This thing is not good that you have done. As the LORD lives, you are worthy to die, because you have not kept your master, the LORD'S anointed. And now see where the king's spear is, and the jar of water that was at his head.
All Commentaries on 1 Samuel 26:16 Go To 1 Samuel 26
Bede
AD 735
The apostles say, “Now look, where is the scepter of your kingdom? You lost it on earth, and you have ceased to hope to find it in heaven. Where is your contemplative keeping of the law, for which you wholeheartedly thirsted and by which you boasted that you could wash your hands of your deeds and purify them from every filth of sin?” … Although all these things had not yet fully taken place in the days of the apostles, nonetheless they had already begun in part, both in the time before the apostles and while they were still alive, as anyone who reads history can discover. Finally, among the countless disasters which Herod the Great and his sons brought upon the Jews, they took away the sacred garb from the priests, they did not grant the priests permission to minister in their sacred garb, and they gutted the rules of the law about the priesthood and changed them in turn to fit their own pleasure. Pilate defiled the temple by bringing in the images of Caesar during the middle of the night. He was simply following Herod’s example of godlessness, since Herod had earlier profaned the temple by affixing a golden eagle on it and ordered any pious individual who tried to remove it to be burned alive. Caligula ordered the temple itself to be profaned, as well as all their synagogues, by offering pagan sacrifices there. He ordered it to be filled with statues and images and commanded them to worship him as a god. There is no end to listing all these ways in which both the worship and the political power of the Jews were curtailed until at last they perished altogether.
