Commentaria in III Regum
Verse 1. AND KING DAVID WAS OLD.—He was seventy years old, which even then was the period and term of the common human life, as he himself says in Psalm 89:10: “The days of our years in them are threescore and ten years”; and this is even now the literal term. Hence from the age of David to this day (a space of 2,600 years) the age and life of men has scarcely diminished.
Verse 1. AND WHEN HE WAS COVERED WITH CLOTHES, HE GOT NO HEAT.—The Rabbis fable that this punishment was inflicted by God on David because he had secretly cut off the garment of king Saul, who was persecuting him, in the cave, 1 Kings 24. Others assign as the cause of his coldness that he had been begotten last of all by old and cold parents. But Scripture here gives senile age as the cause: “He was,” it says, “advanced in years,” and he had spent those days in continual hardships, wars and labors, and had exhausted his strength. Abulensis adds that he was afflicted with sickness.
3. SO THEY SOUGHT FOR A YOUNG WOMAN.—The natural medical cause of this history is given by Galen and by Franciscus Valesius, physician of Philip I, king of Spain. St. Jerome assigns the moral cause; St. Prosper the tropological. Hear Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, chapter 23. They advised David, he says, to take a young woman rather than wine or fur garments, because that human heat is in substance most like the natural heat of man, and does not exceed its degree. Hence Galen, book 7 of the Method, where he cures the weakness of a cold and dry belly, says: “Of the things that are applied from outside, let a girl of good constitution lie beside him, so that his abdomen may always touch her”; which, as Valesius says, was done at that age of David, at which he could not know a virgin; otherwise marital intercourse and union would have hurt him much more than the application of a young woman would have helped him. So Rudolph of Habsburg, the first emperor of the Austrian house, was accustomed, says Serarius from Cuspinian, to kiss chastely the little daughters of nobles and princes, and even their wives, in their presence, because, worn out with hectic fever and old age, he said he drew sweet-smelling breath from their mouths.
This, then, is the literal and common exposition of Abulensis, Dionysius, Lyranus, Serarius, Salianus, Sanchez, etc.
St. Jerome, epistle 2 to Nepotian, gives the moral cause: “Does it not seem to you,” he says, “if you follow the letter that kills, either a fiction from the mime or the sport of the Atellan farces? A cold old man is wrapped in garments, and does not grow warm except in the embrace of a young woman. Bethsabee was still alive, Abigail survived, and his other wives and concubines whom Scripture mentions; all are rejected as if cold, and he grows warm in the embraces of one alone, a girl. Abraham was much older than David, and yet while Sara lived he sought no other wife; Isaac had twice David’s years, and with Rebecca, already old, never grew cold.” Here note that St. Jerome, like Angelomus and others, sets aside here and as it were overturns the literal sense, which ought altogether to be established as the foundation; so by these words they only signify that the literal sense, as less useful, is to be passed over here in passing, and that one should hold to the moral, which is the chief; this St. Jerome assigns in the same place: “Who then is this Sunamitess, wife and virgin, so fervent that she warmed the cold, so holy that she did not provoke the warm to lust? Let Solomon, the wisest, set forth the delights of his father, and relate the embraces of the peaceful man of war.
Get wisdom, get understanding. Forget not, nor decline from the words of my mouth, and forsake her not, and she shall keep thee; love her, and she shall preserve thee. The beginning of wisdom, get wisdom, and with all thy possession get understanding; surround her, and she shall exalt thee; honor her, and she shall embrace thee, that she may give to thy head increase of graces and protect thee with a noble crown. All the powers of the body are changed in the old, and while wisdom alone increases, the rest decrease.”
He proves the same from the etymology of the name Abisag, and Sunamitess, when after much he adds: “But the very mystery of the name Abisag indicates the greater wisdom of the old; for it is interpreted ‘my father’s superabundance,’ or ‘my father’s roaring’; the word ‘superfluous’ is ambiguous, but in the present place it denotes virtue, because it is greater in the old, and wisdom is overflowing and abundant. In another place, however, ‘superfluous’ is put as if ‘not necessary.’ But Abisag, that is ‘roaring,’ is properly so called, because it resounds like the waves of the sea, and, so to speak, a roar is heard coming from the deep. From this it is shown that the thunder of the divine word dwells most abundantly in the old, beyond the human voice. Moreover Sunamitess in our language means ‘scarlet,’ to signify that wisdom is warm and glows with divine reading; which, although it indicates the Sacrament of the Lord’s blood, yet also shows the fervor of wisdom”; whence he concludes with a wish: “Let wisdom embrace me now; and let our Abisag, who never grows old, rest in my bosom. She is undefiled, and of perpetual virginity, and in the likeness of Mary, though she daily brings forth and ever gives birth, she is uncorrupted. Hence I think the Apostle said: Fervent in spirit.”
Angelomus transcribed all this word for word from St. Jerome, and adds: “Hence the Lord says in Luke 12: “I am come to cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?” who, kindling the hearts of the disciples, made them say: “Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in the way and opened to us the Scriptures?” We ought indeed to embrace and love this young woman, who signifies the greater wisdom of the old; not boyish declamations, and the little flowers of the dialecticians, and the allurements of words.” Then he proves the same by examples of the philosophers: “For if Cato,” he says, “the most eloquent of the Roman race (as one of the learned has reported), when already an old man of eighty, was not ashamed of Greek letters, nor despaired of learning them; and if, as they say, Homer relates that from the tongue of Nestor, already aged and almost decrepit, speech sweeter than honey flowed; and a certain wise man of Greece, when he saw that he was dying, having completed a hundred and seven years, is said to have said that he grieved that he was leaving life just when he had begun to be wise; Plato also died writing in his eightieth year; Socrates completed seventy-nine years in the labor of teaching and writing: how much more ought we, while the youth of the body is warm, amid the wars of the body and amid the incentives of vices, to learn wisdom thoroughly, so that in old age, when we grow cold, it may rest in the bosom of our mind, and cherish us and sleep with us, nay, minister to us the food of spiritual understanding! This woman can indeed bear the figure of the contemplative life, which all the perfect, embracing with incredible love, are inflamed by loving.” David therefore takes Abisag, who represents the wisdom proper to old age. For “Abisag,” by the interpretation of St. Jerome just cited, is the same as “abundant” and as “roaring.” “In the old,” he says, “the thunder of the divine word dwells most abundantly and beyond the human voice.” The tropological cause is given by St. Prosper, book 2 On Predestination, chapter 27: “Abisag,” he says, “signifies the soul kindled by God with the warmth of chastity through grace, which with its love kindles the cold powers in faith, like the limbs of a great king.” The symbolic cause is given by Angelomus and Rupert: David, they say, that is Christ, the old Synagogue of the Jews being dead and cast aside, betrothed to himself the young woman Abisag, that is the new Church of the Christians: “And he grew warm with so great an ardor of faith in her love that for love of her he willingly committed himself to various perils, and finally did not refuse to die in her name.”
4. AND THE MAID WAS EXCEEDINGLY BEAUTIFUL.—The physicians teach, says Dionysius, that virgin girls are warmer than corrupted women who have borne children, and that beautiful ones also move the appetite more, and by bringing cheerfulness arouse the natural heat, even without carnal intercourse.
AND SHE SLEPT WITH THE KING, AND SERVED HIM.—You will ask, was Abisag the wife of David, or a handmaid? Abulensis, chapter 1, question 23, denies that she was his wife, and proves it first because, if she had been David’s wife, Adonias his son could not, nor would he have dared, to ask her for himself as wife: for this is forbidden in Leviticus 18:8, which nevertheless he did. Second, because David, being cold, was impotent for conjugal union; therefore unfit to contract marriage.