For the just engage in many struggles. Does an athlete contend only once? How often, after he has won many victor’s crowns, is he overcome in another contest! How often it happens that one who has frequently gained the victory sometimes hesitates and is held fast in uncertainty! And it frequently comes to pass that a brave man is contending with brave men and greater struggles arise, where proofs of strength are greater. Thus, when David sought to flee to avoid the adversary, he also did not find his wings.^[1] He was driven here and there in an uncertain struggle. . . . But David is still in the cave—that is, in the flesh—in the cavern of his body, as it were, as he fights with King Saul, the son of hardness, and with the power of that spiritual prince who is not visible but is comprehensible. FLIGHT FROM THE WORLD 5.28.^[2]

Every one that was in distress and every one that was in debt fled from Saul and took refuge with David. But this is the reason why these men [those persecuting Athanasius] desire to cut off those who are in concealment, that there may be no evidence forthcoming of their own wickedness. But in this their minds seem to be blinded with their usual error. For the more the flight of their enemies becomes known, so much the more notorious will be the destruction or the banishment which their treachery has brought upon them. So whether they kill them outright, their death will be the more loudly noised abroad against them, or whether they drive them into banishment, they will but be sending forth everywhere monuments of their own iniquity.

I am taught through these words that whenever understanding guides my life like it did the life of the great David, that this carries me through to the end of the victory. And then I grieve especially for Doeg, the tyrant of my salvation, whenever I am in the house of the priest and when the attendant of the mules^[1] plots against me secretly because he no longer has the power to come to grips with me face to face, by informing the one who thirsts for my blood that I am staying with the priest.

It’s obvious what the mules represent, which this Edomite has charge over. He tends that sterile nature which has no room for God’s blessing that sets fruitfulness in the creature in the beginning by saying increase and multiply.^[2] Multiplication in evil, like the continuation of the species of mules, is not of God. As the animal is always begun anew, this sterile nature of the creature is produced by trickery and is achieved underhandedly by means of the nature itself.

But the goal intended by the Word is obvious in what has been said. For if everything that the Lord made was very good,^[3] and the mule is not part of what was made in creation, it is obvious that mule has been used by the story to indicate evil. Its existence does not come from God, and it lacks the ability to propagate in order to make its characteristic nature endure. As the mule is unable to maintain its nature by itself, so evil lacks the ability to remain forever or preserve itself. Like with mules, another evil comes into being when it is created by another, when what is noble and splendid in our nature, and perhaps also haughty, sinks to the desire for a union which is ass-like and irrational.

That foreigner Doeg, then, who became the messenger to Saul against David, the herdsman of the sterile herd of mules, is the wicked angel who draws the human soul to evil through the various passions of sin. Whenever he sees that the soul is in the house of the true priest, being unable to strike it with the kicks of the mules, he informs the ruler of wickedness, the spirit which is at work in the sons of disobedience.^[4]

When David was fleeing from Saul, he came to the priest Abimelech. He was received by him and obtained the loaves of proposition^[1] and the sword with which he had slain Goliath. The loaves of proposition denoted his role as priest, the consecrated sword his future rank as most powerful king. The Edomite Doeg happened to be there in charge of the mules and reported everything to King Saul. Then Saul was angry and caused Abimelech and the other priests of the same city to be slain by Doeg. This Doeg through whom such events occurred was called the Edomite from the name of his land. The names combined, according to the authority of the fathers,^[2] mean earthquakes. Such meaning attached to the names is rightly related to the acts of antichrist, for Doeg the Edomite was the foe of David, just as antichrist will be the enemy of Christ. Doeg destroyed priests; antichrist will make martyrs. Doeg through the meaning of his name denotes earthquakes; antichrist will disturb the whole world when with sacrilegious presumption he will constrain it to worship his name.^[3] So antichrist is rightly understood by the name of Doeg the Edomite, since he is seen to be similar to him in these striking parallels. EXPOSITION OF THE PSALMS 51.1-2.^[4]

We have seen, then, that this man Doeg was the enemy of both David the king and Ahimelech the priest. Doeg was a single person, but he represents a whole class of people. Similarly David embodies both king and priest, like one man with a dual personality, though the human race is one. So too at the present time and in our world let us recognize these two groups of people, so that what we sing, or hear sung, may profit us. Let us recognize Doeg still with us today, as we recognize the kingly and priestly body today, and so we shall recognize the body that is opposed to king and priest still. Notice from the outset how mysteriously significant their names are. Doeg is said to mean movement, and Edomite means earthly. Already you can see what kind of people this movement, this Doeg, symbolizes: the kind that does not remain stable forever but is destined to be moved elsewhere. As for earthly: why expect any fruit from an earthly person? But the heavenly humans will last forever. So, to put it briefly, there is an earthly kingdom in this world today, but there is also a heavenly kingdom. Each of them has its pilgrim citizens, both the earthly kingdom and the heavenly, the kingdom that is to be uprooted and the kingdom that is to be planted for eternity. EXPLANATIONS OF THE PSALMS 51.^[5]

And Nob, the city of priests, he killed with the edge of the sword, men and women, infants and toddlers, calves and foals and sheep, all to the edge of the sword. But Abiathar, one of the sons of Ahimelech, son of Ahitub, was saved and fled after David. I will not delay now except to anticipate the textual problem where we read all wearing ephods, but the Hebrew has all wearing linen ephods. You will learn in what follows why I say this. And add this to it: Abiathar, son of Ahimelech, fled to David and went down with David to Keilah, having the ephod in his hand. Then, Saul abandoned his pursuit when David came to Keilah, where, because it was feared that Saul would arrive and besiege the city, David said to Abiathar, Bring down the ephod of the Lord. These are excerpts from the book of Kings [Samuel] pushing you to transcend the book of Judges, in which Micah from Mt. Ephraim gave eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother, which he had promised, who is said to have made graven and molten images out of them.^[6] Notice also that in a short while it is called ephod and teraphim, since surely if it is a girdle or a type of clothing, it cannot also be a graven or molten image. Acknowledge the error of almost all Latin thinkers who allege that the ephod and teraphim, named later, were part of the molten images made from this silver which Micah had given to his mother.