Ambrose (339-397 A.D.) “On Naboth”: Part II. Who is the rich man? And who the beggar? And what constitutes riches? What bondage? Critical insights from the Parable of the Rich Fool

[Reading Time: 18 minutes]

For the Introduction to Ambrose of Milan, see here.

And click here for Part 1. of the text (§ [1.] - [20.]).

The example of a poor man’s family reduced to slavery over need

[21.] I myself have seen a poor man led away because he was obliged to pay what he could not, dragged to prison because there was no wine at the table of an influential man, bringing his sons to auction in order, if possible, to delay his punishment for a while; perhaps there would be someone who would help him in his hour of need.

The poor man returned to his home with his sons and saw that everything was bare and that there was no food left for them.

He wept over his sons’ hunger, grieving that he had not instead sold them to someone who could feed them.

Returning to his purpose, he makes the decision to sell them.

But the damage inflicted by poverty and the obligations of a father’s love for his family were in conflict, with hunger demanding the sale and nature urging its duties.

Ready to die with his sons rather than be separated from them, he would take one step forward and then another back.

But need, and not desire, conquered, and family feeling itself gave way to need

The “raging storm” of poverty: A “tragedy in all its shapes”

[22.] Now let us consider the storms raging in the father’s mind as to which of his sons he should give up first.

“Whom,” he says, “should I sell first?

For I know that the price of one is insufficient to feed the others.”

(This alone would provide rich grounds for anxiety!)

“Whom should I offer?”

“Whom will the grain auctioneer look upon with favor?”

“I could offer my first-born. But he was the first to call me father. He occupies the first place among my sons, and him I rightly honor as the eldest.”

“I shall give my youngest, then. But he is the one whom I love most tenderly.”

“I am ashamed over the former and feel pity toward the latter; I groan over the former’s position and over the latter’s age. The one already senses anxiety, while the other knows nothing of it. The former’s sorrow weighs me down, the latter’s unawareness.”

“I shall give thought to the others: one clings to me the more, another is more bashful; one is more like his father, another is more useful to him.”

“In the one I would be selling my very image; in the other I would be betraying my hope.”

“Woe is me! I have no idea what to do, no way of making a choice.”

“Tragedy in all its shapes, a chorus of distress, surrounds me!”

A defiance of nature’s affections: More questions??

[23.] It is the madness of wild beasts to choose whom you must give up.

The very beasts, when they sense danger threatening their offspring or themselves, are accustomed to choose which ones they will free from it, not which ones they will offer up to it.

“How, then, shall I set aside the affections of nature?"

“How shall I strip myself (exuam) of a father’s mind?”

“How shall I arrange to auction off a son?”

“With what words shall I fix a price, into whose hands shall I deliver that son into slavery?”

“With what eyes shall I look upon him as a slave?”

“With what embraces shall I say farewell to him when he departs?”

“With what words shall I excuse what I have done, saying

‘My son, I sold you for my food’”?

More fatal, then, is the poor man’s table than that of the rich man:

“He sells off others; I sell what is mine. He obliges; I act voluntarily.”

In order to make my situation the more excusable I shall add:

“My son, you shall serve in place of your brothers, so that food may be obtained for them.”

Even Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers (cf. Gen 37:1–36); and yet he fed both them and his father afterwards” (Gen 45-47).

One may respond:

“But his father did not sell him, but wept over his absence; and later even [Joseph] fell into the power of a rich man and could hardly be freed” (Gen 39).

And afterwards his posterity slaved many generations for the riches of Egypt.

“Sell me, then, father, on one condition—that the rich do not buy me” (cf. Gen 49:29-33).

An impasse

[24.] “I am at a standstill, I confess.

What shall I do?

I will sell no one.

But as I reflect on the one, I see all of them perishing of hunger.

If I give up one, with what eyes shall I look upon the others, who will be perturbed by my lack of family feeling and fearful lest I sell them also?”

“With what shame shall I return home?”

“How shall I go in?”

“With what emotions shall I live there—I who denied myself a son, whom did neither disease carry off nor death remove?”

“With what thoughts shall I look at my table, which so many sons, ‘like olive vines,’ graced round about?” (cf. Ps 128:3).

“An evil condition under the sun”

[25.] This is what the poor man laments in your presence, but in your avarice you stop up your ears, and your heart is not softened by the horror of the wretched situation.

All the people groan, and you alone, O rich man, are unyielding.

You do not heed the Scriptures, which say:

“Let your money go for the sake of a brother and a friend.

And do not hide it under a stone to be lost” (Sir 29:10).

And, inasmuch as you pay no heed, Ecclesiastes exclaims in these words:

“There is an evil condition that I have seen under the sun:

Riches kept to the hurt of the one possessing them?” (Eccles 5:13).

The price of our luxuries

[26.] But perhaps you return home and talk with your wife, and she urges you to ransom the one who was sold.

On the contrary—she will urge you to buy worldly feminine trinkets (mundum muliebrem conpares) for her (cf. Prov 11:22), from which meager amount you would have been able to set a poor man free (cf. Dan 4:27).

She will emphasize to you the expenditures that will be necessary if she is to drink from a precious goblet, sleep on a purple bed, recline on a silver couch and burden her hands with gold and her neck with necklaces.

What constitutes riches? What constitutes bondage?

[27.] Women are delighted in shackles on their feet (conpedibus), so long as they are bound (vinciantur) in gold.

They do not think it burdensome (onera), so long as they are precious.

They do not consider them chains (vincula), so long as they are precious.

They do not consider that they themselves are bound (se vinctas), so long as a treasure glitters in them.

They even enjoy wounds, so that gold may be inserted into their ears and pearls may hang down.

Jewels are heavy too, and clothing is cold. They sweat in their jewels and freeze in their silks. Still, the costliness is gratifying, and what nature rejects avarice commends.

With utter frenzy they are on the watch for emeralds and sapphires, beryl, agate, topaz, amethyst, jasper and carnelian (Comp. Ex 28-> Rev 21:19-20).

Even if half their inheritance is required they do not begrudge the expense, so long as they can indulge their covetousness.

I do not deny that there is a certain pleasing luster to these stones, but they are still only stones. And they themselves, polished them in a way that is contrary to nature, so that they may strip away (exuant) their rocky roughness.

But what is more, these admonish us that it is, instead, the hardened soul that must be polished.

What are the power of riches?

[28.] What craftsman has ever been able to add a single day to a person’s life?

Have riches ever ransomed anyone from Hell?

Whose sickness has money ever alleviated? ‘

“A person’s life.”it says, “does not consist in abundance” (Luke 12:15).

And elsewhere:

“Treasures are of no value to the unrighteous,

But righteousness delivers from death” (Prov 10:2).

Rightly does David cry out:

“If riches abound, do not set your heart on them” (Ps 62:10).

For of what value are they to me if they cannot free me from death?

Of what value are they to me if they cannot be with me after death?

Here they are acquired, and here they are left.

We are speaking of a dream, then, and not of an inheritance. Hence the same prophet says well of the rich:

“They have slept their sleep,

And all the men of wealth have found nothing in their hands” (Ps 76:5).

This means that the rich who have given nothing to the poor have found nothing in their own works.

They have helped no one in need.

They have been able to obtain nothing to contribute to their own well-being (salutem).

A rich person (dis); The God of Death (Dis)

[29.] Reflect on the word itself:

The pagans refer to the rulers of Hell and the judge of death as ‘Dis’ (Pluto/Hades).

They call a rich person ‘dis’ as well, because a rich person can produce nothing but death, and his kingdom should be among the dead and his headquarters should be Hell.

For what is a rich person but a kind of bottomless pit as far as wealth is concerned, an insatiable hunger or thirst for gold?

The more he devours, the more he burns (exaestuat).

“The one who loves silver,” it says, “will not be satisfied with silver” (Eccles 5:10).

And further along:

“And this is indeed the greatest evil:

Just as he was, so has he gone, and his abundance labors for wind.

And, indeed, all his days are in darkness and distress and much wrath and evil and anger” (Eccles 5:16–17).

—so much so that the condition of slaves is more tolerable, for they serve human beings, but he serves sin.

“For he who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34).

He is always trapped, always fettered, never free of chains, because he is always in his sins.

What a wretched slavery it is to serve sins!

The Parable of the Rich Fool

[30.] Such a person cannot function according to nature.

He cannot sleep when it is time to do so, nor does he enjoy the pleasures of food, even though none of this is foreign to a slave’s condition.

“For sweet is the sleep of a slave, whether he eats a little or a lot.

But for the one who is filled with riches there is no one who allows him to sleep” (Eccles 5:12).

Covetousness arouses him.

A constant preoccupation with seizing others’ property agitates him.

Envy torments him, delay vexes him.

The unfruitful sterility of his crops disturbs him.

Abundance disquiets him.

Recall the “rich man” whose possessions gave him a copious harvest and who reflected within himself in these words:

“What shall I do, since I do not have a place to store my crops?

And he said:

‘I will do this:

I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones.

And there I will gather everything that I have grown.

And I will say to my soul:

“My soul, you have many good things laid aside for many years.

Relax, eat, drink, feast.’

To him God responded:

‘You fool!

This night they are taking your very soul from you.

Who then will own what you have laid up?’” (Luke 12:16–20)

Not even God himself allows him to sleep:

He interrupts him as he thinks; disturbs him as he sleeps.

Who is the rich man? Who is the beggar?

[31.] But neither does he permit himself to be at peace, since his abundance perturbs him and, in the midst of his copious harvest, he sounds like a beggar.

“What shall I do?” he asks.

Is not this the voice of a poor man, of one who has no livelihood?

In his need of everything he looks this way and that, searches through his home and finds nothing to eat. He considers nothing more wretched than to be consumed by hunger and to die from want of food.

He seeks a quicker death and explores less tortuous ways of dying: He snatches a sword, suspends a noose, lights a fire, looks for poison. And, uncertain as to which of these he should choose, he asks:

“What shall I do?”

Then the sweetness of this life makes him want to recall his decision, if only he could find the means to live. He sees everything bare and empty, and he asks:

“What shall I do?”

“Where is there food and clothing for me?”

“I want to live, if only I could find a way to sustain this life—but with what food, with what assistance?

What shall I do,” he asks, “since I do not have?”

The rich man speaking as a beggar

[32.] The rich man cries out that he does not have.

This is the way poverty talks.

With his abundant harvest he complains of want!

“I do not have,” he says,“a place to store my crops.”

You would think that he was saying:

“I have no crops that I can live off.’

Is he blessed who is put at risk by his abundance?

On the contrary, with all his plenty he is more wretched than a poor person who is threatened by want.

The latter has a reason for his anxiety; he suffers an injustice and he is without fault.

The former has no one to reproach but himself.

What if the rich fool were truly wise?

[33.] And he says:

“I will do this:

I will tear down my barns.”

You might think that he would say:

“I will open up my barns.

Let those come in, who cannot endure hunger.

Let the needy come.

Let the poor enter.

Let them fill their satchels.

I will tear down the walls that exclude the hungry.

Why should I hide anything away?

I, for whom God has provided so abundantly, what is it that I should give?

Why should I shut up behind locked doors the grain

with which God has filled the whole extent of my fields,

and which grows and flourishes without anyone to oversee it?”

The internal calculations of avarice

vs

The voice of Wisdom

[34.] The hope of the avaricious man is borne out:

The old barns are bursting with the recent harvest.

“I had little and stored it in vain; now more has grown.

For whom do I gather it?”

“If I wait for the prices to go up, then I will have squandered a possibility of doing good.”

“How many lives of the poor could I have saved with last year’s harvest?”

“Prices that are counted up in grace and not in money were the ones that should have given me pleasure.”

“I will imitate the holy Joseph with his humane proclamation [“Joseph opened all the storehouses,”Gen 41:56], and I will cry out with a loud voice:

‘Come, O poor, and eat my bread’ (Prov 9:5).

Open your bosoms.

Take my grain.

Of the abundance of the rich man (dis), the whole world’s abundance ought to be everyone’s wealth.”

‘

What are you tearing down?

[35.] But this is not what you say.

Instead you say:

“I will tear down my barns.”

Rightly do you tear down what no poor person ever leaves carrying anything.

These barns are the storehouses of iniquity and not the reserves of charity.

Rightly does he tear them down, because he knows not how to build wisely.

The rich person tears down his property, because he is oblivious of eternal things.

He tears down his barns, because he knows not how to dispense his grain; only how to hoard it.

What are you building?

[36.] “And I will build,” he says, “larger ones.”

Unhappy man, distribute to the poor what you spend on construction.

In shunning the grace of generosity you are incurring the costs of construction.

The calculations continue…

[37.] And he added:

“I will gather everything that I have grown, and I will say to my soul:

My soul, you have many good things.”

The avaricious person is always concerned over an abundant harvest; for he calculates that food will be cheap.

For abundance is advantageous to everyone; but a poor yield is so only to the avaricious person:

He is pleased more by high prices than by abundant crops.

And he prefers to have what he can sell by himself rather than with everyone else.

Observe him as he worries lest the pile of grain be overflowing;

lest in its copiousness it spill out of his granaries and in the direction of the poor;

and the opportunity for doing some good be offered him.

The produce of the earth he claims for himself alone, although he does not want to use it himself but deny it to others (cf. Mt 23:13-14).

How “goods” can become truly good…as well as evil

[38.] “You have,” he says, “many good things (multa bona).”

The avaricious person knows not how to enumerate anything except what is profitable. But I agree with him that what is financial (pecuniarium) may be called good.

Why then, do you make evil things from good, when you ought to make good things from evil?

For it is written:

“Make for yourselves friends from the mammon of iniquity” (Luke 16:9).

For the one who knows how to use them, then, they are good;

For the one who knows not how to use them rightly, they are bad.

“He distributed.

He gave to the poor;

His righteousness endures forever” (Ps 112:9).

What is better than this?

They are good, if you give them to the poor.

And when you do this, you make God your Debtor by a kind of charitable usury.

They are good, if you open up the granaries of your righteousness, so that you may be the bread of the poor, the life of the needy, the eye of the blind, the father of orphaned infants.

The means of abundance: To what end?

[39.] You have the means to do this.

Why are you afraid?

I confront you with your own words:

“You have many good things laid aside for many years.”

You can have plenty, both for yourself and for others.

You can have an abundance for everyone.

Why tear down your barns?

A “better place to store your grain”; A better way to “sow”

[40.] Let me show you a better place to store your grain, where you can keep it safe so that thieves will be unable to take it from you (cf. Mt 6:19-21).

Enclose it in the heart of the poor,

where no worm will eat it, where it will not get stale with age.

As storerooms you have the chests of the needy.

As storerooms you have the homes of widows.

As storerooms you have the mouths of infants, so that it may be said of you:

“Out of the mouth of infants and sucklings you have perfected praise” (Ps 8:1–2).

Those are the storerooms that abide forever.

Those are the barns that future abundance will not destroy.

For what will you do a second time, if you grow still more next year?

If this happens a second time you will destroy what you are now building and build on a still larger scale.

For God gives you abundance either to overcome or to condemn your avarice, so that you may not have any excuse.

But you keep for yourself what He wished to grow for the many through you.

More than that, you even deprive yourself of it, for you would save more for yourself if you distributed to others.

The effects of good works revert to the very ones who have performed them. And the grace of generosity returns to its originator.

Hence it is written:

“Sow for yourselves unto righteousness” (Hos 10:12).

Be a spiritual husbandman: sow what is profitable to you.

Sowing is good in the hearts of widows.

If the soil brings forth a richer yield than it received, how much more will be multiplied the recompense of the mercy that you have shown!

The “right” calculations

[41.] Furthermore, O man, do you not know that the day of death overtakes the earth’s begetting; but that mercy shuts out death’s assault?

Those who would demand your soul are already standing by.

And do you still put off the fruits of your works?

Do you still calculate that you will live for a long time?

“You fool!

This very night they are taking your soul from you.”

Rightly does he say

“night.”

It is at night that the soul of the avaricious person is demanded:

He starts off in darkness and abides in darkness.

To the avaricious person it is always night;

But to the righteous it is day.

And to him it is said:

“Amen, amen I say to you:

This day you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

“But the fool is changed like the moon” (Sir 27:43);

“whereas the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Mt 13:43).

Rightly is that foolishness rebuked which sets its hope on “eating and drinking” (Rom 14:17).

And therefore the time of death is pressed upon it, just as is said by those who pander to their gluttony:

“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Is 22:13).

Rightly is that person called a fool,

who caters to the bodily aspects of his soul,

because he knows not for whom he is preserving the things that he stores up.

A “generous distributor rather than an anxious custodian”

[42.] Hence it is said to him:

“Who then will own what you have laid up?”

“To what purpose do you measure and count and seal every day? (obsignas)”

“To what purpose do you weigh out gold and silver?

“How much better it is to be a generous distributor rather than an anxious custodian!

“How much it would profit you in terms of grace to be called the father of many orphans, rather than to possess innumerable coins sealed up in a sack!”

For our money (pecunia) is left behind here (relinquitur);

but grace (gratia) is transferred with us to the Judge for our merit.

For Part III, click here.]