Chapter III.
It is said that David was exposed to temptation because athletes are trained in various competitions and God wants to serve as an example to us. Furthermore, the adultery of David is portrayed in a figurative manner, with various allegories being used to explain it.
What shall I also add, which we can deduce from the very use of the world, that when we have found many to be diligent and active in one duty, we want to test the same ones as industrious and energetic in another task? How many athletes, when they have excelled in that type of competition, are called to another type of contest! What if the Lord your God also wants to test you in another type of virtue, when you have shown a certain example of your virtue? Though he remained unharmed during the current of his holy work, he was nevertheless tested by the death of his sons and afflicted with sores all over his body, so that even in this he might prove his virtue, that he would not diminish his devotion to God either through injuries or harshness. It is clear that even the holy David, renowned for his faith and most outstanding in gentleness, wished to prove himself strong in hand, so that he might cover up a fault and correct a fall, and thus teach us how we might conceal a sin once committed.
Unless it seems a cheap excuse to someone that the prophet would err so greatly because of our correction, since Christ has taken upon himself our weaknesses for the redemption of all, who became sin for us though he did not know sin. And it is considered unworthy and not credible that David would fall into disgrace for the sake of future generations; when the Lord himself became a disgrace for us, as he himself says: But I am a worm, not a man; scorned by mankind, and despised by the people (Psalm 22:6). And elsewhere: And the reproaches of those who reproached you fell upon me (Psalm 68:10). Therefore, he foreshadowed the mystery of the future dispensation in his own precepts. And indeed, the servants of their own condition bore the sins, therefore they could not themselves be free from sin: but the Lord took on the burden alone, therefore he alone was without the fellowship of offenses.
In conclusion, with the Apostle also teaching, we have learned that many things were done in figure which were done in former times. For when he said that the fathers who were bitten by serpents in the desert could not be healed in any other way except that Moses hung up a brazen serpent, and when this was seen, those deadly bites and injurious effects of the poison were cured, he added: But these things were done in figure to instruct us (1 Corinthians 10:6). In the image, a bronze serpent was placed on a cross; because the true one to be crucified was announced to the human race, who would empty the venom of the devilish serpent, cursed in its image, but in truth, would erase all curses of the world. He also said elsewhere, that is, to the Galatians: Because Abraham had two sons, one from a slave woman, and one from a free woman (Galatians 4:22). And he added: But the one born of the slave woman, according to the flesh; and the one born of the free woman, through the promise; which things are said by allegory (ibid., 23). He clearly explained what is meant by the allegory in the following, saying that those two generations, one born of a slave woman and the other of a free woman, represent two covenants: one indeed from Mount Sinai, which gave birth to slavery, in which Mount Moses received the Law from the Lord; but the other from Jerusalem, which is free, which gave birth to sons through Isaac, that is, in the freedom of grace, not the slavery of the law. For punishment is imposed on slaves, while grace is bestowed on the free. Did not the patriarch Jacob take two wives in a double marriage, from whom he produced different offspring? Why is it read that after the death of his son, the patriarch Judah sought to have sexual relations (Gen. XXXVIII, 16), from which the birth of twins occurred, unless to foreshadow both the Old Testament and the New Testament of Jesus the Lord: one of which is hidden in the figure of his future death, the other in the truth of the Gospel, that two peoples would be generated, of which the latter would fall under the sign of the cross, breaking down all the walls and fortifications of the former people? Here is the people with a prior hand, later in birth. Perhaps because the Lord Jesus himself, born from the tribe of Judah, sent his works before he was born to us from the Virgin.
What can I say about Joseph, who, driven by his brothers' envy, stripped of his father's clothing, thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, clearly expressed a sign of the Lord's Incarnation? Because he, beloved of his father, was in the image of God, he did not consider equality with God as something to be seized, but rather he emptied himself; taking the form of a servant, he came and humbled himself even to the death of the cross. By the price of his blood, he both bought and sold and thus redeemed the human race from his own brothers. In whose type David, the lesser chosen from among the brothers, anointed as king, alone, with great danger of war, saved the entire people through a singular contest, triumphed over ten thousand; so that the girls would play the tambourines and sing: Saul has triumphed over thousands, but David over ten thousand (1 Samuel 18:7). What figure in those young men, if not the souls who sing the triumphant psalm to Christ? He gave birth to sons from himself, one incestuous, the other a parricide; because the incestuous and parricidal people would violate the flesh of their own author affixed to the gibbet of the cross. Finally, in the third psalm, the title 'Absalom' is given, and the passion of the Lord is prophesied.
What can I say about the holy Solomon, whose later actions, though not without serious error, the Jewish people still believe he came for the Christ? And how many people did his offense of serious error turn away? Therefore, the greater fault was more beneficial so that he would not be believed to be above a human who was not free from human vice. Therefore, there was envy in his wisdom and persuasive fault that confirmed the man.
So what prevents Bathsheba from being believed to have been associated with the holy David in figure, in order to signify the gathering of nations, which was not connected to Christ by a legitimate bond of faith, which would enter before the Law through certain vestibules set for its sake, in which the naked sincerity of the mind, and the open simplicity of the justifying mystery of baptism, would lead, provoke the mind of the true David and eternal king, and stir up charity? He came rightly hidden, who deceived the prince of the world, like Uriah who is called my light by interpretation, transforming himself into an angel of light. He came, I say, into this world, and he came hidden, like an adulterer who entered, to claim his rightful authority.