Commentaria in III Regum
“That leader of the Israelite army, who had afflicted Egypt with ten plagues, and at whose command heaven and earth and seas obeyed, is proclaimed the meekest of all men whom the earth then bore; and therefore for forty years he held the principate: because he tempered the pride of power with gentleness and meekness. He was stoned by the people, and prayed for those who stoned him, because he rather wished himself to be blotted out of the book of God, lest the flock committed to him should perish; for he desired to imitate that shepherd who, he knew, would carry even the wandering sheep on his shoulders: The good shepherd, he says, giveth his life for his sheep.”
8. BUT HE FORSOOK THE COUNSEL OF THE OLD MEN, AND TOOK YOUNG MEN THAT HAD BEEN BROUGHT UP WITH HIM.—See here the folly and haughtiness of Roboam, who, spurning the mature counsel of the old men, follows the youthful and foolish opinion of the young, and therefore offended his subjects, estranged them, and drove them to make Jeroboam king for themselves. See here, then, the vanity foretold by Solomon fulfilled in Solomon’s own son: which Ecclesiastes describes, chapter 2, verse 18, saying: “Again I hated all my application wherewith I had earnestly laboured under the sun, being likely to have an heir after me, whom I know not whether he will be a wise man or a fool, and he shall have rule over all my labours with which I have laboured and been solicitous: and is there anything so vain?”
Hear Spartian in Severus: “When I reflect, Diocletian Augustus, that scarcely any of the great men has left a good and useful son, it is clear enough. Finally, men either died without children, or most had such, that it was better to depart from human affairs without posterity.”
This is a maxim; as there are four goods, namely wealth, knowledge, the counsel of the old, and a humble spirit, so on the other hand there are four evils opposed to them, namely poverty, ignorance, youthful counsel, and a proud spirit, which overturn the commonwealth as well as every private man; as the Roman empire was overthrown through imprudent and arrogant youths. Hence in the portico of the hostel, in which once veteran and discharged soldiers were maintained, these verses were once written in letters of gold:
“Old Rome, while the old Quirites ruled thee, there was no good man unrewarded, nor any bad man.
The fathers dead, a petty youth succeeded, by whose counsel thou fallest headlong.”
See Cicero, book On Old Age, Plutarch in Nicias, and Thucydides, book 6. For this reason Augustus Caesar, according to Suetonius, had grave and elderly counsellors, Agrippa and Maecenas, by whose counsels he did so many and such brilliant things: whence when they were dead, having fallen into infamy through the lusts of his daughter, he groaned, repeating that this misfortune would not have befallen him if Agrippa and Maecenas had lived.
Croesus king of the Lydians, drunk with excessive felicity, neglecting the warnings of the old and most wise Solon, and lending his ears to young men flattering his power, while he sought to destroy the empire of Cyrus, lost his own. And so, raised on a pyre to be burnt alive there, calling out the name of Solon, and the whole matter being discovered, he experienced the singular clemency of the conqueror Cyrus, as Herodotus relates, book 1.
If Xerxes had preferred to hear the prudence of his old uncle Artabanus, his counsels, rather than the youthful flatteries of Mardonius, he certainly would not have provoked the Greeks with a war of so many hundreds of thousands, nor been forced to flee from Greece with the utmost infamy, according to Herodotus, book 7.
Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily, if he had obeyed the counsels of the old and most wise Plato, would have left to his children more firmly the empire received from his father; but because he preferred the flatteries of the young, he was cast down from his kingdom, and compelled to become a schoolmaster.
Nero would have reigned happily, if he had always obeyed, as he had begun, the counsels of the old Seneca and Burrus. But while, having first rejected them, then killed them, a youth, he follows the voices of young flatterers, he hastened his own destruction, and gained for himself perpetual infamy among posterity for so many shameful deeds and disgraces. So Suetonius in his Life.
Wherefore Cornelius Tacitus says wisely: “Flattery,” he says, “is the perpetual evil of princes, whose resources are more often overthrown by assent than by an enemy.” And kings abound in everything at court, except truth. What made Nero cruel, though most chastely brought up? Flattery. What made Caesar rebel against his country? Flattery. What made Roboam a tyrant? Flattery. At court, therefore, one Clytus is to be preferred to six hundred Aristippuses. Truly Ovid:
“The throng of flatterers advances in the midst of the hall.”
10. MY LITTLE (in Hebrew qotonni, that is, small, or least, namely) FINGER IS THICKER THAN THE LOINS OF MY FATHER,—it is a proverb, as if to say: I am much stronger and more excellent than my father: I have greater majesty and magnificence than that which my father had: wherefore I shall lay on you greater tributes and burdens than my father Solomon laid. Whence the Chaldee translates: my weakness is stronger than the strength of my father; the Septuagint: my littleness is thicker than the back of my father; Vatablus: my little thing will be thicker than the loins of my father. Behold how pride makes Roboam foolish and stupid.
14. I WILL BEAT YOU WITH SCORPIONS,—that is, with barbed scourges, as Vatablus translates. This word is more worthy of a hangman than of a king.
16. WHAT PORTION HAVE WE IN DAVID, OR INHERITANCE IN THE SON OF ISAI?—as if to say: What communion, what partnership, what hope and advantage have we in the stock of David, namely in Roboam, that we should make him our king? as if to say: None: let us not therefore set him up as our king. Contemptuously they call David “son of Isai,” or Jesse, as if to say: David was a plebeian and poor man, being the son of Jesse our fellow citizen: we raised him to be king, that he might protect us: but now Roboam his grandson, grown insolent on the name of David, does not protect us, but tears and plunders us. Why then should we set him up as our king, because he is of the family of David, when that family has been recently promoted by us to the kingdom? Let us therefore depress him with his family, and bring him to order, and reduce him to the former state of plebeian life, and from another family choose a more modest and kindly king for ourselves.
NOW FEED THY HOUSE, O DAVID.—The Chaldee: now reign over the men of thy house, David; the Septuagint: now feed (that is, rule) thy house, David; as if to say: Do thou, O Roboam son of David, rule thy tribesmen, namely the tribe of Juda; we the ten tribes will provide for ourselves another more merciful to us.
19. AND ISRAEL REVOLTED FROM THE HOUSE OF DAVID,—making Jeroboam king for themselves instead of Roboam.
You will ask whether the ten tribes lawfully made the schism, and separated themselves from Roboam, who was the lawful heir of the kingdom and successor of Solomon? Abulensis answers that they lawfully did it: because they, he says, were free: but Roboam wished to reduce them to servitude: they could therefore withdraw from him: for the people or commonwealth, creating a king, gives him the empire and the right of ruling. Therefore it can take away or diminish this from him, if he abuses it to the ruin of the people: for the people hands itself over to the prince to be ruled not absolutely, but on certain conditions, which if the prince does not keep, it can depose him. So Abulensis, on which matters we must speak elsewhere. More truly you may say that this was done by the will and decree of God, as is plain from verse 24.
Cornelius Tacitus admirably advises the Prince, book 4 of the Annals: “Let them not,” he says, “lay harsh taxes on the people: for too great severity in exacting tribute, and the tribute itself laid on too heavy, often moves subjects to sedition.”
20. BUT THE TRIBE OF JUDA ONLY.—Add, and Benjamin: for this united with Juda made one kingdom with it.
26. AND JEROBOAM SAID IN HIS HEART: NOW SHALL THE KINGDOM RETURN TO THE HOUSE OF DAVID.