Bede : And Samuel said: Bring Agag to me, etc. Agag, as mentioned above, means 'covered'; Amalek is called a people of locusts or a people who lick. Therefore, prophetic Scripture says and its ministers and dispensers tell their listeners to bring out into the open the long-hidden wound of pride and the badly kept secret in the heart by confessing. This pride, indeed, is the king and head of other crimes, as those that spring from its root; it seeks to deceive the unsuspecting by false flattering, as though licking, and to erode all the shoots of vital grace. This same nefarious king is said to be exceedingly fat, that is, weighed down with the dangerously delightful fatness of excessively growing crimes. About which the Psalmist speaks: Their iniquity comes forth as if from fatness (Psalm LXXII). — Commentary on Samuel Gregory the Dialogist : 36. Kings adore the Lord when the proud and scornful humble themselves to carry out the Lord's commands. The unchaste adore when they are subjected to God through the obedience of chastity. But sometimes they pretend to adore, because some have a pretext of humility or chastity, yet while they are believed to truly possess the good, others through the good they believe them to have lose the practice of good works. Therefore they hand over King Agag to Samuel, because by confessing they bring forth the vigor of their sensuality. For when they confess the sins of lust which they committed through the vigor of the flesh, what else do they do but offer the king of Amalek to the prophets to be slain? But what does it mean that Agag is called very fat, when the vigor of sensuality is fat in some and lean in others? What then does it mean that he is offered fat, except that he was led forth by the subjects of the reprobate king? For subjects are often negligent; but when they behold the examples of their chosen pastor, they groan amid the evils they commit. Through the frailty of the flesh they fall into impurities; but struck by the examples of their superiors, they cannot fully rejoice amid the pleasures of impurity. In whom then is Agag fattest, if not in those of whom it is said: "They rejoice when they have done evil, and exult in the worst things" (Prov. 2:14)? For the subjects of a lustful teacher sin all the more boldly, the fewer examples of their superiors they have placed before them to see. But they cast themselves down far more madly when they do not see in their pastors a good that they might follow, and they do see an evil by whose example they perish. In these indeed Agag grows fat, because joyfully, securely, and freely the vigor of the flesh is stretched out in the pleasure of lust, which, with nothing standing in the way, is not deprived of the practice of allurement. Therefore the fattest is offered to be slain when those are converted who greatly rejoiced in the pleasure of lust; for the king is, as it were, handed over when the carnal sense which ruled the mind is revealed to the priests of Christ through confession. Fat also customarily nourishes fire. Rightly therefore this is ascribed to the Amalekite king, because while the spirit of fornication possesses the mind, the more sweetly and frequently it feeds there through shameful thoughts, the more abundant fuel is supplied to it for increasing the fire of concupiscence. But he is said to be trembling, because the carnal sense, when it is handed over to spiritual men through confession, is weakened. Therefore trembling gives a sign that it does not have the strength of its members. When therefore the vigor of sensuality begins to be weakened, what else trembles but the king of the Amalekites? Or he is said to tremble because many, when they begin to be converted, are terrified by the rigor of penance. And because all carnal people cannot abandon the customary pleasures of the flesh without grief, there follows: (Verse 32) And he said: "Does bitter death thus separate?" 37. For to say this to the carnal sense is to strike the mind with the turning of sorrow over the loss of accustomed pleasure. For because the recently converted suffer great darts of bitterness, the king whom they had served, as it were, complains about death: because in them carnality is by no means slain without great tribulation. Therefore to ask the carnal sense about the separation of death is to strike the still-sorrowful mind of the converted person over the loss of past delight. But also the manner of separation is inquired about, when he says: "Is it so?" For as though, having seen the austerities to which it must be subjected, his sensuality says to the mind: "Do you spurn joyful things for such sorrowful ones?" Samuel certainly hears this voice: because the chosen preacher recognizes the tempted heart of his subject by certain signs. But what does it profit to recognize, if he himself says nothing against that which rages within in the heart of the subject? Therefore there follows: (Verse 33) And Samuel said: As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. — Commentary on 1 Kings, Book 6, Chapter 2