Commentaria in III Regum
Concerning his burial he forthwith adds this: “Solomon buried him in Jerusalem magnificently, besides those solemn rites at the funerals of kings, very great riches also being laid in his tomb, the greatness of which it is easy to conjecture from what we shall say. For after 1300 years the pontiff Hyrcanus, besieged by Antiochus surnamed Pius, the son of Demetrius, wishing to give him money that he might lead off his army and raise the siege, and not able to take it elsewhere, opened a chamber of David’s tomb, and, bringing out thence three thousand talents and paying part of them to Antiochus, delivered himself from the danger of the siege, as we have indicated elsewhere. And again after many years had passed king Herod opened another chamber and took away a great sum of money: but neither of them reached the coffins which contained the ashes of the kings. For by a singular art they were so hidden under ground that they could not be found by those entering the tomb.” But let the credit of these things rest with Josephus: for so great a multitude of talents buried in a sepulchre seems almost incredible; and the chambers could hardly have held it.
“…he died in a good old age, full of days, and riches, and glory.” For he was the idea and exemplar of all kings, and therefore in almost all things a type of Christ, as our Salianus shows at length point by point, in the year of the world 3021, number 92 and following. See the eulogies of David in Ecclesiasticus 47:2 and following, where I explained the same.
Verse 17. THAT HE GIVE ME ABISAG THE SUNAMITESS TO WIFE.—
Abisag had been the wife of king David: whence Adonias, the son of David, asks for her, that through her as queen he might make his way to the kingdom, and be acclaimed king by the people who favored him. Theodoret, Hugh, Abulensis and Dionysius think that Joab, who favored his party and was a sagacious and cunning man, suggested this counsel to Adonias; for Joab feared Solomon for himself, and rightly, as will presently appear.
You will ask, how did Adonias dare to ask for his father’s wife, since this is forbidden in Leviticus 18:8? Josephus, Cajetan and Serarius answer that there only marriage with a daughter-in-law is forbidden, that no one take as wife one who has been known by his father. But Abisag was not known by David, but remained a virgin. Whence her marriage was not forbidden by that law of Leviticus. However this may be, Adonias, ignorant of this law, seems to have thought this marriage lawful, or at least, blinded by love of Abisag’s beauty and by ambition to reign, made little account of it.
Whether the marriage of a son who takes his father’s wife is lawful and valid by the law of nature, the opinions of the Doctors vary. For our Thomas Sanchez, book 7 On Impediments to Marriage, disputation 66, teaches that marriage in the first degree of affinity in the direct line, as of father-in-law with daughter-in-law, or mother-in-law with son-in-law, is not void by the law of nature, and therefore is dispensable. He proves it because such would have been the marriage of Adonias with Abisag, the wife of his father David. For if this had been void, Adonias certainly would not have asked her for himself as wife. Sanchez cites for this opinion St. Thomas, Alensis, Abulensis, Gabriel, Tapper and many others.
On the other side Bellarmine, book 1 On Matrimony, chapter 28, teaches that such a marriage is void by the law of nature and indispensable, because we never read that a dispensation was granted in it. For it is plainly against natural honesty and paternal and maternal modesty. Father Aegidius Coninck holds the same, who from Joseph Acosta, book 6 of the Indies, chapter 21, relates that Pope Paul IV with the Council of Lima decided thus: that the Peruvian Indians who had contracted marriage with a stepmother or a daughter-in-law should not be admitted to baptism unless they first dissolved such a marriage, as void by the law of nature. As to Abisag, Bellarmine answers, first, that she was not David’s wife; for in Scripture she is not called a wife, but only the old man’s warmer; second, if she was a wife, that Adonias asked her unlawfully, being against the law of Leviticus 18; for the judgment of king Solomon, the wisest, ought to count for more here than the petition of Adonias. This opinion is followed by Paludanus, Soto, Valentia, Navarrus, Covarruvias, Sylvester, Vasquez and very many others, whom Sanchez in the place cited and Aegidius Coninck, disputation 32 On Impediments to Marriage, doubt 4, conclusion 3, cite.
It is therefore a problem whether the marriage of a father-in-law with a daughter-in-law, or of a son-in-law with a mother-in-law, is void by the law of nature. For there are weighty authors on both sides, these, and indeed more of them, asserting it, those denying it. Both opinions are therefore probable, and the Pontiff can follow either in practice, so as either to dispense in it, if a just and weighty cause exists; or to refuse a dispensation, as he has hitherto refused (and indeed still recently in these days in which I am staying at Rome) on account of the indecency of the thing; at any rate no public example of such a dispensation exists, as far as I know.
This is certain among all, that this marriage is forbidden by the law of nature, and much more by the old law, as is plain from Leviticus 18:15 and 20:14, and Deuteronomy chapter 27, verse 20. Wherefore Adonias, wishing to violate this law, could and ought justly to be repelled and punished by Solomon, especially because by this he was tacitly aspiring to the kingdom.
Much more is marriage in the first degree of the direct line of consanguinity forbidden by the law of nature and void, and therefore indispensable, as if a father wishes to marry his daughter, or a mother her son, as all the doctors teach. Wherefore the Church venerates and celebrates St. Dymphna, who, being the daughter of the king of Ireland, and desired in marriage by him for her beauty, since she constantly refused, was beheaded with the sword by her father and died a Martyr for chastity; God has made her sanctity illustrious by many miracles, and still does; whence there is a great concourse of the possessed and the insane to her tomb (which stands at Gheel in Brabant), as I have seen with my own eyes.
Infamous and swinish, therefore, was the answer of that courtier and flatterer who, when Henry VIII, king of England, wished to marry Anne Boleyn (whom there was a strong suspicion was his own illegitimate daughter), was asked what and how great a sin it would be if anyone should know a mother and her daughter, and answered: Such as if one should eat a chick with the hen. But God showed the contrary, when for this marriage he afflicted Henry and all England most gravely, and utterly extinguished the whole line of Henry. So Sanders, book 1 On the English Schism.
19. AND THE KING ROSE UP TO MEET HER, AND BOWED TO HER— showing filial honor. For privately he received her and honored her as a mother. For, as the philosopher Taurus says in Gellius, book 2, chapter 2: “In private, between a son who is a magistrate and a father who is a private man, public honors cease, and natural and genuine ones arise.” It is otherwise to be done in public. Whence Gellius in the same place praises the son of Fabius Maximus, who, being Consul and meeting his father the Proconsul on the public road, ordered him to dismount from his horse; and Fabius obeyed his son’s command and praised him, since he was upholding the authority which belonged to the people. Hence among the Persians a son was not allowed to sit in the presence of his mother unless she consented. Whence Alexander the Great addresses Sisigambis, the mother of Darius, whom he honored as a mother, thus in Curtius, book 5:
20. ASK, MY MOTHER: FOR I MUST NOT TURN AWAY THY FACE.—In the Hebrew: for I will not make thy face turn back, that is, that I confound thee and thy face and put thee to shame by denying what thou askest. For when something is denied to anyone, he, confounded, draws back his face, turns it away, and goes home. Solomon promises that he will grant all that his mother shall ask; understand, if she asks things just and useful: not, however, if hurtful to himself and his mother, as was the giving of Abisag as wife to Adonias.
If Solomon fulfils all his mother’s requests, much more does Christ grant his mother all that she asks by interceding for us. Let us therefore go to her, and through her we shall obtain all things. For Christ will not confound and put to shame the face of his mother, as St. Bernard often impresses; for she asks nothing, nor can ask anything, that is beyond the dignity of her Son and her own.
to be given as wife to Adonias, ask for him also the kingdom. For he aspires to the wife of our father king David, that through her as queen he may be raised to royal eminence and become king; especially because Abiathar the Pontiff and Joab the commander of the army help him in this. So Rupert and others.