{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-1236","native_reference":{"book_number":90,"chapter_from":22,"chapter_to":22,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":1,"verse_to":1},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ambrose of Milan</b>: For the just engage in many struggles. Does an athlete contend only once? How often, after he has won many victor's crowns, is he overcome in another contest! How often it happens that one who has frequently gained the victory sometimes hesitates and is held fast in uncertainty! And it frequently comes to pass that a brave man is contending with brave men and greater struggles arise, where proofs of strength are greater. Thus, when David sought to flee to avoid the adversary, he also did not find his wings. He was driven here and there in an uncertain struggle.… But David is still in the cave—that is, in the flesh—in the cavern of his body, as it were, as he fights with King Saul, the son of hardness, and with the power of that spiritual prince who is not visible but is comprehensible.<br/><i>— FLIGHT FROM THE WORLD 5.28</i></p><p><b>Athanasius of Alexandria</b>: For if it is a bad thing to flee, it is much worse to persecute. The one party hides himself to escape death, the other persecutes with a desire to kill. It is written in the Scriptures that we ought to flee; but he that seeks to destroy transgresses the law and also is himself the occasion of the other's flight. If then they [the Arians] reproach me with my flight, let them be more ashamed of their own persecution. Let them cease to conspire, and those who flee will immediately cease to do so. But they, instead of giving up their wickedness, are employing every means to obtain possession of my person, not perceiving that the flight of those who are persecuted is a strong argument against those who persecute. For no one flees from the gentle and the humane, but from the cruel and the evil-minded.\"Every one that was in distress and every one that was in debt\" fled from Saul and took refuge with David. But this is the reason why these men [those persecuting Athanasius] desire to cut off those who are in concealment, that there may be no evidence forthcoming of their own wickedness. But in this their minds seem to be blinded with their usual error. For the more the flight of their enemies becomes known, so much the more notorious will be the destruction or the banishment which their treachery has brought upon them. So whether they kill them outright, their death will be the more loudly noised abroad against them, or whether they drive them into banishment, they will but be sending forth everywhere monuments of their own iniquity.<br/><i>— DEFENSE OF HIS FLIGHT 8</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: (1 Samuel 22:1) Therefore David departed thence and fled to the cave of Adullam. Adullam is interpreted as \"their testimony\"; and the Lord, fleeing the hearts of the proud, enters as a welcome inhabitant into the spirits of the humble who possess nothing of earthly height or glory. Their very humility is a faithful testimony that they are worthy to receive Christ. Or certainly, it is the testimony of those from whom, in their pride, God flees; they are called humble, whereby their testimony convinces that they could also have pleased God and received Him if they had wished.<br/><i>— Commentary on Samuel</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: When his brothers heard this, they went down, etc. With Christ remaining among the humble, all the elect descend to Him by humbling themselves; or men, who are His brothers, because He Himself became man; or angels, who are most particularly the house of His Father and the place of His glory's dwelling. All those also come who, depressed by the consciousness of their sins, desire to be cleansed with the bitter tears of repentance, and to be freed from alien air, that is, the debt of sin which the devil has imposed; hoping, under the leadership and guidance of Christ, to be advanced to the joys of the kingdom.<br/><i>— Commentary on Samuel</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"439c9da6c773871400556fc8177dcd23caa3e5d65a671fb7b6b15cc2d1afdf54","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":1236,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"65f44a65b75fd80b6da883eb1198c4eb1b2376b5d778c6c2ac40244eb3184840","translator":null,"work":null}