1 Reis 11
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
1 Reis 11:1-2
However, in [David's] son Solomon libido was not a passing guest; it reigned as a king. Scripture does not pass this over in silence but blames him as a lover of women. His beginnings were redolent with the desire for wisdom; when he had obtained it through spiritual love, he lost it through carnal love. — CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 3.21.31
1 Reis 11:1-2
[God] promised that something everlasting would spring from David's seed. Then Solomon was born, and he became a man of such profound wisdom that everyone supposed God's promise concerning David's offspring had been fulfilled in him. But no, Solomon fell and so made room for people to stretch their hope toward Christ. God can neither be deceived nor deceive us, so we can be certain that he did not ground his promise in Solomon, for he knew Solomon would fall. The divine purpose was that after Solomon's fall you would look to God and earnestly press him for what he had promised.Did you lie, then, Lord? Do you go back on your promises? Do you fail to deliver what you swore to give? Perhaps God will counter you by saying, "I did swear, and I did promise, but that man did not persevere." But how can that be the answer? Did you not foresee, O Lord God, that he would not persevere? Of course you foresaw it. Why, then, did you promise me something that would last forever and attach that promise to someone who would not persevere? You said to me, " 'If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my ordinances, if they break my commandments and violate my covenant,' nevertheless my promise shall endure, and my oath shall be fulfilled. 'Once I have sworn in my holiness,'4 within myself." In that most secret place you swore it, in the fountain from which the prophets drank, those prophets who belched out for us the words, "Once have I sworn in my holiness, and I will not lie to David." Make good your oath then, and deliver what you promised. I was stripped away from David of old, lest in that David we should hope for its fulfillment, and so that you can say to us, "Keep hoping for what I promised." Even David himself was aware of this. Consider what he says: "Yet you, you yourself, have rejected him to nothing." So what has become of your promise? "You have put off your Anointed." The speaker has doleful things to relate, but by these very words he cheers us, because he is implying, "What you promised stands absolutely firm, O God, for you have not taken your Anointed right away from us, but only put him off." — EXPOSITION 2 OF PSALM 88.6-7
1 Reis 11:7-8
Solomon was in his time David's son, a great man, through whom many holy precepts and healthful admonitions and divine mysteries have been wrought by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Solomon himself was a lover of women and was rejected by God: and this lust was so great a snare to him that he was induced by women even to sacrifice to idols, as Scripture witnesses concerning him. But if, by his fall, what was delivered through him were blotted out, it would be judged that he had himself delivered these precepts and not that they were delivered through him. The mercy of God, therefore, and his Spirit, excellently wrought that whatever of good was declared through Solomon, might be attributed to God; and the man's sin, to the man. What marvel that Solomon fell among God's people? Did not Adam fall in paradise? Did not an angel fall from heaven and become the devil? We are thereby taught that no hope must be placed in any human being. — EXPOSITIONS OF THE PSALMS 127.1