Commentaria in III Regum
Finally, woods, because leafy and pleasant, stirred the Gentiles to practise in them their carnal rites, with which they served Bacchus by banquets and drunkenness, and Venus and Priapus by lust.
So Cyrus and the Persians, as Xenophon testifies, book 8, sacrificed in high places. Apollonius teaches the same of others, book 2 On the Romans. The same is clear from the Capitol, in which they worshipped Jupiter Capitolinus. Hear Virgil, Aeneid book 8:
Thence he leads him to the Tarpeian seat and the Capitol, Golden now, once bristling with woodland thorns.
Even then the dread sanctity of the place terrified the fearful rustics: even then they trembled at the wood and the rock. “This grove,” he says, “this hill with leafy crown (what god it is, is uncertain) a god inhabits; the Arcadians believe that they have seen Jove himself.”
The same Virgil, Eclogue 7, thus lists the particular trees which the Gentiles consecrated to their gods in these groves:
The poplar is most dear to Alcides, the vine to Iacchus (Bacchus), the lovely myrtle to Venus, to Phoebus his own laurel. Phyllis loves the hazels.
That the Chanaanites likewise worshipped their gods in groves and woods on high places is plain from the fact that God often commands the Hebrews to burn them and root them out, as is plain from Exodus 34, Deuteronomy 7:5, and chapter 12, verse 2, and chapter 16, verse 21: in which places God directly and expressly forbids them to have such high places as the Chanaanites had, in which they worshipped their false gods; indirectly, however, He forbids them also to sacrifice to Him in like manner in high woods and groves, but only in the tabernacle and at the altar destined for it by Himself and made by Moses, and especially in the temple soon to be built by Solomon.
The high places of the Hebrews, then, of which mention is frequent in the books of Kings and of the Prophets, were of two kinds. One, in which after the manner of the Gentiles they worshipped their gods and idols. These were manifestly unlawful, because dedicated to idols to the injury of the true God. Whence the Prophets inveigh against them most gravely and thunder, as Jeremias 7:31, Ezechiel 6:3, Osee 10:8. Hence Solomon sinned most gravely in that, to please his Gentile wives, he made groves and high places for their gods and idols, and worshipped them there; which accordingly king Ezechias scattered, his wicked son Manasses restored, and Josias utterly abolished.
The other high places were those in which the Hebrews sacrificed not to idols but to the true God. So Gedeon offered a sacrifice to God on a high rock, Judges 6:26.
Samuel did the same on a high place, 1 Kings 9:19, and Solomon here sacrificed on the high place of Gabaon, that is in the tabernacle of Moses, which was then situated on the high and leafy hill of Gabaon.
Furthermore God did not love these second high places on account of the danger of paganism and idolatry; yet He tolerated them until a fixed and stable temple should be built by Solomon in Jerusalem, for before that the tabernacle of Moses was movable, and was carried from one place to another, and indeed was separated from the altar, as I said above. Whence it was inconvenient and difficult for many to sacrifice in it, and therefore they offered their victims in another high place.
Hence pious kings, such as Asa and Josaphat, permitted the high places erected to the true God: or if they were set up to idols, they permitted them because, on account of the inveterate custom of the idolatrous people, fearing its sedition and rebellion, they could not prevent and remove them. It is truer, however, as Abulensis thinks, questions 2 and 5, that these kings only permitted the high places in which sacrifice was offered to the true God, not to idols; and these the more pious kings did not permit, but overthrew them; namely David, Ezechias and Josias, who accordingly alone of the other kings of Juda are said not to have sinned, Ecclesiasticus 49:5. As to Samuel sacrificing in Ramatha, Bethlehem and other places, 1 Kings chapter 16, verses 4 and 5, and Elias on Mount Carmel, 3 Kings 18:23, and David in the threshing-floor of Areuna, 1 Kings last chapter [2 Kings 24:18]; it must be believed that they did this for grave and urgent causes, and by God’s instigation and dispensation, as is plain of David in the place cited.
For this reason, namely that all the high places might be taken away, God willed that a temple be built by Solomon, and that sacrifice be offered to Him in it alone, that in one temple the unity of religion and of Judaism might be preserved, and the Jews be plainly kept from the profane and high-place sacrifices of the Gentiles. God had commanded the same to be done before the temple in the tabernacle made by Moses, Leviticus 17:3 and 4. See what was said there.
3. EXCEPT THAT HE SACRIFICED IN THE HIGH PLACES (dedicated to the true God, of which I have now spoken).—Hence Theodoret, Procopius, Abulensis and Ribera, book 1 On the Temple, chapter 2, think that before the building of the temple to sacrifice in high places was unlawful, and a sin at least venial, because Solomon is here blamed for sacrificing in high places, though in other things he loved the Lord and kept His precepts. The Hebrews, however, Lyranus, Serarius and others hold that it was lawful, not as absolutely pleasing to God, but as conceded and permitted by Him until a firm and stable temple should be built. So also St. Augustine, question 35 on Judges: “God,” he says, “bore with rather than forbade the custom of His people, who, apart from His tabernacle, yet offered not to strange gods but to the Lord their God, even so hearing those who offered.” After the temple, however, the high places were unlawful, and therefore David, Ezechias and Josias took them away, though Asa, Amasias and Josaphat tolerated them for fear of a greater evil, namely lest, if the high places of God were taken away, the people should turn aside to the high places of the gods and Gentiles, that is, to idols. Whence of them it is said: “He did that which was right before the eyes of the Lord, etc.; but yet the high places were not taken away.”
4. HE WENT THEREFORE TO GABAON TO SACRIFICE THERE,—because in Gabaon were the tabernacle and altar of Moses, whence it was lawful to sacrifice there, and therefore it is presently called the great high place, that is the greatest and most religious, though the ark of the covenant was not at Gabaon, but had been carried from Cariathiarim by David to Sion, as is expressly said in 2 Paralipomenon 1:4 and 5. Note here the piety of Solomon, who begins his reign with the worship and invocation of God; for he offered a thousand victims, as follows, and therefore obtained from God such wisdom as God never granted to anyone.
5. AND THE LORD APPEARED TO SOLOMON IN A DREAM BY NIGHT, SAYING: ASK WHAT THOU WILT THAT I SHOULD GIVE THEE.—
You will ask what kind of dream this of Solomon’s was, and whether in it he had the use of free will, so that he freely asked wisdom of God, and therefore obtained it.
This question is a problem. For many affirm, many deny, and both bring probable reasons for themselves.
First, then, some think that this dream was natural, from the images of the day naturally recurring by night in sleep; or naturally sent by God, in order that it might be known that wisdom is to be sought by all men, but especially by kings and princes for governing wisely, above other things, as supremely necessary for good government. So Abulensis. For since Solomon at Gabaon, praying and sacrificing by day, had often and earnestly begged wisdom of God, God caused the same images of thoughts naturally to recur to him by night; so that Solomon, sleeping, seemed to himself to ask wisdom, and God to grant it to him, according to the words of Claudian:
Whatever things are turned over in the mind by day, friendly rest gives back at night.
Aristotle teaches the same, in the book On Dreams, and Hippocrates, in the book On Insomnia.
If you say that this petition of Solomon pleased God, and that through it he really obtained wisdom, they answer that that petition in sleep did not of itself please God, because it was the act of one dreaming, not of one freely asking; but on account of another petition for wisdom by the same Solomon while awake, from which that in sleep took its origin and flowed naturally as an effect from its cause. So St. Thomas, I-II, question 113, article 3, to 2: “Solomon,” he says, “by sleeping did not merit wisdom, nor receive it, but it was declared in sleep that by his preceding desire wisdom would be infused into him by God.” He repeats the same in On Truth, question 28, Augustine, book 12 On Genesis according to the Letter, chapter 15, whom St. Thomas cites. Likewise St. Bonaventure on book 2, distinction member 3, article 3; Richard, quodlibet 1, question 17; Sanchez, Salianus, Serarius, Pineda, book 3 On Solomon, chapter 8; Pererius, book 1 on Daniel, question 7.