Teaching Christianity (continued)
20. They should rather believe that our apostles were neither puffed up when they were looked up to by people, nor cast down when they were looked down upon. Those men were indeed spared neither test, because on the one hand their praises were sung far and wide by believers, and on the other they were defamed by the curses of their persecutors. So just as these men made use of all this as the times and occasions demanded, and were not corrupted, in the same way those men of old used the custom of polygamy in a way suitable to their times, and did not endure the domination of that lust of which these people, who do not believe such things, are the slaves.
30. And that is why these people would in no way restrain themselves from giving way to an unforgivable hatred for their own sons, on learning that they had violated or seduced their fathers' wives or concubines, should such a thing ever happen to them.
21, But when King David suffered such an injury from his impious and monstrous son, he not only tolerated him in his ferocious hostility, but even bewailed him on hearing of his untimely death.[44] He was not caught fast, you see, in the nets of carnal jealousy, and so it was not at all the wrong done to himself, but the sins of his son that troubled him. That is why he gave orders forbidding him to be killed if he was defeated, so that duly chastened he might have the chance to repent; and because this turned out to be impossible, it was not his own bereavement that he grieved over in the young man's death, but he knew what pains awaited such an impiously adulterous and parricidal soul.[45]
Because previously for another son, who was innocent, he had afflicted himself while the child was sick, but rejoiced when he died.[46]
31. And this following instance shows better than anything else with what moderation and self-restraint those men made use of the custom of polygamy. This same king, carried away by a kind of turmoil of feelings common at his age, and by the success of his temporal enterprises, had unlawfully taken one woman, and also given orders for her husband to be killed. He was taken to task by the prophet, who came to him to convict him of his sin; he did this by putting to him a parallel case of a poor man who had one ewe lamb, and whose neighbor, who had many sheep, took his poor neighbor's one and only ewe lamb to provide a meal for a guest of his who had just arrived. David was enraged at his conduct, and ordered him to be put to death,[47] and fourfold restitution of the sheep to be made to the poor man —thus condemning himself unawares, though he had sinned with full awareness. When this was made plain to him, and God's sentence upon him was pronounced, he washed away his sin by repentance.
But for all that, in this parallel case, it was only his sexual misconduct that was signified by what happened to the poor neighbor's ewe lamb; but with his elimination of the woman's husband, that is with the putting to death of the poor man himself who had just the one ewe lamb, David was not taxed in terms of this parallel case, so that he only condemned and passed sentence on himself for adultery. From which we should understand with what self-restraint he had many women, when he was obliged to punish himself over just one, with whom he overstepped the mark.[48] But in this man such ungoverned lust was not something habitual, but a passing instance; that is why even the prophet, in his veiled accusation, called this illicit desire a passing guest. He did not say, you see, that the man had presented his poor neighbor's ewe lamb as a feast for his king, but for his guest. But in David's son Solomon this kind of lust did not come and pass on like a guest, but established its permanent reign; and scripture did not keep quiet about this, but found fault with him for having been a lover of women. In his early days, though, he had had a burning desire for wisdom; and having won her by a spiritual kind of love, he lost her through carnal love.[49]
22, 32. So then, all the doings, or practically all of them, which are contained in the books of the Old Testament, are to be taken not only in their literal sense, but also as having a figurative sense. All the same, when the people in the narratives, which the reader takes in the proper literal sense, [50] were praised for doing things that are abhorrent to the manners of good men and women who keep God's commandments after the Lord's coming, the reader should not take the actual deeds as models for moral behavior, but should try to understand their figurative meaning. There are many things, after all, which at that time were done out of duty that now can only be done out of lust.
23, 33. If, however, you read about any sins of great men, and yet are able to notice and explore in them some figurative representations of future realities,[51] you should still turn the proper literal meaning of the thing done to this good use: that as a result of seeing the tempests such men were in danger from and the shipwrecks they had to bewail, you should never even think of congratulating yourself on what you have done rightly, or of looking down upon other people as sinners from the vantage point of your own justice. The recording even of these men's sins, you see, had this purpose, to make that judgment of the apostle's strike terror on all sides, Therefore let anyone who seems to stand see to it that he does not fall (1 Cor 10:12). There is, in fact, almost no page of the holy books in which the lesson is not echoed, that God withstands the proud, but gives grace to the humble (Prv 3:34; Jas 4:6; 1 Pt 5:5).[52]
Some further, more technical rules of interpretation
24, 34. And so the thing that has to be ascertained above all else is whether the passage we are trying to understand is intended to be taken literally or figuratively. For on being