Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
AND TAKE AWAY THE BLIND AND THE LAME THAT HATE THE SOUL OF DAVID.—Hence it is clear that true blind and lame, Jebusite soldiers, were placed on the walls of Sion, whom David by Joab took away, and, as the Roman Septuagint says, slew with the dagger. Marcion objected that Christ was not the son of David, or at least degenerate from him, because David had killed the blind and lame whom Christ healed. Tertullian answers, book IV Against Marcion, chap. 36, that David slew the blind and lame Jebusites “that hated the soul of David;” but the blind and lame cured by Christ did not hate but loved Christ, and sought sight from him. Wherefore those blind and lame Jebusites resisting David represented, says Angelomus, the Scribes and Pharisees, who were spiritually blind, because they did not acknowledge Christ, and lame, because they were slow and unfit for good works, whom therefore Christ rebuked and punished with eternal death, of whom he himself says: “They are blind, and leaders of the blind,” Matthew chap. 15, verse 14, and chap. 23, verse 13: “Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you yourselves do not enter in, and those that are going in you suffer not to enter.”
Mystically, therefore, the blind and lame are unbelievers, heretics, and believers living badly, who by their deeds deny what they profess to believe, and who halt in the way of God, now striving to serve and please God, now the world. These do not enter the heavenly temple. Wherefore St. Paul, Hebrews chap. 12, verse 12: “Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight steps with your feet: that no one, halting, may go out of the way; but rather be healed.” Let us therefore pray with the Psalmist to God, “that our steps be not weakened,” Psalm 17:37 [Vulgate]; “and that he set our feet like the feet of harts,” in the same place, verse 34; “that we may run the way of God’s commandments,” Psalm 118:32. Wisely St. Ambrose, sermon 68: “Peter, he says, is the rock upon which the Church is built, and therefore as in the Church he holds the foundation of faith, so in man he confirms the foundations, as he restored the lame man’s step, Acts 3:7; and that a Christian, no longer fearful and feeble, may walk upon the rock of the Church, robust and strong.”
THEREFORE IT IS SAID IN THE PROVERB: THE BLIND AND THE LAME SHALL NOT COME INTO THE TEMPLE.—In Hebrew, into the house; which Salianus and others take of the house or palace of David; Vatablus of the citadel of Sion, as if to say: Because the blind and lame Jebusites resisted David in the citadel of Sion and mocked him, therefore David enacted, and set this penalty on them, that none of them thereafter should enter the citadel of Sion and his house situated in the citadel. But our version and the Septuagint understand the house of God, that is, the temple. Now blind and lame Hebrews could enter the old temple; for Christ healed them in it, Matthew chap. 21, verse 14. David therefore barred and forbade from entering the temple not Hebrews but the blind and lame Jebusites, who mocked him, as if to say: You blind and lame Jebusites have proudly insulted David, saying that he could not occupy the citadel of Sion: therefore, now that he has occupied it, he turns this taunt back upon you as a fitting punishment, and ordains that none of you shall enter the citadel of Sion, and much less the tabernacle or temple built on mount Sion; wherefore your taunt passed into a proverb, so that when men see a man deservedly paying the penalty for his foolish boasting, and that boast turned back on the head of the boaster, they say: “The blind and the lame shall not come into the temple,” as if to say: This boaster lost his gift, which he proudly displayed, and was stripped of it as the penalty of his boasting. Yet the same is said literally of the priests, who, if they were blind or lame, were barred from the ministry of the temple, Leviticus chap. 21, verse 18. Others think this proverb is said of an impossible thing, so that when anyone attempts something impossible it is said to him: “The blind and the lame shall not come into the temple,” as if to say: Thou attemptest an impossible thing and strivest to make it possible, but in vain. This was the first act of David’s reign over all Israel, namely the occupation of Sion, and the transfer of the royal throne from Hebron to Sion and Jerusalem. For God wished to establish in it the head of the kingdom and of the synagogue, because Christ, David’s antitype, was to preach in it and to erect the Church, and there to begin his spiritual kingdom, according to that of Isaias chap. 2, verse 3: “Out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” For the Church is Sion, that is, a watch-tower, because by faith it beholds God on earth, and by vision will behold him in heaven. And chap. 62, verse 1: “For Sion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, till her just one come forth as brightness, and her saviour be lighted as a lamp.”
Of Mello and the site and structure of all Jerusalem, see Adrichomius, Arias and Villalpandus, book of whose building Joab was the author, 1 Paralipomenon 11.
Moreover the Chaldee, Canticle chap. 7, verse 4, renders: He built the citadel of Sion, which is called Migdala of Libanus, that is, the tower of Libanus, because everyone who stands in it can count all the towers that are in Damascus. Better the same, chap. 4, verse 15, says that Jerusalem itself is called Libanus.
MELLO.—In Hebrew it is the same as fulness; hence the Hebrews by “Mello” understand the place of assemblies, because there the people were gathered to deliberate about matters to be done. Others understand the rampart which surrounded the citadel. Others think it was a ditch around the citadel, which was called Mello because it was filled with water. Others suppose that “Mello” was the summit or top of mount Sion. But I say with Josephus, Villalpandus, Salianus, Sanchez, Richard, Adrichomius and other geographers: “Mello” was a chasm and a deep and very wide valley, which separated mount Sion from the lower city, and extended from the water gate, towards the west, to the fish gate. David built and fortified mount Sion round about from this chasm. Solomon levelled its hollow, so that it might be a convenient square (whence it is also called the square of the water gate), and adorned it with buildings; which, when fallen, were restored by Ezechias. Here Joas king of Juda was slain by his servants in the descent of Sela; but in the age of Josephus this valley was called Tyropoeon, in which, as he writes, houses very thickly ended, and it was very broad and very populous with dwellings of men; but now the chasm itself is entirely filled up, though the traces of the former hollow remain, and hence it was called Mello, that is, fulness, because it was filled with rubbish, stones and houses. For this book was written after the building of Sion and the temple, when “Mello” was already “Mello,” that is, full.
13. AND CONCUBINES.—Concubines were not harlots and mistresses, but secondary wives, as being of lower lot and station, as I have already often warned. Wherefore the sons of these are not numbered, 1 Paralipomenon. One Elisama is counted among the sons of David, because David had two sons to whom he gave the same name Elisama, or because, the former having died, he gave the same name to the latter, says Vatablus.
17. AND THE PHILISTINES HEARING THAT THEY HAD ANOINTED DAVID KING OVER ISRAEL, ALL WENT UP TO SEEK DAVID—to crush him, still weak and as it were unarmed at the beginning of his reign, as they had been crushed by him when Goliath was slain, 1 Kings 17 and following. Hence David, seeing himself beset by enemies, fled to God, and composed Psalm 2: “Why have the Gentiles raged,” &c., where he describes literally the conspiracy of the Philistines against himself, allegorically the conspiracy of the Jews and Gentiles against Christ and the Apostles, and his own and Christ’s victory over them.