Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
16. HE HELD BACK THE PEOPLE FROM PURSUING AFTER ISRAEL IN THEIR FLIGHT.—For it is a political precept that in a universal rebellion the heads be punished, but the multitude spared, lest the prince be left without his subjects, and a king without a kingdom. So Moses hanged the princes who had been leaders of the people to the worship of Beelphegor, but spared the people, Numbers 25:4. Joab did the same in the sedition of Seba, as we shall hear in chapter 20. So also Elias killed the priests of Baal, who fostered the people in idolatry, 3 Kings 18:40. The Gentiles did the same (whence the law of Lycurgus was: “Do not slaughter a fleeing enemy”; Polyaenus is witness, book 1), especially the Romans. To say nothing of others, notable is what Livy relates, Decade 4, of Tarquin the last king of the Romans, from whom when his son Sextus Tarquin had gone over to the Gabii, the son sent a messenger to his father to ask what he wished done by him. But the father answered not by word but by deed: for walking in the garden he struck off the tallest heads of the poppies. The son, hearing this from the messenger, understood that his father wished him to remove the chief men of the Gabii; and when he had done this in fact, the son easily subjected the rest of the common people to himself and his father. Ovid, book 2 of the Fasti, relating the same history, puts lilies for poppies:
And with his rod, he says, he cut off the tops of the lilies.
17. THEY CAST HIM INTO A GREAT PIT, AND LAID A HEAP OF STONES UPON HIM;—that with this heap they might bury him and his crime, name and memory, and bury them in eternal oblivion and the mark of infamy: for he, as St. Jerome says, was most wicked and liable to a twofold death; namely one who had greatly dishonoured his father against the command of the law, and had revealed his shame by publicly violating his concubines.
18. FOR HE SAID: I HAVE NO SON, AND THIS SHALL BE A MONUMENT OF MY NAME.—We heard in chapter 14, verse 27, that Absalom had three sons and one daughter. These sons, then, were already dead, or certainly Absalom erected this monument before he begot them. So Abulensis, Cajetan, Dionysius. Hence the Chaldee renders, he had no surviving son. Otherwise the Rabbis and Lyranus, who think that Absalom left sons after him, but unfit to reign, or soon to die because of their father’s rebellion. Hear their history, or rather fable, which St. Jerome relates in the Traditions: “The Hebrews hand down that, when taken down from the oak, he asked for a respite before he was put to death, to make a pillar for himself in memory of himself, because he had no son such as would be worthy of the kingdom; for he thought his sons not only unworthy of the kingdom, but even, on account of his sin which he had committed against his father, unworthy of the present life; on which pillar he is said to have fixed a hand, and to have expressed the figure of his hand, and for this reason the pillar is so called.”
AND THIS SHALL BE A MONUMENT OF MY NAME.—This pillar or monument of Absalom still exists, “in the king’s valley,” verse 18, that is, in the valley of Josaphat, with the name of the tomb of the same, which is adorned with flowers carved on the top, as the eye-witness Zuallardo writes, book 3 of his pilgrimage, day 2. Hear Adrichomius in the Description of Jerusalem, number 227. The monument or hand of Absalom was a column and marble statue with an inscription, two stades distant from Jerusalem, which Absalom while alive had erected for himself as a monument in the king’s valley. Where still there stands a tower and a great heap of stones which is increased every day more and more. For pagans and pilgrims passing that way have the custom that each throws a stone upon it, and, as if avenging according to the law his rebellion against David his father, they execrate him with this curse: “Cursed be Absalom the parricide; and whoever unjustly persecute their parents, let them be cursed for ever.” Hence it is plain that the pillar or monument of Absalom was a marble column on which stood a statue of him; whence Josephus says it was a statue. Others call it an edifice. Vatablus calls it a triumphal arch or pyramid, and gathers from it that Absalom was proud and ambitious, and too greedy of praise and glory, and therefore for this proud monument a vile and rough heap of stones was given him in return.
AND IT IS CALLED THE HAND OF ABSALOM.—“Hand,” that is, a monument raised by the hand and work of Absalom. It is a metonymy. Tropologically, the ambitious, such as Absalom was, erect for themselves pillars and pyramids to eternize their name, and call them their “hands,” saying: “Our high hand hath done all this.” So Dionysius.
A like tomb had Rufinus, that celebrated tutor of the Emperor, who therefore ruled him, and through him the whole world: but afterwards, aspiring to the empire, he perished at the hands of soldiers; of whom Claudian, book 2 Against Rufinus, sings thus:
Behold, scattered at the crossroads to be trodden on, he who built pyramids for himself, who built roofs, not to fall, to adorn his shades in temples, and who believed he would be clothed in Sidonian purple, feeds the birds naked; there he lies who possessed the world, in need of a scrap of earth, and with scant dust he is covered in parts, nowhere buried whole.
25. IF HE BE ALONE, THERE IS GOOD NEWS IN HIS MOUTH.—For it is a sign that my men are victors, and are pursuing the conquered enemies; for if my men had been cut down and beaten, this one would certainly not come alone, but many with him would be fleeing back into the city to save their lives.
33. MY SON ABSALOM.—David wept the death of Absalom not so much the present as the eternal, that he was killed in the very act of the crime of parricide; hence he feared, nay believed, that he was damned. Furthermore, St. Chrysostom, homily On Absalom, answers David and restrains his laments, saying: “Why dost thou weep, glorious father, why dost thou lament, as if thou approvedst what Absalom dared? Why dost thou weep for the wicked, as if thou hadst wished him to perpetrate the parricide? Thou bewailest the glory of the conquering army; if the enemy’s destruction is wept, there can be no joy in the victory, if the punishment of a parricide is mourned. He was not thy son, who so violated fatherly affections. He deserved not to be called thine, who ... the right of a father ... not the leaders, to whom thou hadst commanded that the wicked one be spared, but that tree, that first avenged thee; it defended, it avenged the wrong of the injured father, it that had not heard thee.” And a little after, he subjoins the cause, saying: “For he ought to perish by a new punishment, who wished to bring a new crime on the world by the destruction of his father.”
Finally, paternal affection toward a wicked son urged David. For, as Quintilian says, Declamation 392: “He was a father; these feelings are never so far overcome that they do not return to their own nature, most holy.”