Commentaria in III Regum
3. THIS SHALL BE THE SIGN THAT THE LORD HATH SPOKEN: BEHOLD THE ALTAR SHALL BE RENT.—The Prophet gave this sign, not under Josias, but at this very time when Jeroboam stretched out his hand against him, as is said in verse 5.
4. AND HIS HAND WITHERED.—Hear St. Chrysostom, homily on the words of Isaias: “Christ,” he says, “when he himself was struck on the face with blows, did nothing harsher to the servant who had dealt the blow: but Jeroboam, when with outstretched hand he tried to seize the prophet by whom he was rebuked, his hand withered. By this instructing thee, that what is brought against thyself thou shouldst bear with meekness; but what is hurled against the Lord thou shouldst avenge with great vehemence.”
6. AND THE KING’S HAND WAS RESTORED TO HIM.—St. Ambrose gives the cause, book 2 On Virgins, toward the end: “He asked pardon,” he says, “and at once his hand, which had withered by sacrilege, was healed by religion. So timely an example both of divine mercy and of indignation appeared in one man, that to the sacrificer the right hand was suddenly taken away, to the penitent pardon was given.”
Moreover this Prophet wrought three notable miracles: first, he rent the altar, that Jeroboam might see it rent and broken as hateful to God; second, his hand stretched out against the Prophet stiffened; third, it was healed by the prayers of the Prophet. And yet Jeroboam the heresiarch did not come to himself from his heresy and idolatry, but remained in it obstinate and hardened. Wondrous, then, was his blindness, hardness and malice.
9. THOU SHALT NOT EAT BREAD, NOR DRINK WATER, NOR RETURN BY THE WAY THAT THOU CAMEST.—God had commanded this to the Prophet for the detestation of idolatry; that by the very deed he might show that the Bethelites, being idolaters, are so detestable, and as it were excommunicated by God, that he wills the faithful to have with them no communion of food or drink, nay not even of the road. He commanded him, therefore, on his return to take another way, as if the way into Bethel were polluted and accursed on account of its idols, and by no means to be revisited. So severely did he forbid it, that even if he had been cast into prison, he ought rather to have died of hunger than to take food offered by the Bethelites. This was a figure of ecclesiastical censure and excommunication, by which the Church forbids communicating with the excommunicated and taking food with them, that they, shut out from the fellowship of the good, may be confounded and come to themselves. So St. Cyprian, epistle 75; Lucifer of Cagliari, book On not Associating with Heretics; and from them Rupert, book 5, chapter 6, and Abulensis here, Question 8; wherefore this is not a harm to them but a benefit, as it was to Jeroboam himself, of whom Josephus says: “The king,” he says, “marvelling at the man’s abstinence, began to be the more anxious about himself, from what he had seen and heard, foreboding a not very happy outcome of his affairs.”
11. NOW A CERTAIN OLD PROPHET DWELT IN BETHEL.—The Chaldee: a false prophet named Michal, etc. Josephus too calls him a false prophet. So also St. Gregory, Rupert, Angelomus, Eucherius, Lyranus, Hugh, Dionysius, Cajetan and others. Whence some think that he was an idolater and a seer of the devil. Abulensis, however, thinks he was faithful, but wicked and impious. But what follows refutes this, and shows that he was a faithful man and a prophet of God, not a false prophet, because, as Theodoret says, “God foretold through him to the man of God what was to happen, and because he believed what had been foretold of Josias, and because he commanded his sons that, when he died, they should bury him with his body.” All which show that he was faithful and pious. He is called a false prophet, then, by St. Gregory, Rupert and the others already cited, that is, a lying prophet, because he lied, saying that it had been revealed to him by an angel that God willed him to take food with him. With Theodoret agree St. Augustine to be cited presently, St. Jerome, Serarius, Tornielli, Salianus.
18. AN ANGEL SPOKE TO ME IN THE WORD (by command) OF THE LORD, SAYING: BRING HIM BACK WITH THEE INTO THY HOUSE, THAT HE MAY EAT BREAD.—This prophet lies, to lead the other prophet to dinner. For he saw that he, weary with the way, hungry and thirsty, would not eat or drink in Bethel, but would return fasting: wherefore, moved by compassion, from zeal for hospitality he invites the man of God to his lodging, and by a lie as it were compels him. So at times seculars deceive religious men who abstain from flesh and wine, so that they eat melted meats hidden under vegetables. When I was in Belgium there was a certain hermit, called from his simplicity John the Simple, who, coming to a monastery dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, refused wine offered by the procurator, saying that he professed perpetual abstinence from wine. Whence the procurator, deceiving him, said: We will give you, then, the milk of our Blessed Virgin, and ordered another, sweeter wine to be set before him: Drink, he said, the milk offered to you by the Blessed Virgin in place of the wine which you refuse. When he tasted it he was greatly cheered: Would that, he said, we had such milk in our hermitage, since we do not drink wine.
But the hospitality of this prophet was untimely and imprudent; for it brought death to the other prophet; but he himself did not know this: wherefore he sinned only venially; and his lie was merely officious, not pernicious.
Moreover God permitted this, that by the death of the prophet himself, disobedient and eating food in Bethel against His command, the truth of His prophecy might be shown, that he was a true prophet sent by God, and that the threats uttered by him would truly come to pass.
Note: Josephus, whom the Gloss follows, and Abulensis think that this prophet invited the prophet with malicious guile, to make him a liar or destroy him. Hear the Gloss: “This false prophet was chief of the priests, and was greatly honoured by the king as divine; but fearing lest by the word of the man of God the king should withdraw from the worship of idols, and kill him as a sorcerer, he devised to deceive the man of God, acting acutely enough that, while he transgressed the precept of God, he might incur His wrath; as afterwards happened, when he believed man rather than God; and by this what he foretold would be shown to be false; and thus he might persuade the king, as he did.” But what I said first is far truer.
19. HE DECEIVED HIM AND BROUGHT HIM BACK WITH HIM: SO HE ATE BREAD IN HIS HOUSE.—This prophet sinned, because he too easily and rashly believed another prophet lying that God had revoked His precept given him not to eat in Bethel: he ought rather to have examined him and his oracle contrary to his own. For since God Himself had clearly commanded him not to eat in Bethel, he ought not to have believed another prophet saying that God had revoked this precept. He could and ought to have thought: God cannot lie; this man can lie and deceive: why then, leaving my God, should I believe a lying man? Why should I embrace the uncertain and doubtful in place of the certain? For it is certain to me that God absolutely forbade me to eat in Bethel: wherefore this man, saying that the contrary was decreed by God, is certainly suspected of fraud and lying. For, as Abulensis notes, God foresees and fore-thinks all things that can supervene upon His precepts. Wherefore in His precepts we must not use interpretation and epieikeia: it is otherwise in the commands of men: who cannot foresee all future things, and therefore admit of epieikeia.
This sin of his, however, was only venial, because he believed the prophet to be truthful, not a liar. Whence for the sin he was indeed killed by the lion; but his body, as that of a holy man, was kept whole and untouched by the lion. So St. Augustine to be cited presently, Eucherius, Angelomus, Cajetan, Salianus, Serarius and others.
20. AND AS THEY SAT AT THE TABLE, THE WORD OF THE LORD CAME TO THE PROPHET THAT HAD BROUGHT HIM BACK.—The prophet sinning at table by disobedience, and eating against the command of the Lord, is likewise punished at table, and receives from God the sentence of death, and that from his host, namely from the prophet who had seduced and invited him, “that he might truly take punishment thence whence he had carelessly committed the fault.”