Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
—as though to say: If thou grantest life to Nabal thy enemy, when he by his reproaches against thee deserves death, God will repay thee a fitting reward, that in turn he may protect thy life against all who persecute thee, and especially against Saul, and preserve it safe and long-lived for a very long time amid so many dangers: for a thing stored “in the bundle,” or in the binding “of the living,” in which, namely, the living or lives are bound, is stored for this, that it may be kept unharmed among the living; but a thing placed in a sling is placed in it for this, that the sling may cast it out and hurl it: in a similar way, therefore, may God whirl as in a sling the life of thine enemies, to expel and shake out their soul from their body, and compel them to die. So Cajetan. The bundle of the living with God, then, is God’s providence and care, in which he holds as bound together those whose life he preserves, that none perish. Allegorically and tropologically: The bundle of the living is the catalogue, or rather company and council, of the Saints, friends of God, and of those elect to eternal life (conversely, the bundle of the dying is the catalogue of the damned to eternal death. For these, says Isaias chapter 24, verse 22, “shall be gathered together in the gathering of one bundle into the pit”); but the stone whirled in a sling are the wicked and reprobate, to be cast out into hell and eternal death. So Eucherius, Angelomus, the Gloss, and that on account of five analogies. First, because, as Eucherius says, “a bundle is bound that it may be preserved; so the elect are bound by the pressures of tribulations, that, admonished by them, they may be preserved for ever by the hands of the Redeemer; but because the reprobate, the more luxurious they are in life, the farther they are cast from the glory of the divine vision, therefore they are compared to the stone of a sling: to which the royal prophet seems to have alluded, Psalm 87: They are cast off from thy hand.” Second, which is the same author’s: Because, as a bundle is gathered together by some bond and tie, so the company of the saints is bound by the same faith, the same hope, the same bond of charity, and is surrounded on all sides by one and the same divine protection. Third, because, as a bundle of flowers is carried in the hand for delight, so God carries all the elect in his hand, and is continually delighted by the odour of virtues which breathes from them, according to that of Wisdom 3: The souls of the just are in the hand of God, although there the discourse is properly of the protection with which God guards the saints, whence it is added: And the torment of death shall not touch them. Fourth, because as a bundle is made up only of certain and choicest flowers, so the number of the predestined consists of certain ones, and those redolent of charity and of the odour and sweetness of the other virtues. Fifth, the bundle denotes the order and degrees of the glory of the Saints: for as in a bundle one flower is inserted in order beside another, and one shines out above another; so also in heaven the Saints hold their place and order according to merits, and one outshines another by the gifts of grace and glory: “For star differeth from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead,” 1 Corinthians 15:41. These things I have said more fully on Amos chapter 9, verse 6, on those words: “Who hath founded his bundle upon the earth.” The bundle of the living, then, is the same as the book of life.
Moreover Sebastian Münster, though a heretic, brings here something worth noting for the suffrages of the dead, and for the ancient rite of praying for the dead:
By the bundle of the living, he says, the Hebrews understand the throne of majesty, under which they say the souls of the just rest in the other world. Hence also it is that on their tombs they commonly engrave this sentence: “His soul be in the bundle of the living”; as we say, “may his soul rest,” etc., as the book entitled Prayers of the Jews for the Dead proves, which Genebrard translated. Morally: Note here the ways in which Abigail broke the kindled anger of David and restrained him from slaughter, which let us imitate, that we may quench and calm the fury of the furious, as by water thrown on. First, she offered David many large gifts, which Nabal had refused, and thereby had stirred David’s bile: for gifts calm anger and win love; second, she humbled herself utterly, prostrating herself on the ground before David, by which humiliation she wiped out Nabal’s proud answer, by which he had provoked David; third, she brings wise and flattering reasons, by which she showed David how harmful anger and vengeance would be to him, and how salutary and advantageous forgetfulness and forgiveness of it would be, namely first, that Nabal is a fool, and a fool’s sayings and insults are not to be heeded, but despised; second, that she herself offers herself for Nabal to pay the penalty; third, that she herself had not seen the servants sent by David to Nabal, nor heard Nabal’s curses: wherefore she begs him to spare her and her innocent house; fourth, that if he forgave Nabal his life, God in turn would protect David’s life against Saul and the other enemies; fifth, that David fights the battles of the Lord, namely to defend Israel, which was the people of God: wherefore let him not stain this his honour by private malice and revenge, nor stain his pure conscience with the slaughter of so many innocents who were in Nabal’s house; sixth, that if he indulged his anger, he would turn the people away from himself, so that they would not accept him as king; seventh, that this vengeance would be to him a sob and a pang of heart all his life, and would provoke God’s anger to punish him with the penalty of retaliation and to cut off his house: but if he forgave it and spared the lives of so many innocents, God likewise would give him a faithful house and preserve his posterity in life and in the kingdom for ever.
31. AND WHEN THE LORD SHALL HAVE DONE WELL BY MY LORD, (namely by thee, by raising thee to the kingdom), THOU SHALT REMEMBER THY HANDMAID,—namely, that thou do well by me; Abigail seems to presage and tacitly ask to be taken as David’s wife, and to become queen to him as king.
37. HIS WIFE TOLD HIM THESE WORDS, AND HIS HEART DIED WITHIN HIM,—as though to say: Nabal was thunderstruck with fear of David, and as it were dead; for he, ill-conscious in himself, hearing David’s just anger against him, feared that he would pour it all out on him alone: for he thought that for this reason he had spared Abigail and his innocent household, that he might seek the guilty head, that is, Nabal. In like manner Ovid says, book 1 of the Tristia, elegy 3:
I was stunned no otherwise than one struck by Jove’s fires, who lives, and knows not that he lives.
38. THE LORD STRUCK NABAL,—he sent upon him a deadly sickness, which brought him sudden death.
39. TO ABIGAIL, TO TAKE HER TO HIM FOR HIS WIFE.—David taking Abigail represented Christ, who betrothed to himself the Church from the Gentiles. “For she, having lost the husband to whom she had before been joined, passed over to Christ, rich with pious wealth, dowered with the patrimony of humility and faith, and also of mercy, etc., to whom the bridegroom brings joy and grace, cleansing her from all the hindrances of her beauty,” says St. Ambrose, epistle 35 to Irenaeus. He adds that Achinoam, David’s other wife, signified the Synagogue of the Jews. “For Achinoam,” says Ambrose, “in Hebrew is the same as ‘the commotion of my brother’: and such was the Synagogue, which the devil finding wavering, like a lion tore down, and took away its joy, and made its fruits wither, according to that of Psalm 43: Thou hast made us a byword among the Gentiles, a shaking of the head among the people.” More aptly, however, Pagninus in the Hebrew Names: “Achinoam,” he says, “in Hebrew is the same as ‘brother of delight or beauty’; or, ‘my brother’s comeliness or delight’”; which fits the Jews converted to
41. BEHOLD, LET THY HANDMAID BE A SERVANT, TO WASH THE FEET OF THE SERVANTS OF MY LORD.—Abigail addresses the absent David as if present in the envoys sent by him, and calls herself his servant and handmaid: and by this her humility she deserved to become his wife and queen of Israel. Whence she was a type of the Blessed Virgin, who, chosen by God as spouse, and addressed by the Angel, said: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word.” And therefore the handmaid of God became the Mother of God. Truly Ecclesiasticus, chapter 26, verse 1: “Blessed is the husband of a good wife, for the number of his years is double: a virtuous woman rejoiceth her husband, and shall fulfil the years of his life in peace. A good wife is a good portion,” etc., and verse 16: “The grace of a diligent woman shall delight her husband. A holy and shamefaced woman is grace upon grace.” Such was Abigail.
44. BUT SAUL GAVE MICHOL HIS DAUGHTER, DAVID’S WIFE, TO PHALTI THE SON OF LAIS.—The Rabbis relate, or rather in their way fable, that Phalti did not know Michol, because a sword lay between him and Michol, and that he therefore remained free without children. Others assert that he did this from zeal for piety and chastity. Others devise other things: for they are potters not of vessels but of opinions and dreams.