Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
Moreover Abulensis, Serarius and others excuse Isboseth from tyranny and usurpation of the kingdom, because it was owed to him by hereditary right: for although David had been anointed king by Samuel, yet that anointing was secret and was not authentically published, so that Isboseth was bound to believe it and yield the paternal kingdom to David. Hence David also, chap. 4, verse 11, calls him “an innocent man,” and avenged his murder. Similarly they excuse Abner, whose death also David avenged by the death of Joab; for otherwise Abner would have sinned gravely in procuring the kingdom for Isboseth, if he had known that it had been given to David by God, nay, if he had afterwards learned it, he could not lawfully have supported and defended Isboseth as king, but should have warned him to yield the kingdom to David. Moreover it is a fable of R. Solomon that, when the people wanted David as king, Abner proved that the kingdom was due to Isboseth from Genesis 35:18, where Jacob called the son born to Rachel as she died in childbirth, “Benoni,” that is, son of sorrow, “Benjamin,” that is, son of the right hand. For the right hand is a symbol of the king and the kingdom; for Isboseth and Saul were descended from Benjamin, but David from Juda.
10. AND HE REIGNED TWO YEARS.—Hence R. Solomon and the Hebrews in Seder Olam chap. 12 think that Isboseth reigned only two years, so that after these were over and he was slain, the eleven tribes were without a king for five and a half years, at the end of which they made David their king.
But it is truer that Isboseth reigned over Israel for as many years as David reigned in Juda, namely seven and a half years; for when Isboseth was dead, David immediately succeeded him in the kingdom, and reigned as well in Juda as in all the other tribes. Hence Josephus also asserts that the eleven tribes, immediately after the murder of Isboseth, chose David as their king. What is here said, therefore, that Isboseth reigned two years, understand as quietly and peacefully, before he provoked David to war; for he did this after two years, as is narrated in verse 12. Moreover this war lasted on both sides five and a half years, until the death of Isboseth; hence in chap. 3, verse 1, it is said: “There was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David,” namely between Isboseth and David.
14. AND ABNER SAID TO JOAB: LET THE YOUNG MEN (the warlike youths) ARISE, AND PLAY BEFORE US.—“Play” in military sport and duel, that is, let them fight a duel among themselves. For a duel presents to curious spectators a kind of sport and entertaining spectacle: and therefore at Rome the combats of gladiators fighting in the amphitheatre were presented to the people as games. Again, a duel is called “play,” because in it the combatants show how skilled they are in the gladiatorial art, which nobles exercise as a sport, and by exercising learn. So Vatablus. Thirdly, because Abner meant this duel not so much for victory as for military sport, namely to show that his soldiers were stronger than the soldiers of David and Joab. So Josephus. Fourthly, because this duel was a prelude to the general battle which immediately followed, as is clear from what follows; and perhaps, says Serarius, as a kind of divination, a sign of victory, such as the Germans formerly used, as Cornelius Tacitus relates in his book On the Manners of the Germans: “There is also, he says, another observance of auspices, by which they test the outcome of grave wars. A captive taken in some way from the nation with which the war is waged is matched, each with his native arms, against a chosen man of their own people; the victory of the one or the other is taken as a presage.”
Moreover Abner sinned, both because, wishing to display his strength and that of Isboseth’s kingdom, he was the first to challenge Joab to a duel and war, whence by the just judgment of God he was beaten and routed in the same; and Joab sinned too, but less, because he consented to the duel and the war, and to the unjust death of those who were to be killed in it; for there had not yet preceded a just cause of war, for instance, damages or injuries inflicted by Abner or Isboseth. For it is not lawful to undertake war except for a just and grave cause. So Abulensis. If, however, Abner had first attacked Joab, Joab could lawfully, nay ought, to defend himself and his king David, and repel force by force: but Abner did not do that.
16. AND EACH ONE TAKING HIS FELLOW BY THE HEAD.—Josephus, Rabanus and Angelomus restrict “each one” to those on the side of Joab, saying that these, each one “taking his fellow by the head,” that is, his opponent on Abner’s side, pierced them through, so that the men of Joab were safe and victors, but all and only the men of Abner were slain. But others commonly take “each one” generally, as it sounds, and refer it to the men of Abner as well as of Joab, so that all to a man were slain, and fell by mutual wounds. Such was the Cadmean fight. For the poets fable that Cadmus, son of Agenor and founder of Thebes, when he saw his companions slain by a dragon, sowed the dragon’s teeth, from which armed men arose who pierced one another with mutual blows.
17. AND A BATTLE AROSE.—Behold, here the duel of verse 14 passes into a full and bitter war; hence the duel was as it were a game and prelude to it, as I have said.
18. NOW ASAEL WAS A MOST SWIFT RUNNER.—Josephus says that Asael was so swift that he outran not only men but horses, such as there still are in Ireland and India. St. Bachiarius, epistle On the Fallen: “Asael, he says, is said by Scripture to have been swift as a stag, because, I believe, the purity of an undefiled body had granted him the gift of swiftness; for the body that is corrupted burdens the soul,” Wisdom 9:15; and he gathers this purity of Asael from the fact that he is compared, as he reads it, to a stag: “He was swift, he says, as a stag, that is, one who not only by the sharpness of his mind avoided the snares of the enemy, but also stands forth as the slayer of serpents, that is, of adverse powers.” For the stag excels in keenness of sight and wages perpetual enmity with serpents. Tropologically, the Asaels are those who run forward to any offices of charity, as was Cardamas, whom St. Paul, in epistle 5 to Amandus, comparing him to Asael, credits with the feet of stags. “For he is set, he says, in the ministry of so great a charity that in freedom he serves, in old age he runs about, and prefers to spend the rest of a vacation in the labour of a journey rather than at home; because he refuses to tread the ways of the slothful strewn with thorns, lest he be turned into misery, while the thorn of wretched anxiety pierces him from the fruitless leisure of idleness. He therefore rejoices, unwearied, to run the way, lest the want that attends the slothful meet him, as a good runner, while he wears away in sluggish ease.”
23. SO ABNER STRUCK HIM WITH THE BACK OF HIS SPEAR IN THE GROIN.—In Hebrew, in the fifth rib, namely where the liver and gall reside. Tropologically, “Asael” represents those too fervent, headlong and raging, who are to be checked not directly but indirectly, and obliquely; for as St. Gregory says, III part of the Pastoral Rule: “To strike with the point (directly) is to meet an onset with open rebuke; but to strike the pursuer with the back of the spear is to touch the raging man calmly in certain things, and as if sparing him, to overcome him. And Asael straightway fell, because troubled minds, while they feel themselves spared, and yet are touched in their inmost parts by the reason of the replies under calmness, at once fall from that to which they had raised themselves.” Hence Abner in Hebrew is the same as “lamp of the father,” such as is the prudence of one who corrects gently and meekly.
26. KNOWEST THOU NOT THAT IT IS DANGEROUS TO DRIVE MEN TO DESPAIR?—For desperate soldiers fight most fiercely, either to conquer, or, if conquered, not to die unavenged, but to sell their lives dearly to the enemy; wherefore from despair is born the hope of victory; nay, despair is often the cause of victory. Hence famous generals have this maxim: “Do not fight with a desperate man. Build a golden bridge for a fleeing enemy.”
Tryphon, after killing Jonathan, did not dare to attack his few desperate companions. For “those who had pursued, seeing that it was a matter of life for them, turned back,” 1 Machabees 12:50. Nor did Lysias with many dare to attack Judas Machabeus with few. Hear Scripture in the same book, chap. 4:35: “And Lysias seeing the flight of his men, and the boldness of the Jews, and that they were ready either to live or to die bravely, went to Antioch, and chose soldiers, that being multiplied they might come again into Judea.” Similar things we have often seen in the wars of the Low Countries. Vegetius gives the reason, book III On Military Affairs, chap. 21: “From despair, he says, boldness grows; and when there is no hope, fear takes up arms. Therefore the saying of Scipio is praised, who said that a way must be made for enemies by which they may flee.” Well says Curtius, book IV: “Whoever has despised death escapes it; it pursues the most timid.” And again in book V: “Necessity, he says, sharpens cowardice, and despair is often the cause of hope.” Add the philosopher Seneca, book II of the Natural Questions, chap. 59: “No enemy, he says, is more dangerous than one whom straits make bold; and we are always seized far more violently by necessity than by virtue.” Justin relates, book XX of his History, that fifteen thousand of the Locrians fell, [and the Crotonians’ hundred thousand ...], and that, losing hope of victory, they conspired to a death already decreed; and so great a fire from despair seized each that they thought themselves victors if they did not die unavenged. “But while they sought to die honourably, they happily conquered.” Hence that saying of Maro, book II of the Aeneid:
The one safety for the vanquished is to hope for no safety.
And that saying of Sallust: “The bites of provoked necessity are most severe.”