2 Samuel 21
Butler21 1 And there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David sought the face of the LORD. And the LORD said, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put to death the Gibeonites. And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah): and David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the LORD? And the Gibeonites said unto him, It is no matter of silver or gold between us and Saul, or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that will I do for you. And they said unto the king, The man that consumed us, and that devised against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the borders of Israel. let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the LORD. And the king said, I will give them. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the LORD’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul, whom she bare to Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite: and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the mountain before the LORD, and they fell all seven together: and they were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, at the beginning of barley harvest. And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water was poured upon them from heaven; and she suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night. And it was told David what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done. And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from the men of Jabesh-gilead, which had stolen them from the street of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them, in the day that the Philistines slew Saul in Gilboa: and he brought up from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son; and they gathered the bones of them that were hanged. And they buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in Zela, in the sepulchre of Kish his father: and they performed all that the king commanded. And after that God was intreated for the land.
With the suppression of the federal revolution under Sheba, the political history of David, as related in the Second Book of Samuel, closes. What follows in this book (ch. 21-24) must be regarded as an Appendix, giving, first, an account of the famine which desolated the land (21:1-14), probably in the earlier part, and of the pestilence which laid it waste, probably toward the close of David’s reign (ch. 24); secondly, some brief notices of the Philistine wars, and a detailed register of David’s heroes; and, lastly, David’s Psalm of thanksgiving (ch. 22), and his last prophetic utterances (23:1-7). All these are grouped together at the end of the Second Book of Samuel, probably because it was difficult to insert them in any other place consistently with the plan of the work, which was not intended to be a biography or a history of David, chronologically arranged. Perhaps we should add, that the account of the pestilence was placed last in the book, because it forms an introduction to the preparations made for the building of the Temple by Solomon. A. E.
21:1-14. The land was visited with a famine for three years; the cause of which was declared by the oracle of Jehovah to be “for Saul and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.” This massacre, in shameful violation of the oath of Joshua and the elders of Israel, was one of those acts of passionate zeal in which Saul tried to drown the remorse of his later years. In reply to David’s offer of satisfaction, the Gibeonites demanded the lives of seven of Saul’s sons; and the king gave up to them the two sons of Saul by his concubine Rizpah, and the five sons that Merab had borne to Adriel. These seven were hanged by the Gibeonites on the hill of Gibeah, Saul’s own city. They hung there from the beginning of barley harvest till the rains set in, though the law provided that, in such cases, the bodies should be buried by sunset. But Rizpah took her station upon the rock, with only a covering of sackcloth, to keep the bodies from the birds of prey by day and from the wild beasts by night, till the rain began to fall. Touched with her devotion, David caused their remains to be taken down and interred in the sepulchre of Kish at Zelah, together with the bones of Saul and Jonathan, which he transported from Jabesh-gilead. Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, whom David had refused to give up to the Gibeonites, was now the sole survivor of the house of Saul, with his infant son Micah, through whom the family was continued to the latest period of the nation’s history. We hear of him again before the end of David’s reign. P. S.
1. And there was a famine.** There is no adverb of time marking chronological connection with the foregoing narrative. In Palestine a famine was the almost certain consequence of a failure of the winter rains, on which both cornfields and pasturage depend. See 1 K. 18:2; Joel 1:8-20; for famine as the result of drought. This famine must have occurred after David became acquainted with Mephibosheth (ch. 9:1 ff.), for it is expressly stated that he spared Mephibosheth (verse 7); and in all probability before Absalom’s rebellion, in the account of which we may trace one, if not two allusions to the execution of Saul’s sons (ch. 16:7, 8; 19:28); but its date cannot be fixed more exactly, and the phrase in the days of David seems designedly indefinite. A. F. K.
When a third year brought matters to a famine point, David began to see something extraordinary in this succession of bad seasons, and, as became him, consulted the Lord. He was answered, that it was because of the wrongs done by Saul to the Gibeonites. Kit.—It was an ancient oath, wherein the princes of the congregation had bound themselves, upon Joshua’s league, to the Gibeonites, that they would suffer them to live; an oath, extorted by fraud, but solemn by no less name than the Lord God of Israel. Saul, who spared Agag whom he should have smitten, smites the Gibeonites whom he should have spared. God holds it a high indignity, that his name should be sworn by and violated. Length of time cannot dispense with our oaths, with our vows; the vows and oaths of others may bind us, how much more our own! Bp. H.
Saul slew large numbers of the Gibeonites, and doubtless seized their possessions. It is said that he did this “in his zeal for Israel and Judah,” and this cannot be explained but on the supposition that the deed was done in order to give the tribes possession of the reserved territories of the Gibeonites. And there is no doubt this would be, and was designed to be, a popular and acceptable act. From the first, the people murmured greatly at the covenant that had been entered into, mainly, it would seem, because they were thus deprived of the spoil of the Gibeonites. Thus, Saul’s zeal for Israel and for Judah appears; and thus also, by their complicity in this gross breach of ancient covenants with a now harmless and faithful people, who for many ages had been Israelites in faith and practice, they laid themselves open to punishment from Him who abhors iniquity and broken faith, and to whom the innocent blood cries not in vain. It would seem that Saul’s own family must have been active in this cruel wrong, and had a good share of the spoil, for we find them all, when reduced to a private station, much better off in their worldly circumstances than can else be accounted for, especially as Saul’s own estate had gone with the crown, until assigned by David to Mephibosheth. But the punishments of a just God for wrong-doing, whether in nations or individuals, though often delayed, come at last. Kit.
The Gibeonites were neither rebels nor heathen. They had submitted at the beginning of the conquest, their very artifice having been but a dexterous acknowledgment of Jehovah’s power and of the Hebrew triumph. This was a bold stroke for them, and it brought on them the kings of Jebus, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Egion in that famous battle when Joshua said, “Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon.” They obtained a solemn league with the nation, confirmed by an oath taken by the princes of the congregation. The agreement was that the Gibeonites would be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the nation, and that the nation would preserve and protect them. And so thoroughly had they incorporated themselves with the Israelites that the historian of the Second Book of Samuel stops to explain that they were “not of the children of Israel, but a remnant of the Amorites.” This solemn league and formal oath, the conditions of which had been observed by the Gibeonites for long years, Saul ruthlessly broke. Knox.—Whatever may have been
Saul’s motive, it is certain that by his massacre of the Gibeonites a great national sin was committed, and that for this sin the nation had never humbled itself, and never made reparation. W. G. B.
4-6. The answer of the Gibeonites to David implies their feeling that the Hebrew nation, as such, by its sympathy and concurrence with Saul, had sinned against them, and they seem to regard it as an act of moderation on their part, that they waived their claim as against the nation, and restricted it to Saul in the persons of a few of his representatives. “We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us shall thou kill any man in Israel. The man that consumed us, and that devised against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel, let seven men of his sons be delivered up to us, that we may hang them up before the Lord at Gibeah.” The Gibeah which they proposed to make the scene of this tragedy, was the very town in which Saul had held his residence; and which was no doubt chosen by them to make this act the more monumental. David could not refuse their demand. He gave them seven of Saul’s descendants. They were two sons of Saul by Rizpah the same concubine respecting whom Abner had offended Ishbosheth, and five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul. David was determined to save Mephibosheth and his sons for Jonathan’s sake, and it was probably out of respect to this feeling, that the Gibeonites did not insist upon the inclusion of these, the rightful heirs and representatives of Saul. One would think this fact a sufficient answer to those who venture to suspect that the whole matter was a contrivance between David and the priest to get rid of the remnant of the house of Saul, of whose remaining influence in the land, the late commotion had made him apprehensive. If this were the case, how came he to cut off only collateral branches, and spare all those in the direct line of succession to the throne? In this point of view, Mephibosheth and his son Micah, and his four sons (perhaps already born) were those from whom there was most danger to apprehend. Yet these were spared by preference. If the reader turn to 1 Chron. 8: 33, 34, he will find an enumeration of the descendants of Meribaal or Mephibosheth, heirs of the house of Saul, exhibiting, perhaps, the most numerous descent from any one person of the age in which David lived. Kit.
The Gibeonites did not require this out of malice against Saul or his family (had they been revengeful they would have moved it themselves long before), but for the people of Israel whom they saw plagued for the injury done to them. “We will hang them up unto the Lord (verse 6), to satisfy his justice, not to gratify any revenge of our own; for the good of the public, not for our own reputation.” H.—The holiness of the land in which Jehovah dwelt among His people must be guarded. But one of the worst defilements of a land was that by innocent blood shed in it. According to the majestic view of the Old Testament, blood shed by a murderer’s hand could not be covered up; it was, so to speak, a living thing which cried for vengeance, until the blood of him that had shed it silenced its voice, or, in other words, till the moral equipoise had been restored. While the same section of the law provided safety in case of unintentional homicide, and regulated the old practice of “avenging blood,” it also protected the land against crime, which it would not allow to be compensated for by money. Hence the Gibeonites were strictly within the letter of the law in demanding retaliation on the house of Saul, in accordance with the universally acknowledged Old Testament principle of the solidarity of a family; and David had no alternative but to concede their claim. This is one aspect of the question. The other must be even more reverently approached. We can only point out how they who lived in those times (especially such as the Gibeonites) would feel that they might cry to God for vengeance, and expect it from the Just and True One; and how the sternest lessons concerning public breach of faith and public crimes would be of the deepest national importance after such a reign as that of Saul. A. E.
7,8. No choice remained to David but to yield to this legal requisition. God had taken the wrong into His own hands, to avenge by His own power, and famine was perhaps destroying far more than blood-revenge required. He therefore did not simply consent, but approved this fulfilment of the law, and at once proceeded to meet the demand. Knox.
9. And they fell all seven together. The evident intention of God in ordering the death of this part of Saul’s family, was to give a public attestation of his abhorrence of Saul’s perfidy and cruelty, to strike a terror into the princes his successors and caution them against committing the like offences. The death of these seven persons, therefore, supposing them all innocent, was in this view no punishment inflicted personally on them by God, but an appointment of God in virtue of his sovereign right over the lives of all men; to teach princes moderation and equity, and to prevent the commission of those enormous crimes which are inconsistent with the welfare of all civil government. Accordingly, God dealt with these persons exactly as if in the course of his providential dispensations he had cut them off by a natural death. That children do very frequently suffer and die for the sins of their parents in which they have had no share, is evident from history and the constant experience of all ages and nations. Chandler.
The place, time, and manner of their execution, all added to the solemnity of their being sacrificed to Divine justice. They were hanged up as anathemas, under a peculiar mark of God’s displeasure; for the law had said, He that is hanged, is accursed of God (De. 21 : 23). Christ, being made a curse for us, and dying to satisfy for our sins, and to turn away the wrath of God, became obedient to this ignominious death. They were hanged up in Gibeah of Saul, to show that it was for his sin that they died. They were hanged to expiate the guilt of the house of Saul; and thus God accomplished the ruin of that family, for the blood of the priests and their families also, which, doubtless, now came in remembrance before God, and inquisition was made for it. Yet the blood of the Gibeonites only is mentioned; because that was shed in violation of a sacred oath, which, though sworn long before, though obtained by a wife, and the promise made to Canaanites, yet is thus severely reckoned for. The despising of the oath and breaking of the covenant will be recompensed on the head of those who thus profane God’s sacred name (Ez. 17 : 18, 19). They were put to death in the days of harvest, at the beginning of harvest (verse 10), to show that they were thus sacrificed for the turning away of that wrath of God, which had withheld from them their harvest mercies for some years past, and to obtain his favor in the present harvest. Those executions must not be complained of as cruel, which are become necessary to the public welfare. Better that seven of Saul’s bloody house be hanged, than that all Israel be famished. H.
Under the Old Testament the rights of the individual were not so clearly acknowledged as they are under the New; the family was a moral unit, and the father was the responsible agent for the whole. When Achan sinned, his whole household shared his punishment; all were involved in the sin of the father. However strange it may seem to us, it did not appear at all strange in David’s time that this rule should be applied in the case of Saul. On the contrary, it would probably be thought that it showed considerable moderation of feeling not to demand the death of the whole living posterity of Saul, but to limit the demand to the number of seven. Doubtless the Gibeonites had suffered to an enormous extent. Thousands of them had probably been slain. People might be sorry for the seven young men that had to die, but that there was anything essentially unjust or even harsh in the transaction is a view of the case that would occur to no one. Justice is often hard; executions are always grim; but here was a nation that had already experienced three years of famine for the sin of Saul, and that would experience yet far more if no public expiation should take place; and seven men were not very many to die for a nation. W. G. B.
Saul’s sons, who were not charged with being in any way personally accessory to their father’s crime, were put to death to expiate it. The sins of the father were visited upon the children. Now, as Ezekiel clearly teaches, no innocent man can be regarded as justly punishable for another’s sin: but in those early ages the family was regarded as an unit, and the sins of the head of the family were regarded as involving all its members in their consequences. The sense of the rights and the responsibilities of each individual was as yet undeveloped. Consequently, as seen by the people, the execution of Saul’s sons was a judicial act of retribution; but this aspect of the transaction was only an “accommodation” to the current ideas of the age. Viewed in its essential character as sanctioned by God, it was a didactic act, designed to teach the guilt of sin. God has an absolute power of life and death over His creatures, and may at any time take away the life which He has given. “The extermination of the Canaanites, and the destruction of the families of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, of Achan, and of Saul, were great lessons, and lessons which the great Master could give by the simple exercise of His right as the Lord of human life. They were real acts, and expressed the real mind of the Deity, only as acts of instruction. God cannot punish a man for the reason of another’s sin; but it is open to God to inflict death upon His creatures, without a reason, if it so pleases Him; and of course for a reason if it be a good one—in order to strike wholesome terror, in order to keep a standing memento, in order to associate sin with a spectacle of horror and destruction.” (Mozley.) The act was no doubt one which would not have been sanctioned in a more enlightened age; but the supposition that “David seized this opportunity to rid himself of seven possible claimants to the throne”
(Smith’s “Dict. of the Bible”) is a baseless calumny, sufficiently refuted by his care for Mephibosheth, and by the obscurity of the victims; and the idea that he may have been, for a while at least, “infected by the baneful example of the Phœnicians” in offering human sacrifices, is contradicted by all that we know of his character. A. F. K.
Well near forty years are past betwixt the commission of the sin and the reckoning for it. It is a vain hope that is raised from the delay of judgment. No time can be any prejudice to the Ancient of Days: when we have forgotten our sins, when the world hath forgotten us, he sues us afresh for our arrearages. Bp. H.—Particular events may for a long while be delayed, and the very delay of them may, in concurrence with the operations of Providence, be one means at last of bringing them to pass with greater observation and more convincing evidence of the interposition of God in bringing them about, as is frequently the case in long-concealed murders. God, therefore, in a time of profound peace, when David’s government was settled and there was nothing to interrupt the course of justice, punishes the people with a three years’ famine, to let them feel his displeasure, to render them solicitous to know the cause of it and take the proper methods to appease it. So that though no train of intervening and unavoidable circumstances can impede the operations of Providence, or prevent what God is determined to bring to pass; yet such circumstances may, for a very considerable while, impede the operations of human justice; nevertheless, how long soever that justice may be delayed, it will certainly at last take place, when God judges it the proper season to execute it, and when such execution shall most effectually demonstrate his inspection and tend to secure the purposes of his moral providence and government over mankind. Chandler.
10. The grimness of the mode of punishment was softened by an incident of great moral beauty, which cannot but touch the heart of every man of sensibility. Rizpah, the concubine of Saul, and mother of two of the victims, combining the tenderness of a mother and the courage of a hero, took her position beside the gibbet; and, undeterred by the sight of the decaying bodies, she suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night. W. G. B.—She spread on the rocky floor the thick mourning cloth of black sackcloth, which as a widow she wore, and crouching there she watched that neither vulture nor jackal should molest the bodies. That she did not seek to take them down, that no one, moved by her devotion, offered to help her, seems to show that all acquiesced in the execution of the approved law. That she waited for water to drop out of heaven, signifies that she waited for the token of the cessation of the wrath of heaven in the falling rain in October. Grove.—The courage and self-denial needed for this work were great, for the risk of violence from wild beasts was very serious. All honor to this woman and her noble heart! David appears to have been deeply impressed by her heroism. W. G. B.
11-14. When David heard of it, he felt himself bound to interfere to prevent the continuance of a scene so distressful, and so revolting to the feelings of the Israelites. He caused the remains to be removed; and, obtaining the bones of Saul and Jonathan from Jabesh-gilead, had the whole deposited, with becoming respect and honor, in the sepulchre of the family at Zelzah. The reader who recollects the strong desire of the Israelites, that their bones should rest with those of their kindred—as lately instanced in the case of Barzillai—will appreciate this mark of attention on the part of David, which must have been most gratifying to all Israel, and especially to the friends and connections of the house of Saul. Kit.—David knew how to sympathize with the childless Rizpah, and Rizpah was doubtless consoled when, in a princely burial, she saw honor done to her husband’s house. Justice first, and then mercy. This is the way of the Lord, and David, as the Lord’s vicegerent, walked in it. F. W. Hook.
We offer a concluding remark, founded on the tone of this narrative. It is marked, as every one must perceive, by a subdued, solemn tone. Whatever may be the opinion of our time as to the need of apologizing for it, it is evident that no apology was deemed necessary for the transaction at the time this record was written. The feeling of all parties evidently was, that it was indispensable that things should take the course they did. No one expressed wonder when the famine was accounted for by the crime of Saul. No one objected when the question of expiation was referred to the Gibeonites. The house of Saul made no protest when seven of his sons were demanded for death. It seemed as if God were speaking, and the part of man was simply to obey. W. G. B.
SINFUL NUMBERING OF ISRAEL. ITS PUNISHMENT BY PESTILENCE STAYED AT DAVID’S REPENTANCE. MORIAH, THE PLACE OF HIS ACCEPTED SACRIFICE, APPOINTED AS THE SITE OF THE FUTURE TEMPLE.
We have here a very particular account of the valiant men who had previously attached themselves to David, some at least of whom came to him at Ziklag before the death of Saul; men who had wrought signal exploits of heroism and power, and were thoroughly prepared to lead the armies of Israel. H. C.—From the long list of David’s “mighty men,” it appears that the nation must have been singularly rich in war-like heroes—a circumstance due in some degree to the example of David himself. He appears to have established something like a legion of honor, or order of valor, embracing different classes, like the military and civil orders of the present day. His own military ardor seems to have passed by a kind of electric current into his followers, animating them with the same spirit as his own. W. G. B.
2. S. 23 : 10.** Eleazar, one of the three mighty men of David’s army, threw himself, sword in hand, into the battle against the Philistines; and when he grew weary and turned aside to rest, he found that the fingers of his right hand would not unclasp themselves from the handle of his sword. The hero’s fingers had become set by his strong grasp of his weapon; and when he let fall his arm, his hand still clave unto his sword. This vivid and impressive picture suggests an instructive lesson both for our temporal and spiritual life. Is there not such a grasp of the principles of honor and integrity, of the truths of God and His Word, and of the responsibilities of Christian service, that no trouble, nor doubt, nor temptation, shall be able to unclasp our hold? For such instruction, we may believe this simple but graphic incident was recorded. Eleazar teaches men, in their worldly occupations, with what grasp to lay hold of the principles of honor and integrity. There is a grasping of the principles of high and noble living among men in the every-day battle of business life; so that the invisible fingers of human character, clasping them around, grow firm and fixed until temptation has no power to separate us from them. Then Eleazar teaches us how to grasp the truths of God and His Word. Take hold of God’s warnings and encouragements, as though they were worth something, and we will find, to our relief and joy, when wearied and tried by battling with a world of disappointment and evil, that our hand still cleaves to them. And taking hold of these blessed, uplifting truths of God’s Word, as Eleazar took hold of his sword, there will be no annoyance or pain in the grasp; and when wearied, as you will sometimes be, unable longer to resist the enemies of your hope, like Job the patriarch and Paul the apostle, your hand will still be clasped around the unfailing promises of your Heavenly Father. And so should we grasp the responsibilities and known duties of the Christian service. Given Eleazar’s grasp of the responsibilities of Christian service, and there would be full churches, full prayer-meetings; multitudes now careless inquiring the way to Zion; souls now dumb singing the joys of salvation; Christians now weak, doubting, and despairing, happy, confident, strong, and, further, the veteran believer who has thus grasped these truths and duties through his life, finds toward its close that they still cleave to him when everything else lets go. When old age comes on with its weakness and decrepitude, the interest in worldly things diminishes, the mind begins to let go of the world. But the heart of the devoted Christian still clings with the old tenacity to the things of God and the interests of eternity. It is the crown and glory of our theme that, when the Christian mind and heart let go of all things else in their weakness and weariness, they still cleave to God and Heaven. C. C. Hemenway.
1. S. 23 : 15, 16.** During the wars with the Philistines David, heated with the sun while scanning the hosts of his enemies, suddenly gave expression to a desire for water from the well of Bethlehem. “Oh, that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!” He had probably been thinking of his boyhood, and gave utterance to this, which was a sort of passionate outburst of home longing. It was just like David with his intense nature to speak and act in the way recorded in these verses. Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah determine that his wish for the water shall be gratified, and they plan their sortie with caution, and carry it out with courage and celerity. At dusk they steal up, break through the lines of the enemy, overpowering and silencing the sentinels, and reach the well at last. Two defend the one who draws the water, then, putting it into a skin, that one slings it over his shoulder, and they fight their way out of the surrounding host, bearing the water to the king. F. Hastings.—Here was a striking proof of the enthusiasm which David inspired in his followers, and a noble instance of the true spirit of chivalry, which fears no danger and shrinks from no self-sacrifice, in order to do the smallest service for the object of its devotion; the spirit which is perfected in the highest example of love. A. F. K.
17. “He would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord,” he saw in it but the blood of these brave men. In this incident at once the strong home affections which prompted the wish, and the womanly tenderness which shrunk from its gratification at so great a risk, are full of significance in relation to the degree in which the finer instincts of David’s nature remained unaffected by the circumstances of his outlaw life at this time. W. Lee.—It had cost too much to be used for any common purpose or for mere personal gratification; the only fit thing to do with it was to devote it to God. The incident teaches us that whatever comes to us at great cost should be sacred in our eyes, and should not be devoted to any common, selfish or sinful use, but should be dedicated to the Lord. A most obvious application is to our own redeemed lives. Jesus broke through the lines of enemies and brought water fresh from the lost well of salvation. All the blessings and joys of our Christian faith reach us through the suffering and sacrifice of Christ. Can we devote these gifts and powers of our lives, ransomed at such cost, to any common end or use? Can we do otherwise with them than as David did with the water—make them holy offerings to God? Is any other use in keeping with their sacredness? “The Lord hath set apart the godly man for himself.” The hands which take the sacramental emblems must do no unholy work. The lips that speak the vows of love and the words of prayer must utter no bitter words, no evil or impure words. The eye that is lifted up to look upon the suffering Lamb of God and upon the holy beauty of the exalted King must not linger an instant on anything that defileth. The heart that has been warmed by the consciousness of the love of God must not open to any foul thought or evil desire or unholy imagination. The life that has cost the blood of Jesus must be used to honor God and bless the world. It is too sacred to be devoted to any but holy service. We do good only at the cost of self. Christ blessed the world not by an easy, pleasant life, but by suffering and dying for it. We never can bless the world merely by having a good time in it; we can do it only through toils and sacrifices. The cup of sweet life that is before us we may not take and lightly drink, merely to quench our own thirst; it is the blood of those who before us went in jeopardy of their lives to win it, and we must treat it as sacred, pouring it before God in consecrated offering to bless other lives. Presbyterian.
1. Chron. 12: 16-18. Came of Benjamin and Judah.** David meets these men with caution. Observe how fairly he deals with them. As they are, they shall find him; so shall all that deal with the son of David. If they be faithful and honorable, he will be their rewarder. Affection, respect, and service that are cordial and sincere, will find favor with a good man, as they do with a good God, though clogged with infirmities and turning to no great account. But if they be false, and come to betray him into the hands of Saul, he leaves them to God to be their Avenger, as He is and will be of everything that is treacherous and perfidious.
Amasai was their spokesman, on whom came a spirit of wisdom and resolution according to the occasion, putting words into his mouth which were proper both to give David satisfaction, and to animate those that accompanied him. Nothing could be said finer or more fitting. Thine are we, David, and on thy side. He wishes prosperity to David and his cause, praying for peace to him and all his friends and well wishers, Peace, peace, be unto thee, and peace be to thy helpers, among whom we desire to be reckoned, that peace may be on us. For thy God helpeh thee; God is thy God, and those that have him for their God have him for their Helper in every time of need and danger.
Christ, the Son of David, has worthies too, who, like David’s, are influenced by his example, fight his battles against the spiritual enemies of his kingdom, and in his strength are more than conquerors. Christ’s apostles were his immediate attendants, did and suffered great things for him, and at length came to reign with them. They are mentioned with honor in the New Testament, as these in the Old. Nay, all the good soldiers of Jesus Christ have their names better preserved than even these worthies have; for they are written in heaven. This honor have all his saints. H.
In the Hebrew memoirs one is brought face to face with actual facts, and we see the man as he is, not as his kindred or friends or countrymen would wish him to appear. Both sides of his career are given with equal simplicity and fulness. The same book which describes the generosity of David at the well by the gate of Bethlehem when the three heroes broke through the garrison and drew the coveted drink for him, recites also the hideous story of his dealing with Bathsheba and Uriah, the melancholy record of uncleanness and blood-shedding. The more closely the pages of these records are studied, the more evident it becomes that the reader has before him the veritable man himself as he would appear to Him who searches the heart and tries the reins. Not only are all the facts that are given true, but they are so given as to produce a correct impression, a point in which the most impartial and conscientious of merely human biographers are very apt to fail. Chambers.