Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Add a third cause, that God might chastise the impiety of the sons of Heli, who abused the ark and the altar for their rapines and crimes.
So God permitted the Holy Land to be taken by the Chaldeans, and afterwards by the Romans, and finally by the Turks, to show that He had “not chosen the people for the place’s sake, but the place for the people’s sake,” 2 Machabees chapter 5, verse 19. So Theodoret, Question 1 on Daniel.
Tropologically, the ark taken by foreigners indicated that the testament of God would pass to the Gentiles, says This calamity of Israel, the death of Heli and the capture of the ark happened in the year of the world 2850, and in the 397th year from the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. This is plain from the fact that from this exodus to the building of the temple, which happened in the fourth year of Solomon, there flowed 480 years, as is said in 3 Kings chapter 6, verse 4. Now this year 480 of the founded temple falls in the year of the world 2933; thence go up and take away the three years of the reign of Sa[lomon] ... you will find that Heli, who immediately preceded and judged the people before Samuel, died in the year of the world 2850, that is, 83 years before the temple was founded, when Heli died at the age of 98, as will be said verse 13. Hence it follows that he was born in the year of the world 2752, 299 years from the exodus from Egypt, 181 before the temple; and since he himself judged Israel 40 years, it follows that he entered on this principate in the year of the world 2810, 357 from the exodus from Egypt, 123 before the temple, when he was in his 58th year. This according to the chronology which I prefixed to the Pentateuch.
Note: the Hebrews were more punished after the ark was brought into the camp than before it was brought; for before, only four thousand were slain, but after it was brought, thirty thousand; because, namely, on account of the crime of violation of the ark and temple by priests and people, they were more sharply punished by the angry God, now present in the ark: especially because they did not correct this crime and many others by serious penance. Allegorically, it was signified that more Jews would be damned by God after Christ than before Christ, because they themselves despised Christ and killed Him, and their descendants, defending their parents’ Christ-killing, refuse to believe in Christ. So Bede. So those who sin before Him in the temple are more sharply punished by God than those who sin outside; for sacred things do not protect sacrilegious men, but avenge and chastise them.
18. AND WHEN HE HAD NAMED THE ARK OF GOD, HE FELL FROM HIS STOOL BACKWARD BY THE DOOR (of the temple, says Tertullian, book On Fasts, chapter 10, and St. Chrysostom, book 3 Against the Reviler of the Monastic Life, or of the city of Silo; for judges, such as Heli was, sat in the gates, especially as he was eagerly waiting to learn from those approaching the city gate the outcome of the battle), AND BROKE HIS NECK AND DIED.—Hence Abulensis, Cajetan and others note that Heli was a pious man, as one whom neither care for his sons nor for the people so touched as the ark and the religion of sacred things. He fell backward, therefore, because, plainly stricken with consternation, and by anguish, fear and stupor, his spirit failing, he could no longer keep himself on the high seat. Backward, moreover, because this chair was bare, lacking the supports with which our seats prop the back of the sitter. So Abulensis. Heli warns us, therefore, says Dionysius, how much we ought to grieve at the capture by enemies of the Holy Land, and of so many Churches and souls.
Hear Blessed Peter Damian, book 1, epistle 6 to Pope Nicholas, striking Prelates: “If Heli, for only two sons, whom he did not rebuke with the invective they deserved, perished with them and with so great a multitude of men; what sentence do we think those worthy of who preside in the Ecclesiastical court and on the seats of the judges, and are silent about the not unknown crimes of wicked men? Who, while they fear to dishonour men in public, to the contempt of the supreme Judge confound the commands of the divine law; and while they keep for the lost men the office of not losing honour, cruelly dishonour the very author of Ecclesiastical dignity.”
You will ask, whether Heli is damned? St. Gregory affirms it, here and Pastoral Rule 2, chapter 6: “Because, overcome by false piety, he would not strike his offending sons, he struck himself with his sons, before the strict judge, with cruel damnation; hence by the divine voice it is said to him: Thou hast honoured thy sons more than me.”
And Eucherius: “The priest Heli,” he says, “was condemned for the iniquity of his sons, because he punished them when sinning with too little severe a penalty. He restrained, indeed, he rebuked, indeed, but with the gentleness and mildness of a father, not with the severity and authority of a Pontiff. By this sentence let priests learn how they are punished even for the crimes of their sons and subjects; and though they be holy, the fault of their subjects is nevertheless imputed to them, if they do not restrain them.”
So also Bede. The same seems to be the opinion of St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian, St. Chrysostom, homily 59 on Genesis, and oftener elsewhere, and St. Caesarius of Arles, homily 15, Blessed Peter Damian, volume 3, epistle 16, chapter 17. Nay St. Augustine, in the book On the City of God, chapter 4, says that Heli was reprobated in the same way as Saul.
The contrary is judged by Theodoret, Lyranus, Dionysius, Abulensis, Cajetan, Serarius, Sanchez, Mendoza. And this is proved first, because Heli was an upright and pious man, and therefore the Pontificate was transferred to him as well as the principate; again, expiring on hearing of the ark, he showed the greatest grief, and thereby the greatest zeal of religion. Secondly, because although he sinned by too much gentleness and indulgence toward his sons, yet in part it excuses him that, from old age, he could not so severely correct them, especially as they were now men, and despised the commands and sayings of their aged father. Thirdly, because, granting that he sinned mortally, yet he seems to have repented, and humbly accepted the hard penance enjoined by God, when he said, chapter 3, verse 18: “It is the Lord: let him do what is good in his sight.”
What more could a penitent say? Fourthly, because God therefore punished him so hardly in this life, that He might spare him in the future; for therefore he died last, that by hearing of so many deaths of his own he might die many times. “For God does not punish twice for the same thing,” as Sophonias says. Moreover in what sense it is said chapter 3: “His iniquity shall not be expiated for ever,” I have explained there. Finally Heli seems to have paid for and expiated all remaining fault in Purgatory, says Dionysius and from him Mendoza. Moreover many of the Fathers already cited, asserting that Heli is damned, can be expounded of a condemnation to temporal death, and other punishments inflicted on him, that is, on his descendants.
AND HE JUDGED ISRAEL FORTY YEARS.—So the Hebrew, Chaldee, Josephus, Theodoret; wrongly therefore the Septuagint have twenty for forty. Moreover St. Chrysostom, book 3 On Providence, before the middle: “Samuel,” he says, “when he beheld his master carried off to a miserable death, was so confused and troubled as became a grateful and loving disciple.”
SHE BOWED HERSELF AND BROUGHT FORTH,—because anguish and grief hastened her delivery, and so she bore a seven-month child, says Josephus, whereas pregnant women commonly bore in the ninth or tenth month from conception. Moreover that seven-month births are viable Galen teaches, in the Isagoge book on medical definitions, and others whom Pineda cites and follows, book 1 On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 10. Nay Philo, or rather Pseudo-Philo in the Biblical Antiquities, says Isaac was born in the seventh month, and therefore lived long; but this seems fictitious. Finally that this mother soon after actually expired, Josephus, St. Gregory, Eucherius, Angelomus, Dionysius and others commonly teach.
21. AND SHE CALLED THE CHILD ICHABOD, SAYING: THE GLORY IS DEPARTED (Hebrew gala, that is, migrated, passed over from Israel to the Philistines) FROM ISRAEL.—Ichabod in Hebrew is said as if ei-chabod, that is, where is the glory? namely vanished. Josephus renders adoxia, that is inglorious, ignobility, vileness, as if he said: Let this boy be called in Hebrew Ichabod, in Greek adoxos, in Latin inglorius; because at his birth the glory of Israel set, as if he said:
We were Trojans, Ilium was, and the great glory of the Teucrians, etc. Now only ashes, and a harbourage treacherous to ships.
For although Ichabod seemed destined to succeed his father Phinees and grandfather Heli in the Pontificate, yet the ark being now taken and carried to Philistia, all his glory, as of all Israel, fell and collapsed.
Note: Heli dying was succeeded by Samuel in the principate, in the Pontificate not Phinees or Ophni, being already slain, nor Ichabod, being an infant; but the mother called her son Ichabod, both on her own account and for her father-in-law and husband, whose right it was to impose the name on the son. Or taking for as a preposition, saying, as if she said: For, that is, on account of her slain husband and her dead father-in-law, she said: “The glory is departed from Israel”; because the princes and pontiffs of Israel, namely Heli and Phinees, perished with the ark taken. So the Chaldee and Vatablus.
Achitob, grandson of Heli by his son, as is plain chapter 14, verse 3. So Mendoza.
AND FOR HER FATHER-IN-LAW AND HER HUSBAND.—First, for, that is, of, as if she said: The glory of the kingdom is departed from Israel, and the glory of the Pontificate from her father-in-law Heli and her husband Phinees.