Commentaria in III Regum
2. I AM GOING THE WAY OF ALL THE EARTH,—that is, of all the earth-born, or of all men dwelling on the earth, as if to say: I am tending to death, like other men who inhabit the earth, to return from the earth from which I was formed into earth and dust. It is a metonymy signifying the same as is said elsewhere: “I am going the way of all flesh,” that is, the way of death, which all who consist of flesh enter upon. This remembrance of death and the sepulchre is salutary, according to Ecclesiasticus 7:40: “In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin.” And chapter 14, verse 12: “Remember that death is not slow, etc.; for this is the covenant of this world,” that every man “shall die the death.” In like manner St. Anthony, about to die, as St. Athanasius testifies, said to his disciples: “I, indeed, my little children, according to the words of the Scriptures, go the way of my fathers. For already the Lord invites me, already I desire to see heavenly things; but you, O my bowels, I warn that you not suddenly lose the labor of so long a time. Today you think you have taken up a religious zeal; let the strength of the will you have begun grow also.” And St. Paul the first Hermit, visited by God’s inspiration near his death, said to Anthony: “Behold, uncultivated grey hair covers the limbs, rotten with old age, of him whom thou hast sought with so great labor. Behold, thou seest a man who will soon be dust.” And a little after: “Since the time of my falling asleep is come, and what I always desired, to be dissolved and to be with Christ, the course being finished, there remains for me the crown of justice; thou art sent by the Lord to cover my little body with earth, nay to give back earth to the earth.” And St. Mary of Egypt to Zosimas: “Bury, Abba Zosimas,” she said, “the little body of wretched Mary. Give back to the earth what is its own, and add dust to dust. But pray the Lord for me.” And Barlaam to Josaphat: “No longer, dearest son, will the same house and table join us in this life. For now I enter upon the last way of my fathers. Wherefore you must show a proof of your love towards me by observing the divine commandments, and by dwelling in this place to the last day of your life; so ordering the course of your life as you have learned, and never ceasing to remember my abject and slothful soul. Fare thee well, therefore, and delight and exult in Christ; for thou hast exchanged earthly things and things subject to destruction for everlasting goods not subject to destruction, and the reward of thy works is near, and he who gives the reward is now at hand.” So Damascene in their history.
3. AND KEEP THE CHARGE OF THE LORD THY GOD.—“Charges,” that is, the precepts which God commanded to be observed and kept by thee and others. This is plain from what follows. “Charges,” then, are here called the things to be kept, by metonymy.
THAT THOU MAYEST UNDERSTAND ALL THAT THOU DOST,—that is, that thou mayest act intelligently and prudently in whatever thou doest; for this is what the Hebrew word taschekil signifies, whence the Chaldee translates, that thou mayest make prosperous all that thou doest; others, that thou mayest be happy in all that thou doest. For he who does his own affairs prudently does them prosperously. For prudence is the mother of prosperity and happiness, as imprudence is of unhappiness.
5. AND SHED THE BLOOD OF WAR (which could be the cause of war) IN PEACE, AND PUT THE BLOOD OF BATTLE ON HIS GIRDLE, etc., AND ON HIS SHOE,—as if to say: Joab treacherously killed Abner and Amasa, pretending so friendly and close an embrace of them that, piercing them deceitfully in this embrace, his girdle and shoes were stained with the blood of the slain. So Lyranus, Vatablus and others: but he calls this blood “of war and of battle” because the danger of war lay in this slaughter; namely that all Israel might rebel against David and wish to avenge this treacherous slaughter of their leaders Abner and Amasa committed by Joab, and therefore David here orders him to be slain. Again, “of war” alludes to the war in which Abner justly slew Asahel the brother of Joab, whose death Joab avenged by the slaughter of Abner, as if to say: Joab wished to avenge the blood of his brother Asahel by killing Abner, but wrongly and unjustly. For Abner justly killed Asahel in war; but Joab unjustly and treacherously killed Abner in peace, when Abner was already reconciled to David, and indeed was bringing all Israel back to him. Wherefore Joab killed Abner and Amasa in peace as if in battle, and so treacherously turned peace into battle, in which fighting and drawing the sword he deceitfully killed both, when they thought they were in peace and that all was peaceful between themselves and David and Joab on account of the peace made with him, and Joab made a show of this, deceitfully embracing and kissing each; which was a great fraud, injustice and perfidy of Joab.
6. THOU SHALT DO THEREFORE ACCORDING TO THY WISDOM (when a convenient occasion has been sought and a just pretext, that thou mayest punish him), AND SHALT NOT LET HIS GREY HAIRS GO DOWN TO HELL IN PEACE,—as if to say: Thou shalt not suffer him to die in peace in his bed in old age, but shalt punish him with a violent death; for before Christ all who died went down to hell, at least to the limbo of the fathers. For the law of retaliation was laid down by the law of nature, divine and human, that whoever kills another be killed.
You will say: Why did David not kill Joab, but commanded this to Solomon? I answer, because when Joab killed Abner and Amasa, David had not power and strength sufficient for it. For he was not yet fully established in the kingdom, but feared Joab, lest he should stir up Israel against him, as Abner had before stirred it up; and afterwards David, entangled in continual wars, could not do it, especially because he needed Joab; for he had no other so fit to put over the camp.
He commanded it therefore to Solomon, who enjoyed full peace, and therefore was strong in full dignity and authority. So Josephus. Theodoret brings another reason why David ordered Joab to be slain: because he feared, he says, that Joab, using his wonted malice, would despise Solomon’s youth, and either kill him under a show of good will, as he had killed those aforesaid, or draw up an open line of battle and divide Israel by thrusting in king Adonias, whom he favored, and who had not wholly given up the hope of the kingdom, as what follows shows.
8. WHO CURSED ME WITH A GRIEVOUS CURSE,—the Septuagint has “painful”; the Chaldee, bitter; in the Hebrew it is nimretzet, which the Hebrews according to St. Jerome explain so that by the five letters of which this word consists, the five reproaches which Semei cast at David are signified. Namely, by the first, nun, is signified noeph, that is adulterer, because of the adultery with Bethsabee; by the second, mem, Moabi, that is Moabite, because David drew his descent from the lowborn Ruth the Moabitess; by the third, resh, rotseach, that is murderer, because of Urias and so many others removed from the midst; by the fourth, tsade, tsarua, that is leper, because David seemed now to be cast out of the city no otherwise than lepers are, whose company all shrink from and execrate; by the fifth, tau, is designated toebah, which signifies abominable.
I WILL NOT SLAY THEE WITH THE SWORD.—Hence it is plain that David, when he said to Semei, “Thou shalt not die,” did not grant him full pardon and impunity, but one limited and restricted to the time of David’s life, as if to say: I will not kill thee; for all my life I will grant thee thy life; but after my death beware, for my son Solomon at my instigation will seek an occasion to chastise thy crime and cursing: for since this promise was not owed but gratuitous and liberal, it is to be interpreted and limited according to the mind of him who promised, says Abulensis. David therefore here commends to Solomon justice towards all, but especially towards evildoers, whom he himself had hitherto in clemency permitted to live, that he might now himself satisfy justice, which in his clement permission was tacitly understood, according to Psalm 71:1: “Give to the king thy judgment, O God, and to the king’s son thy justice.”
10. AND DAVID SLEPT WITH HIS FATHERS, AND WAS BURIED IN THE CITY OF DAVID,—that is, in Sion. “He slept.” Holy Scripture calls death a sleep, on account of the faith and hope of the resurrection. For on the day of judgment we shall awake from death as from sleep to eternal life. Hence the pious custom of the faithful is, when anyone dies, to say: “He has fallen asleep in the Lord.”
Furthermore Josephus at the end of book 7 gives David this eulogy, as it were an epitaph: David was “a most excellent man and endowed with all the virtues which a king providing for the safety of so many nations ought to have. For he was brave as no other: and in the contests undertaken for the defense of his subjects he was the first to expose himself to dangers, rousing the soldier by his example to noble deeds, and not as a lord driving him to duty by command. He was likewise most prudent in counsels, and eminently skilled in what was expedient for the present or the future. Besides, he was sober, gentle, kind towards the afflicted, just, humane: which are the chief virtues of kings, and in so great power he never swerved from equity, save in the matter of the wife of Urias. Moreover he left such riches as no other king left, either of the Hebrews or of other nations.”