Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
THAT THERE SHALL NOT BE AN OLD MAN IN THY HOUSE.—“Old man,” that is, Pontiff, says St. Jerome, Angelomus and St. Augustine. More simply take old man as it sounds. For so he explains himself in verse 33, saying: “They shall die when they come to man’s estate.” Again some in Vatablus say that old man means wise. For wisdom is of old men; whence the Senate is named from old men, which is an assembly of wise men taking counsel for the Commonwealth. Brevity of life is therefore a fitting punishment of the impious, especially of those rebelling against parents (as these sons of Heli were), that they die before old age, according to that: “Before his days be full he shall perish, and his hands shall wither,” Job chapter 15, 32. And that: “Who were taken away before their time, and a flood hath overthrown their foundation,” Job chapter 22, 16. Whence David: “Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days,” Psalm 54, verse 24. And Solomon: “Be not foolish, lest thou die before thy time,” Ecclesiastes 7, 18. Truly Seneca, book On the Brevity of Life, chapter 1: “We have not received a short life,” he says, “but we make it so: we are not poor in time, but prodigal.”
33. YET I WILL NOT ALTOGETHER TAKE AWAY A MAN OF THEE FROM MY ALTAR,—as if He said: I will indeed take away the Pontificate from thy posterity, yet I will permit that they be lesser Priests or Levites, but to the increase of thy punishment and theirs; that they, seeing themselves despoiled of the Pontificate and of its great wealth and emoluments, may groan, and for bitterness and sorrow fail and pine away. For these things are said of Heli, not in his own person, but in that of his descendants. This is the third punishment; the fourth follows:
AND A GREAT PART OF THY HOUSE (family, namely of descendants) SHALL DIE WHEN THEY COME TO MAN’S ESTATE,—as if He said: The young shall die, not the old, and that by a violent death, namely “by the rompheae or framea,” that is, by the sword, as the Septuagint add; and the Chaldee: The whole multitude of thy house shall be slain young. This we shall hear was done, chapter 22, 19 and following, where Saul slays Achimelech the Pontiff, and the grandson of Heli, with his whole family, because he had given bread to David. Moreover “all the multitude,” as the Hebrew and Chaldee have it, is the same as most, many: for that some were saved and escaped death is plain from what follows.
34. AND THIS SHALL BE A SIGN TO THEE,—that these calamities will come upon thy descendants; for these Heli did not see, being by then dead: whence God gives him the sign and certainty of them, the slaughter of Ophni and Phinees; for this he himself, living, heard of and groaned. This is the fourth punishment of Heli; the fifth follows:
35. AND I WILL RAISE ME UP A FAITHFUL PRIEST.—Who is this? Some think it is Samuel, whom they think succeeded Heli, not only in the principate, as judge of the people, but also in the Pontificate. So Augustine, book 17 On the City of God, chapter 4, and on Psalm 98, verse 2; Retractations chapter 55, and Against Faustus chapter 31; Gregory, Eucherius, Angelomus, Jerome on that of 1 Corinthians 1: With all that call upon the name of the Lord, where thus of Samuel:
“That he was a priest this fact proves, because he both succeeded the priest, and offered victims. Of whom also according to the history it was said: I will raise me up a faithful priest.” Nay, St. Ignatius also, epistle to the Magnesians: “Saul,” he says, “is deprived of royal honour, not waiting for the high priest Samuel.”
The reason is that Samuel, chapter 7, verse 9, is said to have sacrificed and prayed for the people, and to have anointed Saul as king, and after him David. Now these are the duties of a Pontiff.
Josephus favours this, book 6, last chapter, saying that Samuel was raised by the Pythoness in a priestly robe; Nazianzen also, oration 40, calls the Ephod of Samuel the priestly stole: so also Theodoret and Procopius here.
But the contrary seems far truer, namely that Samuel was not a Pontiff. The reason is that the Pontificate was assigned by God to Aaron and his descendants, of whom Samuel was not.
Again, Heli dying, Samuel was a young man, and as a young man began to judge Israel after Heli, as he himself indicates, chapter 12, verse 2. But no one could be made Pontiff before he was a man of thirty years, as St. Jerome teaches on chapter 1 of Ezechiel. But this reason does not prove it, as I shall show chapter 12, 9.
Thirdly, because in the time of Samuel the Pontiff was Achias, great-grandson of Heli, as is plain chapter 14, 3.
Finally, in the series of Pontiffs which Josephus and others weave, Samuel is not put, nor does Scripture anywhere call him a priest, nay David, Psalm 98: “Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that call upon his name.” So judge Bede, Rabanus, Abulensis here on chapter 7, Question 30; Hugh, Lyranus, Cajetan, Dionysius, Genebrard, and St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian: “Samuel,” he says, “was a Levite, not a Priest, not a Pontiff.” And St. Augustine at length in the Questions of the Old and New Testament, chapter 46 (or whoever is their author, for it does not seem to be St. Augustine). And St. Thomas on Hebrews chapter 7, lecture 3, Serarius, Mendoza, Sanchez, Torniellus and others.
To the argument of the opposite opinion I answer that Samuel, although by race and lineage he was only a Levite, nevertheless afterwards by dispensation of God sacrificed, as when he anointed Saul and David as kings, and is therefore called a priest by many (as by Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, Bernard, Damian and others, whom Mendoza cites at length here, page 395); and he anointed them as kings not as a Pontiff, but as a Prophet, as also Elias (who was not a Pontiff) the prophet anointed Hazael king of Syria, 3 Kings 19, and Eliseus by one of his own anointed Jehu king of Israel, 4 Kings 9. Moreover Samuel’s Ephod was of linen and Levitical, not many-coloured and priestly. Whence St. Jerome on Psalm 98, 6: “Samuel,” he says, “keeps the rule of the Levitical order: which that linen and white Ephod prefigured, showing that he can be made white who, by penance invoking the name of the Lord, has washed away the blackness of sin.”
When therefore it is said here: “I will raise me up a faithful priest,” Sadoc is understood, whom Solomon made Pontiff in place of Abiathar, who faithfully ministered to God in the temple, and to Christ, that is, to David and king Solomon, anointed by him.
Allegorically the transfer of the priesthood from Heli and Aaron to Christ is signified here: for He is the priest faithful to God. So St. Gregory, Theodoret, Angelomus, Procopius and St. Augustine, book 17 On the City of God, chapter 4. And we see today the Jews without a priesthood: “And among them,” says Augustine, “whoever is of the Aaronic race, when he sees the sacrifice of Christians prevail throughout the world, and that great honour taken from himself, his eyes fail, and his soul melts away with the decay of grief; and that death of the sons signified the death of the priesthood itself of the sons of Aaron, says Augustine, and that faithful priest, verse 35, is chiefly and principally Christ the Lord,” says Procopius, Theodoret and others.
Moreover Christ is not only Priest and Pontiff, but makes any Christians whatsoever mystic priests and kings, according to Apocalypse 5, 10: “And hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests.” Whence St. Leo, sermon 3 on the anniversary of his assumption to the Pontificate: “All who are regenerated in Christ,” he says, “the sign of the cross makes kings; and the anointing of the Holy Spirit consecrates priests.” And presently he shows in what this kingdom and priesthood consist: “For what,” he says, “is so kingly as for the mind subject to God to be the ruler of its own body? And what so priestly as to vow to the Lord a pure conscience, and to offer immaculate victims of piety from the altar of the heart?”
AND I WILL BUILD HIM A FAITHFUL HOUSE (family, posterity),—which, namely, faithfully ministering to me in the Pontificate, may faithfully, that is, firmly and constantly, continue in it. This cannot be said of Samuel: for his sons, like those of Heli, were degenerate and wicked, as is plain chapter 8, verse 3: “They turned aside,” it says, “after covetousness, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.” But the descendants of Sadoc remained faithful and firm in the Pontificate until the Babylonian captivity and the overthrow of the temple, nay even after it, as is plain from Ezechiel chapter 40, 46, and from the series of Pontiffs which Josephus weaves, book 10, book 5, chapter 1.
36. AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS THAT WHOSOEVER SHALL BE LEFT IN THY HOUSE, SHALL COME THAT HE MAY BE PRAYED FOR.—For the lesser Priests and Levites, when they had sinned in anything, by the law had to offer victims for sin, like the laity, and the Pontiff had to pray for them.
AND SHALL OFFER A PIECE OF SILVER, AND A ROLL OF BREAD.—To the Priest or Pontiff, to win his favour, to this end that by him he may be admitted to a priestly portion. From the Hebrew it may be rendered more clearly: He shall come to pray for a piece of silver and a roll of bread, praying, namely, that there be given him, as to a poor and hungry man, a little coin and a fragment of bread to satisfy his barking belly. So Cajetan and Vatablus. Whence our Serarius thinks that for offer, or as others read bring, we should read take away, that is, receive a piece of silver and a roll of bread; but the Roman Bibles have, offer.
PUT ME, I BESEECH THEE, TO SOME PART OF THE PRIESTHOOD (both of the victim offered by me, and of any other victims offered by the people to the priests), THAT I MAY EAT A MORSEL OF BREAD.—Great was this abjection, vileness and beggary of the descendants of Heli.
Allegorically, the morsel of bread signifies the sacrifice of the Eucharist, which is made of bread. So St. Gregory, Eucherius, Theodoret, Procopius. Hear St. Augustine, book 17 On the City of God, chapter 5: “That therefore he added, to eat bread, he also elegantly expressed that kind of sacrifice, of which the priest himself says: The bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world: this is the sacrifice not according to the order of Melchisedech; let him that readeth understand.”