Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
16. HE PUT URIAS IN THE PLACE WHERE HE KNEW THE BRAVEST MEN WERE.—Josephus adds that Joab commended to Urias faith and valour, that he should fight even to death for David and Israel, and secretly warned Urias’s comrades to desert him in the fight, and let him be surrounded and cut down by the enemy. What can be said or imagined more treacherous or wicked than this? Moreover St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian, asserts that David on account of the murder of Urias was forbidden by God to build the temple, but we shall hear his graver punishments in the next chapter.
17. URIAS THE HETHITE WAS KILLED ALSO.—Behold here the murder of Urias completed by ungrateful David, whose unworthiness Abulensis graphically depicts and exaggerates here, Question 5 on chap. 12. Now God permitted David to fall so grievously: First, to humble him, that he might know that, though by grace he was a holy Prophet and Psalmist, yet by nature he was a frail man and prone to sin, like the rest. Hence he himself, now fallen, confesses this in Psalm 50: “Behold, he says, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me.” Second, that in his fall and rising God might show his justice as well as mercy; justice in the chastisement of sin, mercy in the forgiveness of guilt: as the greater the disease or wound, the greater the skill and efficacy of the physician healing it is shown, says St. Chrysostom on Psalm 50. Third, for the example of others, that all may learn from David’s fall to beware of occasions of falling, and especially of incautious looks at women. Hear St. Ambrose, Apology 9 of David, chap. 3: “Let not the desire of beauty overcome thee, if thou wouldst not be overcome; engage not with sins, lest vices be crowned in thee: be thou not taken by the eyes, nor carried off by the eyelids. A woman seems cheap to thee for price, but strong for vice: who captures the precious souls of men.” He proves it from Proverbs chap. 6: “Can a man hide fire in his bosom, and his garments not burn? or can he walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be burnt? Beware therefore, thou too, lest thou kindle within the bosom of thy mind the fire of lust and love.”
Solomon fell, art thou immovable? If Paul was first of sinners, canst thou be first of saints?”
Fourth, that if it chance us to fall, we may not despair, but with David rise again by penance, and the fall may be to us a stimulus to greater rigour and virtue. Hence St. Augustine, homily 91 among the Fifty: “Many, he says, are willing to fall with David, and are unwilling to rise with David, &c. Let those who have not fallen hear, lest they fall: let those who have fallen hear, that they may rise. Sin with despair is certain death,” &c. And St. Prosper, book II On Predictions, chap. 26: “David, he says, is set as an example to the faithful, that they may learn to fear prosperity more than to dread adversity. For it is dangerous for the soul to be let go in its pleasures, the Lord saying: Behold whom I love I chastise,” Proverbs chap. 3, verse 12.
See St. Ambrose in the two Apologies which he wrote for David, where in the first book, chap. 2, he says: “The saints, if anywhere perhaps, as men, have fallen, through the frailty of nature rather than the lust of sinning, rise more keen to run, repairing with the sting of shame greater contests; so that the fall is thought to have brought them no hindrance, but even to have heaped up incentives of speed.” And after some intervening: “For they are set before us to imitate, and therefore care was taken that they too should at some time fall. For if they had run through this course of the world unhurt by vices amid so many slippery places, they would have given us weaker ones occasion to suppose that they were of a certain higher and divine nature, so that they could not admit transgression and have fellowship in guilt.” Hence a little after he concludes: “The grace of God therefore passed them over for a little, that their life might become a discipline for imitation to us, and that we might take from their acts the mastership of penance as well as of innocence. Therefore, when I read their falls, I recognise them also as sharers of infirmity: while I believe them sharers, I presume that they are to be imitated.”
26. SHE MOURNED FOR HIM,—Urias her husband. This mourning among the Hebrews was of seven days, as Ecclesiasticus says, chap. 22, verse 13. The Romans, however, and afterwards the Christian Emperors, as Gratian and Theodosius, ordained a year for a wife to mourn the death of her husband, so that she could not marry another until the year of mourning was over. I gave the reason at Ecclesiasticus chap. 21 [sic]. But neither David nor the Hebrews waited a year, hence he married Bethsabee soon after the death of Urias, as soon after the death of Nabal he married Abigail.
27. AND SHE BECAME HIS WIFE, AND BORE HIM A SON.—Verse 27.
This son therefore was conceived in adultery, but born in marriage, since David, Urias being dead, had taken Bethsabee to wife. In which David sinned, in that he straightway married her with whom he had committed adultery, her husband having been slain, thereby tacitly approving the previous adultery and murder. Hence follows:
AND THIS THING WHICH DAVID HAD DONE WAS DISPLEASING BEFORE THE LORD.—This was therefore David’s fifth sin: for it was forbidden to the Jews to marry her whom they had defiled by adultery; yet the marriage with her was not void, as is now among Christians, as is clear from the Decretals, On him who married a woman whom he defiled by adultery. Hence in the following chapter Nathan reproves David, not only that he had killed Urias, but also that he had married the wife of the slain man, stained by adultery with himself: for so he says in verse 9: “Thou hast killed Urias the Hethite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife.” And in verse 10: “The sword shall never depart from thy house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Urias the Hethite to be thy wife.” For David seems, enticed by the beauty of Bethsabee, to have desired her as wife, and therefore to have killed Urias. Some, however, with Salianus, excuse David, saying that he married her to provide for her reputation, modesty and life, lest she be stoned as an adulteress; and to repair the injury done to Urias by honouring his wife and taking her as queen, and by adopting his children, if he had left any. But David seems to have intended and set himself these ends afterwards, when in the following chapter, reproved by Nathan in this matter, he repented: and changed his mind, imbued with the adulterous love of Bethsabee, into the chaste use of marriage with her. For hitherto he seems to have obeyed his own concupiscence: and he gave no sign of penance except after he was rebuked by Nathan, as we shall hear in the following chapter.