Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
2. SO THAT HE FELL SICK FOR HER LOVE.—This sickness of love is called by physicians “eros,” that is, love, by which a man wholly languishes, wastes, withers and pines away through the vehemence of love. The spouse in the Canticles laboured under this sickness, chapter 2, verse 5, saying: “Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples, because I languish with love.” See what is said there. Antiochus, son of King Seleucus, laboured under a like sickness, but a carnal one, pining away for love of Stratonice his stepmother, and not daring through shame to express it. The physician Erasistratus detected the cause of this sickness, when at the entrance of Stratonice he saw Antiochus, languishing, flush with blushing and grow breathless, and when she went out grow pale and draw his breath in quicker gasps, and he at once laid the matter before the father Seleucus, who yielded Stratonice to his son, to keep him alive, as witnessed by Appian in the Syriac Wars, and Valerius Maximus, book 6, chapter 7. The devil sent the same sickness on a certain nun, so that she cried out that she should die unless the monk Benedict came to her, that is, a certain demon who had taken the appearance of a monk and called himself Benedict; whom St. Equitius by his prayers and merits restored to health, sanity and chastity, as St. Gregory relates, book 1 of the Dialogues, chapter 4.
FOR AS SHE WAS A VIRGIN,—she was kept at home by her father David, in the women’s apartments, or rather the maidens’ quarters, among the other virgins and the king’s daughters, with great care and guard.
13. SPEAK TO THE KING, AND HE WILL NOT DENY ME TO THEE.—The simple girl, ignorant of the law, thought this could be done; that marriage between brother and sister was lawful, if she were only a half-sister on the father’s side, that is, by another mother, as Thamar was; for Rabbi Solomon in Lyranus held this to be lawful; but he erred. For the law, Leviticus 18:17, expressly forbids, under penalty of death, every marriage between brothers and sisters, even where they have only one parent in common. Certainly, if Thamar knew this, she put forward this excuse against her violation to gain time, and to slip out of so evident a danger, and escape the hands of Amnon raging with love, as Josephus hints and Serarius asserts.
14. HE FORCED HER.—Behold the violation by Amnon, who used force against his sister. God permitted this to chastise the adultery of David his father. For Amnon was David’s firstborn son and most beloved by him, who, following his father’s lust, violated his own sister. Hence let parents learn to be chaste, that they may teach chastity to their sons by example rather than by word. For if they are unchaste, their sons will imitate their unchastity.
15. AND AMNON HATED HER WITH AN EXCEEDING GREAT HATRED.—The natural reason of this hatred, says Cajetan, is given by the philosophers: that in so great a love there is much emission of seed, which greatly alters and changes the disposition and temper of the inner humours; and consequently the feelings change into their contrary, namely love into hatred, because they feel the enormous harm of their love and of their wasted lust. Hear Aristotle, book 4, Problems 11: “Why do young men, when they first begin to lie with women, hate those with whom they have been joined, when the act is done? Is it that the change has been very great, and in the sadness of what follows they flee from her, as from one guilty, to whom they had attached themselves?” The same, ibid., Problem 6: “Why,” he says, “of all animals does man, after intercourse, grow weak and languid? Is it that he emits the most seed in proportion to his body?”
Abulensis adds that this happened, and is wont to happen, from the particular providence and chastisement of God, namely that to that love which is excessively unreasonable an excessive hatred should follow; so that in this way a fitting penalty is given to the sinner by opposites. For it is God’s ordinance that those who act very wickedly should be a punishment to themselves, even with no one punishing them.
man, and so it is, that every disordered mind is a punishment to itself.” The same, sermon 14 On the Words of the Lord according to Matthew: “To each one,” he says, “his own desire is a tempest.”
Like conversions of lovers into extreme hatreds and mutual deaths are recounted everywhere in the tragedians, as in Seneca’s Medea, who afterwards so hates her lover Jason that to avenge herself on him she slew their common children while he looked on, yet could not prevent it. And these punishments the poets call “Furies,” because they flow from raging thoughts. So Semiramis cruelly killed her lovers, and among them her own son. See Abulensis at the end of the chapter, discoursing at length on the power and properties of love. The Rabbis devise another cause of the hatred, namely that Thamar, resisting Amnon’s assault, in struggling with him so injured his genitals that they had to be cut off; but these are gross imaginations and fictions of the Rabbinic brain.
16. SHE ANSWERED HIM: THIS EVIL WHICH THOU DOST NOW AGAINST ME, IN DRIVING ME AWAY, IS GREATER THAN THAT WHICH THOU DIDST BEFORE,—first because this expulsion was public and infamous, whereas the violation had been secret and hidden; next because the shameful expulsion increased the grief conceived from the violation; for when Amnon ought to have consoled her whom he had violated and soothed her, he drove her out in a hostile and ignominious manner; next because Thamar hoped that Amnon would cover the wrong done to her, either by concealing it or by taking her as his wife: but now, driven out, she saw that the wrong was made public and her marriage refused by Amnon; finally because by this expulsion she saw that she would be despised and rejected by all, so that no one would ask her for his wife. For most people thought that Amnon had discovered some fault in her, on account of which he had driven her out so inhumanly. Wherefore everyone, shunning this fault, scorned her; hence she pined away at home, sad and desolate, as is said in verse 20.
19. AND LAYING HER HANDS ON HER HEAD,—that through shame she might veil with her hands her face, in which is the seat of modesty.
20. BUT NOW, SISTER, HOLD THY PEACE: HE IS THY BROTHER,—as if to say: The injury would be graver if thou hadst been forced by a stranger, or a man of low condition; but now thou hast been violated by the king’s firstborn son, and thy brother, of whom thou oughtest not to have been wary. Wherefore all will easily know that thou didst not consent, but wast forced by the king’s son, to whom all things are lawful. With this thought, therefore, console and mitigate thy grief. So Abulensis.
21. HE WOULD NOT GRIEVE THE SPIRIT OF HIS SON AMNON.—These words are not in the Hebrew, Chaldee and Septuagint. David sinned in not correcting or chastising his son Amnon for this so infamous violation, especially since the law, Leviticus 20:17, commands it. Wherefore by the just judgment of God so many and so great evils followed from it, harms to David as well as to Amnon: for the latter was killed and lost his life, the former almost lost his kingdom with his life, Absalom avenging the violation of his sister. So Abulensis, who thinks that David ought to have punished Amnon with death for the violation, as the law ordains; although Cajetan excuses him from so grave a punishment, because the crime was hidden and could be proved by no witness. Add that Amnon was the firstborn, heir and successor to the kingdom, and therefore to be preserved alive for the public good of the commonwealth, and to be chastised with a milder penalty.
23. AND IT CAME TO PASS TWO YEARS AFTER,—Hence it is plain that the killing of Amnon took place two years after the violation which he inflicted on Thamar: so swiftly did God’s vengeance pursue the wicked and incestuous man, and deprive him of life and kingdom. For he was the firstborn, and a delight to David, and therefore was to succeed to his kingdom.
24. BEHOLD, THY SERVANT’S SHEEP ARE SHORN.—Absalom, therefore, the king’s son, was a shepherd, and had the care of sheep and flocks, as did the other princes of that age, upright and simple.
25. HE BLESSED HIM,—as if to say: David prayed well for Absalom, and so dismissed him, saying for example: Go in peace. Hence Vatablus translates, he bade him farewell.
29. THEY FLED,—fearing lest they should be killed, as Amnon was; as if Absalom alone desired to survive, that he might succeed his father in the kingdom, lest any other of his brothers be preferred. As the Turk, when he has offspring, kills all his brothers, lest they invade the kingdom.
was not in Absalom’s eyes and mouth, that he frequently spoke of avenging the violation of his sister by him. For what is in the heart boils up into the mouth.
37. ABSALOM FLED, AND WENT TO THOLOMAI THE SON OF AMMIUD, KING OF GESSUR.—He fled, then, to his maternal grandfather; for he himself was the son of the daughter of Tholomai, king of Gessur, as was said in chapter 3, verse 3. For he received his grandson and protected him, because Absalom had avenged the violation of Thamar, equally his granddaughter, by the killing of Amnon, the violator.
38. HE WAS THERE THREE YEARS.—Hence the chronology of the events then done is plain, which I assigned in chapter 12, verse 25.