Apology of the Prophet David 1–35

We have taken up our present pen to write a defense of the prophet David, not because he needs this service, he who shone with such great merits and flourished with virtues, but because many, having read the account of his deeds without looking into the force of the Scriptures or the hidden meaning of the mysteries, wonder how so great a prophet did not avoid the stains first of adultery and then of murder. Therefore we have been eager to review the history itself.

It seems to lie open to the charge of sin. For in the second book of Kingdoms we read that David, walking in his royal house, looked out and saw a woman bathing (her name was Bathsheba), of exceptional figure, lovely in grace and countenance, and of very striking appearance; and that, softened by these allurements, he conceived the desire to possess her. But the woman was married; her husband’s name was Uriah, for whom, by royal orders, the scene of his death was arranged. For although his life was thought no hindrance to desire, it was thought a great obstacle to the shame of adultery.

So, to begin with the plainer points: do not judge one whom God has justified. “It is a very small thing to me,” says Paul, “that I should be judged by you or by any human day; I do not even judge myself.” And he was still placed in the body, still liable to temptation; but he did not judge himself for this reason, that the spiritual man is judged by no one except God alone. Indeed he added: “He who judges me is the Lord. Therefore do not judge anything before the time.” But David has already completed his time and earned grace and been justified by Christ, since the Lord himself was glad to be called the son of David, and those who so confessed him were enlightened. Why do you summon the man of God from his reward to judgment? The Lord has already judged concerning him, of whom he said to Solomon: “If you walk before me as David your father walked, in holiness of heart and righteousness, 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 commands, walking in holiness and righteousness of heart? Where the sins and vices of others lie hidden, there David received the divine testimony of his virtue and glory. And we idly dispute about the sin of one for whose merit and grace the sins of others have been relieved! For when Solomon had given offence, because he had not kept the Lord’s commands, and God had resolved to tear his kingdom into several parts, he said to him: “Yet I will not do these things in your days, for the sake of David your father; I will take it from the hand of your son. Yet I will not take the whole kingdom; I will give one sceptre for the sake of David my servant.” Since the Lord justifies him, then, who is it that judges so great a man? “What God,” he says, “has cleansed, do not call common.”

Saving, however, the heavenly judgment, by which you too may honor so great a prophet, enter into his acts and character. Do you not wonder that a man who for most of his life was worthy to be compared to the angels, or rather who from boyhood lived amid riches, honors, and power, placed in many temptations, gave place to error only once, and to that error by which, as Scripture records, even the angels of heaven were cast down from their grace and power? There is indeed another error of his recorded, that he had the people numbered.

Each of us sins so much every hour, and yet everyone of the common people thinks he need not confess his sin; but that king, so great and powerful, did not allow the consciousness of his offence to stay with him even for a short moment, but by a prompt confession and immense sorrow he rendered his sin to the Lord. Whom will you easily find for me now, honored and rich, who, if he is accused of some fault, does not take it ill? But he, illustrious with royal power, approved by so many divine oracles, when he was rebuked by a private man for having sinned grievously, did not roar with indignation but confessed and groaned with sorrow for his fault. Indeed the sorrow of his inmost feeling so moved the Lord that Nathan said: “Because you have repented, the Lord has also taken away your sin.” So the speed of the pardon declared that the king’s repentance had been profound, since it removed the offence of so great an error.

Other men, when they are rebuked by priests, make their sin heavier while they wish to deny or defend it, and there their fall is greater where correction is hoped for. But the saints of the Lord, who are eager to complete the devout contest and run the course of salvation, if perhaps as men they have fallen, more from the frailty of nature than from lust for sinning, rise again keener to run, renewing greater contests under the spur of shame, so that the fall is thought not only to have brought no hindrance but even to have heaped up incentives to speed. If, then, the race of runners is not cancelled when some of them happen to fall, nor the struggle of wrestlers, but the contests remain unharmed, and indeed many after one or two falls have won with greater grace: how much more ought those who have entered the contest of piety not to be judged by the offence of a single fall, since blessed is he who has been able to restore himself after a fall, since to rise again even after death is the gift of the blessed.

We can understand in other ways too that sin can be profitable, and that offences crept upon the saints by the providence of the Lord. For they are set before us for imitation, and therefore it was arranged that they too should sometimes fall. For if they had completed their course free from vices amid so many slippery places of this world, they would have given us weaker ones occasion to think that they had been of some higher and divine nature, so that they could not admit offence or have any share in fault; and this opinion would surely have called us back, since we have no part in that substance, from an impossible imitation. So the grace of God passed them by for a little while, so that their life might become a discipline for us to imitate, and we might take from their acts a lesson in repentance as well as in innocence. So when I read of their falls, I recognize them as sharers in weakness; when I believe them sharers, I presume that they are to be imitated.

The apostle Paul also reminds us that the Lord our God took care that human feeling should not be puffed up even in the saints, either by the sublimity of revelations or by the continued success of their works, and that they should not credit to themselves and attribute to their own virtue what had been conferred on them by divine working. So, lest they rush into such a judgment and fall into the pit of faithlessness, the Lord allowed fault to slip in upon them, so that they too might notice that they needed divine help and recognize that the guide of their salvation must be sought. Indeed Paul testifies that weakness was profitable to him, the Lord saying to him when he asked that the thorn of his flesh might depart from him: “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.” And rightly he glories in weaknesses; for he knew that many even of the saints had fallen without remedy from abundance of virtue. How much more advantageous, then, to have given place to one or two reproaches than to have incurred the everlasting offence of God!

What shall I add of those things we can infer from the very practice of the world: that when we have proved many in some office, we wish to test the same men, as diligent and energetic, in another task? How many athletes, when they have prevailed in one kind of contest, are called to another kind of contest! What if the Lord your God too, when you have given some proof of your virtue, wishes to test you in another kind of virtue? He allowed holy Job, running without stumbling, to be tempted nevertheless by the death of his children and by sores over his whole body, so as to test his virtue in this too, whether, compelled by injuries and bitterness, he would not lessen the devotion of his heart. Is it not clear that he wished also to test holy David, noble in faith, most excellent in gentleness, strong of hand, in how he would cover his fault and amend his fall, so as to teach us how we could cover a sin committed?

Unless perhaps it seems to someone a cheap reason that so great a prophet should have erred for our correction, since for the redemption of all Christ took up our infirmities, who was made sin for us, though he knew no sin. And is it thought unworthy and not believed probable that David incurred the disgrace of a single fall for the benefit of posterity, when the Lord himself was made a reproach for us, as he himself says: “But I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and the outcast of the people,” and elsewhere: “And the reproaches of those who reproached fell upon me”? So he sent ahead in his own servants the mystery of the dispensation to come; and the little servants bore the sins of their own condition, and therefore they could not themselves be free of sin; but the Lord took up another’s burden, and therefore he alone was without any share in offences.

In sum, we know, the apostle also teaching it, that many things done in earlier times were done in figure. For when he had said that the fathers wounded by serpents in the desert could not be healed in any other way than by Moses hanging up a bronze serpent, at the sight of which those deadly bites and harmful infusions of poison were cured, he added: “Now these things happened to them in figure, for our correction.” The bronze serpent was in figure as if fixed to the cross, because the true one who was to be crucified was being announced to the human race, who would empty the poisons of the serpent the devil; in figure he was cursed, but in truth he was the one 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 by the slave woman and one by the free, and added: “But the one by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, the one by the free woman through the promise. These things are said by way of allegory.” What “by way of allegory” means he explained clearly in what follows, saying that those two generations, one by the slave woman, the other by the free, are two testaments: one from Mount Sinai, bearing children into slavery, the mountain on which Moses received the law from the Lord; the other from Jerusalem, which is free, which bore children in Isaac, that is, in the freedom of grace, not in the slavery of the letter; for punishment is decreed for slaves, grace is conferred on the free. Did not Jacob take two wives as a type of the twofold people, from whom he begot different offspring? Why do we read that the patriarch Judah, after the death of his son, sought intercourse with his own daughter-in-law, from which the birth of twins came forth, unless that a figure should go before of the two testaments of the Lord Jesus, one of which was established as a type of his future death, the other in the truth of the Gospel: that two peoples were to be begotten, of whom the later would cut through, in the sign of the cross, every hedge and fortification of the former people (this is the people first by the hand, later by birth); or because the Lord Jesus himself, born of the tribe of Judah, sent his works ahead before he was born to us of the Virgin?

What shall I say of Joseph, who, attacked by his brothers, stripped of his father’s garment, thrown into the pit, sold into slavery, expressed a clear sign of the Lord’s incarnation, since that beloved of the Father, though he was in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, so that, taking the form of a servant, he came and humbled himself even to the death of the cross; and by his price, both bought and sold by his brothers, he redeemed the human race? As a type of him David, the youngest, chosen from among his brothers, anointed alone to the kingdom, in the danger of a grievous war freed the whole people by single combat; he triumphed over ten thousands, so that the girls sang with timbrels: “Saul has triumphed over thousands, and David over ten thousands.” What figure is in those young women but of souls, who sing the triumphal psalm to Christ? He begot sons from himself, one incestuous and the other a parricide, because an incestuous and parricidal people was going to violate the flesh of its own Author fixed to the gibbet of the cross. Indeed in the third psalm the title of Absalom is set before it, and the passion of the Lord is prophesied.

What shall I say of holy Solomon, whose later deeds are not free of grave error, yet whom the Jewish common people think came as the Christ? And how many has the offence of his grave error called back! So the greater fault profited more, lest he be believed to be above man who was not without human vice. So there was in him an enviable wisdom and a persuasive fault, which proved him a man.

What, then, prevents us from believing that Bathsheba too was joined to holy David in figure, to signify the congregation of the nations, which was not united to Christ by a kind of lawful marriage of faith, because it was to enter into his grace by certain hidden entrances, beyond the prescription of the law; in which the naked sincerity of the mind and open simplicity, through the justifying mystery of the washing, would draw the mind of the true David and eternal King and provoke his love? Rightly he came hidden, and so as to deceive the prince of the world, like that Uriah, whose name is interpreted “my light,” who transforms himself into an angel of light. He came, I say, into this world, and came hidden; he entered like an adulterer, so as to claim the lawful right.

We have set out strong arguments, as we think, and have shown that the text of this history was woven in figure. Now let us return to the earlier points and, as if stripped of the spiritual garments, look into the error itself. David sinned, as kings are wont to do; but he did penance, wept, groaned, as kings are not wont to do; he confessed his fault, begged for pardon, lying on the ground he lamented his misery, he fasted, prayed, and transmitted to all ages the testimony of his confession by making his sorrow public. What private persons blush to do, a king did not blush to confess. Those who are bound by laws dare to deny their sin, disdain to ask for pardon, which he sought who was bound by no human laws. That he sinned belongs to our condition; that he made supplication belongs to correction. The fall is common, but the confession special. So to have fallen into fault is of nature; to have washed it away is of virtue. “Who will boast,” it says, “that he has a chaste heart?” Not even an infant of one day is declared clean by the testimony of Scripture.

Give me anyone without the slip of an offence. Samson is read to have been the strongest of all, who strangled even a lion with his hands; but would that he had been able to choke his love! He burned the crops of the foreigners, and he himself burned with the little fire of one woman. Jephthah returned victorious from the enemy, but, bringing back triumphal standards, he was conquered by his own oath, so that he thought the devotion of his daughter, who came to meet him, should be repaid by parricide. First of all, what need was there to swear so easily and to vow uncertain things for certain ones, whose outcome he did not know? Then, does anyone render sad oaths to the Lord God, so as to pay his vows with bloody funerals?

Nor do I think I should be silent about priests, lest I seem to hide our own offences. Aaron himself, the high priest, under whose leadership together with Moses the people of the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea on foot, when asked by the people to make them gods to worship, asked for gold, threw it into the fire, and the head of a calf was formed, to which sacrifices were offered. By this sign it became clear that desire for gold is the material of faithlessness and that sacrileges are usually born from the pursuit of avarice. Again, so great a priest fell into offence with his sister Miriam. For while both disparaged their brother because he had taken a foreign wife, Miriam at once broke out with the contagion of spotted flesh.

In this place there was a figure of an evident mystery: that the priestly people of the fathers would in later times disparage its brother people, not knowing the mystery of that Ethiopian woman. For had it known, it would not have blamed what agreed with the ancient mystery. And so, when the Jew calls the one who has believed from the Gentiles “common” and wishes to separate him from the law, he has a leprosy which he will not be able to escape unless the spiritual knowledge of the law comes to his aid for pardon.

So David too, who knew that he had been born a man liable to fall, asked for pardon, and 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 said of himself, as was read today, that a certain man, being rich, went into a far country to receive a kingdom and return? And truly he was rich in the wealth of his majesty and the fullness of his own divinity, whom angels and archangels, virtues and powers and principalities, thrones and dominions, cherubim and seraphim served with tireless obedience. Yet, though he was rich, he left the ninety-nine sheep on the mountains and sought the one sheep that had remained behind exhausted. This sheep the prince of this world, poor and needy in comparison with that rich man, was feeding like a daughter on his own food. Rightly, then, had she grown faint, whose substance was the food of the world. This sheep had strayed in Adam, enticed by the snares of the serpent.

And she was not a bad sheep, for she was full of the Word, being the daughter of the rational seven and the gift of a holy Author; yet she was fed not on any precious things but long on the poor man’s cheap resources. Indeed, “she ate of his bread,” it says, “and drank of his cup and slept in his bosom.” Not good is the food of the Ethiopians; harmful is the golden cup of Babylon, which makes the nations drunk; sleep is not useful to those who sleep in evil. Indeed, “all the foolish in heart were troubled; they slept their sleep and found nothing.” For the sake of hospitality, then, because he had received a guest, to set a feast before him, he took away the poor man’s sheep; for if he had sacrificed any animal from his own flocks or herds, it could not have profited us, whom he would not have redeemed had he not sacrificed.

So with a kind of hospitable affection he took up in his own flesh the infirmities of our frailty, and to relieve them, or rather to restore them, he offered his flesh to that saving passion, so as to provide us the food of eternal life. And Scripture rightly called it a ewe lamb, because it was the offspring of a virgin. Rightly is this rich man pronounced worthy of death by the prophetic judgment, since Caiaphas too prophesied, saying: “It is expedient that one man die for the people.” And the Lord Jesus alone was chosen as worthy of such a death, by which he would take away the sin of the world. Beautifully too he added: “He shall restore the ewe lamb,” because he raised up his own flesh, he restored that flesh of virginal integrity. Nor is it idle that he says: “He shall restore it fourfold”; for the resurrection of the dead is fourfold, 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 will indeed restore the ewe lamb fourfold also in the sense in which a man can now say: “If I have taken anything from anyone, I restore it fourfold.” Fittingly too he added: “Because he did not spare”; for Christ did not spare himself, so as to come to the help of all.

And therefore it was said by the Lord Jesus Christ to his servant David, to declare the mystery: “Because you did this in secret, I too will do this thing before all Israel in the sight of this sun.” And at first, not knowing the mystery, David was moved with indignation, but he did not err in his feeling. But afterwards, when he recognized the great mystery (for great is the mystery of Christ and the church), seeing the future remission of all sins, foreseeing the brightness of grace through the washing of regeneration and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, he said, sure of pardon: “I have sinned against the Lord,” so that he too might come into the fellowship of those to whom remission of fault 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 could cover his sin. For since human frailty cannot be without sin, we must take care that sins are not more than works of virtue. This holy Paul expressed with great force of wisdom, saying: “The sins of some men are manifest, going before them to judgment; but in some they also follow after”; that is: no one is found untouched by fault; a man has good merits, he has also vices and sins. So all our deeds are weighed as in a balance. If, then, sins outweigh good deeds, they go before to judgment; for sins tip down as into the depth; those that are manifest tip it either by their weight and bitterness or by their number. “But in some,” 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 to error, their good deeds go before, the bad follow. These are more honorable, but still men who have slipped by lighter vices and errors. So sins follow the just and do not go before them; they go before the unjust. The sins that tip down outweigh, and if there are any right deeds, they follow, weighed down as by a kind of prejudgment of the preceding sins. Likewise good deeds too are manifest. For they shine with the work of virtues and the splendor of merits, and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden. Such sins, then, are not covered: love, which covers a multitude of sins, does not overshadow them; the grace of good works does not cover them; the multitude of virtues does not hide them; they are exposed as naked and uncovered. For there is no one among these who says: “Protect me under the shadow of your wings”; for the cross of the Lord abolishes and hides all errors.

Who, then, covered and hid more than holy David, who says elsewhere too: “And in the shadow of your wings I have hoped, until iniquity passes,” and so loved the Lord that by his great love he covered and hid every sin? For if the holy apostle Peter abolished his fall by the confession of love, when he was asked by the Lord, who said to him a third time: “Simon son of John, do you love me?”, so that he might confess three times the one he had denied three times, and so hide the fall of a threefold denial by a kind of threefold veil of love; if, because Peter wept once, he obtained pardon, how much more David, who washed his bed every night and watered his couch with 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 one who has turned and groaned, if he looked at Peter and Peter wept, how much more on one who wept long and did not depart from the Lord’s sight? Peter denied and did not weep, because Jesus had not looked at him; he denied a second time and did not weep, because the Lord had not looked at him; he denied a third time, Jesus looked at him, and at once he wept, and wept most bitterly. Therefore David, who was always weeping, said: “My eyes are always toward the Lord”; he who was always seen by Christ said: “My eyes have run down with streams of water.”

But now let us consider his deeds too. Who would not overshadow the odium of one crime with the praise of such great virtues? Chosen by divine choice, he at once proved that he was not unworthy of so great a judgment. He went out to battle and, while the rest trembled, he alone, with faith and courage together, laid low the foreigner Goliath, terrifying with the boasting of his words and the huge bulk of his body, as he charged him. The courage of one became the victory of all. Let a private crime be compared, if you please, with a triumph for all; the death of one with the life of the peoples, so many whom he freed from death.

Let us come to other things. He suffered plots from the king; the king sought to extinguish his life; but when by divine arrangement 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 the deadly wound away from the body of one who would have perished, saying: “Do not touch the Lord’s anointed.” Indeed he even avenged the death of his enemy, lamented his end most tearfully, and long put off the kingdom owed him, which he knew was owed him by God’s authority. By this alone he taught all men that a kingdom is not to be seized beforehand, even if it is owed, but to be awaited until it is conferred in its own time. Would that later men had imitated this man! We would not have endured such bitter wars. You blame him for killing one man; you do not consider that he taught how lasting peace might be preserved for the Roman world. With what grievous devastation we are still paying for it! By what public funeral, as it were, of the whole world have we paid for the murder of a king who was attacked? Alas, harsh punishments! From this the barbarian enemy still insults us, while the arms prepared against him are turned against us. So the public strength has fallen, so Roman valor, broken by its own upheavals, has grown old, while what is undertaken with the reverence of a father’s care is snatched away by public parricide. And David guarded against this so carefully that, when he learned that his son Adonijah was usurping the kingdom and gathering assemblies, he chose not the one who was eager to seize it beforehand but the one who waited.

The most powerful of kings danced before the ark of the Lord, and when he was reproached by his own wife for having stripped himself before the eyes of the maidservants, he answered: “Before the Lord I will be uncovered still, and I will be a trifler before your eyes, so that the Lord may be honored,” he says, “who chose me rather than your father for the kingdom”; teaching that regard for royal power is not to be kept where service is being shown to religion. For it is honorable to act for the sake of religion, even if it is unbefitting to power.

Look at another memorable thing. A parricidal son had violently seized his father’s kingdom. His father first gave way to his fury and avoided a place of battle, so that the wicked son might thus come to his senses from his fury. He refused to take part in the war, and asked those setting out to battle to spare his son. He was sure of victory who asked that they spare him, and not a stranger to fatherly love, who did not think that even a wicked son ought to perish. He wept and lamented the end of the parricide with great grief, saying: “My son Absalom, who will grant me to die for you, my son Absalom?” He thought he should punish the man who had killed him to avenge his father’s love.

And how patient he was of injury and pain! When, as we said, he was giving way before the fury of his son Absalom, surrounded on right and left by strong warriors, a man named Shimei cursed him, calling him bloody and a man of blood, cast down from the kingdom by the just judgment of the Lord; but he was not moved even by such insults, though his companions were moved. Indeed one of his companions, a man named Abishai, threatened to take off his head as the price of the insult. But the king turned to Abishai and said: “What have I to do with you, son of Zeruiah? He curses me because the Lord has told him to curse.” How morally he taught that the times of our injuries or dangers are contests of temptation and tests of proof, and that therefore they are not usually inflicted without divine judgment! The good athlete is exercised by insults, exercised by labors and dangers, so that he may be worthy to receive the crown of righteousness. And therefore things thought adverse must be borne patiently. Indeed elsewhere too divine Scripture teaches you this, the just man saying: “If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not bear evil things?”

And the holy prophet added, saying: “Behold, my son, who came out of my body, seeks my life. And if the Benjaminite curses me, let him curse, for the Lord has told him, so that he may see my humiliation, and the Lord will repay me for this curse.” O depth of prudence, O mark of patience, O great discovery for swallowing an insult! Are you troubled, he says, Abishai, that a stranger curses me, whom my son seeks to kill? The Lord told him to curse me. But the Lord is not a curser, nor does he delight in insults.

See how carefully he keeps each point. He does not accuse the Lord as the author of the injury, but rather praises him because he suffers it. We suffer lesser things … so that we may obtain pardon for greater sins. See, the insult of words lightened the hardship of the parricide, and acquitted the insolent man, whose curses profit the more because they are rewarded by divine recompense. Who would not offset such an injury against himself, so that the one whom a man has harmed God may console with the repayment of better things?

Let us consider his other deeds too. He fought against the offspring of the giants, when one of them had almost struck the king as he was engaged in battle; yet the adversary paid for his daring with the price of the death he received.

Having won this triumph over a fierce conquered nation, he again undertook a mighty war in the valley of the Titans, no less against nature than against the enemy. For being thirsty while engaged in war, he had nothing to drink. “Who,” he said, “will give me a drink from the well that is in Bethlehem by the gate?” Now between the well and holy David lay the enemy and the enclosures of the hostile camp. Three men cut through the multitude of the adversaries, filled water from the well that was in Bethlehem, and offered it to the king to drink. But the king would not drink and poured it out to the Lord (for it was worthy of so great a gift that what had been a mark of living courage should become a sacrifice of devotion), and he spoke a sentence worthy of the prophetic spirit: “Far be it from me to do this, lest I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives.” So he conquered nature, so that though thirsty he did not drink, and he gave an example from himself by which the whole army might learn to endure thirst. He also trained his subjects in the duty of courage, so that even through dangers soldiers might willingly obey the royal command. By not wishing to drink, he showed that he had given the command for the sake of proving his soldiers, not conquered by the necessity of thirst; that he had also taken care that no king should seek the enjoyment of drinking by others’ dangers; finally, that he had averted a wound to his devout conscience, since water sought with the blood of so many men could have no sweetness in drinking, consisting as it did in the horror of death set before them.

But if you wish to look higher and examine the mystery, David was thirsting not for water from the well that is in Bethlehem, but in the Spirit he foresaw Christ to be born of the Virgin. So he wished to drink not river water but the drink of spiritual grace; that is, he thirsted not for the element of water but for the blood of Christ. Indeed he did not drink the water offered him, but poured it out to the Lord, signifying that he thirsted for Christ’s sacrifice, not the stream of nature: that sacrifice in which there would be remission of sins; that he thirsted for the eternal spring, not one sought by others’ dangers, but one that would drive away others’ dangers.