Commentaria in II Regum (II Samuelis)
AND A FLAGON OF WINE [Vulgate: fine flour fried with oil].—In Hebrew it is ashisha, which Vatablus, Pagninus, Arias and others render, a flagon of wine. For this David gave them as drink with the food. But our version here, like the Septuagint, here as in 1 Paralipomenon chap. 16, verse 3, constantly renders, fine flour fried with oil, whom, as ancients and very skilled in the Hebrew tongue, we should believe more than recent conjecturers. See what is said at Canticle chap. 2, verse 5, and Osee chap. 3, verse 1. David therefore gave them no drink, but allowed each to take it at home at pleasure, or if he gave it, it is not expressed here.
20. AND DAVID RETURNED TO BLESS HIS OWN HOUSE,—that as he had prayed well for the people, so he might pray well for his own household also who had remained in the citadel on guard. Again, “to bless,” that is, to do good by bestowing on them the same or more gifts than he had bestowed on each of the people on account of the celebration and joy of the translated ark. So Serarius, Cajetan, Abulensis and others.
AND WAS NAKED, AS IF ONE OF THE BUFFOONS SHOULD BE NAKED.—“Naked,” not that David was altogether naked; for this would have been indecent and shameful, but that he had laid aside the outer royal garment to put on the ephod; just as if today a king, having laid aside his cloak, clad in breastplate and greaves only, should put over them the linen shoulder-garment, and so appear in a procession or at the sacrifice of the Mass, and sing with the singers clad in surplices. So Cajetan. Michol was the daughter of King Saul, and wife of King David; hence she thought it unworthy of her royal dignity and of David’s majesty that he should dance before the ark. “She knew not, say Theodoret and Procopius, the stings of divine love, which rouse even the great to small things.”
Allegorically Angelomus: David, transferring the ark, was mocked by Michol. “So the Lord Jesus Christ, he says, when he wished to transfer the testament of God into his Church, that is, from the Old Testament to the Gospel precepts, as one founding new things, seized by the Jewish people and hung on the cross, was a mockery to them. On which cross he appeared to them as naked, while, hiding from them the power of his divinity, he showed only the weakness of the flesh.”
22. AND I WILL PLAY AND MAKE MYSELF MEANER (St. Ambrose, book I of the Apology of David, chap. 6, reads: “I will be a trifler before thine eyes”) THAN I HAVE DONE: AND I WILL BE LITTLE IN MY OWN EYES: AND WITH THE HANDMAIDS OF WHOM THOU SPEAKEST, I SHALL APPEAR MORE GLORIOUS;—for true glory is humility, which made David and the saints glorious, when by the heroic virtue of lowliness they associate themselves with inferiors and as it were equal themselves to them, and with them perform abject and seemingly mean services for the honour and worship of God. Hear St. Gregory (whose words Eucherius and Angelomus transcribe), book 27 of the Morals, last chapter, where he explains David’s sentiments thus: “I desire to be vile before men, because I seek to keep myself free before the Lord by humility. There are some, however, who think lowly things of themselves, because, set in honours, they weigh that they are nothing but dust and ashes; yet they refuse to appear despised before men, and contrary to what they think of themselves within, they are cloaked outwardly in a kind of rigid dignity. And there are some who desire to be seen vile by men, and despise all that they are by showing themselves cast down; yet inwardly within themselves, as if by the very merit of the lowliness displayed, they swell, and are the more puffed up in heart, the more they repress pride in appearance. Both these wars of one pride, great David detected with caution, and overcame with wonderful virtue.” He proves the same when he adds: “For because, thinking lowly things of himself inwardly, he does not seek honour outwardly, he hints it by saying: I will play and make myself meaner. And because by showing himself vile outwardly he in no way swells inwardly, he adds: And I will be little in my own eyes; as if he said: As I show myself outwardly, despising myself, so I regard myself inwardly. What then will they do whom learning exalts, if David knew that the Redeemer would come of his flesh, and proclaimed his joys by prophesying, and yet in himself pressed down the neck of his heart with the strong heel of discretion, saying: And I will be little in my own eyes.”
Tropologically St. Bernard, epistle 87 to Ogerius: “I will play, he says, that I may be mocked. A good play, by which Michol is angered and God is delighted. A good play, which to men indeed offers a ridiculous but to Angels a most beautiful spectacle. A good play, I say, by which we are made a reproach to the abounding and a contempt to the proud. For in truth what else do we seem to worldlings than to be playing, when what they seek in this world we by contrast flee, and what they flee we seek?” And after some intervening: “This is not a childish play; it is not of the theatre, which with womanish and winding turns provokes lust, and represents filthy acts. But it is a pleasant play, honourable, grave, worthy to be looked upon, which can delight the gaze of the heavenly spectators. With this chaste and religious play he played who said: We are made a spectacle to Angels and to men. With this play let us also meanwhile play, that we may be mocked, confounded, humbled, until he come who putteth down the mighty and exalteth the humble, who will gladden us, glorify us, and exalt us for ever.”
23. THEREFORE MICHOL THE DAUGHTER OF SAUL HAD NO CHILD TO THE DAY OF HER DEATH.—Michol, says St. Ambrose, being condemned, bore no royal offspring, lest she should produce proud ones like herself, as being proud. Interpreters commonly teach that Michol bore no children, neither by David, nor by Phalti, nor by any other husband. Michol seems to have been barren by nature; for during eleven years as David’s wife she had so far given him no sons, which defect of barrenness God here confirmed in her as a punishment for her mockery of David. Pineda adds, book VII On the Affairs of Solomon, chap. 4, that David thereafter abstained from her use and marital intercourse; but this is uncertain.
Thou wilt say: In chap. 21, verse 8, five sons of Michol are numbered. The Rabbis trifle, saying that Michol was barren only at the time when she mocked David. More truly the ancient Hebrews in St. Jerome and Abulensis answer that those sons were of her sister Merob, but adopted by her; Josephus, however, will have them not from David but received from another husband. For if, say Theodoret and Procopius, sons had been born from David and her, they would more easily have been afterwards enrolled among kings, since they would have had a king for father and a king’s daughter for mother. But the former answer is truer, as will appear at chap. 21, verse 8.
Symbolically, Michol represents Pagans, Jews, Heretics and other impious persons who mock and calumniate the faith, the ceremonies of the Church and the deeds of pious men. So Eucherius, Angelomus and St. Ambrose, book I of the Apology of David, chap. 6. Hence Michol in Hebrew is the same as all water, says Eucherius; and water is a symbol of persecution and persecutors, who like water flow away into carnal vices, and therefore persecute the true, pious and spiritual as if diametrically opposed to themselves.
Finally, the sense of Michol was the sense of the Gentiles, who thought it unworthy of the majesty of kings as well as of gods to sing, to chant psalms, to lead choruses. That saying is trite: “Jupiter does not sing, nor strike the lyre.” King Philip reproved his son Alexander the Great because he had sung. Nero too was ill spoken of for his singing, as Suetonius attests. But contrary was the zeal and practice of the faithful, even of great men, in divine things. To pass over others, a hundred years ago Thomas More, Chancellor of England and martyr, imitated David. Hear what Thomas Stapleton writes of him in his Life, chap. 6, page 87:
“But in his own church also he sang along with the priest, clad in a surplice. When he did this though Chancellor of the kingdom, he was warned by the Duke of Norfolk, who once coming upon him found him thus singing in the choir in a surplice, that this his manner of acting would doubtless displease the king, as too humble and less befitting the dignity which he held; he replied: It cannot displease my lord the king that I render service to the Lord of the king himself. Moreover he served at the altar the priest who was sacrificing (supplying the place of a clerk); and sometimes in the public processions customary in his own parish he carried the cross before the priest, refusing nothing of the office of a common clerk or sexton, shrinking from nothing, blushing at nothing, nay rejoicing greatly; and as it were leaping with David before the ark of the Lord and saying: I will be meaner than I have been, and I will be little in my own eyes.” So far Stapleton.