Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
Mystically (which is new and wonderful), most of the Fathers mystically explain the adultery of David of Christ espousing to himself the Gentiles; most of the Fathers interpret David’s adultery of Christ espousing to himself the Church of the Gentiles. Hence St. Ambrose: “... figure, sin in the history; the fault through man, the Sacrament through the Word.” As if the whole mystery were in this, that the Word joined an alien nature to his own hypostasis, as David joined another’s wife to his bed: and then the same bore the type of Christ the Lord taking to himself from the Gentiles the Church as his bride. So also St. Augustine, book XXII Against Faustus, chap. 86: “This David, he says, sinned gravely and wickedly; yet he who was the desired of all nations loved the Church washing herself on the housetop, that is, cleansing herself from the filth of the world, and rising above and treading underfoot the house of clay by spiritual contemplation.” As if he said: Although David, in taking to himself another’s wife, sinned gravely, yet he signified Christ the Lord espousing to himself the Church in place of the Synagogue. St. Augustine, and from him Bede, adds that David slew Urias, that is, Christ slew the devil, and wrested his bride from him, namely the Church of the Gentiles. Third, St. Gregory, book III of the Morals, chap. 21: “David, he says, is Christ, Bethsabee is the old law, which Christ took from Urias, that is, from the Jews, and joined to himself, because he declared that it was preached through himself.” The same Eucherius, Angelomus, Rupert and others transcribed from St. Gregory; and St. Ambrose has similar things in the Apology of David, chap. 3. St. Gregory goes on: “Urias is sent to Joab with letters by which he is to be put to death; because the Jewish people itself carries the law by which, convicting, it dies. For while holding the commandments of the law it refuses to fulfil them, it itself bears the judgment by which it is condemned.” Hence he concludes: “What can be said more wicked than David by this deed? what purer than Urias? But again through the mystery, what is found holier than David, what more faithless than Urias? When the one by the fault of his life signifies the innocence of prophecy, and the other by the innocence of his life expresses in prophecy a fault.”
But these allegories are not proper and of the first class, but of the second and improper, because they are looser, and do not correspond equally to the letter and the history. For there is in them some proportion and analogy, but not similar in all things, but dissimilar in many. For what David did with sin, Christ did from holiness and mercy. Wherefore in these allegories David is to be regarded not so much as at the beginning committing adultery with Bethsabee, as afterwards joining her to himself in marriage. For so he represented Christ espousing to himself the Church of the Gentiles.
AND PRESENTLY SHE WAS PURIFIED FROM HER UNCLEANNESS,—as if to say: She washed her body with lustral water, according to the rite of the old law, “sanctified,” that is, blessed, and so cleansed herself from the legal irregularity contracted by intercourse with David, according to the law of Leviticus chap. 15, verse 18; but she did not wash away the sin or guilt of adultery; for this is to be washed away not by water but by penance and tears.
5. AND SHE SENT AND TOLD DAVID, AND SAID: I HAVE CONCEIVED.—“O king, I am lost. And he said: What hast thou? I am pregnant, she said. The fruit of my sin is sprouting, I have an accuser within, I bear a betrayer in my womb. If my husband come and see, what shall I say, what shall I speak? what excuse shall I put forward?”
Morally Chrysostom infers: “See and wonder, brethren, how great an evil it is to become liable to faults and sins. The king fears a soldier, and dreads a subject; the Emperor wore the crown on his head, and feared the reproaches of confusion.”
6. SEND ME URIAS THE HETHITE.—The cause was, says Abulensis, that David might free himself from the infamy of adultery, and Bethsabee from death on account of the same adultery, ... to be thought to have had relations with Bethsabee his wife, and so the infant which Bethsabee had secretly conceived by David would be thought to be the son of her husband Urias, not of David the adulterer. For if Urias after a longer delay had returned with his wife pregnant or in childbirth, it would have been known to all that this son was not Urias’s but some adulterer’s, and at last, an inquiry being made, David would have been found to be the adulterer, the parent of this offspring. So Chrysostom on Psalm 50.
11. AND URIAS (a man stronger in spirit than in body) SAID TO DAVID: THE ARK OF GOD AND ISRAEL (the soldiers and the ten tribes besieging Rabba) AND JUDA DWELL IN TENTS.—Hence it is clear that the ark was brought by the high priest Abiathar to the camp and siege of Rabba, that by God’s leadership and aid they might take it. AND SHALL I GO INTO MY HOUSE, TO EAT AND TO DRINK, &c., BY THY WELFARE AND BY THE WELFARE OF THY SOUL (I swear that) I WILL NOT DO THIS THING.—O brave and holy soldier, who nevertheless received from David a reward unworthy of his faith and strength, as being doomed by him to death. So the pious are here oppressed, that in the future judgment of Christ they may be exalted, blessed and glorified before all Angels and men. What Urias said, let the Christian say and do generously for God and the salvation of souls ...
labouring, and succumbing and falling under the labour, but rising to the rest and glory of blessed eternity. Hence Urias in Hebrew is the same as, God my light, or God my fire; Hethite the same as, cut off, says St. Augustine, book XXII Against Faustus, chap. 87.
... should return, and sleep with his wife, and so she would be thought to have conceived the offspring from him, not from David. See here how one sin draws another. Behold, David, to cover the adultery, procures that his offspring be passed off as Urias’s; which was a crime of injustice. So today adulterers pass off and foist the sons conceived in adultery on their husbands; and so they commit fraud and injustice, since by this substitution they cause the husband to nourish them as his own, and appoint them heirs, to the damage of the true sons; to the restitution of which damage the adulterers are bound, because they gave the cause of it. Again David, to carry out this substitution of his offspring, makes Urias drunk, which was his third sin. For, as St. Augustine says, sermon 231 On the Season: “He who forces another to make himself drunk by drinking more than is needful, it would be a lesser evil to him if he wounded his flesh than if he harmed his soul by drunkenness.” And lower he says that he sacrifices to the devil. And St. Ambrose, Apology 2 of David, chap. 3: “By the eyes, he says, lust is aroused, but by drunkenness it is kindled; Noe was drunk, and he who was not made drunk by the deluge was made drunk by wine.”
14. DAVID WROTE A LETTER TO JOAB, AND SENT IT BY THE HAND OF URIAS,—for he wrote to Joab to see that Urias be slain by the Ammonites. Hence the letters of Urias, like those of Bellerophon in Lucian, passed into a proverb, and are said of those who carry letters that are the cause of their own harm or death. Our Sanchez thinks that from these letters of Urias the Gentiles made up the fable of Bellerophon, that he, having received letters of recommendation from King Proetus to Jobates (which name alludes to Joab here), was cast headlong to death. So from Moses speaking with God they took the fable of Minos conversing with Jove; from Samson the fable of Hercules, and many other like things, as Clement of Alexandria attests, book II of the Stromata. This was David’s fourth and gravest sin, by which, to conceal the adultery and to enjoy the adulteress securely and continually, he caused Urias, a most brave soldier and most faithful to him, to be killed, lest he, returning home after the war and seeing his wife pregnant or in childbirth, knowing that he had not had relations with her, should expose her as an adulteress, nay kill her, or lest she, for her own protection, should name and betray David as the author of the child conceived, to Urias. Moreover David’s murder was much aggravated by the manner in which he killed him, which was fraudulent and treacherous: “So from vice vice is born, says Isidore, as David did not avoid adultery, he committed murder too.” See here again how lust, flattering to itself, is savage and cruel to others; for to indulge its pleasure alone, shutting others out, it sends them away or kills them. Mystically Rupert, book XI On the Divine Offices, chap. 1: “David took the wife of Urias the Hethite, he says, and caused Urias himself to be slain, bearing in his hand written his own sentence of death; committing indeed a grave crime according to the deed done, but prefiguring a great mystery through Christ the king of life; strong of hand and desirable, to be accomplished in his own time,” &c. Again St. Thomas, Prologue to the Canonical Epistles: “The letters of their own death, he says, are borne by learned men who know and teach, and do not do. These are letters without a seal, that is, knowledge without life, and therefore he is not believed.”