Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Finally I have a great suspicion that our version, for the Hebrew bashash, that is, stank, was putrid, read bahash [sic] (for the letters on either side are alike), that is, was angry, was inflamed, despised, abominated: for so the Chaldee seems to have read, for it renders, and Israel was aroused against the Philistines. And the Septuagint: Israel despised, they say, the Philistines. For the Israelites were angry and inflamed that they had so long endured the yoke and tyranny of the Philistines, when they saw them so easily cut down by Jonathas. Wherefore, roused by this anger, they raised their courage, and flew together to battle against them. For anger is the whetstone of fortitude. Whence soldiers about to fight whet their anger against the enemy, that they may contend generously against him and lay him low.
AND THE PEOPLE WAS CALLED TOGETHER AFTER SAUL TO GALGAL,—saying: Let us follow Saul our king to battle against the Philistines, let us with common minds and strength pursue with him the victory begun by him over them, let us eliminate the Philistines from the land of Israel. So the soldiers of Gedeon cried in the battle against the Madianites: “The sword of the Lord and of Gedeon,” Judges 7:20. Furthermore this was done in Galgal, because Galgal was a religious place, on account of the circumcision performed there by Josue, chap. 5, that piously and religiously, the help of God being invoked in the same place, they might go bravely to battle.
Morally, learn here that of Job chap. 7, verse 1: “The life of man upon earth is a warfare,” which is often true of bodily warfare, always of spiritual. For the Hebrews, Naas being conquered, were at once harassed by the Philistines, and waged war with them the more fiercely. Whence St. Gregory: “As often as we conquer other enemies,” he says, “it is necessary that we be prepared for the conquering in other contests. For almighty God, because he rewards his elect more abundantly, wills them to be always in the fight, that they themselves may always prepare for themselves the gifts of the eternal reward.” And below: “God,” he says, “permits great battles, which they may conquer; he stirs up light ones, in which they may fall: that the victory of the strong may be great, the fall harmless; that the fallen may easily raise themselves; and that the great things in which they have stood as victors may not lift them up.”
5. AND THE PHILISTINES ASSEMBLED, THIRTY THOUSAND CHARIOTS.—For of old the Syrians, Arabs and Asiatics fought from chariots. Mystically Bede: “As the ardor of doing virtue grows in the good,” he says, “so grows in unclean spirits the ardor of hindering and breaking the same virtue; who, seeing the friends of the faithful raised up against them, strive to storm these hills with the forces of ambushes and various deceptions.”
6. THEY HID THEMSELVES IN CAVES,—of which Judea abounds, as Josephus testifies, book 1 On the War, chap. 12. Whence David also, fleeing Saul, hid himself in a cave, 1 Kings 24, and Josue 10 slew five kings hiding in a cave.
IN SECRET PLACES.—In Hebrew and Chaldee, in strongholds; Vatablus, among thorn-thickets; Cajetan, in the clefts of mountains. Abulensis explains that these secret places are the hidden places both of cities and of houses. Such at Rome are the crypts and cemeteries of St. Priscilla, St. Sebastian, St. Laurence, St. Pancras, etc., in which in times of persecution Christians hid themselves, which I, entering more than once, saw an underground city, an underground Rome, saw and was astonished. Mystically Dionysius the Carthusian: “So,” he says, “some Christians, perceiving themselves tempted on every side by the devil, the world and the flesh, hide themselves wholesomely in the hole of the rock, in the ditch of the ground, that is, in the wounds of Christ, and in the memory of the Lord’s passion; and conceal themselves in the depth of their own humility, and make so little of themselves and reckon themselves as nothing that they cannot be touched by demons.” And Bede: “When the faithful have seen,” he says, “the snares of the ancient enemy, etc., it is necessary at once that they have recourse to the defenses of spiritual readings, fasts, almsgivings, prayers and the other virtues, by which they may be defended, and be hidden in them from the contradiction of tongues; that the Father, who seeth in secret, may have mercy and help.”
7. AND THE HEBREWS WENT OVER THE JORDAN.—There is a paronomasia in the Hebrew: ibrim, that is, Hebrews, and aberu, they have passed over; for ibri, that is, Hebrew, is derived from abar, that is, passed over, because Abraham, coming from Chaldea into Palestine, passed over the Euphrates, as I said Genesis 14:13, where Abraham is called a Hebrew, that is, a passer of the Euphrates, and thence his descendants were called Hebrews. As at Rome all Germans, Gauls, Spaniards, etc. are called Transmontane, or Transalpine.
Abulensis probably thinks that these Hebrews who crossed the Jordan were the Rubenites, Gadites and Manassites, who dwelt beyond the Jordan, as if to say: These, hearing of the coming of the Philistines from Galgal, crossed the Jordan and returned home, as if safe by their Jordan, and separated from Palestine.
The Author of the Quaestiones in St. Jerome adds, and St. Gregory, Rabanus, Hugo Victorinus and others, that they deserted to the Philistines; for this seems to be intimated, chap. 14, verse 21, although Lyranus, Abulensis and Dionysius deny it.
8. AND HE WAITED SEVEN DAYS ACCORDING TO THE APPOINTMENT (that is, the ordinance and decree) OF SAMUEL.—Samuel had commanded Saul, chap. 10, that, when an enemy or danger pressed, he should go to Galgal, and there, a messenger being sent to him, await his coming for seven whole days; that, God being invoked, he might hear from him what was to be done. Saul obeyed, and sent a messenger to Samuel, and awaited his coming for seven days; but the seventh day being begun, and not yet completed, seeing the people dissolving for fear of the Philistines, Samuel not being awaited further, he offered sacrifice, that, God being propitiated, he might learn from him what was needed to be done, and receive from him strength for fighting. And in this matter Saul sinned, namely that he did not wait for the end of the seventh day, which Samuel had commanded Saul. For before its end Samuel arrived, who, seeing that Saul had sacrificed, sharply rebuked him for disobedience. So St. Gregory, Lyranus, Abulensis, Cajetan, Serarius. Hear St. Gregory: “Therefore he fell through disobedience, because he did not wait the whole seven days as he had been commanded.” And afterwards: “Behold, seven days he waited for the prophet, but while he ceased to wait for him at the end of the day, he lost the glory of so great a dignity.”
Less rightly, therefore, do some excuse Saul by saying that he waited for Samuel the whole seven days, but that he did not rightly compute them; for he computed them from the day on which he sent the messenger to summon Samuel; whereas he ought to have computed them from the next day.
9. AND HE OFFERED A HOLOCAUST.—Some think grace; and since before him he had been Judge of the people, and by his prayers and merits had obtained many goods from God for the people; but this time too he hoped to be helped through Samuel.
11. AND THOU DIDST NOT COME ACCORDING TO THE DAYS APPOINTED.—To the appointed days, on which, namely, thou hadst promised and appointed that thou wouldst come, or to the appointed day which it pleased thee to appoint. Hence some think that Saul waited for Samuel seven whole days, but computed them wrongly, as I said at verse 8. Better others say that this excuse is put forward by him, that he waited until the seventh day begun, but not completed.
As if to say: I waited for thee until the seventh day, and seeing that thou didst not come according to thy promises, I thought that thou wouldst not come; and therefore, the enemy pressing and the army dissolving, I offered the holocaust that I might make God propitious to me.
Saul increased his sin in that he did not acknowledge his fault and ask pardon, but excused it, and as it were turned it back on Samuel himself. St. Gregory gives the cause: “Because,” he says, “from the root of pride, the very that Saul sacrificed by himself, and therefore was deprived of the kingdom. He sinned gravely, therefore, in that, being a layman, he presumed to usurp the priestly function; as Ozias the king did by offering incense, and was therefore smitten by God with leprosy, 2 Paral. 26:16. So Rupert, Lyranus, Dionysius, and Josephus favors it. R. Levi adds that Saul offered these sacrifices to obtain from God the spirit of prophecy, so that thenceforth he might be ruled without Samuel. Whence also he is called by Tertullian, book 2 Against Marcion chap. 22, “the despiser of Samuel the prophet.”
But Scripture indicates nothing of the kind, for otherwise Samuel would have most sharply reproached him with this; and Saul had priests in the camp, by whom he could offer sacrifices: why then would he claim it for himself, knowing that it was forbidden by God? So Abulensis, Serarius, Sanchez and others.