We have undertaken with the present pen to write an apology for the prophet David—not that he needs this service, who shone with such great merits and flourished with virtues, but because very many, having read the series of his deeds without looking into the force of the Scriptures or the hidden things of the mysteries, marvel how so great a prophet did not avoid the contagion first of adultery, then of homicide. Therefore it has been our care to review the history itself, which seems to lie open to sin. For in the second book of Kingdoms we read that David, walking in his royal house, looked out upon a woman bathing—her name was Bathsheba—of outstanding form and of grace, comely of countenance and of exceedingly remarkable appearance; that, charmed by these allurements, he conceived a desire to possess her.
Now the woman was married to a husband; Uriah was the name of the husband, for whom, by royal commands, the scene of slaying was arranged. For although his life was reckoned no impediment to the king's lust, yet it was reckoned to stand greatly in the way of the shame of adultery. And so, that we may begin from things more plain: him whom God has justified, do not you judge. It is a very small thing to me, says Paul, that I should be judged by you or by any human day, but neither do I judge myself. And he was still set in the body, still subject to temptation, but for this reason he did not judge himself, because the spiritual man is judged by no one except God alone. Finally he added: He who judges me is the Lord. And so do not judge anything before the time.
But David has already fulfilled the time and merited grace and been justified by Christ, since the Lord himself rejoiced that David should be called his son, and those who so confessed him were enlightened. Why do you summon a man of God from reward to judgment? The Lord has already judged concerning him, of whom he said to Solomon: If you will walk in my sight, as David your father walked, in holiness of heart and in justice, so as to do according to all that I commanded him. Is this man, then, worthy of judgment or of reward, who did according to all the heavenly commandments, walking in holiness and in justice of heart? Where the sins and vices of others lie hidden, there David received the divine testimony of his virtue and glory.
And we, idle, dispute about his sin, for whose merit and grace the sins of others were revealed! For when Solomon had offended, because he had not kept the commandments of the Lord, and God had purposed to rend his kingdom into very many parts, he said to him: Yet nevertheless in your days I will not do these things, for the sake of David your father. From the hand of your son I will take it. Yet nevertheless I will not take the whole kingdom; one scepter I will give for the sake of David my servant. Since, then, the Lord justifies, who is it that so judges such a man? What God has cleansed, he says, do not call common. Yet, the heavenly judgment being preserved—by which you yourself should honor so great a prophet—enter into his acts and his ways.
Do you not marvel at a man, and judge him to be made equal even to the angels for very much of his life—nay, from boyhood lingering amid riches, honors, and dominions, set in many temptations—that he gave place to error only once, and to that error by which even the angels of heaven, as Scripture records, were cast down from their grace and virtue? Indeed, another error of his too is read of: that he caused the people to be numbered. Each one of us, through each single hour, how many things does he transgress in, and yet each one of the common people does not think his sin ought to be confessed; but that king, so great and powerful, did not allow the consciousness of his offense to remain with him even for the briefest moment, but by a premature confession and by immeasurable grief he restored his sin to the Lord.
Whom now would you easily find for me, honored and rich, who, if he were accused as guilty of some fault, would not take it ill? But that man, illustrious in royal dominion, approved by so many divine oracles, when he was rebuked by a private man for having gravely transgressed, did not, indignant, growl in fury, but, confessing, groaned with the grief of his guilt. Finally, the grief of his inmost feeling moved the Lord, so that he said through Nathan: Because you have repented, the Lord also has transferred your sin. Thus the swiftness of pardon declared that the repentance of the king had been profound, which carried off the offense of so great an error. Other men, when they are rebuked by the priests, aggravate their sin while they wish to deny or to defend it, and there their fall is greater, where correction is hoped for.
But the saints of the Lord, who eagerly desire to consummate the godly contest and to run the course of salvation, if perhaps anywhere, as men, they have fallen more by the frailty of nature than by the lust of sinning, rise up the more keenly to run, by the goad of shame repairing greater contests, so that the fall is reckoned not only to have brought no impediment, but even to have heaped up incentives of swiftness. Therefore, if for those running the course is not dissolved when some have perchance fallen, neither is the striving of those wrestling, but the contests remain unhindered; nay rather, very many after one or another fall have conquered with greater grace.
How much more ought those who have entered the contest of godliness not to be appraised by the offense of a single fall, since blessed is he who has been able to repair himself after a fall, seeing that to rise again even after death is the privilege of the blessed. In another way too we can grasp that sin can be of profit, and that by the providence of the Lord transgressions have crept upon the saints. For they are set before us for imitation, and therefore care was taken that they too should sometimes fall.
For if they had passed through the course amid so many slippery things of this world unscathed by vices, they would have given us weaker ones occasion to suppose that they were of some higher and divine nature, such that they could not incur sin nor have fellowship in guilt—an opinion which would surely call us back, as having no share in that substance, from an impossible imitation. For a little while, therefore, the grace of God passed them by, so that their life might become for us a discipline unto imitation, and that, as of innocence, so also of penitence, we might take instruction from their deeds. Therefore, while I read of their fall, I recognize them also to be partakers of weakness; while I believe them partakers, I presume that they are to be imitated.
The apostle Paul also reminds us that the Lord our God provided that the human affection, even in the saints, should not be exalted either by the sublimity of revelations or by the continuing success of their works, nor that they should reckon to themselves and attribute to their own virtue what had been conferred upon them by divine operation. Therefore, lest they should rush into so great a judgment and fall into the pit of perfidy, the Lord allowed guilt to creep upon them, so that they too might observe that they needed divine aids, and might recognize that the captain of their salvation must be sought. Finally, Paul testifies that weakness profited him, when the Lord said to him as he prayed that the thorn of his flesh might depart from him: My grace is sufficient for you; for virtue is perfected in weakness.
And deservedly he glories in his weaknesses; for he knew that, by abundance of virtue, very many even of the saints had fallen without remedy. How much more advantageously, then, to have given place to one or two rebukes than to have drawn upon himself the perpetual offense of the divinity! Why should I also add those things which we can conjecture from the very practice of the world: that, when we have approved many in some office, we wish to try the same men, as industrious and energetic, in another duty? How many athletes, when they have prevailed in this kind of contest, are summoned to another kind of contest! What if the Lord your God too, when you have given some specimen of your virtue, wishes to prove you in another kind of virtues?
He allowed holy Job, running unhindered, nevertheless to be tempted by the destruction of his children and by ulcers over his whole body, so that in this too he might prove his virtue—whether, even when constrained by injuries and bitter things, he would not diminish the devotion of his affection. Is it not clear that he also wished to prove holy David, noble in faith, most outstanding in gentleness, strong in hand—how he would cover his fault, amend his fall, so that he might teach us how we might cover the sin we have committed? Unless perhaps the cause seems base to someone, that for the sake of our correction so great a prophet should have erred, when for the sake of the redemption of all Christ took upon himself our weaknesses—he who was made sin for us, although he knew no sin.
And it is reckoned unworthy, nor believed likely, that David, for the sake of posterity's profit, should have incurred the reproach of a single fall, when the Lord himself was made a reproach for us, as he himself says: But I am a worm and no man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people; and elsewhere: And the reproaches of those who reproached fell upon me? Therefore he sent before, in his own people, the mystery of the future dispensation, and the sins indeed of his servile condition they bore, and therefore they too could not be exempt from sin: but the Lord took up a burden not his own, and therefore he alone was without fellowship of transgressions. In sum, the apostle too teaching us, we have learned that very many things were done in figure which were done in former times.
For when he had said that the fathers in the desert, wounded by serpents, could not be healed otherwise unless Moses had hung up the bronze serpent, by the sight of which those deadly bites and harmful infusions of venom were cured, he subjoined: But these things were done in figure for them, unto our correction. In figure the bronze serpent was as it were fastened to the cross, because the true one was being announced to the human race as about to be crucified, who would empty out the venom of the serpent, the devil—in figure accursed, but in truth he who would blot out the curses of the whole world. Elsewhere too, that is, to the Galatians, he says that Abraham had two sons, one of the bondwoman and one of the freewoman; and he added:
But the one indeed who was born of the slave-girl was born according to the flesh, while the one born of the free woman was born through the promise. These things are spoken by way of allegory. What the allegory signifies the Apostle expounded plainly in what follows, saying that those two generations — one of the slave-girl, the other of the free woman — are two covenants: the one indeed from Mount Sinai, begetting unto bondage, on which mountain Moses received the Law from the Lord; the other from Jerusalem, which is free, which begot her sons in Isaac, that is, in the freedom of grace, not in the bondage of the letter. For to slaves a penalty is decreed, but upon the free grace is conferred. Did not Jacob too, as a type of the twofold people, take two wives, from whom he begot a diverse offspring?
Why is it recorded that the patriarch Judah, after the death of his son, sought intercourse with his own daughter-in-law, by which the birth of twins was brought forth — unless it was that a figure might foreshadow the two covenants of the Lord Jesus? Of these the one was established as a type of His future death, the other in the truth of the Gospel, signifying that two peoples were to be begotten, of whom the later, under the sign of the cross, would break down all the hedge and fortification of the earlier people — this is the people first by the hand but later in birth — or because the Lord Jesus Himself, born of the tribe of Judah, sent His works before Him ere He was born for us of the Virgin?
What shall I say of Joseph, who, assailed by his brothers, stripped of his father's garment, cast into the pit, and sold into slavery, set forth a clear sign of the Lord's incarnation — in that he, the beloved of his father, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, that taking the form of a servant He might come and humble Himself even unto the death of the cross, by whose price, both bought and sold by his own brothers, He redeemed the human race? In whose type also David, the youngest, was chosen from among his brothers, anointed to the kingdom; alone, amid the grave peril of war, by single combat he delivered the whole people and triumphed over ten thousands, so that the maidens sang with timbrels:
'Saul has triumphed over thousands, David over ten thousands.' What is the figure in those young women but that of the souls who sing a triumphant psalm to Christ? He begot from himself sons, one guilty of incest and another a parricide, because the incestuous and parricidal people was about to do violence to the flesh of its own Author, fastened to the gibbet of the cross. Hence in the third psalm the title of Absalom is set before it, and the Lord's passion is prophesied. What shall I say of holy Solomon, whose latter deeds are not free from grave error, yet whom the Jewish multitude reckons to have come in place of Christ? And how many has the offense of his grave error called back! And so his greater fault profited the more, lest one who had not been free from human vice should be believed to be above man.
There was therefore in him an enviable wisdom and a persuasive fault, which proved him to be a man. What then prevents us from believing that Bathsheba too was joined to holy David in a figure, so that there might be signified the gathering of the nations, which was not united to Christ by any lawful wedlock of faith — a people that, for His grace, was to enter beyond the prescription of the Law, by certain forbidden thresholds; in whom the naked sincerity of mind and open simplicity, by the justifying mystery of the laver, would draw over the mind of the true David and eternal King, and provoke His love? Rightly did He come hidden, He who would deceive the prince of the world, even as that Uriah, who by interpretation is called 'my light,' transforming himself into an angel of light.
He came, I say, into this world, and came hidden; He entered as an adulterer, that He might claim a lawful right. We have, as we judge, distinguished the strong allegations, and have proved that the text of this history was set forth in figure: now let us return to what comes earlier, and let us examine the error as it were stripped of its spiritual garments. David sinned, as kings are wont to do; but he did penance, he wept, he groaned, as kings are not wont to do; he confessed his fault, he implored pardon, prostrate on the ground he lamented his misery, he fasted, he prayed, and transmitted the testimony of his confession to all ages by his published grief. What private men blush to do, the king did not blush to confess.
Those who are held by laws dare to deny their own sin and disdain to ask for pardon, which he sought who was held by no human laws. That he sinned belongs to his condition; that he made supplication belongs to his amendment. The fall was common, but the confession was singular. To have incurred fault, therefore, belongs to nature; to have washed it away belongs to virtue. 'Who glories,' he says, 'that he has a clean heart?' Not even an infant of a single day is declared to be clean, by the testimony of Scripture. Give me anyone without the lapse of a fault. Samson is recorded as the strongest of all, who even strangled a lion with his bare hands; but would that he had been able to choke his own passion! He burned the harvests of the Philistines, yet he himself was set ablaze by the little fire of one woman.
Jephthah returned victorious from the enemy, but, bearing back the standards of triumph, he was conquered by his own oath, so that he thought the affection of his daughter coming to meet him must be requited by parricide. First of all, what need was there to swear so rashly and to vow uncertain things in place of certain, whose outcome he did not know? Then, does anyone pay sad oaths to the Lord God, so as to discharge his vows by bloody funerals? Nor do I think the priests should be passed over in silence — lest I seem to conceal our own faults. Aaron himself, the high priest, under whose leadership, together with Moses, the Hebrew people passed the Red Sea on foot, when asked by the people to make them gods whom they might worship, demanded gold, cast it into the fire, and the head of a calf was fashioned, to which sacrifices were offered.
By which token it became clear that the lust for gold is the matter of perfidy, and that sacrileges are wont to be engendered by the zeal of avarice. Again, so great a priest fell into an occasion of offense together with his sister Miriam. For while both detracted from their brother, because he had taken a foreign wife, immediately Miriam broke out with the contagion of spotted flesh. In which place there was a figure of a manifest mystery: namely, that the priestly people of the fathers should in later times disparage their brother people, not knowing the sacrament of that Ethiopian woman. For had they known it, they would not have reproached what accorded with the ancient mystery.
And so, when the Jew calls one who has believed from among the Gentiles 'common,' and wishes to separate him from the Law, he has leprosy, which he will not be able to escape, unless the recognition of the spiritual law shall have availed him unto pardon. Therefore David too, who knew that he had been born a man liable to fall, asked for pardon, yet did not despair of the Lord's mercy. Nor does the parable seem to differ from the mystery. For who is the rich man but our Lord Jesus, who says of Himself, as has been read today, that 'a certain man, being rich, went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return'?
And truly He was rich with the wealth of His own majesty and with the fullness of His own divinity, whom angels and archangels, virtues and powers and principalities, thrones and dominions, the Cherubim and Seraphim served with untiring homage. Yet, although He was rich, He left the ninety-nine sheep upon the mountains, and sought out the one sheep which had remained behind, wearied. This sheep the prince of this world, needy and poor in comparison with that rich One, was nourishing as it were a daughter with his own food. Rightly therefore had he failed, for whom the substance was the food of the world. This sheep had gone astray in Adam, enticed by the wiles of the serpent. And it was not a bad sheep, for it was full of the word, being, as it were, the rational daughter of the seventh-day rest and the gift of the holy Author:
yet it was fed not on any precious things, but on the cheap and meager resources of the poor man. In short, 'it ate of his bread,' He says, 'and drank of his cup, and slept in his bosom.' Not good is the food of the Ethiopians; harmful is the golden cup, Babylon, which makes the nations drunk; not profitable is the sleep of those who slumber — I prefer to keep watch. In short, 'all the foolish of heart were troubled; they slept their sleep, and found nothing.' Therefore for the sake of hospitality, because he had received a guest, that he might set a feast before him, he took away that poor man's sheep; for if he had sacrificed any animal from his own flocks or herds, it could not have profited us, whom, unless He had sacrificed Himself, He would not have redeemed.
Therefore the infirmities of our frailty He took upon His own flesh with a certain hospitable affection, and to relieve, or rather to restore them, He offered His own flesh to that saving passion, that He might provide us with the food of eternal life. And well did Scripture say 'a ewe-lamb,' because it was the offspring of a Virgin. Well is this rich man pronounced worthy of death by the prophetic judgment, because Caiaphas too prophesied, saying, 'It is expedient that one man die for the people.' But the Lord Jesus alone was chosen worthy of such a death, by which He might take away the sin of the world. Beautifully too he added, 'He shall restore the lamb,' because He raised up His own flesh, He gave back that flesh of virginal integrity. Nor is that idle which he says: 'He shall restore fourfold';
for the resurrection of the dead is quadrupled, as the Apostle teaches, saying: 'It is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it rises in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises in power; it is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body.' He shall surely restore the lamb fourfold also in that manner in which a man can now say: 'If I have taken anything from anyone, I restore fourfold.' Fittingly too he added: 'because he did not spare'; for Christ did not spare Himself, that He might succor all. And therefore it was said by the Lord Jesus Christ to His servant David, to make manifest the mystery: 'Since you have done this in secret, I also will do this word before all Israel and in the sight of this sun.'
And indeed at first, not knowing the sacrament, David was stirred with indignation, but he did not err in his affection. But afterward, when he came to know the great mystery — for great is the sacrament of Christ and the Church — seeing the future remission of all sins, foreseeing the splendor of grace through the laver of regeneration and the infusion of the Holy Spirit, he said, secure of pardon: 'I have sinned against the Lord,' that he too might enter into the fellowship of those to whom the remission of guilt would come. Do you notice how he lamented his own sin? Who then should wonder that it was forgiven him? Now let us consider his works, by which he was able to cover his sin. For since human frailty cannot be without sin, care must be taken lest the sins be more than the works of virtue.
This holy Paul expressed with the great force of his wisdom, saying: 'The sins of some men are manifest, going before to judgment; but some men they also follow after' — that is: no one is found unstained by fault; one has good merits, he has also vices and sins. All our deeds, therefore, are as it were weighed in a balance. If, then, the sins outweigh the good deeds, they go before to judgment; for sins sink as it were into the depths — they sink which are manifest, whether by their weight and bitterness or by their multitude. 'But some men,' he says, 'they also follow after' — that is, those who have conducted themselves soberly, but through the frailty of their condition have sometimes given place even to error: their good deeds go before, their evils follow after.
These are the more honorable, yet nonetheless men who have lapsed into lighter vices and errors. Therefore sins follow the just; they do not go before them: they go before the unjust. The sins that sink outweigh, but if any right deeds have been done, they follow weighed down as it were by a certain prejudgment of the preceding sins. Likewise good deeds too are manifest. For they shine by the work of virtues and the splendor of merits, and those which are otherwise cannot be hidden. Therefore such deeds are not covered, charity that covers a multitude of sins does not overshadow them, the grace of good works does not cover them, the multitude of virtues does not conceal them: as it were naked and uncovered they are brought forth. For there is not among these one who may say: 'Protect me under the shadow of your wings';
for the cross of the Lord abolishes and hides all errors. Who then has covered and concealed more than holy David, who elsewhere also says: 'And in the shadow of your wings will I hope, until iniquity pass away,' and so loved the Lord that by his exceeding charity he covered and hid every sin? For if holy Peter the Apostle abolished his lapse by the confession of his love, and he, being questioned by the Lord who said to him three times, 'Simon, son of John, do you love Me?', that whom he had thrice denied he might thrice confess, and thus by a certain threefold veil of love hide the lapse of his threefold denial:
if, because Peter wept once, he won pardon, how much more David, who washed his bed every single night and watered his couch with his tears, whose tears were his bread day and night, who ate ashes like bread and mingled his drink with weeping! For if Jesus has mercy on him who, being converted, has groaned, if He looked upon Peter and he wept, how much more did he who long wept never depart from the sight of the Lord? Peter denied and did not weep, because Jesus had not looked upon him; he denied a second time and did not weep, because the Lord had not looked upon him; he denied a third time, Jesus looked upon him, and immediately he wept, and wept most bitterly. Therefore David, who always wept, was saying:
'My eyes are ever toward the Lord,' he who was ever seen by Christ, was saying: 'My eyes have run down through the streams of waters.' But now let us also consider his deeds. Who would not overshadow the odium of one crime by the praise of so many virtues? Chosen by the divine examination, he straightway proved himself not unworthy of so great a judgment. He went forth into battle, and while the rest trembled, he alone, by faith and courage joined together, laid low the Philistine Goliath, terrible by the boasting of his words and by the mass of his monstrous body, who rushed upon him. The fortitude of one became the victory of all. Let there be compared, if you please, the private crime and the triumph of all, the death of one and the life of so many peoples whom he delivered from death. Let us come to other things. He suffered plots from the king;
the king sought to extinguish his life, but by the divine ordering, when the king was delivered into his power and lay wholly open to a wound, holy David ran to meet his companions who were about to strike, and turned aside the deadly wound from the body of the man who was to perish, saying: 'Do not touch the Lord's anointed.' Nay more, he avenged the death of that very enemy of his, he lamented his destruction tearfully enough, and he long deferred the rule due to him, because he knew it was owed to him with God as its Author. By this alone he taught all men that the kingdom is not to be snatched, even if it be due, but is to be awaited, that in its own time it may be conferred. Would that posterity had imitated this man! We should not have endured such great bitternesses of wars.
You accuse him because he killed one man; you do not consider that he taught how perpetual peace might be preserved for the Roman world. With what grievous devastation do we still pay the penalty! With what public funeral, as it were, of the whole world have we paid for the murder of an emperor that was sought! Alas, the harsh punishments! Hence the barbarian foe still insults us, while the arms made ready against him are turned upon us. Thus the public strength has fallen, thus Roman valor, broken by its own commotions, has grown old, while it is snatched away by public parricide — a thing that is undertaken under the guise of fatherly solicitude. And so far did he take precaution against this, that when he learned that his son Adonijah was usurping the kingdom for himself and sowing conspiracies, he chose not the one who was striving to snatch it away, but the one who would wait.
The most powerful of kings danced before the ark of the Lord; and when he was reproached by his own wife because he had been stripped bare before the face of the maidservants, he answered: 'I will yet be more bared before the Lord, and I will be a trifling thing before your eyes, that the Lord may be honored,' he says, 'who chose me before your father for the kingdom' — teaching that the regard of royal power is not to be held where homage is rendered to religion. For it is honorable to act for the sake of religion, even if it be unbecoming to one's power. Behold another memorable thing. A parricide son had violently invaded his father's kingdom. The father at first gave way to his fury and avoided the place of battle, that even thus the impious one might come to his senses from his frenzy. He was unwilling even to take part in the war; he begged those who were setting out to battle that they would spare his son.