When Absalom was cruelly attacking his father David, the speed of his mule caused him to collide with a thick oak tree, and the branches wound round his neck so that he was suspended high in the air. This was a prefiguration of the Lord’s betrayer. Just as Judas ended his life in the knot of a noose, so also David’s persecutor breathed his last through the pressure on his throat.

It is becoming, therefore, that you also should be obedient to your bishop and contradict him in nothing, for it is a fearful thing to contradict any such person. For no one does [by such conduct] deceive him that is visible but does [in reality] seek to mock him that is invisible, who, however, cannot be mocked by anyone. And every such act has respect not to people but to God. For God says to Samuel, They have not mocked you, but me.^[1] And Moses declares, For their murmuring is not against us but against the Lord God.^[2] . . . Absalom, again, who had slain his brother, became suspended on a tree, and had his evil-designing heart thrust through with darts. In like manner was Abeddadan^[3] beheaded for the same reason. Uzziah, when he presumed to oppose the priests and the priesthood, was smitten with leprosy.^[4] Saul also was dishonored, because he did not wait for Samuel the high priest.^[5] It is necessary for you, therefore, also to reverence your superiors.

What should I say of Peter, who went up to the roof at the sixth hour and learned there the mystery of the baptism of the Gentiles?^[1] On the other hand, the murderer Absalom set up a pillar to himself in the valley of the king and was thrown into a ditch when he was slain. Thus the saints go up to the Lord, the wicked go down to sin; the saints are on the mountains, the guilty in the valleys, For he is the God of the mountains and not the God of the valleys.^[2]

When his rebellious son chased him from his kingdom, the Lord soon delivered David. Not only did the Lord deliver him, but [he] delivered him more fully than the one delivered wished. This was that God might show that the injustice is more grievous to himself than to those who suffer it. He who avenges beyond the wish of him who is being avenged, what else does he want understood than that he himself is being avenged in him for whom he is doing the avenging? Thus, when, for his attempted patricide, David’s son being hanged on a cross not made by human hands, the Scripture says that the punishment, divinely brought on him, was thus announced: I bring good tidings, my lord, the king: for the Lord has judged on your behalf this day from the hand of all that have risen up against you.

You see how the Scriptures prove by divine witnesses that God judges not only by deeds and by examples, as I have already said, but does so today by the very name and terms of judgment.

That same David, I say, who had not wept for the innocent infant wept for the parricide when dead; the difference of his actions may not perhaps disturb those who cling to the words of Scripture. For at the last, when he was wailing and mourning, he said, O my son Absalom, my son Absalom! Who will grant me to die for you! But not only is Absalom the parricide wept over, Amnon is wept over. Not only is the incestuous wept over but is even avenged; the one by the scorn of the kingdom, the other by the exile of his brothers. The wicked is wept over, not the innocent. What is the cause? What is the reason? There is no little deliberation with the prudent and confirmation of results with the wise; for there is great consistency of prudence in so great a difference of actions, but the belief is one. He wept for those who were dead but did not think that he ought to weep for the dead infant,^[1] for he thought that they were lost to him but hoped that the latter would rise again.