtur eis esse, in tribulatione gaudere, prospera mundi quasi pestem fugere. Sed quia copiam mundi ad necessitatem non respuit, et ad voluptatem non admittit, Liam lippam, non caecam vocant, quam in rerum judicio errare putant. Si igitur per Liam desiderium justitiae, per Rachel vero studium sapientiae intelligitur, patet ratio quare vel Lia ab omnibus fere contemnitur, vel Rachel tantum diligitur.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Matt.5.44;Luke.6.27 — But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Luke.6.27 — But I say to you who are listening: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.
- ↩Matt.19.29;Luke.14.26 — And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. Luke.14.26 — If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters — yes, even his own life — he cannot be my disciple.
- ↩Rom.5.3;Jas.1.2;Matt.5.12 — And not only that, but we also boast in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces endurance. Jas.1.2 — Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, Matt.5.12 — Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in the heavens; for in this way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Notes
- 1 ↩Leah stands allegorically for the desire for justice (desiderium justitiae), as the next section makes explicit; connubia Liae names spiritual marriage to that desire, not a literal marriage.
- 2 ↩Rachel stands for the pursuit of wisdom (studium sapientiae); Leah for the desire for justice. The contrast is between shunning the hard work of justice and longing for contemplative wisdom.
- 3 ↩Latin has a semicolon after parentes (inimicos diligere, parentes; propria quaeque relinquere). Taken as coordinated objects of the hard commands of justice: love enemies; leave parents and all one's own goods; bear wrongs; refuse glory—rather than as a separate incomplete clause.
- 4 ↩lippa = blear-eyed / weak-sighted (the traditional reading of Leah's eyes in Genesis), not simply 'ugly'.
- 5 ↩interpretatur marks medieval name-etymology (onomastic allegory), not a modern philological claim.
- 6 ↩lippa vs. caeca: partial dimness of sight versus total blindness—the world grants Leah some sight (she allows goods for necessity) but still judges her mistaken.
Benjamin Minor (The Twelve Patriarchs / Preparation of the Mind for Contemplation) companion
A daily portion of stillness
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