Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
You will say: Daniel 13:23, Susanna chose the contrary of David, saying: “It is better for me to fall into your hands without doing it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord.” The answer is easy: for Susanna speaks of him who falls into the hands of men by punishment, to be killed by them; for this is better than to fall into the hands of God by guilt, namely by fornication, to which she was urged by the elders, as if to say: It is better to be killed by men than to sin against God: for the slaughter by men is temporal; but the offence and vengeance of God is eternal: wherefore it is better to offend men than God. But David speaks of punishment, not of guilt, as if to say: It is better to be punished by God than by man, namely by an enemy: for he is often savage and implacable; but God is merciful, and is appeased by penance. Hence St. Chrysostom, homily 29 on the epistle to the Romans, shows that David was a good shepherd, because, according to the sentence of Christ the Lord, John chapter 10, verse 11, he gave his life for his sheep: “Therefore,” he says, “in the choice of those punishments he chose neither famine, nor hostile persecution; but death sent by the Lord, by which he hoped that others indeed would be safe; but himself be removed before all the rest.” Whence he says: “It is I that have sinned: I have done wickedly: these that are the sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, be turned against me.” For, as St. Chrysostom well adds, “his bowels were torn as they fell, as though his own sons were being killed.” Whence St. Ambrose, Apology of David, chapter 7: “By which deed,” he says (that is, by prayer for his subjects), “he was at once judged worthy of sacrifice who was thought unworthy of absolution.” And below: “Nor is it wonder,” he says, “if by such an offering for the people he obtained pardon of his sin; since Moses, by offering himself to the Lord for the error of the people, also blotted out the sins of the people.”
15. AND THE LORD SENT A PESTILENCE UPON ISRAEL, FROM THE MORNING UNTO THE TIME APPOINTED.—The Septuagint: from morning until the hour of the meal; the Chaldee: from the time when the daily (sacrifice) is slain until it is burnt, that is, until by burning it is wholly consumed, which was about the time of the meal. So also Josephus. Hence many think that this plague lasted only six hours: for so many are from morning to the meal. So Theodoret: “God threatened death for three days, but inflicted death for six hours only. If the days are counted with the nights, it is found that only a twelfth part of the threats was inflicted on the people. So God, kind and merciful, used indeed greater threats, terrifying sinners, but inflicts by threats far lesser punishments.” The same Ambrose on Psalm 37: “He who had proposed to exercise death on the earth for three days did not suffer even one day to pass, but gladly indulged it to the hour of the meal, and, to use the word of Scripture, repented of the evil.” And somewhat after: “See,” he says, “the grace of the Lord, that he himself turned aside from the proposed condition. Is it any crime of mercy, that he threatens more and exacts less, who in the reward of prizes keeps his promises, in the exaction of penalties relents from what was prescribed?” Others, as Lyranus, Rupert, Vatablus, Sanchez, take by the “time appointed” the fixed time of the evening sacrifice, at which in the evening the second lamb was offered to God in the daily sacrifice, as though the plague ceased by force of that sacrifice: for the Hebrew moed signifies a fixed time, such as that of feasts and sacrifices. But more simply and fitly, take by the “time appointed” the three days appointed by God for the plague, verse 13. So Abulensis, who confirms this by reason: Because, he says, if no mention had been made before of the time during which the pestilence should last, there would be room for conjecture, and the morning being named at which the plague began, it might be understood to have lasted to the time of the evening sacrifice defined by the law; especially since at that time David seems to have sacrificed. But when a little before it was said it would last three days, and soon it is said it lasted to the time appointed, violence is certainly done to Scripture if the time appointed is referred to anything other than the aforesaid three days: so also Cajetan, Dionysius, Salianus and others, who think that this plague lasted two whole days, and part of the third day, until God said to the Angel: It is enough.
AND THERE DIED OF THE PEOPLE, etc., SEVENTY THOUSAND MEN.—Wrongly, then, do the Rabbis count three hundred thousand, as I said on verse 9.
16. AND WHEN THE ANGEL OF THE LORD HAD STRETCHED OUT HIS HAND (hence it is plain that this Angel inflicting the plague was good, not evil. So a good Angel burnt Sodom, Genesis 19; the same is plainer in verse 17, where David asks pardon of the Angel) OVER JERUSALEM TO DESTROY IT, THE LORD HAD PITY.—Hence it is plain that the Angel had first struck the other tribes with the plague, and killed 70 thousand of them, and at length on the third day also struck Jerusalem and slew many in it: for the Jerusalemites too had sinned against God, by conspiring with Absalom against David their king; and by several other sins.
AND SAID TO THE ANGEL THAT STRUCK THE PEOPLE: IT IS ENOUGH.—Hence it is gathered that God, before David prayed, of spontaneous mercy ordered the Angel to stay the stroke and the plague. Furthermore, this Angel inflicted the pestilence on the Israelites “by applying to their body and heart something very pestilential,” says Abulensis, “which suddenly corrupted the vitals, and that without sensation, as infected air is not felt when it is drawn in; and because that which the Angel applied was more corrupt than the air which is drawn in at the time of a pestilence, men fell more swiftly and insensibly, as though they had had no sickness.” Hence this plague is called a “sword,” both because those who were struck by the plague by the Angel felt as it were the blow of a sword; and because in Scripture everything that pricks, torments, afflicts is called by catachresis a sword. A like thing happened in the Roman plague which carried off Pope Pelagius, to quell which St. Gregory instituted public Litanies to the basilica of St. Peter, and himself bore the image of the Blessed Mary painted by St. Luke, of which hear Baronius, in the year of Christ 590: “Then they say this wonderful thing also happened, that when Gregory in procession had come to the mole of Hadrian beside the Tiber, in sign of the reconciled Deity, an Angel was seen putting back into its scabbard a drawn sword, and by this sign the ceasing of the disease was signified,” as (as was said above from the same Gregory, Dialogues, book 4, chapter 36) the same had been divinely foreshown by arrows seen falling from heaven.
A like thing was done in that universal plague through the East, nay through the whole world, which happened in the year of Christ 544, which was the 18th of the Emperor Justinian, of which Procopius writes thus, book 2 On the Persian War: “Phantoms of a more than human kind were seen: for as many as fell into it thought they were struck by some man, and the disease suddenly broke in. Some at the beginning sought in vain to avert it with holy words and other supplications (as they could): and as if frenzied or driven by a malignant spirit, calling their friends, they did not hear them at all: they were also kept shut in narrow places. To some in sleep these same things happened.” And below: “For three months, then, this plague prevailed at Constantinople, and at the beginning indeed a few, then daily five, and often ten thousand were carried out: so that many even of the rich, all the servants now being dead, perished more from the want of attendants than from the disease, and remained unburied.” The remedy was the implored help of the Blessed Virgin, by which the plague was quenched, whence in memory of so great a benefit the Greeks instituted the feast of Hypapante, that is, the Meeting of the Lord, which we call the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, on 2 February. See Baronius in the Martyrology and in the Annals, in the year of Christ 544, at the end. A like plague happened in the year of the Lord 605, of which Regino thus in his Chronicle: “Then,” he says, “it visibly appeared to many that a good and a bad Angel went through the city by night, and at the order of the good Angel the bad Angel, who seemed to carry a hunting spear in his hand, as often as he struck with the spear the door of any house, so many from that house died the next day.” Altogether the same happened at Rome under Pope Agatho, in the year of the Lord 689, in the same words that Regino uses (whence there is suspicion that one and the same thing is narrated by both, but dated in different years), Paul the Deacon writes, book 6, chapter 5, and Anastasius the Librarian in Agatho, and from them Baronius in the year of Christ aforesaid, who add: “Then it was said to a certain man by revelation that the plague itself would not rest until in the basilica which is called St. Peter in Chains an altar of the martyr St. Sebastian should be set up. And it was done; and when the relics of the blessed martyr Sebastian had been brought to the city of Rome, as soon as the altar was set up in the aforesaid basilica, the plague itself ceased.” Thus far Paul. “The altar itself still stands entire, and also an image of the same holy martyr expressed in carved work. But from this a devotion was propagated to posterity, that in time of plague an image of the same St. Sebastian was wont to be painted in various places by way of vow, and altars in his memory erected, nay even churches built.” The same Anastasius has of the time and the plague in Pope Agatho. So Baronius.