3 Kings 13:24
And when he was gone, a lion found him in the way, and killed him, and his body was cast in the way: and the ass stood by him, and the lion stood by the dead body.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Qui cum abiisset, invenit eum leo in via, et occidit, et erat cadaver ejus projectum in itinere : asinus autem stabat juxta illum, et leo stabat juxta cadaver.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εὗρεν αὐτὸν λέων ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ καὶ ἐθανάτωσεν αὐτόν· καὶ ἦν τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ ἐρριμμένον ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ, καὶ ὁ ὄνος εἱστήκει παρ᾽ αὐτό, καὶ ὁ λέων εἱστήκει παρὰ τὸ σῶμα.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֵּ֕לֶךְ וַיִּמְצָאֵ֧הוּ אַרְיֵ֛ה בַּדֶּ֖רֶךְ וַיְמִיתֵ֑הוּ וַתְּהִ֤י נִבְלָתוֹ֙ מֻשְׁלֶ֣כֶת בַּדֶּ֔רֶךְ וְהַחֲמוֹר֙ עֹמֵ֣ד אֶצְלָ֔הּ וְהָ֣אַרְיֵ֔ה עֹמֵ֖ד אֵ֥צֶל הַנְּבֵלָֽה
Haydock's commentary
Killed him. Thus the Lord often punishes his servants here, that he may spare them hereafter. For the generality of divines[theologians] are of opinion, that the sin of this prophet, considered with all its circumstances, was not mortal. (Challoner)
He had received a positive order, and ought to have tried the spirits, whether they were from God, 1 John iv. 1., and Galatians vi. 18. Every prophecy which contradicts the word of God, comes from an evil principle. (Calmet)
The prophet might suppose, however, that some cause had intervened, which authorized him to eat with this his brother, (ver. 30.) whom he probably revered as a true prophet. Many of God's commands are conditional. (Haydock)
Serenus observes, that God often inflicts death for the smallest faults. (Cassian vii. 26.) (St. Gregory, Dial. iv. 24.)
St. Augustine (cura, c. 7.) doubts not of the prophet's salvation.
Body, without even hurting the ass, ver. 28. (Haydock)
God protected the relics of his servant, by stationing the lion for a guard. (Procopius) (Menochius)
How impenetrable are the counsels of God! He suffers Jeroboam, and the prophet who had seduced his servant, to live; while he punishes the latter for a fault which he had committed undesignedly. But he thus purified him from guilt, (Calmet) while he reserved Jeroboam for more lasting torments in another world. (Haydock)
Nothing could prove more forcibly the existence of future rewards and punishments. (Calmet)
Not only the deceiver, but he also who is deceived, so as to transgress God's orders, must be punished. (Worthington)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome Against Jovinianus, Book II
17. My opponent has dared to maintain that our Lord was called by the Pharisees a wine-bibber and a glutton: and from the fact of His going to marriage feasts and from His not despising the banquets of sinners, I am to infer His wishes respecting ourselves. That Lord, so you suppose, is a glutton who fasted forty days to hallow Christian fasting;who calls them blessed that hunger and thirst;who says that He has food, not that which the disciples surmised, but such as would not perish for ever;who forbids us to think of the morrow; who, though He is said to have hungered and thirsted, and to have gone frequently to various meals, except in celebrating the mystery whereby He represented His passion, orin proving the reality of His body is nowhere described as ministering to His appetite;who tells of purple-clad Dives in hell for his feasting, and says that poor Lazarus for his abstinence w …