September 13

SEPTEMBER 13.—“For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him.”—2 Samuel 14:14.

JOAB was resolved to reconcile David to Absalom. For which purpose he “sent to Tekoah, and fetched thence a wise woman, and said unto her, I pray thee, feign thyself to be a mourner, and put on now mourning apparel, and anoint not thyself with oil, but be as a woman that had a long time mourned for the dead.” Though she is called “wise,” she seems very little deserving of the appellation, unless she displayed more wisdom on former occasions than she does in the present instance. For there is scarcely one article in the whole of her long wordy address that pertinently and justly bears on the subject. Joab indeed furnished her with the leading part of her story—for it does not deserve the name of reasoning. But he had an unjustifiable measure to accomplish, and therefore he did as well as he could, to make the worse appear the better cause. He was also aware “that the king’s heart was toward Absalom.” He knew what tune pleased David, and therefore he depended not on the goodness of the music, but the nature of the effect. And accordingly, weak and irrelevant as the statement was, it succeeded! For, as

“He that’s convinced against his will,

So when a man is inclined to a particular course, a little child may lead him.

We may here remark, and it is of importance in reading the Scriptures to observe it, that the Holy Ghost does not sanction as righteous, or as true, every thing recorded in them. The sacred writers relate facts as they occurred, leaving us to employ our reason in distinguishing things that differ. We are not to believe all the arguings of Job’s friends because they are found in the book of Job; it is obvious that they sometimes laid down wrong principles, and at other times drew unfair inferences from right ones. And in the Ecclesiastes, Solomon more than once utters sentiments not as matters of his own credence, but as the language of worldlings, or libertines, whose objections he would answer.

Let us apply this to the case before us. The woman having by a kind of parable drawn from David a sentence of censure and condemnation, which, as she supposed, affected himself, she makes an application of it—“Let thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak one word unto my lord the king. And he said, Say on. And the woman said, Wherefore then hast thou thought such a thing against the people of God? for the king doth speak this thing as one which is faulty, in that the king doth not fetch home again his banished.” And then, to enforce her suit, she adds, “The word of my lord the king shall now be comfortable: for as an angel of God, so is my lord the king to discern good and bad; therefore the Lord thy God will be with thee.” She adduces two arguments. The first drawn from man’s mortality: “For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person”—As much as to say, Amnon would

VOL. II.