Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Morally, hence let us learn to bear calmly any adversities and afflictions sent or permitted by God for our good, and to submit our back humbly to God who scourges. So did David fleeing Absalom and Saul: “Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgment is right,” Psalm 118, verse 137. Where Ambrose cites a similar example of Jeremias, who, when he was sinking in a pit of foul mire to be destroyed, cried: “Thou art just, O Lord,” although these words are not found in Jeremias, chapters 38 and 45. The same, however, in Lamentations 1, 18: “The Lord is just, for I have provoked his mouth to wrath.” So the three children in the Babylonian furnace sang with humble exultation: “Thou art just, O Lord, in all that thou hast done to us,” Daniel 3, 27, and therefore were preserved unhurt in the fire by the Angel. The same did Daniel in the lions’ den, chapter 6, 16, and chapter 14, 30. And Jonas in the belly of the whale, chapter 2, 10: “I,” he says, “with the voice of praise will sacrifice to thee.” And Job chapter 1, verse 21:
“The Lord,” he says, “gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord.” So the Emperor Maurice, who had vexed St. Gregory, when he was punished by God with the death both of himself and of his wife and all his children, whom he saw in his own presence slaughtered by Phocas, his rival and successor in the empire, cried out in penitence: “Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgment is right,” as his Acts have it, and from them Baronius.
The cause is given by St. Ambrose in the place cited: “because when we lose our things, we give them back to God, we do not lose them: the Lord is therefore just in dangers, just in losses, just in vengeances, not only because everyone justly pays the penalty of his faults, but also because while one is punished, very many are corrected.”
And Tertullian, book On Flight in Persecution, chapter 10: “Wherever I shall be,” he says, “I am in His hand: let Him do what He wills, I do not depart, and if He will lose me, let Him Himself destroy me, while I keep myself for Him.”
19. AND SAMUEL GREW.—The Septuagint, was magnified, both in age and rather in wisdom, virtue, fame and glory with God and men. For as St. Gregory says: “He grows who advances to the perfect man in maturity of mind.” Then he adds: “There are some who, while they grow in virtues, fall by elation. These seem indeed to grow; but nevertheless the Lord is not with them: because by thinking high things of themselves they cast out of themselves Him whom, set in the progress of virtues, they could have had with them by humility.” Presently, inveighing against those who grow vain from dignity: “Very many,” he says, “are Religious in a humbler rank; but when they suddenly come to the summit of sanctity, they leave their first works with humility. Samuel, then, advanced, and advancing had the Lord with him. That he might doubtless set forth the manner of the chosen preachers, who, while they obtain gifts and dignities by which they may profit others, do not neglect to please God within.”
AND NOT ONE OF HIS WORDS FELL TO THE GROUND.—First, as if He said: Nothing said by Samuel was in vain, but all that he said and foretold was in fact fulfilled. It is a metaphor from the falling and ruin of houses, or of precious liquid things, in which much runs out, is scattered, broken, lost, so that it cannot be gathered. So Eucherius, Abulensis, Lyranus, Dionysius, Cajetan, Vatablus and others.
Secondly, as if He said: The speech of Samuel was not contemptible, but with all in great honour and price; for what we despise we cast to the ground. “To the ground,” says St. Gregory, “the word of the preacher falls when it grows cheap through his reprobate conversation.”
Symbolically, Hugh, as if he said: he spoke of earth, earthly things; but of heaven, heavenly; because he himself was heavenly, and as an angel among men. Whence St. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, chapter 2: “But do thou, O son, by speaking divine things be made divine.” For as St. Bernard says, On the Inner House, chapter 41: “A vain speech is the index of a vain conscience”: for as he is a Spaniard who speaks Spanish; a German who speaks German; a Pole who speaks Polish; so he is heavenly who utters heavenly things; earthly who utters earthly things. For, as Christ says, Matthew 12: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”
20. AND ALL ISRAEL FROM DAN TO BERSABEE KNEW,—that is, through the whole of Judea; for its limit and boundary to the North is Dan or Caesarea Philippi, to the South the limit is Bersabee. “Knew,” I say, that Samuel was “faithful,” that is, a truthful prophet, “not in the ambition of vanity, but judging in the spirit of God and in the truth of the word of the Lord,” says Rupert; for he looked not to the applause of men, nor feared their threats, because, grounded in God alone, he strove to please Him alone. Wherefore what he taught with his mouth he showed in deed. For, as St. Gregory says, homily 14 on Ezechiel: “He to whom the care of others is committed is called a watchman, that he may sit in the height of his mind, and draw the name of his title from the virtue of his action. For he is not a watchman who is in the depth: a watchman must stand on high through his life, that he may be able to profit through foresight.” “For nothing,” says St. Chrysostom, homily 1 on the Acts, “is colder than a Teacher who philosophizes only in words. For this is not the part of a Teacher, but of a stage-player and hypocrite; and therefore the Apostles taught first by the examples of their life rather than by words. Nay, there was no need even of words, when their works cried out.”
21. AND THE LORD CONTINUED TO APPEAR IN SILO (the Septuagint add: to him, namely Samuel, as if He said: God appeared again to Samuel in Silo), FOR HE REVEALED HIMSELF TO SAMUEL IN SILO,—as if He said: Because the Lord had begun to appear to Samuel in Silo, hence He continued to appear to him there on account of the holiness both of Samuel and of the covenant ark which was in Silo. For God is constant, and therefore constantly promotes and pursues what He has begun: wherefore the bestowing of one benefit by God is the reason and spur for bestowing another. It is otherwise with men, who, being narrow of mind, when they have given one benefit, refuse another. What God said here to Samuel Scripture is silent; it is likely that He repeated and confirmed the former oracle of the punishment of Heli, and of the slaughter of Israel, and added the salvation to be offered to the same through Samuel, after the death of Heli; for God is wont to join joyful things to sad, and this last properly touched Samuel.
Tropologically Philo, in the book On the Migration of Abraham: “The fountain,” he says, “whence goods flow is familiarity with a kind God; therefore, as if sealing His benefits, He says: I will be with thee. What good, then, can be lacking, God Almighty being present? Then all advantages come in heaps.”
“When,” he says, “we have God as friend and well-wisher, even if we be in the desert, we shall live much more securely than those who dwell in cities, the divine grace supplying us with all things.”
The same Chrysostom, homily 26 on the epistle to the Hebrews: “If,” he says, “we always see God with the mind, if we always turn our mind to the remembrance of Him, all things will seem easy to us, all bearable; we shall endure all things, we shall be made superior to all.” And a little after, confirming the same from the lesser: “If anyone,” he says, “remembering a friend raises his soul, delighting in the memory of him, who has in mind Him who has truly deigned to love us, when shall he be able to feel any sadness, or fear anything terrible or dangerous?”