Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
8. AND GAVE THEE THY MASTER’S HOUSE, AND THY MASTER’S WIVES INTO THY BOSOM.—For “wives” the Hebrew has nashim, which signifies not only wives but any women. Now the women, that is, the daughters of Saul, were Merob and Michol, whom God gave to David as wives: for Merob was betrothed by Saul to David, although Saul afterwards by fraud took her from him. Again the Hebrews relate that Egla, David’s wife, was formerly the wife of Saul, as was Respha: but Abulensis refutes this here, Question 3. Finally, here is signified not so much an act as a right and power, namely that David, succeeding Saul in the kingdom, had a right over Saul’s handmaids and wives, so that he could, if he wished, join them to himself in marriage. So Lyranus, Abulensis and others.
10. THEREFORE THE SWORD SHALL NEVER DEPART FROM THY HOUSE—not absolutely, but relatively, namely with respect to the house of David and Israel, as if to say: As long as thy royal stock shall last, and as long as the kingdom of Israel shall last, I will make the sword always hang over thee and thy house, and not because thou didst kill Urias, therefore in punishment not one but many of thy sons and descendants shall be slain by the sword. So it came to pass: for of David’s sons four were slain, namely this little child, verse 19, Amnon, Absalom, and Adonias, and perhaps many others. Moreover David’s descendants, except Solomon, waged continual wars with enemies, in which many Israelites, and those sprung from David and his brothers, were slain. So Abulensis, Salianus and others.
11. BEHOLD I WILL RAISE UP EVIL AGAINST THEE OUT OF THY OWN HOUSE,—namely that Absalom thy son shall persecute thee. For, as St. Chrysostom says on Psalm 50: “Whence is the fountain of sin, thence is the plague of punishment; because therefore he fled an exile and fugitive from the Lord’s commandment, he fled from his son.” And soon: “Unless he had hidden the sparks of sins, the youth would not have been set on fire.” He then adds a moral lesson: that those who in youth sinned with harlots afterwards fall upon troublesome and quarrelsome wives, by whom their past lust is chastised by God, according to that of Ecclesiasticus 7:27 [sic]: “But the sinner shall be caught by her,” as by an antidote of loves, which consumes the evil humours of sins. Hear Chrysostom: “Thy wife wages war with thee, meets thee as a wild beast when thou enterest, sharpens her tongue like a sword. A very troublesome and difficult thing, that thy helper has become an adversary: yet examine thyself, whether in youth thou didst attempt some new thing with a woman, and the wound which was inflicted by thee on a woman is to be healed through a woman, and another’s sore is cured by one’s own wife performing the office of a surgeon; and although thou knowest not who cuts, yet God the physician knows. For he has used her against thee as a knife; and as the iron does not know what it does, but the physician knows the future cure by the iron; so also, though the wife who strikes and the husband who is struck know not the cause of the blow, God as physician knows what is profitable.”
12. BUT I WILL DO THIS THING, &c., IN THE SIGHT OF THE SUN.—For Absalom publicly on the housetop before all Israel violated his father’s wives, chap. 16, verse 22, so that by a fitting retaliation the housetop of punishment answered to the housetop of adultery, from which David looked out and desired Bethsabee. And this is little: moreover the sun answered to the housetop, or rather the midday sun to the evening time already, when after noon David walked on the housetop. For it was said to him: “Thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing in the sight of Israel, and in the sight of the sun.” Therefore for adultery there is no covering, but God brings it, though hidden, into light and makes it known, as he made known here to all not only Israelites but Gentiles, and even to future ages, the adultery and murder of David. How great then will be the confusion of adulterers and criminals on the day of judgment, when before all Angels and men Christ will lay open, convict and condemn each one’s crimes?
13. AND DAVID SAID TO NATHAN: I HAVE SINNED AGAINST THE LORD,—in the Lord’s regard, against the Lord, and that before the Lord, he seeing and beholding, though before men I had concealed and hidden the same. This word, “I have sinned,” is short; but proceeding from the inmost bosom of the heart, and filled with the deep feeling of humility, compunction, penitence, religion and charity, as is clear from Psalm 50, which he then composed: “Have mercy on me, O God,” where among other things he says: “To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee.”
Wherefore the Fathers, examining this word of David, “I have sinned,” wonderfully exaggerate and celebrate it. First, St. Ambrose, Apology 4 of David, chap. 2: “That king, he says, so great and powerful, did not suffer the consciousness of his fault to remain with him even for a little moment, but by a prompt confession and immense sorrow rendered his sin to the Lord. Whom could you now easily find, honoured and rich, who, if accused of some fault, would not take it ill? But he, illustrious in royal command, approved by so many divine oracles, when rebuked by a private man for having sinned gravely, did not rage with indignation, but confessed and groaned.” The same St. Ambrose, in the same place, chap. 4: “David sinned, he says, as kings are wont to do: but he did penance, wept, groaned, which kings are not wont to do. He confessed his fault, besought indulgence, prostrate on the ground he bewailed his misery, fasted, prayed, and transmitted the testimony of his confession to all ages in a published sorrow.
What private persons blush to do, the king did not blush to confess. Those who are held by the laws dare to deny their sin, disdain to ask indulgence, which he asked who was held by no human laws. That he sinned belongs to his condition; that he made supplication, to his correction. The fall was common, but the confession special. To have fallen into fault is of nature; to have washed it away, of virtue.” The same again in chap. 9 says thus: “Whatever sounds, whatever resounds, his own fault always meets him; whatever is said or read he thinks said against himself: whatever anyone intends, he thinks himself signified by a nod, by the eyes: whether he feasts, whether he thinks, whether he prays and supplicates, his own error is always before his eyes: and at every moment the fault knocks at his conscience; nor does it suffer him to rest nor to forget: like a severe censor it harasses him with perpetual terror.” Ambrose adds the reason: “It is the mark of a good mind to feel the wound of sin. For those who are without pain do not feel the bitterness of the wound: which is of an incurable sickness. But those who are pricked by some pain, as they do not lack the sense of pain, so they do not lack progress to health. For where there is sense of pain, there is also sense of life.” Finally St. Ambrose, Exhortation to the Penitent: “‘I have sinned,’ in three syllables, he says, the flame of sacrifice ascends to heaven.”
Second, St. Augustine, book XXII Against Faustus, chap. 66: “This is, he says, the sacrifice of penance,” and chap. 67: “The Spirit of God, he says, discerned the depths of his heart, when, rebuked through the Prophet, he said: I have sinned, and straightway at this word deserved to hear that he had received pardon: to what end, but to everlasting salvation? for the discipline of the fatherly scourge was not omitted in him, according to the threat; that both being a confessor he might be freed for ever, and being afflicted he might be proved temporally.” If thou say that Saul also and Judas the traitor said, “I have sinned,” and yet did not repent so as to obtain pardon, St. Augustine answers: “In a similar voice, which human sense heard, there was a dissimilar heart, which the divine eye discerned.” The same Augustine, homily 21 among the Fifty: “Hear David crying out, he says, and cry with him; hear him groaning, and groan with him; hear him weeping, and weep with him.” Hence it is clear that David from the vehemence of inward sorrow burst into profuse tears, groans and sobs, which cut off his voice, so that he could utter nothing else than “I have sinned against the Lord.” That it is so is clear from Psalm 6:7, where he says: “I will wash my bed every night (in which I committed the crime), I will water my couch with my tears,” where for “I will wash” the Hebrew is asche, that is, I will make to swim, as if to say: I will pour out so many tears not only now but through all my life thereafter, that my bed, conscious of the crime, may be overwhelmed by them, nay swim in them.