Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
Moreover Angelomus, Abulensis, Dionysius and others think that Oza was chastised with that temporal death, and escaped the eternal. Finally this place was called “the Striking of Oza,” as follows, or “the Division of Oza,” as it is said in 1 Paralipomenon chap. 13, verse 11. “Division,” namely because God divided Oza’s soul from his body, and Oza from men and the life of this world; not that his arm withered and was severed from the shoulders with which he ought to have borne the ark, as some Rabbis say; the author of the Wonders of Holy Scripture asserts that he was suffocated.
Allegorically, learn hence with how great purity and reverence one must approach the Holy Eucharist, in which there is not earthly manna, which was in the ark, but heavenly and divine, nay Christ himself, God and man. Hear St. Pacian in the Paranesis: “I call upon you who, having committed crimes, refuse penance, you, I say, who are timid after shamelessness, bashful after sins, who with an evil conscience touch the holy things of God, and fear not the altar of the Lord, who approach the hands of the priest in the sight of the Angels with confidence of innocence, &c., so great was the care of divine providence that it would not endure bold hands, even for help.” So also Angelomus.
Tropologically, the Fathers draw various lessons from this: first, St. Dionysius the Areopagite, epistle 8, that laymen ought not to meddle with sacred things; second, that virgins, who are the spiritual ark of Christ, are not to be touched. Hear St. Jerome, epistle 22 to Eustochium on the keeping of virginity: “I adjure thee before God and Christ Jesus and his elect Angels, not lightly to bring into public the vessels of the temple of the Lord, which to priests alone it is granted to see; let no profane person look upon the sanctuary of God. Oza, touching the ark, which it was not lawful to touch, was struck down by sudden death; for no vessel of gold and silver was so dear to God as the temple of a virginal body. The shadow went before, now the truth is.” The same, epistle 48 to Sabinian, the tempter of a virgin: “Oza the Levite, he says, wished to steady the ark of the Lord, which he himself ought to have carried, as it was falling, and was struck; what dost thou think will become of thee, who hast endeavoured to cast down the ark of the Lord standing?” Third, that sacred vessels are not rashly to be touched. So St. Ephrem, treatise On the Priesthood, tome 1. Fourth, that the deeds of superiors and saints, even if they seem to turn somewhat from the right, are not to be judged by subjects and others. Hear St. Gregory, book V of the Morals, chap. 10: “What, he says, is the mind of the just man but the ark of the testament? which, carried by kicking oxen, is bent aside: because sometimes even he who presides well, when he is shaken by the confusion of the people subject to him, is moved by love alone to the condescension of dispensation. But in what is done by way of dispensation, the very bending is thought by the unskilled a fall of fortitude. Whence some subjects also stretch out against this hand the hand of reprehension, but straightway fall from life by their own rashness. The Levite therefore stretched out his hand as if helping, but, offending, lost his life; because while the weak rebuke the deeds of the strong, they themselves are reprobated from the lot of the living.” Then applying the same to the saints: “What is it, he says, to wish to correct the just in his condescension, but to raise the bent ark with the proud hand of rebuke? What is it to reprehend the just for an unfamiliar utterance, but to count the motion of his fortitude a fall into error? But he loses life who haughtily lifts up the ark of God; because he who presumed to correct what is right in the saints would never do so unless he first thought better things of himself. Whence rightly the Levite also is called Oza, which is interpreted ‘the strong one of the Lord;’ because presumptuous persons, who would never judge the deeds or words of better men to be weak unless they believed themselves strong in the Lord with a bold mind.”
Symbolically, the ark of the testament is Holy Scripture, which we are bound to touch reverently, that is, to read and hear; and consequently the ark is the soul of a man learned and holy in it. Hence St. Anthony of Padua, for his remarkable citation and explanation of Holy Scripture in preaching, was called by the Pontiff “the ark of the testament.” So also Gennadius, in the Catalogue of Honoratus, bishop of Marseilles, calls his mouth “the armoury of the Scriptures.” And Cassian, Conference 14, chap. 10: “Continual meditation, he says, on the Scriptures makes the mind the ark of the testament.” And St. Jerome, at the end of chap. 3 to the Ephesians: “Let the ark of the testament, he says, be laid up in us, the keeper of the law of the Lord, and the Cherubim, a multitude of knowledge, and let the inner parts of our breast pass into a new name, and let us be called debir, that is, an oracle, or lalaterion, that is, a speaking-place.”
Finally the ark of the testament is the Blessed Virgin, who, having embraced in her womb Christ, the author of the new covenant and testament, brought him forth for the world: whoever touches her irreverently will surely be struck by God. So Nestorius, denying that she is Mother of God, was struck, when his blasphemous tongue rotted, eaten by worms. So Constantine Copronymus, comparing her to a purse which, when the gold is taken out, is only a worthless purse, struck by a carbuncle, cried out that he was delivered alive to an inextinguishable fire because of Mary the Mother of God, and thereafter commanded that she be honoured and celebrated as Mother of God, says Glycas from Cedrenus. See Paul the Deacon, book 23, and Zonaras, book III. So Cajanus the mime, blaspheming the Blessed Virgin, rebuked by her in sleep, when he did not amend, found himself in the morning with hands and feet cut off, as John Moschus relates in the Spiritual Meadow, chap. 4.
10. HE CAUSED IT TO BE CARRIED INTO THE HOUSE OF OBEDEDOM THE GETHITE.—This house was either in the city of Jerusalem itself, or in a place near the city, as Josephus says, who also adds that Obededom was at the beginning poor, but just; and a Levite, and this is clear from book I of Paralipomenon chap. 15, verse 18, and chap. 16, verse 38. Thou wilt say: How then is he here called a Gethite, that is, a Philistine, that is, as Theodoret and Procopius say, an Allophylus, that is, a foreigner? I answer, he was a Jew by race, but a Gethite by house, because he was born or dwelt in Geth, as Elimelech the Jew dwelt in Moab, Ruth chap. 1. So Serarius. Moreover Obededom in Hebrew is the same as serving, tilling or working red, says Pagninus in the Hebrew Names, and that aptly, to denote his red and burning devotion, piety and charity.
Mystically, Geth in Hebrew is the same as winepress, which signifies the cross, on which Christ the true vine, says Eucherius, deigned to be trodden and pressed, from which the whole people of the Gentiles may rightly be called Gethite, when he says: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;” the ark of God therefore, and God himself, rests in the soul of the Gethite, that is, of the faithful who loves the cross and mortification.
11. AND THE LORD BLESSED OBEDEDOM, AND ALL HIS HOUSEHOLD,—that is, prospered him, and suddenly heaped upon him great wealth and abundance of goods. So Josephus. The Hebrews in St. Jerome relate that all his wives, handmaids and daughters-in-law bore male children, and the animals twins.