Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Like calamities have often been inflicted by mice. Whence “M. Varro,” says Pliny, book 8, chapter 29, “is the authority that a town in Spain was undermined by rabbits, one in Thessaly by moles, a city in Gaul driven out by frogs, one in Africa by locusts, and that from Gyarus, an island of the Cyclades, the inhabitants were put to flight by mice.” The same, book 10, chapter 68, says that mice drove out the dwellers from the Troad, and adds the reason that the mouse is most prolific, so that from one were born 120. So Popiel, prince of the Poles, was eaten by mice, because he had killed his uncles with poison, for from their corpses mice were born and gnawed him with his wife and sons, as Martin Cromer relates, book 2 of Polish Affairs.
Trithemius writes in the Chronicle of Hirsau, at the year 967, and Genebrard, in the year of the Lord 970, that the same happened to Hatto, Archbishop of Mainz; but Serarius refutes it in his Mainz.
8. ALL THE LORDS (SATRAPS),—that is, governors and princes: “Satraps,” says St. Thomas, book 3 On the Rule of Princes, chapter 21, “are so called as if sat parati, sufficiently prepared for their office and for war,” or as if “sat rapientes,” that is, plundering their subjects: this allusion is ingenious and a play of wit. For it is certain that “satraps” is a Persian name, Esther 3, 12; Daniel 3, 3. Hence also Herodotus, book 3, says that Darius king of the Persians divided Babylon into twenty-eight satrapies or governorships.
LET THE ARK BE CARRIED ABOUT.—This counsel the Gethites give, because they thought that this calamity had befallen the Azotians not from the ark, but from the nature of the place, for example from infected and pestilential air, or a malign influence of the stars, says Theodoret and Procopius; whence in the next chapter, after the plagues of the carried-about ark, they still test by lot of cows whether these plagues came to them from the ark or by chance. Hence the Septuagint render, let the ark pass over to us, as if to say: We do not fear the ark or the vengeance of the ark; let it come then to us.
Wicked and faithless was this counsel of the Gethites, which therefore God turned back upon them and their slaughter. So the Jews killed Christ, to blot out His name and escape His reproofs; but by this they the more increased His name, and incurred the final destruction by Titus. Excellently Nazianzen, oration 4 On his Flight, near the end: “God alone,” he says, “of all things is He who can neither be escaped by flight nor overcome, when He wills to seize anyone and bring him under His hand and power: the swift He outstrips, the prudent He deceives, the strong He overthrows, the lofty He brings low, the bold He subdues, power He crushes.”
9. THE HAND OF THE LORD,—that is, the plague and stroke of God; verse 6; for this among men is done by hand: but the hand of God is His immense power.
AND THEIR SECRET PARTS ROTTED,—that is, the entrails or bowels and viscera flowed away putrid through the anus, as happened to Arius the heresiarch.
were hidden to them, ophelim, that is, hidden diseases of the anus, as if to say: They were smitten with these hidden and shameful diseases. The Septuagint, they were smitten in the buttocks; the Chaldee, in the constrictions. David looked to this, singing, Psalm 77, 66: “He smote his enemies on the hinder parts: he put them to an everlasting reproach.”
Moreover Abulensis, Question 15, says that some judge that not only the Philistines were smitten in the more secret part of the buttocks, but also the more recent Hebrews, who suffer frequent flux of blood or hemorrhoids as a punishment of that sacrilege by which they demanded the death of Christ the Lord, crying out: “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” And in this sense they interpret that: “He smote his enemies on the hinder parts,” Psalm 77, 66, but he prudently judges that they err, since they are supported by no testimony of Scripture.
AND THEY MADE THEMSELVES SEATS OF SKINS.—The Royal Bibles, likewise the Hebrew and Chaldee, St. Gregory, Lyranus and others omit this (see Francis Lucas in his notes here); but the corrected Septuagint have it, except that they omit of skins; but this disease required soft seats: such are those of skin. Whence Theodoret also seems to have read it so. For he says that they made themselves seats chrysas, that is, golden; but for the Greek word for golden it seems we should read the word for of skin. For why golden in this place, unless to increase the evil and the pain? Moreover Lyranus, Dionysius, Cajetan, Mendoza and others take seats here properly so called; for these, they say, they made of skin, that they might sit more softly. But our Sanchez by seats aptly understands, by metonymy, garments, to foment those ill-affected parts, and to hold in the flowing viscera and the plasters laid on them. For the Palestinians did not use breeches. Seats, therefore, he says, is taken for garments, that is, the coverings of the buttocks, as foot is taken for shoe, and body for the garment of the body. So too Abulensis, who adds a third cause, lest mice should attack and gnaw those parts. To this contributes that the Septuagint and Aquila in this verse render: He smote them in their seats; in seats, that is, in the buttocks on which one sits: for in like manner here the coverings of the buttocks can be called seats.
Moreover fitting was this punishment of the Philistines’ fault; for since they had restored their Dagon, cast down by the ark from his throne and seat, to it, they were justly punished by disease in that member on which they were accustomed to sit, so that they could not sit except on seats of skin, because they had denied to the true God the throne of divinity and assigned it to their Dagon. So Theodoret: “They suffered,” he says, “a disease of the seat, who impiously placed the divine ark beside one falsely called god.” So also Procopius. Like this is what he says of a certain Arian: the inhabitants of Azotus, who dared to touch the ark, which it was unlawful for them even to behold with their eyes, perished tormented by the torments of the seat; so a certain Arian youth who dared to tear away the wooden chair of the Alexandrian temple (from which St. Athanasius taught), a fragment of wood rebounding thence into his belly pierced his intestines, and with the same force with which he tried to break the throne, his belly burst and poured out his intestines, and sooner than he could carry off the throne, the throne took away his life. Another reason is given by the Author of the Marvels of Holy Scripture, book 2, chapter 7: “That they who drew the interior things of the tabernacle of the Lord, that is, the ark, beyond their bounds, should be afflicted with the foul calamity of their own interior parts protruding outwards.”
With a like pain of the viscera Antiochus was punished for the plundered vessels of the temple, 2 Machabees chapter 9.
A third cause is given by Rupert and the Gloss, namely that the Philistines were pederasts and men who lay with males, and therefore were punished in that member in which they had sinned. Isaias hints the same, chapter 2, verse 6, saying: “They have soothsayers as the Philistines, and have adhered to strange children.”
Symbolically Mendoza: “In the hinder parts,” he says, “the Philistines are smitten, to signify that they are to be smitten in all their posterity, that is, not only in this life, but also in the future; nor only in their bodies, but also in their sons and grandsons.” So Peter of Blois, epistle 48, comparing wicked Prelates and Princes with the Philistines: “Are not these smitten on the hinder parts, whose end is destruction, whose posterity is condemned, so that their successor in the Church of God shall not rise again henceforth,” according to Psalm 77, 66: “He put them to an everlasting reproach.” To this contributes Amos 1, 8: “And I will turn my hand against Accaron, and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish.”
In like manner God punished the mockers of St. Thomas of Canterbury, who, having cut off the tail of the horse on which he rode, jeered at him; but God repaid them with a tail. For they were all made tailed in the hinder parts, and not only they, but all their descendants to this day, as Polydore Virgil relates, book 13 of the History of England.
12. THE HAND OF GOD EXCEEDING HEAVY.—“Hand,” that is, vengeance, smiting, slaying. Philo, in the Biblical Antiquities, assigns the number of the slain thus distinctly: “Of women with child, seventy-five thousand. Of children still infants and sucklings, sixty-five thousand. Of women nursing and suckling, fifty-five thousand. Of men now adult, twenty-five thousand. Of all gathered together, two hundred and twenty thousand.” But this is not Philo, but Pseudo-Philo.