But when king David had suffered this injury at the hands of his impious and unnatural son, he not only bore with him in his mad passion but mourned over him in his death. He certainly was not caught in the meshes of carnal jealousy, seeing that it was not his own injuries but the sins of his son that moved him. For it was on this account he had given orders that his son should not be slain if he were conquered in battle, that he might have a place of repentance after he was subdued. When he was baffled in this design, he mourned over his son’s death, not because of his own loss but because he knew to what punishment so impious an adulterer and parricide had been hurried.^[1]

Why are you surprised, Peter,^[1] that we who are but human make mistakes? Have you forgotten that it was David’s reliance on the untruthful words of a servant that caused him to pronounce sentence against the innocent son of Jonathan?^[2] And David had the spirit of prophecy. But, since David did this, we can be sure that in God’s secret judgment he acted justly, even though we cannot see the justice of it with our human reason. Why should we be surprised, then, if we who are not prophets are sometimes led astray by deceitful people? An important point to consider is that the mind of a superior is distracted by a world of cares, and once the attention is preoccupied with a variety of matters it becomes less observant of details. One who is occupied with a multitude of affairs is all the more liable to be misled in regard to any one of them.

Would you like that, in another way also, I should make what I say plainer? Let us look into their case, [to those] who avenge themselves even justly. For concerning the wrongdoers, that they are the most worthless of all people, warring against their own soul, is surely plain to every one.

But who avenged himself justly yet kindled innumerable ills and pierced himself through with many calamities and sorrows? The captain of David’s host. For Joab both stirred up a grievous war and suffered unnumbered evils; not one of them would have happened had he but known how to exercise self-control. Let us flee therefore from this sin and neither in words nor deeds do our neighbors wrong.