On Naboth

Contents

Reading pages: 1–43 · 44–73

1. 1The story of Naboth is repeated daily, as the rich covet and seize the land of the poor, who are driven out with their families.
2. 2The earth was made common to rich and poor alike; nature begets all naked and the grave makes all equal.
3. 3Riches buried with the rich man profit no one, and the wealth he leaves burdens good heirs or is wasted by bad ones.
4. 4The rich man is truly poor, since avarice grows with wealth and he combines the ambition of the rich with the craving of a beggar.
5. 5King Ahab, rich in means, was poor in spirit, while Naboth, poor in land, was content; greed makes the rich man poor.
6. 6Ambrose quotes the story of Ahab's request for Naboth's vineyard and Naboth's refusal.
7. 7Elisha's giving up his oxen to follow Elijah stands in contrast to Ahab, who abused God's gifts.
8. 8Ahab's 'Give me' is a beggar's plea, but spoken not from need or humility but from greed and impudence.
9. 9Ahab acknowledges the vineyard is Naboth's, yet covets it more than his own.
10. 10Ahab offers money rather than land, wanting Naboth to own no land at all.
11. 11The rich seek to exclude others more than to gain for themselves, claiming for a few a world created for all.
12. 12Isaiah's woe on those who join field to field condemns the rich, who, unlike the animals that seek company, drive out their neighbors.
13. 13Naboth refused to sell his ancestral inheritance; the rich should likewise not squander their inheritance on vice.
14. 14Ahab sulked because he could not have Naboth's vineyard, as the rich grieve at anything not theirs.
15. 15Ahab did not eat his own bread because the rich live on bread taken from others.
16. 16The poor fast from need; the rich fast from avarice, neither using their wealth nor letting others use it.
17. 17The miser starves himself to hoard wealth for heirs who wish him dead and will squander it.
18. 18Ambrose tells of a rich miser who rationed his own bread and grudged eating an egg, an instance of God's justice punishing greed by self-inflicted hunger.
19. 19True fasting gives the cost of feasting to the poor; the rich man's table is made from the blood of the poor.
20. 20The luxury of the rich costs the lives of the poor who labor and die to supply it, as Herod killed John the Baptist for a dancer's reward.
21. 21Ambrose describes a poor man, ruined by a powerful creditor, forced by hunger to decide to sell his own children.
22. 22The father agonizes over which of his children to sell first, finding reasons to keep each.
23. 23The father imagines bargaining over his son and the son's reply that Joseph was sold by brothers, not by his father, and that he would not be sold to the rich.
24. 24The father, torn between selling one child and seeing all starve, despairs at the shame of the deed.
25. 25The rich man ignores the poor man's plight and Scripture's command to spend for a brother, while his wife spends on luxury what could free the poor.
26. 26Women spend fortunes on jewels and silks that burden and chill them; polished stones should teach the polishing of hard minds.
27. 27Riches cannot lengthen life, cure illness, or free from death, and the rich who gave nothing to the poor find nothing at the end.
28. 28The rich man, like Dis, god of the dead, is an insatiable whirlpool of greed, a slave of sin more wretched than any slave.
29. 29The rich man cannot sleep for greed, like the rich fool in the parable, to whom God said that his soul would be required that night.
30. 30The rich fool's 'What shall I do?' is the cry of a starving poor man contemplating death for want of food.
31. 31The rich fool complains of want amid abundance, more wretched than the poor, since he alone is to blame.
32. 32The rich fool should have opened his barns to the hungry instead of building bigger ones.
33. 33The rich fool, hoarding for higher prices, should have imitated Joseph and fed the poor; his barns are storehouses of iniquity.
34. 34The cost of new barns would have fed the poor.
35. 35The greedy man profits from scarcity and fears abundance lest it reach the poor, claiming the earth's produce to deny it to others.
36. 36Riches are goods only when given to the poor, by which one lends to God and becomes bread to the hungry and father to orphans.
37. 37The safest storehouses for grain are the poor, widows, and infants, where it is kept forever and returns with increase.
38. 38Death comes by night to the greedy fool, who hoped in eating and drinking, while mercy brings the just to the day of paradise.
39. 39The miser's hoard will go to others; better to be a generous steward and father of orphans, since only grace goes with us to judgment.
40. 40The poor are not cursed but blessed; mercy gives according to need, not merit, and must not be postponed.
41. 41The rich should not even seize others' goods; Jezebel figures avarice, which promises possessions by false charges and murder.
42. 42Jezebel is the recurring figure of the avarice of the rich, a destructive flood.
43. 43Ambrose quotes Jezebel's letter ordering a fast and false witnesses to have Naboth stoned.
44. 44The rich fast and attend church to further their crimes, but God rejects such fasting and demands justice and care for the poor.
45. 45Ambrose confronts the rich man who uses contracts and false witness against the poor, setting God's law and the judgment of conscience against him.
46. 46False witnesses, as against Susanna and Christ, condemned Naboth, who was stoned outside his own land.
47. 47Ahab feigned grief at Naboth's death and then took his vineyard, as the rich pretend sorrow over the harm they cause.
48. 48God's sentence that dogs would lick Ahab's blood where they licked Naboth's avenged the poor man by a fitting punishment.
49. 49The harlots washing in Ahab's blood signify his bloody luxury; the rich should flee avarice, the Jezebel that drives to crime.
50. 50The greedy rich man always feels poor and fears exposure, as Ahab's guilty conscience shows when he meets Elijah.
51. 51Elijah, poor, 'found' the guilty King Ahab; the guilty are found out, while the just escape, so that wealth is captive and poverty free.
52. 52Riches, like a well, stagnate unless drawn off; almsgiving quenches the fire of sin, which otherwise threatens the rich man as it did Dives.
53. 53What is given to the poor is not a gift but the return of what belongs to them, since the earth was given in common to all.
54. 54The rich man's pride in birth and luxury is vain; all are born alike, and the gold he displays is dug by the poor, who are denied it.
55. 55Gold is a stumbling block, and the rich man who keeps himself from it is so rare as to be marveled at, as Sirach says.
56. 56The rich adorn walls and horses with marble and gold while the naked and hungry cry at their doors; a single jewel could save a whole people.
57. 57Job, the model rich man, rescued the poor, widows, and orphans and yet lost everything but the fruit of mercy; how much worse for the rich who give nothing.
58. 58The rich man is only steward of his wealth; he should sell it to buy eternal life, as Christ told the rich young man.
59. 59Wealth hoarded is shared with moth and rust; wealth given makes God the Father and Christ, who is fed in the poor, our debtors.
60. 60True riches are faith, mercy, simplicity, and wisdom; the rich who give to the poor lend to God.
61. 61Psalm 76 shows that God is known not among the rich and powerful but in the soul that confesses him and sees him.
62. 62God dwells in the peaceful soul, free from the storms of avarice, and breaks the devil's weapons, which can enter only the greedy, as with Judas.
63. 63'Men of riches' are possessed by their wealth; not using it for the poor, they sleep their own sleep, not Christ's, and will not rise with him.
64. 64Those who 'mounted horses' are those carried by bodily pleasures without governing them, unlike Elijah, driver of Israel, and Christ, who drove his apostles to preach.
65. 65The horseman who falls may rise by hoping in God, but the 'mounter' who cannot govern his horse is thrown down; the rich should not trust in horses or be roused by lust.
66. 66The rich should cease from sin and confess to God, as Paul did though conscious of nothing, so as to keep the feast of a pure mind.
67. 67The rich should pray and render to God, through the poor, the gifts he gave them; God seeks not sacrifices but faith, praise, and mercy.
68. 68Alternatively, the call to pray and offer is addressed to the poor, who are near to God, while the rich are made far off by avarice.
69. 69God, terrible to kings, cannot be bought; Saul lost his kingdom, and Ahab, who coveted the poor man's vineyard, died with dogs licking his blood.
70. 70God's promise to delay punishment after Ahab's repentance was not broken; Jezebel turned Ahab back, and God did not keep the promise for one who abandoned repentance.
71. 71God kept his word to Ahab, who defeated the Syrians, but Ahab squandered God's gift by freeing the Syrian king who later destroyed him.
72. 72A prophet's oracle declared that, because Ahab freed the Syrian king devoted to destruction, his own life would be forfeit.
73. 73God keeps his promises even to the unworthy, but the wicked perish by their own folly; we should live so as to deserve his promises.