Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Note: the Septuagint for feet render years: He blessed, they say, the years, or as the Sixtine have, the years of the just, while He directs and prospers their days, months and years, heaps and advances them with His goods and gifts, that they may come to the years of blessed eternity. And as St. Augustine explains, book 17 On the City of God, chapter 4: “That they may live without end with Him to whom it is said, and thy years shall not fail,” Psalm 101, 28: “for there the years stand: but here they pass,” nay perish; for before they come, they are not; but when they have come, they will not be, because they come with their end.
AND THE WICKED SHALL BE SILENT IN DARKNESS (of the body, as the Sodomites, of the mind, namely of imprudence, blind concupiscence of sins, and finally of both in gehenna)—from vehement horror, terror and consternation, so that they cannot speak to or console one another.
Hear St. Gregory, Pastoral Rule part 1, chapter 11: “He is blind,” he says, “who is ignorant of the light of heavenly contemplation; who, pressed by the darkness of the present life, while he never beholds the true light by loving it, knows not where to set the steps of his work. Hence, indeed, when Anna prophesies, it is said: The wicked shall be silent in darkness.” Moreover “shall be silent” means first, they shall be obscure: for so we by catachresis call the moon not shining and obscure silent, according to Virgil, book 2 of the Aeneid:
They go through the friendly silences of the silent moon.
Secondly, “shall be silent” means they shall be motionless for stupor, as the Egyptians in the plague of darkness, fearful and stupefied, dared not move from their place, as though “fettered with the bonds of darkness,” Wisdom chapter 17, verse 2. For as it is said in the same place, verse 17: “They were all bound with one chain of darkness.”
Thirdly, “shall be silent” because they will have no excuse to offer for their fault and gehenna (but they will curse themselves, their parents, and all creatures, which were the cause to themselves of sin and damnation), that is, “they shall be convinced and, convicted, be silent.” Whence the Chaldee renders: The wicked transgressors of His word shall be judged in darkness in gehenna, to show that there is no one in whom is the strength of purity for the day of the judge.
Hence gehenna is called in Hebrew duma, that is, silence and place of silence. Hence also Virgil, book 6 of the Aeneid:
And Chaos and Phlegethon, places silent far and wide in night.
Next also the Lemures, they called the soul of the silent.
He entered the silent house of perpetual night.
This is the second oracle of Anna.
“The wicked therefore shall be silent in darkness,” that is, they shall be condemned to the eternal darkness of gehenna, who here proudly vaunted themselves and their possessions, and everywhere resounded, magnifying themselves with glory.
BECAUSE NO MAN SHALL PREVAIL BY HIS OWN STRENGTH,—so as to prevail over, or be able to resist, God, the most strong. She refers this to what went before, as if she said: Therefore God will keep the feet of His Saints, because they, knowing their weakness, trusted in the strength not their own but God’s, and suppliantly invoked Him; but the wicked He permitted to slip into sin and fall into gehenna, because they, trusting in their own strength, neglected to invoke the help of God. Hear St. Augustine in the Soliloquies, chapter 22: “I hoped once in my own virtue, which yet was not virtue. And when I wished so to run, where I believed I stood more firmly, there I fell the more. What I believed more that I could do by myself, I was always less able to do. For I said: This I will do, that I will finish, and I did neither this nor that. The will was present, the power was not. The power was present, the will was not, as I trusted in my own strength. But now I confess to thee, O Lord my God, that no man shall prevail by his own strength. For it is not in man to will what he can, or to be able to do what he wills, or to know what he wills and can, but rather by thee the steps of man are directed.”
The same St. Augustine gives the cause, book 17 On the City of God, chapter 4: “For when the Lord begins to possess us, the adversary who had been ours becomes His and is conquered by us, but not by our strength, because not by his own strength is a man powerful.”
10. THE ADVERSARIES OF THE LORD SHALL FEAR HIM,—both in the near time, when the Philistines, by God through my Samuel, terrified with thunders and lightnings, shall flee in all directions, as we shall hear chapter 4, verse 7, and chapter 7, verse 10; and at any other time, especially the time of Christ, who then in this life will smite and cast down the demons, Pharisees, and all unbelievers by the force of His spirit; and most of all on the day of judgment, when He will drive them into the pit: for then He will appear so dreadful to them that they will say “to the mountains: Fall upon us; and to the hills: Cover us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?” Apocalypse chapter 6, verse 17; Osee chapter 10, verse 9; Luke chapter 23, verse 30. So St. Augustine, St. Gregory, Lyranus, Abulensis and others. This is Anna’s third prophecy; the fourth follows:
AND UPON THEM SHALL HE THUNDER IN THE HEAVENS.—This God did first when, through Samuel, who by his prayer drew lightnings and thunders from heaven, He smote the Philistines, as will be said chapter 7, verse 10, and chapter 12, verse 18; secondly, when He thundered over Christ at the baptism, the transfiguration, and at other times, John chapter 12, verse 28: “This is my beloved Son,” etc., and again when at Pentecost by thunder and fiery tongues He sent the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles (whence the Septuagint render: He ascended into the heavens and thundered), that they also might thunder with their voice, and lighten with their life, and so smite the Jews and Gentiles, and subject them to Christ. Whence St. Jerome calls St. Paul “the thunder of the Gentiles,” and Christ called James and John “Boanerges,” that is, sons of thunder.
Finally on the day of judgment He will thunder and lighten the sentence of condemnation upon the wicked, saying: “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.”
Mystically, God thunders in the sinful soul, when God inflicts threats and fear of gehenna, so that from earthly sinners he becomes heavenly, nay from earth heaven is made. For as St. Ambrose says on Psalm 118, sermon 12: “He is called heaven who exercises the life of Angels in the guard of integrity, and moderates his body with continent sobriety.” Hear St. Jerome on Psalm 133, verse 3: “Many from earth become heaven, and many from heaven earth. Unhappy Judas was heaven, and was made earth. Paul the Apostle, at the time when he persecuted the Church, was earth; he confessed, and was made heaven.”
“The Church,” he says, “has her heavens, spiritual men conspicuous in life and reputation, pure in faith, firm in hope, joyful in charity, suspended in contemplation. And these, raining the saving rain of the word, thunder with rebukes, flash with miracles.”
THE LORD SHALL JUDGE THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, AND SHALL GIVE EMPIRE TO HIS KING, AND SHALL EXALT THE HORN OF HIS CHRIST.—Hebrew and Chaldee, his Messias. This is the fifth, sixth and seventh oracle of Anna concerning Christ, about to be born after one thousand three hundred years, to whom from afar she as it were applauds and congratulates; where note that Anna is the first in Scripture who here expresses the name of Messias or Christ. For hitherto in the Pentateuch, Josue and Judges we have not heard the name of Christ.
Note that these three things can be referred in the first place to the time of Anna and Samuel, and of Saul and David, whom Samuel appointed and consecrated kings; whence the Septuagint, for malko, that is, his king, reading in the plural melachenu, that is, our kings, render, He will give strength to our kings; but under all these she chiefly understands Christ, their antitype: for Christ alone will judge the ends of the whole earth. In like manner Isaias, chapter 14, describes parabolically by the fall of Lucifer from heaven the fall of Nabuchodonosor, or rather of Baltasar: and Ezechiel, chapter 28, describes by the fall of the Cherub the fall and setting of Tyre.
The sense is therefore as if she said: God by my Samuel “shall judge the ends of the earth,” namely of the Holy Land, or Palestine. For Samuel, judge of Israel, went round the cities judging, and settling every dispute of the whole people; and so kept all Israel in peace and religion, as will be plain chapter 7. Again, the Lord by my Samuel “shall give empire (Hebrew oz, that is, strength) to his king,” first, namely to Saul (for Samuel anointed Saul as king, who, anointed by him, bravely fought for Israel, and overthrew the Philistines and other enemies of it). Finally the Lord by Samuel shall exalt “the horn,” that is, the kingdom, strength and glory “of his Christ,” namely David, that succeeding Saul he may surpass him, and spread the kingdom of Israel far and wide. David therefore was a Christ, that is, an anointed of the Lord, and wondrously beloved by Him and Wherefore all these things regard rather Christ. For God by Christ judged the ends of the earth, not only of the Holy Land, but of the whole world, when He subjected all nations by the preaching of the Apostles to the faith of Christ and the Gospel law, so that Christ is prince, king and lawgiver of all nations, according to Psalm 2: “Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And Psalm 71, verse 4: “Give to the king thy judgment, O God: and to the king’s son thy justice: to judge thy people with justice, and thy poor with judgment”; which was said chiefly of Solomon the son of David, but principally of Christ, the son and antitype of both. “God” therefore gave strength and “empire to his king,” when He appointed Christ king and lord of all nations, and subjected them all to Him by the Apostles: wherefore then likewise “He shall exalt the horn,” that is, the strength, kingdom and glory “of his Christ.”