Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
Hence third, St. Chrysostom on Psalm 6, and homily 77 to the People: “Do not consider, he says, that he fell, that thou mayst grow torpid; but how much of tears he afterwards poured forth, how great the penance, joining nights to days, sending forth fountains of tears, washing his bed with tears, clothed in sackcloth,” &c. Fourth, St. Salvian, book III On the Government of God: “David the guilty, he says, acknowledges his fault, is humbled, is pricked to the heart, confesses, mourns, repents, lays aside the royal jewels, puts off the garments rustling with woven gold, is stripped of purple, laid down from the diadem, is changed in heart and dress, casts away the whole king with his ornaments, is drained by fasting, dried up by dryness, poured out in weeping, imprisoned in solitude.” Fifth, St. Hilary on Psalm 118, letter P, verse 136: Exitus aquarum: “David, he says, then when Nathan the prophet reproving he recognised his crime and wept; now also ceases not to wash away the crime of his old deed with the tears of true penance, saying: My eyes have sent forth springs of water: namely the fountains of his tears to have passed beyond the fountains of rivers.
For this is the voice of penitence to pray with tears, to groan with tears, and by this confidence to say: I will wash my bed every night, I will water my couch with my tears. This is pardon of sin, to weep from a fountain of weeping, and to be drenched with a large rain of tears.” AND NATHAN SAID TO DAVID: THE LORD ALSO HATH TAKEN AWAY THY SIN.—For “hath taken away” the Hebrew has heebir, that is, made to pass over, that is, removed, taken away, as the Septuagint render here, and our version and others commonly, Zacharias chap. 3, verse 4, and Psalm 118, verse 39. Hence it is clear how great was the vehemence of David’s sorrow, since to him saying “I have sinned,” God immediately remitted the sin. So St. Ambrose, Apology 4 of David, chap. 2: “The ripeness of the pardon, he says, declared how deep the king’s penance was, which carried away the offence of so great an error.” The same teaches St. Augustine, book XXII Against Faustus, chap. 67, nay David himself, Psalm 50, saying: “A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” Hence it is clear that perfect contrition, which proceeds from love of God above all things, blots out all sins however grave, as were the adultery and murder of David: so that God immediately forgives the contrite all guilt and eternal punishment, and commutes it into temporal punishment: for this, to be paid for discipline and satisfaction by the penitent, as David here paid it, St. Ambrose and Augustine already cited teach, and St. Gregory, book IX of the Morals, chap. 27: “The Lord, he says, will in no way spare the offender, because he does not leave a fault without vengeance. For either the penitent himself punishes it in himself in this life, or God, avenging it, strikes it together with the man.” See Bellarmine, book IV On Penance, chaps. 2, 3 and 4.
Wherefore St. Ambrose, reproving the Emperor Theodosius for having in anger slain so many thousands of the Thessalonians on account of a statue of his wife thrown down, when he said that David also had sinned by the murder of Urias, replied: “Thou who hast followed him erring, follow him repenting.” And in fact he followed. For he humbly received and fulfilled the penance imposed on him by Ambrose. See St. Ambrose in the oration On the Funeral of Theodosius, and Bellarmine, book On the Christian Prince, in the Life of Theodosius, near the end.
THOU SHALT NOT DIE,—Hence it seems that God, threatening through Nathan to the house of David the punishment of the sword for ever, had also pronounced sentence of death upon David himself, and decreed that he too should be slain by the sword of the Ammonites or of Absalom, &c., as he had slain Urias by the same: for this is the law of retaliation, that he who kills another be killed, Exodus 21:23; but on account of his eminent penance he mitigated this punishment, namely by forgiving him his life, saying: “Thou shalt not die;” and at the same time tempering and diminishing the other slaughters which he had threatened to send upon his house by the sword. So Serarius, Abulensis, Lyranus, Cajetan.
14. NEVERTHELESS, BECAUSE THOU HAST GIVEN OCCASION TO THE ENEMIES OF THE LORD TO BLASPHEME,—to say: Behold how wicked are the Israelites, worshippers of God, and above all their king and prophet David. Is this the holiness of the people of God? Is this the piety of kings and prophets? Certainly our gods are not such, nor do they suffer us to be such.
Learn here how grave is the sin of scandal, especially that by which the faithful give unbelievers occasion to blaspheme God. Hear Salvian, book IV On the Government of God, near the end, explaining this “thou hast given occasion to blaspheme”: “The diadem laid aside, jewels cast off, purples stripped off, all dignity of royal splendour removed, when instead of all these he, solitary, groaning, shut in, squalid in sackcloth, wet with weeping, defiled with ashes, sought the life of his little child by the suffrages of so many lamentations, and knocked at the most pious God with such an importunity of prayers: so asking and beseeching he could not obtain, though he believed, which is the strongest help to petitioners, that he would obtain what he asked of God. From which it can be understood that there is absolutely no crime of greater expiation than to give the Gentiles cause for blaspheming. For whoever has erred gravely without the blasphemy of others brings damnation on himself only; but he who has made others blaspheme drags many with him to death; and it will be necessary that he be guilty for as many as he has drawn with him into guilt.” And after some intervening: “But he who by sinning has made others blaspheme, his sin must be beyond the measure of human crime; because by the reproaches of very many he does God an inestimable injury. And this evil, as I said, is peculiar to Christians alone, because through them alone is God blasphemed, who say good things and do evil; who, as it is written, confess God in words and deny him by deeds.” St. Jerome and Procopius add that David gave occasion to the Ammonites, Philistines, &c., to attack him and his kingdom, as one who by so great a crime had already deprived himself of divine grace and favour.
THE CHILD THAT IS BORN TO THEE SHALL SURELY DIE,—that is, shall die certainly and irremissibly, that as he was the object of thy crime, so he may be its expiation. This punishment was tempered with clemency. For it turned to the good of the infant, who, dying in innocence, was saved; otherwise perhaps, like his father, he would have sinned and been damned; and to the good of David himself, as it were obliterating and burying his adultery by the death of the infant, as Theodoret teaches: for thus the fame and honour of David was provided for; for God took away the son born of adultery as his disgrace, and gave in his stead another, legitimate and far more excellent, namely Solomon. Some add that David himself was then struck by God with a grave illness to chastise his lust; for he signifies this in Psalm 6, which is the first penitential psalm, which he seems therefore to have composed soon after the penance for his sin, when he says: “O Lord, rebuke me not in thy indignation, nor chastise me in thy wrath. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak: heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.” And Psalm 37: “There is no health in my flesh, because of thy wrath: there is no peace for my bones.” So Salianus.
23. BUT NOW THAT HE IS DEAD, WHY SHOULD I FAST?—For I shall not be able to recall him from death, nor to free him from the pains of Purgatory, as one who, dying in innocence, suffers none; it is otherwise with Absalom, whose death David mourned inconsolably, because he had died in the sin of parricide, and was therefore condemned to hell. So St. Jerome, epistle 29 [sic].
The Hebrews say that Bethsabee, fearing lest other offspring would likewise die, determined to abstain from David’s company, but that David removed this fear from her by promising that her first offspring from God would be lively and most happy. So Pineda and Salianus.