desired, by swearing that no one should eat any food until evening, and until vengeance was taken of his enemies. What, I ask, could have been more senseless than this? For when it was needful that he should have refreshed those who were fatigued and exhausted, and have sent them forth with renewed vigour against their enemies, he treated them far worse than he had done their enemies, by the constraint of an oath, which delivered them over to ex- cessive hunger. Dangerous, indeed, it is for any one to swear in a matter pertaining to himself; for we are forcibly impelled to do many things by the urgency of circumstances. But much more dangerous is it by the obligation of one’s own oath, to bind the determination of others; and especially where any one swears, not concerning one, or two, or three, but an unlimited multitude, which Saul then inconsiderately did, without thinking that it was probable that, in so vast a number, one at least might transgress the oath; or that soldiers, and soldiers too on campaign, are very far removed from moral wisdom, and know nothing of ruling the belly; more especially when their fatigue is great. He, however, overlooking all these points, as if he were merely taking an oath about a single servant, whom he was easily able to restrain, counted equally on his whole army. In consequence of this he opened such a door for the devil, that in a short time he framed, not two, three, or four, but many more perjuries out of this oath. For as when we do not swear at all, we close the whole entrance against him, so if we utter but a single oath, we afford him great liberty for constructing endless perjuries. And just as those who twist skeins, if they have one to hold the end, work the whole string with nicety, but if there is no one to do this, cannot even undertake the commencement of it; in the same manner too the devil, when about to twist the skein of our sins, if he could not get the beginning from our tongues, would not be able to undertake the work; but should we only make a commencement, while we hold the oath on our tongue, as it were a hand, then with full liberty he manifests his malignant art in the rest of the work, constructing and weaving from a single oath a thousand perjuries. 6. And this was just what he did now in the case of Saul. Observe, however, what a snare is immediately framed for this oath: “The army passed through a wood, that contained a nest of bees, and the nest was in front of the people,1579 and the people came upon the nest, and went along talking.”1580 Seest thou what a pit-fall was here? A table ready spread, that the easiness of access, the sweetness of the food, and the hope of concealment, might entice them to a transgression of the oath. For hunger at once, and fatigue, and the hour, (for “all the land,” it is said, “was dining),”1581 then urged them to the transgression. Moreover, the 1579 Some mss. read του ‡γρου, of the ground, as LXX. 1580 1 Sam. xiv. 26, LXX. 1581 So LXX., 1 Kings xiv. 24 (i.e., 1 Samuel). The clause in the Hebrew, corresponding to the Greek words καὶ π‚σα ἡ γῆ ἠρίστα, is - , E.V. “And all they of the land came to a wood.” It seems most likely that the word was thus taken, all the land went, i.e., “to dinner,” as the word stands in LXX. for the name of the wood. 632 Homily XIV