Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
LEST WHEN THE CITY SHALL BE WASTED, THE VICTORY BE ASCRIBED TO MY NAME,—Admire here the fidelity and modesty of the general Joab, who, refusing the glory of the city soon to be taken, which was due to him, and which generals of war are so wont to covet, transfers it entire to his king David.
Hence tropologically let Christians learn to resign the glory of their works, even heroic ones, wholly to the true David, that is to Christ and God, because he is their total cause; for although man by nature and free will does them freely, yet all their dignity is from the grace of Christ. For a work of charity, for example, has its freedom from man, namely that it is a free work, not forced or necessary, but from Christ’s grace it has that it is supernatural, pleasing to God and meritorious of eternal glory. To Christ alone therefore is due its honour, praise and glory. This is what he himself says: “My glory I will not give to another,” Isaias 48:11. For he freely gives to the man who works all the utility, merit and reward of the good work; but all its glory he reserves to himself. Hence the twenty-four ancients “cast their crowns before the throne, saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour, and power: because thou hast created all things,” Apocalypse chap. 4, verse 10, and consequently hast created our free will itself, and given it the power of cooperating with grace, and by thy preventing grace hast both roused it to work well and, to the worker, by cooperating grace hast cooperated. Let us say therefore with the Psalmist, when we do anything good: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to thy name give glory,” Psalm 113. Hence allegorically Angelomus: “The leader David, he says, wages war against the enemies, when the order of holy preachers opposes the shield of faith against the powers of the world. But the end of the contest and the triumph of the war is referred to the king Christ alone; because to him all power and might of the kingdom is ascribed. For it is God (according to the Apostle) who worketh in us both to will and to accomplish, and he triumpheth always in Christ Jesus.”
30. AND HE TOOK THE CROWN OF THEIR KING (in Hebrew Melchom, that is of their idol, or god, which had the form of melech, that is, a king) FROM HIS HEAD, THE WEIGHT (having in weight, or weighing) OF WHICH WAS A TALENT OF GOLD.—Hear 1 Paralipomenon 20:2: “David took the crown of Melchom from his head, and found in it a talent weight of gold, and most precious stones, and made himself a diadem thereof,” namely of part of it; for David could not have borne the whole weight of gold, namely a talent, on his head. For the talent of the Hebrews contained 125 pounds, as I showed in the treatise On Measures, at the end of the Pentateuch. What king could bear on his head a crown of 125 pounds? David therefore spent part of the talent on his crown, and distributed the rest to other ornaments of the temple or his palace. Unless someone say that David did not wear this diadem on his head, but commanded it to be bound or fixed above his head on the throne and the royal canopy, so that it hung perpetually over the head of David seated on the throne, which is quite probable.
Allegorically Angelomus: “The crown, he says, of the king of the hostile people David took from his head, and formed from it a diadem for himself, when our Redeemer, taking the kingdom from the contrary power, prepared for himself a fitting badge. And what is better understood by David’s crown than the assembly of the Catholic people? which with believing heart nobly encircles our head, namely Christ the King, and, conversing worthily, fittingly crowns him? For all the labour of the saints, their contest and victory, is referred to the honour of the heavenly King; for it is he to whom every knee bows, of those in heaven, on earth and under the earth; and every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” So far Angelomus.
31. AND BRINGING FORTH THE PEOPLE THEREOF, HE SAWED THEM, AND DROVE OVER THEM CHARIOTS ARMED WITH IRON,—namely which were furnished with iron toothed wheels for threshing grain from the ears, says St. Jerome. Hence it is said in 1 Paralipomenon 20:3: “And he made over them sledges, and harrows, and iron wains pass, so that they were cut asunder and ground,” according to that of Virgil, Georgics 1:
The sledge and the harrow, and the rake of unequal weight,
So the Damascenes “threshed Galaad with iron wains,” Amos 1:3.
AND HE LED THEM THROUGH THE BRICK-KILN.—Vatablus: he cast them into a brick-kiln or lime-kiln, in which bricks or lime are baked, so that they were scorched in it. So also Serarius, Sanchez and others. For the Hebrew malben (for which Cajetan wrongly reads malchen) signifies a brickworks, that is, a place where bricks are made. But since this place is twofold (for first the bricks are formed from clay on the ground, then they are baked in a kiln), it is uncertain, says Marinus in his Lexicon, whether malben signifies the former place or the latter. Most think it signifies the former, as if to say: As in the place where bricks are formed from clay, the muddy mass is repeatedly cut up by the potters together with the straw, so that the due mixing and union of the different material may be made, from which the bricks are formed; so David cut up the Ammonites like a muddy mass, and tore and mangled them with frequent blows of swords. The Vulgate requires this, rendering it, “in the brick-kiln”; for the Latin “typus” either signifies likeness (as if to say, like bricks), or rather the workshop, form and forming of bricks, as if to say: As in a brickworks the bricks are formed by repeatedly leading the muddy mass through, that is, by rolling, kneading, treading, levelling, mixing, cleaving and cutting it; so likewise David “led” the Ammonites through the yard, and perhaps the brickworks, that is, he rolled, subdued, trampled, mangled and cut them up. So St. Jerome in the Hebrew Traditions: “He divided them,” he says, “with knives, as bricks are wont to be divided, which are made of straw and clay.” So also Angelomus, Lyranus and others. For he explains it, “and he divided them with knives,” and all the preceding words signify brick-making, not burning. To this is added the Chaldee, which renders it, according to Pagnino in his Lexicon: He sawed, or tore, or mangled them in the streets, that is, in the brickworks; for the Chaldee calls these streets, because in them the courses of bricks are set in order, as stones are set and arranged in the pavement of streets; hence the potters so arrange their bricks laid out in a square that they seem to make streets. The Septuagint agree, who render it, he made them pass through, or led them through the brick-mould (wrongly the Complutensian and others read a word which in Greek signifies nothing, though they themselves translate it, a battle-line), that is, through the brickworks. Theodoret adds on chapter 21 that it also signifies a square battle-line, as bricks are squared: as if David had forced the Ammonites to pass through this line of the Hebrews, to be pierced by their spears and swords, which the French call: To pass through the pikes.
Furthermore, our Sanchez thinks that David did this before the repentance for his sin, at which time David was in ferment, and in the heat of sins was another from himself, and served his own passions, however immoderately poured out, more readily than the will of God. Therefore he thinks David committed a most grievous sin in this bitterness of punishments. But others think David did this in the order in which it is here narrated, namely after his repentance (for God seems to have given David this victory as a reward and prize for it), and therefore they excuse him from the sin of cruelty, because he was bound to punish with these atrocious penalties the atrocious injuries and insults inflicted on his ambassadors, sent out of friendship, against every law of nations, and likewise the other things which Naas, the father of Hanon, had threatened to the men of Galaad, namely the putting out of eyes, 1 Kings 11, and because the Ammonites had often invaded Judea, and had often waged war on the Hebrews, and had stirred up neighbouring nations and kings to make war on David. So Theodoret, Cajetan and Salianus, who adds: Let us also say with Lyranus and Dionysius that these punishments were inflicted not on the whole people, but on some from each city; namely on those who had been the authors or abettors of the injury and insult done to David’s ambassadors; and because these had disgracefully cut off the middle of their garments, they deserved to be cut through the middle with saws; and because they had shaved their heads with knives and razors, they were rightly mutilated in head or other members with knives and swords. And if they had led the ambassadors about placed on chariots or sledges, as is customary, and exhibited them to the courtiers and the whole people to be derided, they could deservedly be laid under iron-shod chariots and wagons and crushed. And since the Ammonites had been most cruel in offering their sacrifices to the god Moloch, or Melchom, as being accustomed to pass their infants through the fire, or to burn them between the arms of the glowing idol, as David Kimchi says, they too were deservedly led through a burning furnace, or even cast into it.