Second Apology of David 32–56

Let David have sinned, so that the whole world might not err; let him have sinned for himself, so that he might amend us all; finally, let him have sinned against his own body (for one who commits fornication sins against his own body), let him have sinned against his own body, so that he might be redeemed in the body of Christ. See, the one we thought hardly to be defended we now see to be praised. For who is there who would not rather have divine gifts than human works proclaimed in himself? For we hold, according to the apostle, that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law. Let David, then, be justified by faith, who through the law recognized sin, but believed by faith in the pardon of sin; let David be justified, because in his sin the mysteries of the church that was to rise shone forth.

Someone will say: for what reason did the one chosen as ancestor of the Lord’s race commit both adultery and murder? But I say something else: such an ancestor of the Lord’s body had to be chosen. For what is incorporation but the remission of sins? And therefore he could not be free of sin, so that he might set forth divine grace both by example and by message. Indeed, by that same dispensation Bathsheba and Tamar are counted among the ancestors of the Lord’s race, of whom the one committed adultery and the other incest. By that dispensation too Ahab and Jeconiah, as the evangelist Matthew described, are numbered among the ancestors of Christ, so that he might begin the benefit that would redeem all men from his own ancestors; at the same time, lest he who subjected himself even to the suffering of the body should seem to have sought the nobility of a spotless origin; for it is the boasting of men to seek another’s glory, not their own; and yet even among men the grace of virtue is greater than that of nobility. At the same time an example had to be given, so that all might understand that the disgraces of ancestors cannot be a dishonor to their descendants, since each one could abolish the stain of his succession by the merit of his own virtue. Do you see how many and how gravely criminal persons the line of the Lord’s generation includes, from whose origin Christ was not ashamed to be born for your sake? And if you believe these things, they are gifts of divine mercy toward you, and this is the mark of heavenly power; for sin abounded, so that grace might abound more. So let David not have been exempt from fault, so that he might be chosen for grace.

But now let us review the mysteries of the history itself and draw from the very springs of the Scriptures, and, so that we may look into the whole course of the mysteries, let us repeat the text of the history itself. Thus, we remember, it is expressed in the book of Kingdoms: that David, when he had seen Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, bathing, fell in love with her, then ordered her to come to his house while the woman’s husband was away; that not long after her husband returned as a messenger of the war, a truly religious and devout man, who thought he should not enter his house in time of war, when he saw his companions intent on the war and keeping watch not in domestic dwellings but in battle tents; that afterwards by David’s order he was sent back to the war with the instruction that he be thrown against the enemy warriors, so that, by the man’s death, the king might have free opportunity of possessing the woman. And here there is some shame at the sin and modesty about the fault, in that he sought a hiding place for the error and did not take upon himself the authority of an unjust killing by right of royal power, but avoided odium. I admit the fault, but more tolerable is that which is pressed down by shame than that which is proclaimed by insolence. So Uriah died, thrown against the warriors; but afterwards those same men who had killed him were slain by David’s order when the city was stormed. This is the course of the history, in which deep mysteries may be seen.

And since we have undertaken not to defend David (for he does not need my help) but to excuse him, or rather to praise him, lest I waver in so great a depth of mysteries, it is right that I use the mouth of the one whose history I use. I will use, then, the prophetic response, saying: “Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” For no one can look into such divine recesses of mystery without the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. For if so great a prophet asks that the gift of the Holy Spirit be poured into him, what ought I, weak as I am, to do, especially since even the holy apostle asks to be helped by the prayers of the people, so that a door may be opened to him to speak the mystery of the Word? O that Christ would deign to open that door to me! Let us knock, however; for he is wont to hear those who knock, since he himself said: “Knock, and it will be opened to you.” O that he would unlock himself to me, since Christ is the door. He is within, he is without; he is the way that leads, he is the life to which we strive to come.

Come, then, Lord Jesus, and open your springs to us, so that we may drink of the water which whoever drinks will never thirst again; or, if we cannot yet draw from your spring, deign to grant that we may at least draw from the well from which you promised drink to that Samaritan woman while she was still doubting. And you indeed promise to all from the spring, but for those who doubt, like that Samaritan woman, your spring is still a deep well. Let us too drink the water of heavenly secrets, and, since we have been found worthy to come to your spring, let it be granted us at least to see an image of the heavenly mysteries.

And so, unless I am mistaken, by the prophet we shall understand the Holy Spirit, and by the adulteress we may consider the various fornications of the synagogue. And therefore we see it revealed long before by the Holy Spirit that the Lord Jesus would be born also of the family of the Jews, whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh: he was indeed born, as a Jew, of an adulterous family, but, as one spotless, of a virgin. The family of the Jews was under the law, as if under a husband. The observance of the law had to be abolished, so that truth and grace might be substituted.

We have one mystery. Receive another too, remembering, however, that from the first conception of Bathsheba a little child was born, who died; afterwards Solomon was born: that little child from a stolen conception, but Solomon from an acknowledged marriage. It is clear, then, that by David the prophet is to be understood, and by the prophet the prophetic people, from which also the synagogue; first, the one who was born, since he degenerated from his ancestors, formed through shameful deeds and conceived through vices: the people of the Jews could not reach the age of resurrection nor grow into a perfect man, but failed in the small littleness of its senses and in a kind of infancy of virtue. But he who was afterwards conceived from a lawful union is the Christian people, that wise and peaceful one (for these things are disclosed by the interpretation of the name Solomon), which has reached the hoary age of a long resurrection and that heavenly kingdom. Through that people the law was dissolved, through this one grace was restored.

Receive also a third mystery. What the Hebrews call David, the Latins interpret as “humbled.” And who is truly humbled but he who did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but, taking the form of a servant, humbled himself, becoming obedient even to death? He, then, is the one signified by David: exalted by nature but humbled by mercy, lofty in divinity but gentle in body. And so, where he is humbled, there he is obedient. For from that from which humility is born, obedience is born, and in it it ends. For when he is said to have become obedient even to death, and death not of the divinity but of the body, surely that was not the obedience of the divinity but of the body, nor the humility of the majesty but of the flesh. So as far as concerns the taking up of the body, the apostolic reading declared in what Christ’s humility consisted; but as for what concerns the nature of the divinity, it was disclosed by the Gospel reading, which you followed with devout assent when you heard read the Son of God saying: “I and the Father are one”; for the Son and the Father are one in divinity, but the sacrament of the body and the eternity of the divinity are not one. Nor did the apostle alone say that the Lord was humbled, but he himself too declared that he was humble, saying: “Take my yoke, for it is light, since I am gentle and humble of heart.” And yet he is marked not only by interpretation but also by explicit naming, for it is written: “I have found David my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him,” and further on: “He will say to me: You are my Father,” and: “I will say to him: You are my Son.” So the David we were seeking we have found: a servant in appearance, but Lord in truth. This David, then, was walking within his house.

What is Christ’s house but that of which he says: “In my Father’s house are many dwellings”? Set in that palace, then, he saw human nature naked and, pitying her, loved her. For she was still naked of virtues, because through the serpent’s snares she had been stripped of the native garments of her nature. For it does not seem likely that a woman would strip naked in front of the king’s house, that a woman would bathe in front of the king’s house, as though no other place could be more convenient for bathing. It does not square, it does not fit, it does not agree with faith; it is far from the truth, it is repugnant to sense. Such a woman, so wanton, so impudent, the king could have shuddered at, not loved. Could she not have felt shame, if not before a man, at least at the king’s gaze? Could not even his servants have kept her away before the king saw her?

So if this cannot agree with faith, let us ask who this naked woman is: clearly human nature, stripped of all the garments of its nature, lacking the cloak of immortality and despoiled of the veil of innocence; for he is naked who is stripped by sin and fault. Indeed that first sinner of our race, and would that he were the only one, did not perceive that he was naked before he sinned; after he sinned, he saw that he was naked, and therefore thought he must be covered with leaves, because he knew he was naked. So he became naked to himself after he became guilty of fault. In him the whole human condition was stripped, liable through the succession of nature not only to fault but also to hardship. So he perceived and saw that he was naked. Hence our whole condition is such that one who thinks himself naked both sees and perceives himself naked. Indeed one who covets riches is naked; one who despises them is wealthy. So much is each one’s own perception his hardship, and each one’s own virtue free of injury. So Christ first claimed human nature for himself in marriage through the law, and afterwards divorced her. Hence he says too: “Where is your mother’s bill of divorce, by which I sent her away?” In this way, then, Christ saw his family naked and loved it; for Christ loves the holy soul. Indeed Jesus loved Lazarus and Mary; Christ loved his church although naked, although not yet clothed with any adornment of virtues.

Indeed, so that we may know that the course of the Scriptures agrees with the arrangement set before us, let us learn that the church is naked, let us learn that she is seeking, hastening, and washing herself before the house of Christ, when John was baptizing in the Jordan, saying: “I indeed baptize you in water for repentance; but he who comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit.” So when the people was being baptized for repentance, it was already near his house, seeking Christ, so as to come to grace. So the church was seeking Christ in John, saying: “Tell me, you whom my soul has loved,” recalling that he was the cause of her desire, the cause of her washing, as you have: “I am dark and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem, like the tent of Kedar, like the skin of Solomon.” You have the reason why she longs to wash herself, because she recalls that she is dark. For, as if to John asking why the great people running together longed to be washed, she answered, saying: “I am dark and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem.” Because she is dark, she desires to be washed; because she is beautiful, she does not fear to be seen naked. “Do not look at me,” she says, “because I have been darkened, because the sun has not looked upon me.” So we are darkened when we are not seen by Christ, but when we are seen we become white. So he saw her, to whom all things are naked and from whom the hidden things of the breast cannot be hidden, because he is the searcher of heart and reins; nothing is covered from him, nothing wrapped up. He saw his church naked and, as he saw, loved her. He saw his beloved naked and loved her as a son of love.

See how he invites, see how he calls. These are not the reproaches of adultery but the mysteries of chastity. “You are all beautiful,” he says, “my near one, and there is no blemish in you. Come hither from Lebanon, my bride, come hither from Lebanon; you will pass and pass through from the beginning of faith.” And well “from the beginning of faith.” So where you have faith, you ought not to fear adultery; for faith belongs to marriage, fraud to adultery. But so that she might be able to come from Lebanon, he said before: “Arise, come, my near one, my beautiful one, my dove, my perfect one”: near by the desire of faith, beautiful by the adornment of virtue, a dove by spiritual grace. For the silvered wings of the dove signify that eternal power, and the flight of the dove declared the presence of the Holy Spirit. So Christ calls her to himself, that she may come, since she was coming already dowered with spiritual gifts, because, “behold,” he says, “the winter has passed, the rain has gone, it has departed by itself, the flowers have appeared on the earth.” See how the holy church is invited. “The winter,” he says, “has departed by itself,” lest, naked, she fear the winter: a winter not of the season but of weakness, which strips the fruitful field of the soul of every flower. For there is a winter not of the earthly sun; there is a winter of the mind, when cold slips into the soul, when the warmth of the mind vanishes, when the vigor of sense is loosened, when too much moisture overflows and weighs down the mind, when the inner sight grows dim. And therefore the Lord says: “See that your flight be not in winter or on the sabbath.” For it is good that the day of judgment or of death should come when the gentle temperature of the soul is vigorous, when the heavenly mystery shines with serene light, when our heart burns within us. For then Christ is present, as Ammaon and Cleopas testify in the Gospel, saying: “Was not our heart burning within us on the way, when he opened the Scriptures to us?” And the soul is vigorous when a flower too is seen on the earth. What is this flower of good fragrance but he who said: “I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys”? Of him it is written in Isaiah too: “A rod will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a rod will rise from the root, and a flower will come forth from the rod.” The root is the family of the Jews, the rod Mary, the flower of Mary Christ, who, when he shines in our land and is fragrant in the field of the soul or blossoms in his church, we can neither fear the cold nor dread the rain, but await the day of judgment.

And therefore the church, so as to see this flower, hastened with all eagerness, as she herself testifies, saying: “On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loved. I sought him and did not find him; I called him, and he did not hear me. I will rise, then, and go into the house, into the forum and the streets, and seek him whom my soul loved. I sought him and did not find him. The watchmen who go about the city found me, struck me, and took my cloak from me.” You see how she seeks him whom she desires to find, so that she does not fear to be wounded. But these wounds are not to be feared but desired, because they are wounds of love, as she herself said: “I am wounded with love.” Good are the wounds of love. Indeed, “more useful are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy.”

Rightly, then, she is naked, because she lost her cloak; or perhaps she is naked because it is sometimes a mark of virtue not to have the breast covered, not to have the heart veiled. Indeed, the veiled one, that is, the synagogue, which had a veil in the reading of the Old Testament which is not lifted, since it is done away in Christ, the veiled synagogue, I say, Christ despised and spurned; hence even today a veil is laid over the heart of the Jews. But she who turns to the Lord with her whole mind is naked and transparent. For when anyone turns to the Lord, the veil will be taken away, so that, beholding the glory of God, we may see. Indeed elsewhere too to be naked is a sign of virtue, for it is written: “I have put off my tunic, how shall I put it on?”

“I have washed my feet, how shall I soil them?” What tunic, then, she has put off and does not find how to put on again, let us reveal from the Scriptures if we can. For there is a kind of bodily tunic, there are certain veils woven of desires; and therefore it is sometimes better to be naked in body than veiled in heart. Hence Paul too admonishes us that it is much better to be stripped than to be clothed over, saying also elsewhere: “Stripping off the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.” So she who has been stripped also has her feet washed, and therefore she who has washed does not know how she could be soiled; for by grace she forgets what she had drawn in by nature. Great, then, and just is this love of the woman washing herself before David’s palace.

But she not only washed but also called, as we receive in the same book, the holy church saying: “Come, my brother, let us go out into the field, let us rest in the villages, let us rise early to the vineyards, let us see whether the vines have blossomed.” So she not only washes but also calls and invites Christ to come to her, saying: “I will give you my breasts.” And she promises not only her own but also things new and old, as you have: “New and old, my brother, I have kept for you.” And, as if impatient of love, she seeks the support of someone by whom Christ may be asked to come. See her burning, see her longing. “Who will give you to me, my brother,” she says, “nursing at my mother’s breasts?” And she shows for what reason she seeks him, with what grace she invites him, how she can hold him, and how she awaits him lingering outside, and begs him to enter her house, saying: “Finding you outside, I will kiss you; I will take you and bring you into my mother’s house and into the secret chamber of her who conceived me.” You see how she is naked, who cannot have a covered secret of an undefiled nature, the secret of an inmost conscience not marked by any rashness of vices. For the holy church is a garden enclosed and spotless virginity, which merits this grace from Christ because she sought, desired, and found the Word of God, watching before the doors of Wisdom, as Wisdom herself says: “Blessed is the man who hears me, and the man who keeps my ways, watching daily at my doors, guarding the posts of my entrance; for my goings out are the goings out of life.”

So Christ desired the beauty of his church and prepared to take her as his wife. But because she was under the law (for Peter, John, and the rest of the apostles were under the law), he thought we must first be released from the bonds of bodily observance. For although the law is religious, the law is just, as is shown in the person of Uriah, who was so religious and chaste that, having returned from the war, he did not know his wife or go in to her; yet when David, that is, the humble man, came to know the union of Uriah, the church, departing from union with the synagogue, was preparing a place for the marriage to come. Hence John too received a type of the law: though he was of the fathers, he announced that the ways of the Lord were to be prepared and prophesied the church’s union; and therefore he is presented as killed, to show the failure of the legal observance; for the law and the prophets were until John. So now Uriah was killed as a type of the law, so that the synagogue might be released from the snares of the law, since the woman who is under a husband is bound to the law while the husband lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband. So while the husband lives she will be called an adulteress if she has been joined to another man; but if her husband has died, she is freed from the law of the husband, so that she is not an adulteress if she has been with another man. So human nature is not an adulteress, which, though it was under the law, has nevertheless, the observance of the law being in a way abolished, been claimed for grace.

But Christ did not abolish the observance of the law. Hence David did not kill Uriah himself, but allowed him to be killed by the warriors; that is, Christ allowed the rite of the observance coming from the law to be profaned through the incursion of barbarians and the captivity of the Jews. Indeed Uriah means “my light.” And what is Christ’s light but the law and the Gospel? (“For if you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me.”) For Christ’s light went before in the law, whose grace afterwards, in the Gospel, filled the whole of this world as by a sevenfold Spirit. To this law, then, he took away the flesh and joined the church to himself. The light of this law a hostile people diminished, when it violated the holy things of the law. So the light of God was diminished in the people of the Jews, because blindness has happened in part to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved.

There still remains a fourth mystery, which I beg you to receive with calm ears, and to weigh our mind, not our words; for the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. Adultery was committed, murder was committed. This is what was said to the prophet: “Take for yourself a rod of the nut tree.” And elsewhere we read of a rod of the nut tree, by which we understand a certain law and sum of prophecy, which, like a nut, is bitter outside in the rind, hard in the middle of the shell, tender and fruitful within. So even if in the history you hear bitter things, and in the type you recognize hard things, yet hope for fruitful things in the mystery. Adultery, I say, was committed as a type of salvation; for not every adultery is to be condemned. Indeed it was said to the prophet: “Go, take for yourself a wife of fornication.” The Lord commands this, that a woman who has committed fornication should be a wife, of which marriage, as we said above, the offspring is Christ. For to the son who was born of fornication the name Jezreel was given by the Lord, which is “divine generation.” If, then, that union with a fornicating woman was devout, surely this union with an adulteress too is a devout fellowship. But that one concerned the Jews. Of divine things, however, I do not dare to speak of a devout adultery, even if it may be so, lest even the sound of the word offend anyone, though a more reverent sense is at hand. What can nevertheless be said more cautiously, if not more expressly, is that from unequal unions a devout companionship was made when the Word was made flesh. For the fellowship of divinity and flesh is not a lawful one, nor, as flesh and soul come together in a kind of covenant of natures, the flesh to the soul and the soul to the flesh, do divinity and flesh likewise keep in some way the law of a just bed. God took up flesh, assumed a soul; through an unusual and not lawful incarnation he made the fellowship lawful, so that God may be all in all.

Indeed, so that you may know there is a mystery, interpret the names. You take David as a type of Christ; Bathsheba is called “daughter of the sabbath,” and “full daughter,” and “well of the oath.” What, then, is clearer than that the daughter of the sabbath is the flesh of Christ, because God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law? She is also full, because in his passion is the fullness of the law, or because she is full of the Holy Spirit; for Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. She is also the well of the oath, that is, of religion and faith. And well a well, because rivers of living water will flow from his belly. Taking her to himself, then, God the Word made the union lawful; this mystery that wedding too declared which is in the Song of Songs, in which the church weds Christ and the flesh the Spirit. And therefore she ran about and sought the Word of God everywhere, because wounded, because naked, because adulterous in all, though spotless in Christ, the wretched flesh was seeking its Redeemer.

This flesh Christ joined to himself, to make her spotless; he associated her with himself, to take away the adultery. And because she was under the law, she had to die, so as to be freed from the law, so that through that death a kind of marriage of law and flesh might be dissolved. So the flesh died in Christ, so that we, made dead to the law through the body of Christ, as the apostle said, might belong to another, who rose from the dead, and the passions and desires of the flesh and the thoughts of sins, which through the law were in our members, might die in that death, while we, freed from the law of death, might rise as by a new union with Christ in newness of the Spirit.

And yet those who dissolved the law in the flesh of Christ and thought it should be violated were all slain by the warriors at David’s command. By this sign is shown what they taught was marked for later times: that none of those who killed Christ escaped; and it is most clearly revealed that those whom Christ took to himself before his death, like the Jews, perished as little ones and unformed, while those whom he took into the number of his sons after his death were kept for the kingdom. Hence, according to this mystery, it fits that the first birth among the Jews was weak, so that afterwards the eternal fruit might come among the Christians.

But now let us pass to the messenger. For above our treatment concerned that odious adultery and murder of the prophet David, and, the mysteries having been gone through, we found not only nothing to be condemned but even something to be praised. Now the treatment begins to be about the messenger, whom the title of the psalm gone through, already often repeated, shows. For it is thus: “A psalm of David, of understanding, when Nathan the prophet came to him, when he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

And so this part of the history too must be gone over, which is as follows. “A rich man,” he says, “and a poor man were in one city. The rich man had many herds, many sheep; the poor man one sheep, which was fed on the poor man’s bread and wine and rested in his bosom. A guest came to the rich man; the rich man took nothing from his herd or from his flocks, but killed the poor man’s one sheep.” When David learned this, “That man shall die,” he said, “and restore it fourfold.” Nathan answered him: “You are the man.” Then he disclosed to him the heavenly command, saying that the Lord commanded that he had conferred on him many goods, that is, royal wealth, after taking him from among the shepherds, and had poured out his mercy upon him; and therefore, since he had provoked the Lord by sin, all his goods were to be carried off, seized by enemies, his house laid waste. Then he said: “I have sinned”; and Nathan answered: “Since you confess that you have sinned, the Lord will forgive you your sin; but your son who was born of Bathsheba will die.” While this son was sick David wept, lay on the ground, covered himself with sackcloth, fasted. When he learned he was dead, he rose, washed, ate, and comforted others.

See how many things there are. First of all, that God is kind and merciful, and that the adversities which happen to us we receive as the price of our error. We have learned, then, that captivity is the price of sin; for this punishment is decreed for crime. Then we notice that the fall of kings is the punishment of peoples. For as we are preserved by their virtue, so too we are endangered by their error. Hence we should pray that we may have a glorious and perfect king. Do we, then, who wish to have a perfect king, not wish to have a perfect Lord? Or can those wish a man to be perfect who do not wish God to be perfect? The text of the history also briefly brings it about that we notice how quickly the hope of pardon followed. And it is no small thing that Nathan announced it to him, that is, a lesser prophet; for it is a heavy shame and embarrassment to have an offence rebuked by an inferior. You see that fault diminishes grace. Nathan knew what David did not know; so much is the mind darkened, overshadowed by a kind of cloud of vices. Then this is the Nathan who had earlier prophesied that David was acceptable to the Lord, so that he might grieve that his sin was convicted by the same witness by whose prophecy his merit had been proclaimed.