Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Chapter Thirty-one
The Philistines defeat the Hebrews: whence Saul, lest he fall into their hands, falling on his sword, kills himself. Soon, verse 9, the Philistines send Saul’s severed head into Philistia, and hang his arms in the temple of Astaroth, but his body on the wall of Bethsan; but the men of Jabes Galaad take it away thence and burn and bury it.
1. Now the Philistines fought against Israel, and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gelboe. 2. And the Philistines rushed upon Saul and upon his sons, and slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Melchisua, the sons of Saul, 3. and the whole weight of the battle was turned upon Saul; and the archers overtook him, and he was grievously wounded by the archers. 4. And Saul said to his armour-bearer: Draw thy sword, and kill me, lest these uncircumcised come and slay me, and mock at me. But his armour-bearer would not, for he was struck with exceeding great fear; so Saul took his sword, and fell upon it. 5. And when his armour-bearer saw this, namely that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword, and died with him. 6. So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armour-bearer, and all his men that same day together. 7. And the men of Israel that were beyond the valley, and beyond the Jordan, seeing that the men of Israel were fled, and that Saul was dead, and his sons, forsook their cities, and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt there. 8. And on the next day the Philistines came to strip the slain, and found Saul and his three sons lying in mount Gelboe. 9. And they cut off Saul’s head, and stripped him of his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to publish it in the temple of their idols, and among the people. 10. And they put his armour in the temple of Astaroth, and hung up his body on the wall of Bethsan. 11. And when the inhabitants of Jabes Galaad heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12. all the valiant men arose, and walked all the night, and took the body of Saul, and the bodies of his sons, from the wall of Bethsan; and they came to Jabes Galaad, and burnt them there, 13. and took their bones, and buried them in the wood of Jabes; and they fasted seven days.
2. AND THEY SLEW JONATHAN, AND ABINADAB, AND MELCHISUA, THE SONS OF SAUL.—This was done by God’s counsel, that, all the sons of Saul being slain, he might level and smooth for David the way to the kingdom: for Isboseth, Saul’s fourth son, sitting at home, seemed less warlike, and unfit for a kingdom entangled in so many wars.
4. AND FELL UPON IT.—Vatablus: he fell on it, driving it into his breast. Hence it is plain that Saul killed himself. Josephus and R. Levi deny this, saying that Saul tried indeed to kill himself, but did not accomplish it, either because he was armed with a breastplate, or because he had not fixed the sword firmly enough; and that he was killed by that Amalecite who brought David the news of Saul’s death, and said he had killed Saul, of which 2 Kings chapter 1. But these are fables devised in honour of Saul and the Jewish race by Josephus the Jew. For the Hebrew, Septuagint, Chaldee and Latin clearly say, in this verse 4 and 5, that Saul died by falling on his sword, and that his armour-bearer seeing it likewise killed himself in like manner. So all Interpreters, and the other Rabbis too; whence R. Radak, page 46, on Psalm 7, verse 16, “He hath opened a pit and dug it, and is fallen into the hole he made,” explains thus: “David prophesies,” he says, “that Saul will die justly by his own sword.” This was a just judgment of God, that Saul should turn against himself the sword which he had unjustly drawn against David, as Nero did in the same year in which he had killed SS. Peter and Paul, nay in the same month of June returning, killing himself. “By the sword,” says Hugh, “with which he had spared the Amalecites against the Lord’s command, chapter 15, he deservedly killed himself; if anyone, having received power for the common good, either does not use it or abuses it, he pierces himself with his own sword, with which he ought to have been defended against the enemy, and rather helps the enemy.” Whence also in the presence of the Amalecite whom he had spared he killed himself, and the Amalecite took away his diadem and carried it to David, as will be said in the next chapter, verse 13. So tropologically in the hour of death the passions and vices which in life thou neglectest to kill and mortify will afflict thee, and take from thee honour, peace and present and eternal life; for these are our Amalecites. You will ask whether Saul sinned by killing himself? Josephus and the Rabbis deny it, nay praise Saul for greatness of mind and contempt of death, whom Lyranus favours. Hence R. Isaac calls Saul just: “Saul,” he says, “David and Solomon reigned just.” So Cato killed himself, lest, conquered, he should come into the hands of Julius Caesar, and be forced to become a suppliant to him, whom therefore Seneca praises, book On Divine Providence: “Though all things,” he says, “have yielded to one man’s condition, though the lands are guarded by legions, the seas by fleets, and Caesar’s soldiers besiege the gates, Cato has a way to go out. One hand will make a broad road to freedom. That steel, even in civil war pure and innocent, will at last do good and noble work. The liberty which it could not give to the country it will give to Cato. Set about the work long meditated, snatch thyself from human affairs.” See the same, epistle 4, where among other things he says: “He is a great man who has not only commanded death for himself, but found it.” Nay Julius Caesar himself, on receiving the news of Cato’s death, is said to have said: “I envy thee, Cato, thy glory; for thou too didst envy mine, that it might not be counted among my famous deeds that I had saved Cato.” So Brutus and Cassius, slayers of Julius Caesar, conquered by Augustus the nephew of Julius, with the sword driven into their bowels redeemed by voluntary death the disgrace which they foresaw the victor would inflict on them.
But Catholic faith condemns this opinion, nay also the better class of Philosophers, such as Plato in the Phaedo, Aristotle, Ethics book 5, last chapter. See Lactantius, book 3, chapter 18, and book 6, chapter 11. The first reason is that man is not lord of his life, but God; he cannot therefore snatch it from himself, nay from God.
Second, because God gave us soul and life in custody, that we may use it for God’s service and praise. Third, because God has appointed for each the day and manner both of being born and of dying; it is not lawful, therefore, to hasten or pass beyond it. “For he alone hath power of life and death,” Wisdom chapter 16. The reason is that God alone gave us life, as a huge and supreme gift which no industry could procure for himself, and which in no way depends on his consent. Wherefore God would not have it be in the power and choice of man, as lower things are, but reserved the right and dominion over it to himself. Fourth, because by the fifth precept of the Decalogue, “Thou shalt not kill,” it is forbidden, and even more, that anyone kill himself than another. Fifth, because he who kills himself does injury to the Commonwealth; for against its will he cuts off as it were a member of it. He sins therefore against justice, if not commutative, certainly legal. See St. Augustine, book 1 On the City of God, from chapter 17 to chapter 28. Hear him, chapter 26: “This we say, this we assert, this we approve in every way, that no one ought to inflict a voluntary death on himself as if fleeing temporal troubles, lest he fall into perpetual ones. No one on account of other men’s sins, lest by this very act he begin to have a most grievous one of his own, whom another’s did not defile. No one on account of his own past sins, on account of which this life is the more needed, that they may be healed by penance. No one from desire for a better life, which is hoped for after death, because a better life after death does not receive those guilty of their own death.”
Nay, Cicero too, Tusculans chapter 1: “That God who rules in us,” he says, “forbids us to depart hence without his order.” And Plato in the Phaedo: “It is wrong,” he says, “for a man to lay hands on himself, and God is angry if it be done no otherwise than a master if one of his slaves kill himself.” And in many other places he says “that it is lawful for no man to migrate from this life without God’s order. For we are all here as in the battle line, each assigned his place by God the Commander; and the deserter of life is to be visited with greater punishment than the deserter of the army.”
Moreover that Saul, Cato and the like killed themselves to avoid servitude or infamy was a sign of a mind not strong and great, but soft, pusillanimous, unable to bear the mockeries of the Philistines. The very deed of Cato proves this, as St. Augustine, book 1 On the City, chapter 26: “His friends,” he says, “and even some learned men, who more prudently dissuaded this from being done, judged it the act of a weaker rather than a stronger mind, by which it was shown not that honour guarding against shameful things, but weakness not bearing adversities. This Cato himself also judged in his dearest son. For if it was shameful to live under Caesar’s victory, why was the father the author of this shame to the son, whom he bade hope everything from Caesar’s kindness? why did he not force him also to death with himself?”
Nor can it be said, says Serarius, that Saul did this lest God be dishonoured. For he says: “Lest they kill me and mock me,” nor could dishonour redound to God if a despiser of the divine precepts were punished by God, or given over to the mockeries of enemies. Add that Saul seems to have taken his life with such force and speed that he had no time for repentance. Nor did Saul escape the Philistines’ disgrace; for they mocked his dead body, as is plain from verses 9 and 10; nay they hung and offered Saul’s severed head in the temple of Dagon as a votive offering, as is said in 1 Paralipomenon chapter 10, verse 10. You will ask whether Saul is damned? The Hebrews and Lyranus deny it, and think he repented and was saved. But others commonly assert him damned, and namely Eucherius, Bede, Rupert, Abulensis, Dionysius, Cajetan, the Bruges writer, Serarius, Salianus, Sanchez here, and St. Bernard, sermon to Simplicius, Question 2; Pineda, book 8, On the Things of Solomon chapter 1, no. 8.
The reason is that he died in the sin of magic, in which a little before the battle he had consulted the Pythoness, nay in the very act of the crime by which he killed himself, so that he had neither mind nor time to repent. Wherefore he seems damned with Achitophel and Judas. It is otherwise with Jonathan, who all his life behaved excellently, fighting for the Israelites and defending David against Saul, and died in a meritorious act, namely fighting for his country; whence, despoiled of life and earthly kingdom, he seems to have obtained the heavenly and eternal one: wherefore he seems saved, and to have descended to the limbo of the Fathers in the bosom of Abraham. So St. Augustine, Bede, Rabanus, Lyranus, Salianus and others.
where it is said: “So Saul died for his iniquities” (Hebrew and Septuagint: in his iniquities), “because he transgressed the commandment of the Lord which he had commanded, and kept it not; but moreover also consulted the Pythoness, and trusted not in the Lord, wherefore he slew him, and transferred his kingdom to David the son of Isai.” Whence it is clear that Saul was chiefly slain because he consulted a demon through the Pythoness, and that God therefore hastened his death, who, if he had not done so, would have lived longer. So God hastened the death of King Ochozias, sick, because he had consulted Beelzebub the god of Accaron about his health, 4 Kings chapter 1. Finally Saul died two years after Samuel, say Clement of Alexandria, Bede, Josephus, Abulensis, Salianus and others, as I said at chapter 25, verse 1. He was pious and fortunate at the beginning of his reign, but impious and unfortunate at its end; that he might be an example and mirror for posterity, which all, but especially kings and princes, should frequently look upon. Wherefore of Saul you may say what Virgil sang of Priam, when Troy was taken, killed by Neoptolemus:
This was the end of Priam’s fate; this fate bore him off, seeing Troy in flames and Pergamus fallen, he who once proudly ruled so many peoples and lands of Asia;
he lies a huge trunk upon the shore, his head torn from his shoulders, a body without a name.
5. AND WHEN HIS ARMOUR-BEARER SAW THIS.—The Hebrews fable that this armour-bearer of Saul was Doeg the Edomite, of whom chapter 22, verse 18.
11. AND WHEN THE INHABITANTS OF JABES GALAAD HEARD, ETC., THEY TOOK THE BODY OF SAUL.—They did this to Saul out of gratitude: for Saul had delivered them from Naas king of Ammon, chapter 11, verse 4. Whence also, according to the number of days of the truce made between them and Naas, they fasted, namely seven days.
AND THEY BURNT THEM.—For the Hebrews burned the bodies of their kings, lest, while the pomp of a royal funeral was being prepared for many days, they should lie unburied on the ground and rot and be eaten by worms, which seemed foul and horrible. For this reason, therefore, they burned Saul’s body, slain three days before and therefore stinking, and afterwards buried the remaining bones in the wood. So they burned the body of King Asa with spices, 2 Paralipomenon 16:14; but King Joram lacked this honour of burning, 2 Paralipomenon chapter 21, verse 19. Aeneas did the same before Saul, at the funeral of Misenus, of which Virgil, book 6 of the Aeneid: The ancients burned the dead.
They built a huge pyre, whose sides they weave with dark leaves, and set funereal cypresses before it, and adorn it above with shining arms.
And below: Averted they held the torch, the heaped gifts of incense burn, banquets, bowls of poured oil, after the ashes sank and the flame was still, they washed the remains with wine, and the thirsty embers; and Corynaeus covered the gathered bones in a brazen urn.
The Greeks did the same. Whence Lucian, dialogue On Mourning: “The Greek,” he says, “burns, the Persian buries.” And Silius Italicus, book 13:
The sons of Cecrops, for their country slain by the lot of Mars, decreed together to burn them in common flames.
The Romans followed the same. Hear Servius on book and we draw breath, and neither perish nor are born, nor are affected by any fate of mortality; but whenever it has broken the prison of the human breast, and, relieved of mortal limbs, has purged itself with a light fire, it seeks its seat among the stars.” Again, Servius on book 11 of the Aeneid: “Heraclitus,” he says, “who will have all things consist of fire, says that bodies ought to be resolved into fire; but Thales, who affirms that all things are produced from moisture, says that bodies ought to be resolved by moisture.” They thought, therefore, that the body ought to be burned so that the soul might in that way be purged from the filth of the body and return to its fiery nature.
13. AND THEY FASTED SEVEN DAYS,—not only from grief and mourning, but also to aid Saul’s soul; for they did not know that he had killed himself, 3 of the Aeneid: “The Romans did the contrary, burning the bodies, that the soul might at once return to its generality, that is, to its own nature.” Hence Ovid, book 10 of the Tristia, elegy 4:
and died in mortal sin, and so well This spirit shall first be thinned into the empty air, and leave my bones on the warm pyre, before forgetfulness of my benefactors enters my mind, etc.
And Silius Italicus, book 10, at the funeral of Paulus:
So spoke the Libyan: And the fresh soul, exulting amid the crackling flames on every side, escaped into the airy heights.
Quintilian gives the cause, Declamation 10: “The ancients,” he says, “held that the body is resolved in death; but the soul, taking the impetus and perpetuity of flaming vigour not from our fire but from that where the stars fly, and where the sacred axes are turned, thence comes to whence it came, to the author and parent of all things; and they piously hoped for his salvation. So Bede, who adds: “In this way also the pious race of Christians weeps for those who, resisting demons, slip in the world, which is slippery; for Gelboe is interpreted ‘slippery mountains.’” See Bellarmine, book 1 On Purgatory, chapter 4.
As to the synchronism with profane history, under Samuel and Saul reigned at Athens Codrus, who, hearing from an oracle that the Athenians would be victors in battle if he fell in it, offered himself to death and slaughter for his country, and so sealed victory and empire by his death; then also the kingdom of Sicyon and Mycenae ceased, and that of Corinth began. So Eusebius in the Chronicle.