EXPLANATION ABOUT THE PSALM III. PSALM FOR DAVID WHEN HE BEGOT BEFORE HIS SON ABSALON: "LORD, WHY HAVE MY PERSECUTERS MULTIPLIED?

ANALYSIS. That domestic quarrels, the revolts of those who owe us obedience are frequently the punishment of our sins. Revolt and death of Absalon.

1. Kings honor by commemorative statues the victorious generals, magistrates erect effigies and columns in honor of coachmen, athletes crowned, with an inscription proclaiming their 'triumph as could the voice of a herald . Others celebrate in praise books and writings the victors, and endeavor to display in these praises a talent which raises them above their heroes. Historians, painters, sculptors, sculptors, peoples, magistrates, cities, countries, agree to boast the triumphant. But he who fled without having fought, he never found anyone to reproduce his features as David does today: Listen instead: "Psalm for David, when he fled before his son Absalon. And what fugitive has ever deserved praise? What fugitive name has ever appeared on inscriptions? If we show the names of the fugitives, it is in order to find them, and not to do them honor.

Learn, my brother, the reason for this title, and let your soul rest. May this story become a lesson for yourself. May the persecution of the righteous be a strengthening subject for your own heart. Learn why David was being persecuted by Absalom, so that on this foundation you may be edified in the fear of God. Indeed, if, in the absence of a basis, there is no solid construction, so the Scripture is of no help to anyone who does not know how to discover the meaning.

The intention of Blessed David, in composing this psalm, was to reform human life, and to teach him to allow himself no offense, no contempt for the laws of God, so that the sinner would avoid the pitfalls he had encountered. himself. David fled before his son because he had fled from purity; he fled before his son, because he had attacked the rights of a legitimate union; he fled before his son, because he had shirked the law of God, which says, "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery." He had brought the sheep of another into his domain, and had killed the shepherd: and behold, the lamb of the house was threatening his shepherd. He had attacked the household of others, and from his own household he saw the war rise. It is not here my thought, it is the words of God: now, when God interprets himself, all that remains is to be silent. If you want to convince yourself that the revolt of the son of David against his father was for the murder of Uriah, and the theft of his wife, listen to these words of God, addressed to David spoke the mouth of the prophet Nathan "I told you Holy King over Israel, and delivered you from the hand of Saul. I have placed in your hands all the goods of your lord, the house of Saul and Judah; and if it seems to you very small, I will add to it. Why then did you despise my word, even to commit evil before my eyes? You have struck the sword Uriah Hethean, you took away his wife, and took it for you. And now the sword will never come out of your house. "(II Kings, XII, 7-11.) You have shared the sword with the house of another, and I will make a glory against you in your house. "And I will bring you evils from within your house. Hear this: From your own home. Where the source of sin was, that's where the vengeful shot will go. The fugitive servant who fled from the commandments of God is condemned to flee before his son: "Psalm for David, when he fled before his son Absalon. And the narrative of the war is less useful than the indication of the motives which had lit it, to warn us against falling by the sight of the false step of that just, and to make us avoid such a trial. There is no lack of men, still today, who have the war at home: one is under attack from his wife, the other, to the businesses of a child or a brother, a third to the oppression of a servant; and everyone grieves, becomes embittered, struggles, attacks, resists: but no one thinks that if he had not sowed sins, he would not have seen thorns and brambles springing up in his house. ; that if her house had not concealed sparks of sins, she would not be in flames. In fact, that domestic misfortunes are the fruits of sins, which God raises to the sinner of executioners in his family, is what the divine Scriptures attest in his incomparable authority. Your wife makes war on you, when you come back, she rushes on you like a ferocious beast, her tongue is sharp like a sword? It is a distressing thing, no doubt, that your ally has become your enemy: nevertheless, look in yourself, scrutinize if ever in your youth, you have failed in your duties towards a woman, and if not not exactly the damage that another woman repairs, if it is not this injury done to another that your own wife is in charge of dressing. The operator can ignore it himself; but the doctor, who is God, knows it well. He is the one who armed himself with this instrument, as one. iron, against you: and as iron ignores it. the task to which it is employed, while the doctor knows the services which iron must render: thus, when the woman who knocks and the man who is struck, did not know both the reason of the blow, at least God, in his doctor, knows the usefulness. Now, that a wicked woman is a tribulation inflicted on sin, it is still the holy Scripture that testifies it. Listen to his words: "A wicked woman will be given to the sinner:" bitter antidote, intended to expel the remnant of sins. Now that one can be exposed to the plots of his children, in expiation of his faults, is shown by the example of David, attacked by his son Absalon, as we have shown above, because of an illegal trade. Let the war come in; brothers can also come from sins, the book of judges is proof of that. In fact, when those of the tribe of Benjamin had done violence to the concubine of the traveler, and that this one had succumbed to their excesses, the eleven other tribes made war with that one; and when the eleven tribes had abandoned God, and abandoned themselves to the fornication of idolatry, they were vanquished together by the twelfth, so that among several defeats they counted only one victory, and brothers fought against brethren after than. God, by reason of their sins, had removed the partition which sin had raised between them. In fact, one of the tribes who committed fornication on the person of a woman, and the other, having fallen into the fornication of idolatry, both were exterminated by God, as he is writes: "You have exterminated all those who have left you for fornication. (Ps. LXXII, 27.) So that the (525) sin armed brothers against brothers. If you have brethren who make war against you, rather than accuse them by your complaints, probe your own conscience, and look for what is the sin that has earned you their enmity. It is not that sin is always the cause of these paternal hatreds. Joseph had his brothers as enemies, without having deserved it at all: and Job, likewise, was exposed to the perfidies of his wife without having given rise to it by any fault. I only say that most of us are attracted by their sins the enmity of theirs. One sees even friends changed into enemies by the effect of sin, old affections turned into hate and aversion, by the will of God and for reasons known to him. Thus, in the fourth psalm, it is written about the Egyptians: "He changed their hearts so that they hated his people. God would not have provoked this hatred, if at first friendship had been virtuous. Those for whom friendship is a principle of loss, these find in hate an opportunity for wisdom. There is more: the very beings who live in servitude and subjection have often been induced into revolt against their masters by the sins of them. See Adam before his sin: animals are his servants and subordinates, slaves he names as he pleases. But after the sin had disfigured him, the animals ceased to recognize him, and his former slaves became his enemies. And just as the house dog faithfully serves the person who feeds, fears, respects, and. However, if she comes to see her smeared with soot, or masked with a borrowed face, it melts on her as on a stranger, and wants to tear it to pieces as long as Adam kept his pure face to the image from God, he preserved obedience and respect for animals; but once disobedience had defiled his face, they no longer recognized their master, and were hostile to him as to a stranger. We see that the slave revolt can also be the punishment of the sins of the master. Daniel was right, and the lions recognized his dominion; they saw him free from sin, they let him go without punishment. A prophet had committed the sin of lying: he met a lion, which took away his life. (III Kings, XIII, 24.) That he was smeared with lies; the lion did not recognize him. If he had seen a prophet like Daniel, he would have done him homage: he found only a false prophet, and he ran to him like a stranger. The master had lied: his authority was denied by his slave. But why speak of domestic misfortunes, when our body itself, our body, that is to say, what we have most intimate and dearest, sometimes makes war when we are at fault, and weapon against us with fevers, diseases, infirmities; when this humble slave also beats his sovereign, the soul, as long as she is a sinner, not by her own motion, but by virtue of an order which he must execute? Witness Christ, saying to the paralytic healed: "Here you are healthy, do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse will happen to you. (John, V, 14.) Well convinced therefore, my brethren, that domestic wars, dissensions between parents, slave revolts, that diseases of the body are generally fruits of sin, let us close this source of evils, sin, and if the torrents of passions do not flood our soul, the waters of the heavenly rain will bring enough joy. So, when David had, so to speak, usurped the wife of others (is not it indeed a kingship for every man that the tenderness of a wife, does a king hold more to the purple and the tiara? That a husband does not hold to his wife?), in punishment for this crime, the son he had of his wife, to him, became rebellious and usurper, and tried to wrest the throne from his father. He had taken by force, he was forcibly dispossessed; he had sinned secretly, he triumphed over him in broad daylight; he was wounded in the shadows, he was operated under the eyes of all, by the will of the God who had said to him: "You have acted in secret: I will act in the open day and in the face of the sun that's it. Nevertheless, the attack of Absalon did not succeed, just as, without it, the stripped sons would have believed themselves by this example authorized to parricide. He had done the work of executioner; he suffers the punishment of the guilty; and as the animals that are let loose in the theaters throw themselves on one and are killed by the other; thus Absalon, who had attacked David, perished under the blows of Joab, and remained suspended at the top of a tree, he, lifted up against his father; a plant stopped this branch at war with its stock; an offspring chained this offspring detached from the love (526) of its stem; by the head was held whoever wanted to take the head of his father; like a fruit, hung from the tree the murderer of him who had buried the germ of his being; and his heart served as a purpose for the arrows, so that he fell victim to the place where he had planned to be a murderer.

Then a strange spectacle presented itself. As he had mounted a mule, his hair remained caught in the hair of the tree; so that a hair held the usurper by another hair, bruising that very spot where he had undertaken to place the paternal tiara. One could see Absalon suspended between heaven and earth; the sky refused to welcome him; indeed, if he had rejected the first rebel in the person of the devil, how could this new rebel have access? The earth also repulsed him, so as not to be defiled by the feet of a parricide; for if she had swallowed Dathan guilty of speaking against Moses, if she opened her mouth to devour the one who had opened her mouth to speak, how could she have consented to carry a man who ran to attack his father? As he was thus suspended at the top of the tree, came Joab, the generalissimo, who planted three arrows in the heart of this child without heart, striking just the receptacle of his iniquity; and, alluding to the tree where the rebel had been suspended, David celebrated his death in that beautiful funeral song: "I have seen the impious, extremely high, and equal in height the cedars of Lebanon. I passed: he was gone. (Ps. XXXVI, 35.) "Psalm for David, when he was fleeing his son Absalon. He fled, not as a coward, but to save the days of his son; for if, on his own account, he spared him as a father, his companions would not have given thanks to a rebel. This is why David, pursued by his son, and as a result of the insults of Semei, persevered in his long-suffering; but as many people were armed against him, mainly the accomplices of Absalon, and became bolder, believing him abandoned by Providence (David is alone now, they said, deprived of all help, God turned away from him as formerly of Saul, he once left Saul for David, now he abandons David for Absalom, let us rise, let us attack him, he has no recourse in God.) David, more afflicted with these words than His son's delusions, consult the Lord: "Lord, why have my persecutors multiplied? I am circumvented by temptations, overwhelmed by the torrent of misfortune, the fatal rain has fallen, the river of war has burst, the breath of evil spirits has been unleashed, it has shaken my house, so take away my soul from you; but firmly established on the stone of faith, I do not fall, I prostrate myself and ask you: "Lord, why have my persecutors multiplied? He who comes from me is against me; but you are above me. My bowels are making war on me; my people are following Absalon, my soldiers are arming themselves against me. My sheep became wolves; my lambs, lions; my little sheep, mad dogs; my rams, furious bulls; it is not for me that I grieve; it is their loss to them that causes my moans.