1 Samuel 14:43

It is no light sin, as I have said, to violate the appointed fast. In order to demonstrate this briefly by examples, we read in the book of Kings [Samuel] that when Saul the king of Israel was waging war against the foreigners he proclaimed …

For what is it that the captive is interrogated, except because faults which seem to have been detected by signs or conjectures are not yet to be struck? For it is as though the wound is already held, but it is still covered. Let it therefore be uncovered, so that it may be able to be healed and cured. He must indeed be compelled or admonished to confess the fault which is already perceived as if openly. He therefore says: "Show me what you have done," because a crime which is known by certain open indications is not to be judged before it is most openly demonstrated. And because it belongs to the elect to sin and come to their senses, to commit faults and to uncover those committed by confessing them, there follows: And Jonathan showed him and said: "Tasting I tasted a little honey with the tip of the rod that was in my hand, and behold I die." What does it mean that he says: "Tasting I tasted"? Why did he not say above: "Tasting I tasted a little of this honey," when he said: "You have seen that my eyes were enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey"? But certain people, when they confess their sins, diminish them with certain words, while they show that they did not commit them with their whole heart. On the contrary, however, when the elect accuse themselves of the smallest things, they pronounce them not as small, but as great. What does it mean to say: "Tasting I tasted," except: I carried out the sin outwardly, I fulfilled it with a great burning of desire? And what does it mean to say after the confession of sin, "I die," except to drive death away from oneself by repenting and confessing, and to fear it once driven away? This indeed is properly characteristic of the elect, who abandon their sins and yet fear them as though they were not abandoned. […]

It should also be known that the vice of gluttony tempts us in five ways. For it sometimes anticipates the seasons of want, but sometimes [it] does not anticipate them but seeks for daintier food. Sometimes it looks for those things, which must be taken, to be prepared more carefully; but sometimes it agrees with both the quality of, and the season for, its food, but exceeds, in the quantity of what is to be taken, the measure of moderate refreshment. But sometimes that which it longs for is even of a baser kind, and yet it sins more fatally through the heat of unbounded desire. For Jonathan deserved in truth the sentence of death from the mouth of his father, because in taking honey he anticipated the time which had been fixed for eating.

It is as brave to yield in some cases as it is in other cases to fight. Saul is not mollified by his filial submission nor the hardness of his case; but as one that affected to be thought firm to his word, and much more to his oath; even when it bound him hardest, with another imprecation he gives judgment upon Jonathan (

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

Then Saul said to Jonathan, tell me what thou hast done,....