Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
You will say: St. Augustine, book On Grace and Free Will, chapter 20, says: “God inclined the will of Semei, evil by its own fault, to this sin of cursing David.” Therefore he was positively the author of the cursing and the sin, which be far from us. I answer: “he inclined,” that is, he held, directed, bridled it, inclined as it was to cursing, and hindered it from breaking out against any other than David, and permitted it to pour out on him all the venom of its rancour. As one who holds a lion bound by a chain in his hand, when various dogs are set before him, does not allow it to spring on them, but only on some one mastiff, and then slackens the rope and lets it go to attack him and fight with him, is said to have sent the lion at the mastiff, even though he did not actively and positively send it, but only slackened the rope and let it go and permitted it to assail the mastiff: in like manner God acted here with Semei, and acts with the like of him. Whence St. Augustine adds: “God said to Semei to curse David, that is, he sent or let loose his evil heart.” For St. Augustine wishes only to teach that the hearts of men, even of the wicked and malevolent, are in the hand of God, and so shut in and restrained that they are turned only to that which he wills, and cannot be borne or break out otherwise than as it pleases him; for God uses them to punish those whom he wills to punish. Hence in chapter 22 St. Augustine explains how God hardens, saying that he permits Pharaoh and like reprobates to be hardened, and adds that not God, but their free will properly and positively hardens itself. Finally he adds in chapter 20 that God works these things in the hearts of the wicked through good or bad angels. The good work these evil things indirectly and objectively, the bad directly and impulsively.
11. BEHOLD, MY SON, WHO CAME FORTH FROM MY BOWELS, SEEKETH MY LIFE.—Then David composed Psalm 3, and by it invoked God’s help, saying: “Lord, why are they multiplied that afflict me?” ... “He is risen up,” he says, “against me, but thou art for me. My own bowels make war with me, my people. After Absalom my army is armed against me, sheep have become wolves, and lions lambs, and dogs raging with fury, little lambs, and bulls butting with the horn, ...; I am not afflicted with sadness for myself, but I grieve for their destruction.”
12. IF HAPLY THE LORD MAY LOOK UPON.—St. Ambrose, book 1 On the Offices, chapter 48, notes here three reasons by which David proves that this cursing of Semei is to be borne by him. “See,” he says, “how he kept humility and justice and prudence for the grace to be merited from the Lord. First he says: Therefore he curses me, because the Lord hath said to him to curse; thou hast humility, because he judged that what was commanded by divine authority was to be borne calmly, like a little servant. Again he said: Behold my son, who came forth from my bowels, seeketh my life. Thou hast justice; for if we suffer graver things from our own, why do we take it ill that things are inflicted by strangers? Thirdly he says: Let him alone that he may curse, because the Lord hath bid him; that he may see my affliction, and the Lord may render me good for this cursing. And he not only bore the one insulting him, but even the one stoning him, and left him unhurt as he followed, nay, after the victory, when he asked pardon, gladly forgave him. Which I have inserted for this, to teach that holy David, in the spirit of the Gospel, was not only unoffended, but even grateful to the one insulting him, and delighted rather than exasperated by injuries; for which he thought a reward would be rendered him.”
21. GO IN TO THE CONCUBINES OF THY FATHER.—This is the fifth punishment of David, and one fitting to his fault. For as he had violated Bethsabee in secret, so Absalom violated his concubines, that is, secondary wives, not in secret, but publicly in the sight of all the people; which was great impudence, impiety and lust. The crafty but impious Achitophel gave this counsel to Absalom, and subjoined its reason, saying:
THAT WHEN ALL ISRAEL SHALL HEAR THAT THOU HAST DISGRACED THY FATHER, THEIR HANDS MAY BE STRENGTHENED WITH THEE,—that is, that they may know thou hast conceived an implacable hatred against thy father, and so every hope and fear of reconciliation with him may be excluded, and in this way they may be confirmed and strengthened in promoting and completing thy conspiracy against him. For many prudent men feared to join Absalom, because they thought: Absalom, as a son, will easily be reconciled to his father, and the father will see to it; but he will then turn and vent his anger and vengeance on us. But now, seeing that he had violated his father’s wives, they judged that he was irreconcilable with his father, and so were strengthened in their conspiracy with him against the father. So Theodoret: “Achitophel,” he says, “fearing lest nature should unite them (David and Absalom) again, and then, if a reconciliation took place, he would pay the penalty of treason, suggested that last wickedness, that to reconciliation no access might lie open. But he soon paid the penalty of that impious and wicked persuasion: and because he armed the son against the father, he in turn armed his own hands against himself, and by them, with a noose cast about his neck, endured a most wretched end. For though he was fit to foresee the end of affairs, since his persuasion was not admitted he believed the victory would be David’s; and fearing betrayal, he took punishment on himself by his own hand.”
22. SO THEY PITCHED A TENT FOR ABSALOM (in the dative) ON THE TOP OF THE HOUSE,—that is, on the flat roof or housetop (for the roofs in Judea were flat, like floors), that it might be seen by all the people; for the people saw the concubines entering the tent, and Absalom following after them, as fornicators do following their harlots in brothels; but the shameful act itself they did not see, because the tent was veiled with curtains: for otherwise this affair would have been too shameless and execrable to the people, as was therefore the sect of the Cynics, whose father was Diogenes, who for this dog-like shamelessness was called Cynic, that is, canine.
AND HE WENT IN TO HIS FATHER’S CONCUBINES IN THE SIGHT OF ALL ISRAEL.—Hear Salvian, book 2 On Providence: “More impure, you would not know, or more bloody, the son; because he cannot kill his father by parricide, he defiles him by incest, and an incest indeed, beyond the wickedness of incest, raised by design to pile up crime; since the persecutor of his parent publicly perpetrated a deed which even in secret men would abominate: namely that by a most deadly crime not the father only should be disfigured in secret, while the eyes of the whole world also were defiled by a public incest.”
23. NOW THE COUNSEL OF ACHITOPHEL, etc., WAS AS IF A MAN SHOULD CONSULT GOD,—that is, it was held by all as most prudent and divine; as if to say: The counsel of Achitophel was esteemed as an oracle. Doubtless the crafty and impious man accommodated himself to the time and the persons, and gave pious counsels to pious David, but impious ones to impious Absalom: which were prudence according to the devil, but not according to God. For they were fitted to foster Absalom’s ambition and tyranny, but opposed to the virtue, piety and obedience which a son owes his father. So even today in the courts of princes there are not lacking counsellors who bend themselves and their counsels to every wind and breeze of the prince, so as to be upright with the upright, wicked with the wicked. There was lately known in England a counsellor of great name who, with Mary the Catholic queen, was a Catholic, and feigned himself wonderfully devout and pious; and when Elizabeth succeeded, in an heterodox faith, he dropped the mask, and conducted himself as a heretic, and persecuted Catholics: yet he wished nevertheless to be held a Catholic by Catholics.
For he wished, as a politician, to please all, and to win the favour of all. Hence when one of the Fathers of our Society (who once told me this in Belgium), taken in England by him, was secretly asked what the Catholics across the sea and princes thought of him, he answered shrewdly, but aptly and truly: My lord, they say that you imitate the lower spheres of the heavens, which follow the motion of the first mover; for so you follow the nod and motion of the Queen. Such also was that Wolsey who, to assent to the lust of Henry VIII, was the cause of the divorce of Catherine his wife, and thence of all the evils of England. Hence by the just judgment of God he fell into the indignation of Henry VIII, and miserably perished, saying: “Because I studied to please the king more than God, therefore I justly incurred God’s wrath, and lost the king’s favour,” as Sanders relates in the English Schism. Would that our Achitophels, beholding his end, might detest his ways and political counsels, and take wisdom from his hanging, lest they bring on themselves a like death, present and eternal!