2 Samuel 18
ECF2 Samuel 18:6
Apostolic Constitutions: Let us therefore, beloved, consider what sort of glory that of the seditious is, and what their condemnation [is]. For if he that rises up against kings is worthy of punishment, even though he is a son or a friend, how much more the one who rises up against the priests! For by how much the priesthood is more noble than the royal power, since its concern is for the soul, so much has the one a greater punishment who ventures to oppose the priesthood than the one who ventures to oppose the royal power, although neither of them goes unpunished. For neither did Absalom nor Abdadan escape without punishment; nor Korah and Dathan. The former rose against David, and strove concerning the kingdom; the latter against Moses, concerning preeminence. And they both spoke evil; Absalom of his father David, as of an unjust judge, saying to every one, “Your words are good, but there is no one that will hear you, and do justice. Who will make me a ruler?” But Abdadan [said], “I have no part in David, nor any inheritance in the son of Jesse.” It is plain that he could not endure to be under David’s government, of whom God spoke, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my heart, who will do all my commands.” — CONSTITUTIONS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 6.1.2
2 Samuel 18:8
Richard Challoner: Consumed: Viz., by pits and precipices.
2 Samuel 18:9
Cassiodorus: When Absalom was cruelly attacking his father David, the speed of his mule caused him to collide with a thick oak tree, and the branches wound round his neck so that he was suspended high in the air. This was a prefiguration of the Lord’s betrayer. Just as Judas ended his life in the knot of a noose, so also David’s persecutor breathed his last through the pressure on his throat. — EXPOSITION OF THE Psalms 3.1
2 Samuel 18:14
Pseudo-Ignatius: It is becoming, therefore, that you also should be obedient to your bishop and contradict him in nothing, for it is a fearful thing to contradict any such person. For no one does [by such conduct] deceive him that is visible but does [in reality] seek to mock him that is invisible, who, however, cannot be mocked by anyone. And every such act has respect not to people but to God. For God says to Samuel, “They have not mocked you, but me.” And Moses declares, “For their murmuring is not against us but against the Lord God.” … Absalom, again, who had slain his brother, became suspended on a tree, and had his evil-designing heart thrust through with darts. In like manner was Abeddadan beheaded for the same reason. Uzziah, when he presumed to oppose the priests and the priesthood, was smitten with leprosy. Saul also was dishonored, because he did not wait for Samuel the high priest. It is necessary for you, therefore, also to reverence your superiors. — LETTER TO THE MAGNESIANS 3
2 Samuel 18:17
Ambrose of Milan: And what shall I say of Peter who at the sixth hour went up upon the house-top, and there learnt the mystery of the baptism of the Gentiles. But the homicide Absalom had reared for himself a pillar in the King’s dale, and then, after his death, he was cast into a great pit. So then the saints ascend unto the Lord, the wicked descend to crime; the saints are on the mountains, the wicked in the valleys; For God is the God of the hills, not of the plains. — Letter 28.2
Augustine of Hippo: But they, as we have sometimes said before in other places, do not charge themselves with what they do to us; while, on the other hand, they charge us with what they do to themselves. For which of our party is there who would desire, I do not say that one of them should perish but should even lose any of his possessions? But if the house of David could not earn peace on any other terms except that Absalom his son should have been slain in the war which he was waging against his father, although he had most carefully given strict injunctions to his followers that they should use their utmost endeavors to preserve him alive and safe, that his paternal affection might be able to pardon him on his repentance, what remained for him except to weep for the son that he had lost and to console himself in his sorrow by reflecting on the acquisition of peace for his kingdom? — THE CORRECTION OF THE DONATISTS 8.32
2 Samuel 18:18
Richard Challoner: No son: The sons mentioned above, chap. 14. 27, were dead when this pillar was erected: unless we suppose he raised this pillar before they were born.
2 Samuel 18:31
Salvian the Presbyter: When his rebellious son chased him from his kingdom, the Lord soon delivered David. Not only did the Lord deliver him, but [he] delivered him more fully than the one delivered wished. This was that God might show that the injustice is more grievous to himself than to those who suffer it. He who avenges beyond the wish of him who is being avenged, what else does he want understood than that he himself is being avenged in him for whom he is doing the avenging? Thus, when, for his attempted patricide, David’s son being hanged on a cross not made by human hands, the Scripture says that the punishment, divinely brought on him, was thus announced: “I bring good tidings, my lord, the king: for the Lord has judged on your behalf this day from the hand of all that have risen up against you.”You see how the Scriptures prove by divine witnesses that God judges not only by deeds and by examples, as I have already said, but does so today by the very name and terms of judgment. — THE GOVERNANCE OF GOD 2.3-4
2 Samuel 18:33
Ambrose of Milan: But that same David, that the difference of his actions may not perhaps disturb those who cling to the words of Scripture; that same David, I say, who had not wept for the innocent infant, wept for the parricide when dead. For at the last, when he was wailing and mourning, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son Absalom! Who will grant me to die for thee!” But not only is Absalom the parricide wept over, Amnon is wept over; not only is the incestuous wept over, but is even avenged; the one by the scorn of the kingdom, the other by the exile of his brothers. The wicked is wept over, not the innocent. What is the cause? What is the reason? There is no little deliberation with the prudent and confirmation of results with the wise; for there is great consistency of prudence in so great a difference of actions, but the belief is one. He wept for those who were dead, but did not think that he ought to weep for the dead infant, for he thought that they were lost to him, but hoped that the latter would rise again. — On the Decease of His Brother Satyrus, Book 2.28
Augustine of Hippo: When King David had endured this affliction from his wicked and treacherous son, he had not only tolerated his uncontrolled passion but even lamented his death. He was not held ensnared by a carnal jealousy, since it was not the outrages inflicted on him, but rather the sins of his son that troubled him. For he had forbidden that his son be killed if he were conquered in order that opportunity for repentance might be reserved for him after he was vanquished. Since this was impossible, he did not grieve because of his bereavement in the death of his son but because he realized into what punishments such a wickedly adulterous and murderous soul was precipitated. — CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 3.21.30
Augustine of Hippo: Now what are we to do, seeing how many, with the help of the Lord, find the way of peace through your instrumentality? Surely we neither can nor ought to hold them back from this impulse toward unity, through fear that some, utterly hard and cruel to themselves, may destroy themselves by their own will, not ours. Indeed, we should pray that all who carry the standard of Christ against Christ and boast of the gospel against the gospel may forsake their wrong way and rejoice with us in the unity of Christ. But since God, by an inscrutable yet just disposition of his will, has predestined some of them to the ultimate penalty, undoubtedly it is better for some of them to perish in their own fires, while an incomparably greater number are rescued and won over from that deadly schism and separation, than that all should equally burn in the eternal fires of hell as a punishment for their accursed dissension. The church mourns their loss as holy David mourned the loss of his rebellious son about whose safety he had given orders with anxious love. He grieved over his son’s death, with tearful utterance, although it was the penalty of a wicked impiety; but as his proud and wicked spirit departed to its own place, the people of God that had been divided by his tyranny recognized their king, and the completeness of their reunion consoled the grief of the father for the loss of his son. — LETTER 204
Augustine of Hippo: But, as we have said elsewhere on occasion, these heretics refuse to take the blame for what they do to us and they lay the blame on us for what they do to themselves. Who of us would wish them to lose anything, much less that they be lost themselves? If the house of David could win peace in no other way than through the death of Absalom, David’s son, in the war which he was carrying on against his father—although the latter had instructed his followers with great care to keep him safe and sound as far as it was possible for them to do so, that he might repent and receive pardon from his father’s love—what was left for him but to weep for the son that he had lost and find comfort for his grief in the peace thus gained for his kingdom? In the same manner, then, our Catholic mother acts when others who are not her sons make war on her—because it is a fact that this little branch in Africa has been broken off from the great tree which embraces the whole world in the spreading of its branches—and although she is in labor with them in charity, that they may return to the root without which they cannot have true life, still, if she rescues so many others by losing some, especially when these fall by self-destruction, not by the fortune of war as Absalom did, she solaces the grief of her maternal heart and heals it by the deliverance of such numbers of people. — LETTER 185.32
John Chrysostom: So great is the concern and sympathy of a good pastor. For David was deeply moved at their falling, as when one’s own children are killed. And on this ground he begged that the wrath might come upon himself. And in the beginning of the slaughter he would have done this, unless he had seen it advancing and expected that it would come to himself. When therefore he saw that this did not happen, but that the calamity was raging among them, he no longer forbore but was touched more than for Amnon his firstborn. For then he did not ask for death, but now he begs to fall in preference to the others. Such ought a ruler to be and to grieve rather at the calamities of others than his own. Some such thing he suffered in his son’s case likewise, that you might see that he did not love his son more than his subjects. The youth was promiscuous and mistreated his father, yet still the father said, “Would that I might have died for you!” What do you say, you blessed one, you who are meekest of all men? Your son was set upon killing you and surrounded you with unnumbered ills. And when he had been removed, and the trophy was raised, do you then pray to be slain? Yes, he says, for it is not for me that the army has been victorious, but I am warred against more violently than before, and my insides are now more torn than before. — HOMILIES ON Romans 29
Richard Challoner: [33] Would to God: David lamented the death of Absalom, because of the wretched state in which he died: and therefore would have been glad to have saved his life, even by dying for him. In which he was a figure of Christ weeping, praying and dying for his rebellious children, and even for them that crucified him.