The hump alludes to thinking or doing something that is ugly for the soul, and it is always a certain twisted deformity of mind that reaches for impure things and is distracted from the sacred threshold of the church by worldly concerns. It seems to me that the prophet spoke in a spiritual sense of this physical deformity to describe instead a deformity of character, when he says: Let not the crooked boast in the same way as the upright,^[1] as if he were saying: Let not the sinner who is deformed by the perversion of his own vices boast as the just person boasts when he is made upright by the sincerity of a good conscience. For though, O sinner, you rejoice in the stature of your body and you find pleasure in the straightness of your shoulders, your soul is still deformed because of the crookedness of your character. It is only right that the rich person is compared to the camel since the density of its body hinders it from the passing through the needle, while concern for inheritance holds the rich person back from entering the church. For as a small opening does not let the camel in, weighed down by the mass of its members, so also this holy entrance does not accept the rich, weighed down by the mass of transgressions. Each has its own burden: the camel is burdened by his own flesh and the rich by his sins. As the camel is not able to inhabit the extremely confined hole of the needle, so also the rich person is not suitable for the most blessed kingdom of God. The only difference between the two is that the camel is not well suited due to the nature of his body, while his own will renders the rich person crooked.

Here the Scripture relates the two battles of the king of Israel against the Arameans, at which we have already hinted,^[1] and the twin slaughters of the Arameans, of which the second caused the death of 127,000 men, as God took his revenge on the impious voice of the Arameans, who said about the true God worshiped by the Israelites, The Lord is a god of the hills, but he is not a god of the valleys.

Did not the Lord wish Benhadad, king of Syria, whom besides countless thousands of his own people, thirty-two kings and armies of the same number of kings served, to be conquered by a few foot soldiers of the princes in order that he who was the author of such victory would be acknowledged?

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. Those who dwelt in the houses of the plain where God does not dwell could not have the house of God within them, for this is the house that God sought from them so that they might build up themselves and rear within themselves the temple of God from living stones of faith. He did not want buildings made with earthen walls or wooden roofs, for the hand of an enemy would have been able to overthrow them. He wanted that temple that is built in human hearts, to whom it might be said, You are the temple of God,^[1] in which the Lord Jesus might dwell and from there set out to redeem all humankind. There also could be prepared a sacred chamber in the womb of the Virgin where the King of heaven might live and a human body become the temple of God, which, though it was destroyed, might yet be restored to life on the third day.

For no one can doubt that when the judgment of our heart goes wrong and is overwhelmed by the night of ignorance, our thoughts and deeds, which are the result of deliberation and discretion, must be involved in the darkness of still greater sins. Finally, the man who in the judgment of God was the first to be worthy to be king of his people Israel, because he was lacking in this eye of discretion, was, as if his whole body were full of darkness, actually cast down from the kingdom. While being deceived by the darkness of this light and in error, he imagined that his own offerings were more acceptable to God than obedience to the command of Samuel. And so he failed in that very act by which he had hoped to propitiate the Divine Majesty. And ignorance, I say, of this discretion led Ahab the king of Israel, after a triumph and splendid victory which had been granted to him by the favor of God, to imagine that mercy on his part was better than the stern execution of the divine command, which seemed a cruel rule to him. Moved by this consideration, while he desired to temper a bloody victory with mercy, he was on account of his indiscriminating clemency rendered full of darkness in his whole body and condemned irreversibly to death.

Ahab once captured a king of Syria and, contrary to God’s decree, saved his life. He had the Syrian king enjoy a seat by his side and sent him off with great honor. About that time a prophet came to his companion and said to him, In the word of the Lord, strike me. But his companion was not willing to strike him. And the prophet said to him, Because you would not listen to the word of the Lord, behold, you will depart from me, and a lion will strike you. And he departed from him, and the lion found him and struck him. Then the prophet found another man and said, Strike me. And the man did strike him and wounded him, and the prophet bandaged up his own face.

What greater paradox than this could there be? The man who struck the prophet was saved; the one who spared the prophet was punished. Why? That you may learn that when God commands, you must not question too much the nature of the action; you have only to obey. So that the first man might not spare him out of reverence, the prophet did not simply say strike me but said strike me, in the word of God. That is, God commands it; seek no further. It is the King who ordains it; reverence the rank of him who commands and with all eagerness heed his word. But the man lacked the courage to strike him and, on this account, he paid the ultimate penalty. But by the punishment he subsequently suffered, he encourages us to yield and obey God’s every command.

After the second man had struck and wounded him, the prophet bound his own head with a bandage, covered his eyes and disguised himself. Why did he do this? He was going to accuse the king and condemn him for saving the life of the king of the Syrians. Now Ahab was an impious man and always a foe to the prophets. The prophet did not wish Ahab to recognize him and then drive him from his sight; if the king drove him away, he would not hear the prophet’s words of correction. So the prophet concealed his face and any statement of his business in the hope that this would give him the advantage when he did speak and that he might get the king to agree to the terms he wanted.

When the king was passing by, the prophet called aloud to him and said, Your servant went forth to the campaign of war. Behold, a man brought another man to me and said to me: ‘Guard this man for me. If he shall leap away and bound off, it will be your life for his life, or you will pay a talent of silver.’ And it happened that as your servant turned his eyes this way and that, the man was not there. And the king of Israel said to him: This is your judgment before me: You killed the man. And the prophet hurried to take the bandage from his eyes, and the king of Israel recognized that he was one of the sons of the prophets. And he said to the king: So says the Lord: ‘Because you let go from your hand a man worthy of death, it will be your life for his life, and our people for his people.’

Do you see how not only God but also people make this kind of judgment because both God and people heed the end and the causes rather than the nature of what is done? Certainly even the king said to him, This is your judgment before me: you killed the man. You are a murderer, he said, because you let an enemy go. The prophet put on the bandage and presented the case as if it were not the king but somebody else on trial, so that the king might pass the proper sentence. And, in fact, this did happen. So after the king condemned him, the prophet tore off the bandage and said, Because you let go from your hand a man worthy of death, it will be your life for his life and your people for his people. Did you see what a penalty the king paid for his act of kindness? And what punishment he endured in return for his untimely sparing of his foe? The one who spared a life is punished; another, who killed a man, was held in esteem. Phinehas certainly killed two people in a single moment of time—a man and his wife; and after he killed them, he was given the honor of the priesthood.^[1] His act of bloodshed did not defile his hand; it even made them cleaner. So you see that he who struck him perishes; you see that he who spared a man’s life is punished, while he who refused to spare a life is held in esteem. Therefore, always look into the decrees of God before you consider the nature of your own actions. Whenever you find something that accords with his decree, approve that—and only that.

In the course of these events Ahab’s indulgence toward a man who was notoriously impious and an open and arrogant despiser of divine majesty fully deserved to be condemned, just as Saul’s clemency toward the king of the Amalekites was reproached with good reason by Samuel;^[1] this is especially true if, as some commentators assert, the same prophet who had promised the victory in the name of God prescribed that a punishment was to be inflicted on Ben-hadad. On the other hand, a mild punishment should have been inflicted on Ahab and his subjects, if they were completely unaware of the will of God. But they could not ignore God’s will at all, because the prophet had told them ahead of time that the Arameans would be handed over to them, after the Arameans had violated the majesty of God with their impious insults.