Commentaria in Judices
The same Damian then adds a tropology and says: “What are we to understand by Joatham, whose name is interpreted consummated or perfect, if not some holy and learned preacher? He went up into mount Garizim and cried with a loud voice. First he went up, and afterwards he cried. He first rises on the mountain, and so lifts his voice, because unless the Teacher of virtues first ascends to the height, he cries in vain.” Damian goes on to unfold the rest, and I shall condense his words into few: “By Garizim is designated the holy Church, which is the school of all virtues, and fruitful with the abundance of heavenly harvests. By the olive are signified those who, anointed with the fatness of the Holy Ghost, by preaching the Gospel reconcile men to the Creator. By the fig, those who are sufficiently instructed in the learning of the holy law. By the vine, those who do not cease to preach the triumph of the Lord’s Passion, and so, through the clusters of their doctrine, water our dry hearts with the wine of the shed blood. When therefore the olive, fig and vine, that is, spiritual men, will by no means consent to preside over the trees of the forest, that is, over earthly and carnal men, the bramble offers itself, to be consumed by them, and about to consume them also, either by the example of an evil way of life or by the fire of erroneous doctrine. For the bramble bristles with thickly growing thorns, by which is signified any perverse man, who is thus crowded with the roughness of sins as with briars.” From which he finally concludes: “When therefore the trees ask for a king, that is, when depraved men choose a prelate carnally, the bramble comes into the midst, that is, any one who may increase their depravities, and consume them by a reciprocal burning of perverse living or teaching.”
20. LET FIRE COME OUT FROM HIM, AND CONSUME THE INHABITANTS OF SICHEM.—“Fire,” namely of anger, vengeance and fury, let it come out from Abimelech, and consume the Sichemites. This is properly an execration and imprecation, by which Joatham calls down curses on the impious Sichemites, namely the just vengeance of God and destruction, and it was effectual; for in truth they were cut off. So effectual was the curse of Josue, chap. vi, verse 26, by which he called down curses on him who should rebuild Jericho; and that of Eliseus, by which he cursed the boys who mocked him, crying out: “Go up, thou bald head, go up”; for they were soon torn by bears, 4 Kings ii, 24. For God avenges the injuries of the impious against the pious; and hears their groans, prayers and imprecations.
AND LET FIRE COME OUT FROM THE MEN OF SICHEM, etc., AND DEVOUR ABIMELECH.—So it came to pass, as is plain from verse 57: for although the woman who killed Abimelech with a piece of a tile was not of Sichem, but of Thebes, yet Thebes was within the borders of Sichem, says St. Jerome in the Hebrew Places. Add that the Sichemites were the occasion why Abimelech was killed by a woman.
Finally Thebes seems to have been a colony of the Sichemites, as was Mello.
21. AND HE WENT AWAY TO BERA.—Hear St. Jerome in the Hebrew Places. The village Bera is eight miles to the north of Eleutheropolis. Eleutheropolis was then a famous city in the tribe of Juda, not far distant from Jerusalem.
23. AND THE LORD SENT A MOST EVIL SPIRIT BETWEEN ABIMELECH AND THE INHABITANTS (in Hebrew baale, that is, men or lords and princes) OF SICHEM.—“A spirit,” namely of hatred and discord, by which they destroyed one another. God did this not merely permissively, but also positively, by presenting to them an occasion of discord, namely by casting a scruple into the Sichemites about the parricides of Abimelech, of which they themselves had been the cause, and because they had made so impious a man and fratricide king over themselves: for from this they began to detest him; and Abimelech, perceiving it, detested them in turn; and this was the source of the mutual war in which both destroyed themselves. So Abulensis. For although God cannot be positively the cause of sin, e.g. of hatred and discord, but stands towards it only permissively, yet he can positively do something indifferent for a good end, from which he foresees that many sins will follow. Of the scruple just mentioned, then, God was positively the cause; but the sin and hatred that followed from it he merely permitted. Secondly, St. Augustine, Question XLIV, Cajetan and Arias understand by this most evil spirit the devil: for to him, wishing to disturb their peace and stir up war, God not only permitted it, but also positively sent him in as a tormentor, to vex and chastise these impious men, that they might remember their crime and parricide, for which they were being chastised, and do penance: to disturb, then, the peace of the impious who unanimously oppress the pious, for the end just stated, is a virtue, not a vice: but in the devil it is a vice, because he does it for an evil end, namely to stir up hatreds, slaughters and other sins. So God sent a spirit of destruction upon the impious Achab to have him killed in war, 3 Kings last chapter. Hence the Poets say that Jupiter does this through Alecto and the other Furies; of whom Virgil sings thus, Aeneid book VII:
Alecto, the sorrow-bringing, from the seat of the dread sisters
And the darkness of hell he rouses, whose heart delights in sad wars, angers, plots, and baneful crimes.
Scatter the peace that has been made, sow the crimes of war; let the youth desire arms, and demand and seize them together.
In short, God justly directed all these things to chastise the parricides of Abimelech, and the idolatry of the Sichemites.
Wisely St. Augustine, book XXII On the City of God, chap. i: “Many things indeed are done by the wicked against the will of God; but he is of such great wisdom and such great power, that all things which seem adverse to his will tend to those issues or ends which he himself foreknew to be good and just.” And Enchiridion chap. C: “The good God would not allow evil to be done, unless, being Almighty, he could make good even out of evil.”
Note this place for the punishment of the worm of conscience, with which he here chastised the Sichemites, and chastises the wicked for ever in hell, which is surely a great torment to them. For this thought torments them most keenly: By your own fault and folly you have cast yourself into these pains, you could most easily have avoided this guilt and these torments. Why were you so mad as to cast yourself into these eternal fires for a slight pleasure? O folly! O malice! O cupidity, whither hast thou led me! O my irrevocable error:
There remains, and for ever will remain, the punishment of crime and the wrong done to despised law.
WHO BEGAN TO DETEST HIM.—So also the Septuaginta. But the Hebrew has bagedu, that is, they prevaricated, they rebelled; the Chaldee, they lied.
24. AND THAT THE CRIME OF THE SLAUGHTER OF THE SEVENTY SONS OF JEROBAAL, etc., MIGHT BE LAID UPON ABIMELECH.—The Hebrew, the Septuagint and the Chaldee set this down as pertaining to God; for so they have it: And he sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the inhabitants of Sichem, who rebelled against him; that the injury of the seventy sons of Jerobaal might come, and their blood might be laid upon Abimelech their brother, who had killed them, and upon the lords of Sichem, who strengthened his hands to kill his brothers. Our Interpreter, however, ascribes this to the Sichemites, not to God, because he saw cleverly and deeply that God had sent this spirit of discord upon the Sichemites through the conscience and remorse for the parricide sent by himself, of which they made Abimelech himself the author, and therefore they turned away from him as a parricide and destroyer of his country, and prepared war against him. For no other probable cause of hatred can be asserted here.
26. AND GAAL CAME.—This Gaal was an enemy and rival of Abimelech, who, desiring that he be cast down as vile and unworthy, sought to become prince of the Sichemites, so that the vintage was pressed in the winepress. These were the vineyards of the princes of Sichem, who had raised Abimelech to be king: perhaps they were also the vineyards of Abimelech himself. So Abulensis.
THEY WENT INTO THE TEMPLE OF THEIR GOD,—namely Baalberith, verse 4.
28. AND GAAL THE SON OF OBED CRIED OUT: WHO IS ABIMELECH, AND WHAT IS SICHEM, THAT WE SHOULD SERVE HIM? IS HE NOT THE SON OF JEROBAAL, AND HATH APPOINTED ZEBUL HIS SERVANT RULER OVER THE MEN OF HEMOR THE FATHER OF SICHEM? WHY THEN SHALL WE SERVE HIM?