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| Chapter IV. How Abraham, David, and other saints went beyond the requirement of the law.
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Chapter IV.
How Abraham, David, and other saints went beyond the
requirement of the law.
For so we read that
Abraham went beyond the requirement of the law which was afterwards to
be given, when after his victory over the four kings, he would not
touch any of the spoils of Sodom, which were fairly due to him as the
conqueror, and which indeed the king himself, whose spoils he had
rescued, offered him; and with an oath by the Divine name he exclaimed:
“I lift up my hand to the Lord Most High, who made heaven and
earth, that I will not take from a thread to a shoe’s latchet of
all that is thine.”2164
So we know that
David went beyond the requirement of the law, as, though Moses
commanded that vengeance should be taken on enemies,2165
he not only did not do this, but actually
embraced his persecutors with love, and piously entreated the Lord for
them, and wept bitterly and avenged them when they were slain. So we
are sure that Elijah and Jeremiah were not under the law, as though
they might without blame have taken advantage of lawful matrimony, yet
they preferred to remain virgins. So we read that Elisha and others of
the same mode of life went beyond the commands of Moses, as of them the
Apostle speaks as follows: “They went about in sheepskins and in
goatskins, they were oppressed, afflicted, in want, of whom the world
was not worthy, they wandered about in deserts and in mountains, and in
caves and in dens of the earth.”2166
What shall I say of the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab, of whom we
are told that, when at the Lord’s bidding the prophet Jeremiah
offered them wine, they replied: “We drink no wine: for Jonadab
the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying: Ye shall drink no
wine, ye and your sons forever: and ye shall build no house, nor sow
any seed, nor plant vineyards nor possess them: but ye shall dwell in
tents all your days”? Wherefore also they were permitted to hear
from the same prophet these words: “Thus saith the Lord God of
hosts, the God of Israel: there shall not fail a man from the stock of
Jonadab the son of Rechab to stand in My sight all the
days;”2167
as all of them
were not satisfied with merely offering tithes of their possessions,
but actually refused property, and offered the rather to God themselves
and their souls, for which no redemption can be made by man, as the
Lord testifies in the gospel: “For what shall a man give in
exchange for his own soul?”2168
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