Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
8. AND THERE WERE MANY MORE WHOM THE FOREST CONSUMED.—“The forest,” that is, the wild beasts of the forest: lions, wolves and tigers lurking in the wood, which shows that this was divine vengeance, say St. Jerome, Cajetan and Angelomus. Again, “the forest,” that is, the precipices and pits hidden in the forest, into which the fleeing fell. So Abulensis, Vatablus and others.
9. HIS HEAD STUCK FAST IN THE OAK.—The Septuagint: his head was entangled in the tree; the Chaldee: and his head was caught in the oak; Vatablus: his head was held fast by the oak; the Hebrew: his hair stuck in the tangled branches of the oak. The thick and flowing hair of Absalom, therefore, entangled in the thick and interwoven branches of the oak, stuck fast. By the hair, then, in which Absalom had gloried, he is punished and hung up. So Abulensis and Josephus. Cajetan adds that his head was held between two branches, doubtless that he is punished in the head, who had proudly wished to lift it against his father. Hear St. Chrysostom, homily On Absalom, vol. 1: “He is inserted in the branches, bound to the wood, tied with his throat pierced. Hanging, he is found dead by men, whom heaven could not look upon alive, nor earth bear any longer. O the unspeakable desert of the parricide! The wrong done to his father neither the sword of one fighting, nor an enemy hand, nor the blow of one hurling a javelin avenged, but the wood vindicates it, the tree avenges, the branches defend.”
AND WHILE HE HUNG BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH, THE MULE ON WHICH HE RODE PASSED ON.—The Septuagint: and he was hanged on the tree between heaven and earth, etc. So also the Chaldee. Note here the punishment, by God’s just vengeance in all things commensurate to Absalom’s crime; he aspired to his father’s throne; a gibbet is given him as a throne.
He sought to be crowned with a diadem, and lo, his crown was the hair of his head entangled in a tree. He wished for a sceptre, and lo, three lances are given him instead of a triple sceptre, with which he is pierced. He coveted a royal bodyguard, and Joab’s armour-bearers furnish him exactly that. His punishment was turned, therefore, into a tomb and an epitaph of his crime. Hear Chrysostom, homily on the Psalms: “Absalom attacked David, was killed by Joab, and was hung on a high tree, he who was raised up against his father; and he was held by a tree, who fought against the root; and branch was bound by branch, he who was torn away from fatherly affection; and he was held by the head, who strove to take away the head of his begetter; and like fruit he hung from the tree, who wished to cut down the husbandman of nature; and he was pierced in the heart with a javelin, killed there where he was preparing slaughter. And then a wonderful spectacle could be seen. For riding on a mule, he was held by the hair of his head by the foliage of the tree, and the foliage held the tyrant by the hair, crushing him there where he strove to wear his father’s diadem.” Then he adds the cause why Absalom was hung: “Absalom could be seen, then, hanging in the midst of heaven and earth. Heaven would not admit him. For if it cast out the first rebel, the devil, how would it admit this second rebel? The earth was against him, not bearing to be polluted by the steps of a parricide. For if it swallowed Dathan, who had spoken against Moses, and opened its mouth against him who had shamelessly opened his mouth, how could it have borne feet running against a begetter?”
11. WHY DIDST THOU NOT STAB HIM TO THE GROUND,—that he might fall to the earth, and expire there pierced; this is plain from the Hebrew. 14. SO HE TOOK THREE LANCES (shorter ones, whence the Septuagint renders three javelins; the Chaldee, three darts; Vatablus, three small spears; for this the Hebrew shebatim signifies), AND THRUST THEM INTO THE HEART OF ABSALOM,—that the feigned and double, nay triple heart, with which before his father he had outwardly pretended obedience, but inwardly had cherished ambition for the kingdom and rebellion, that the treacherous heart, I say, he might pierce with a triple dart. St. Chrysostom gives this cause, in the place already cited, saying: “Into the heart of the heartless he thrust three arrows, striking him there where was the receptacle of iniquity, and when he hung aloft in the tree, David sang over him a fair epitaph: I have seen the wicked highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Libanus; and I passed by, and lo, he was not.” The same Chrysostom on Psalm 7, vol. 1: “And that thou mayest know that what was done was not by human industry, but wholly by divine judgment, his hair and the wood bound him, and a brute animal delivered him, and the hair was in place of a rope, the tree in place of a gibbet. And in place of a soldier the mule led him. But consider (which is wonderful) that when he suffered this, none of his own dared approach him, though there was so much space. But God had provided this, that he should not be taken down, nor brought bound to his father, since the father’s bowels had shown immoderately that they wished to spare him; and (what is more wonderful) he who reconciled the father to him, killed him, almost a vehement accuser pressing: but this man killed him, yet God passed the sentence.” He proves this from the Psalms of David: “For that the sentence was passed from above, hear how he himself showed it. For when he had said: And his iniquity shall come down upon his own pate, he says (I will give glory to the Lord according to his justice, and will sing to the name of the Lord the most high): I will give thanks, he says, not rejoicing in the slaughter of others, but accepting the sentence of God.”
Mystically the Gloss: “The tree of Absalom,” it says, “signifies the gibbet of hell; the three lances the triple punishment of the damned, namely fire, the worm, and the lack of the beatific vision.” Furthermore, Joab sinned in killing Absalom, because he killed him against the command of the king, who ordered that he be saved; wherefore he had not authority and right to kill him, says Abulensis, who thinks that for this cause David took from him the command and governance of the army, chapter 19, verse 13. Cajetan, however, excuses Joab, because he took David’s word about saving Absalom not as a command, but as an admonition and desire or sign of fatherly piety. Again, because he killed him in the heat of battle from zeal to avenge so great a crime and parricide. Finally, as to his fearing that, if he were spared, he would renew the war, or otherwise plot against his father: Joab also feared for himself, lest he be killed by Absalom.
You ask, whether Absalom was damned? Some deny it; for, pierced with lances, he did not expire at once; he had therefore time to repent. But, pierced in the very act of crime, he seems to have had neither mind, nor counsel, nor reason for thinking of God and his salvation; but overwhelmed by wounds, his mind lulled and buried, he seems to have breathed forth his unhappy soul, and to be damned. So think St. Augustine, book 3 On Christian Doctrine, chapter 21, and book 22 Against Faustus, chapter 66; Salvian, To the People; St. Bernard, sermon 26 on the Canticles; Theodoret, Procopius and others here. For, as St. Augustine says: “This is the just judgment of God, that the sinner who in life forgot God, in death forgets himself.” Altogether like was the crime of Chramnus, son of Clothar, king of the Franks, who, rebelling against his father, fell by a like vengeance; of whom hear Gregory of Tours, book 4 of the History of the Franks, chapter 20: “Clothar went like a new David to fight against his son Absalom, Look down, O Lord, from heaven, and judge my cause, for I suffer injuries unjustly from my son; look down and judge justly; and lay on that judgment which once thou didst lay between Absalom and his father David. When, therefore, they joined battle, the count of the Britons turned his back, and there fell; at length Chramnus took to flight, having ships prepared on the sea; but while he wished to free his wife and daughters, he was overwhelmed by his father’s army, taken and bound. When this was announced to King Clothar, he ordered him to be burned with his wife and daughters, and, shut into the hut of a certain poor woman, Chramnus, stretched on a bench, was strangled with a napkin, and so afterwards, a chasuble having been set on fire over them, he perished with his wife and daughters.”