Bible Commentaries

1 Kings 11:25)] the son of Haggith; and the fifth, Shephatiah the son of Abital;

5. And the sixth, Ithream, by Eglah David's wife. These were born to David in Hebron. [It is quite in the manner of the sacred historians to give such statistics about the house or family of the king.]

6. And it came to pass, while there was war between the house of Saul and the house of David, that Abner made himself strong for the house of Saul.

7. And Saul had a concubine, whose name was Rizpah [see chap. 2 Samuel 21:8-11], the daughter of Aiah: and Ish-bosheth said to Abner, Wherefore hast thou gone in unto my father's concubine?

8. Then was Abner very wroth for the words of Ish-bosheth, and said, Am I a dog's head, which against Judah [lit. Am I a dog's head belonging to Judah?] do shew kindness this day unto the house of Saul thy father, to his brethren, and to his friends, and have not delivered thee into the hand of David, that thou chargest me today with a fault concerning this woman?

9. So do God to Abner, and more also [for he now saw the utter and contemptible weakness of Ish-bosheth], except, as the Lord hath sworn to David, even so I do to him;

10. To translate the kingdom from the house of Saul, and to set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah, from Dan even to Beersheba.

11. And he could not answer Abner a word again, because he feared him.

12. And Abner sent messengers to David on his behalf, saying, Whose is the land? saying also, Make thy league with me, and, behold, my hand shall be with thee, to bring about all Israel unto thee.

13. ¶ And he said, Well; I will make a league with thee: but one thing I require of thee, that 1 Samuel 18:20; 1 Samuel 19:11-17), there were political reasons of importance for the demand. The demand itself shewed that he bore no malice against the house of Saul, and the restoration would again constitute him Saul's 2 Samuel 2:5-7).

Where is the vindictiveness? Where is there one note of evil triumph and glory? Why did not king David go out and slay the men of Jabesh-gilead and bury them in the dishonoured grave of a discrowned king? Is this the man to write imprecatory psalms—psalms toned to the evil music of the worst wickedness? Is this the man to spend his after days in writing poetry of iniquity? We must have misunderstood him if we have thought there was anything meanly and narrowly personal in his imprecations; there must be some deeper meaning than this: otherwise David, a mightier man than Saul, fell infinitely more deeply. But the lesson to us comes in the form of a question: How much further than this have we advanced? We speak in somewhat of a tone of patronage of Old Testament saints—men who "lived in the twilight," who were "not permitted to see the full blaze of gospel day." Historically the comment is true, but regarding this action of David as a standard, how do we measure ourselves? Could we have done this? When our enemies die, what is our inmost feeling? Is there not an unuttered sense of thankfulness and relief? Do we visit their graves and bedew them with tears? Do we listen with delight to a recital of their virtues? Do we become their encomiasts? Let us not fear these lance-questions; let them pierce us till the blood comes. Our boasting is great as to our historical position: we live in the Christian centuries; the whole heaven is flooded with Christian light, the whole air vibrates with evangelical music,—what about our spirit, the reality of our heart's desire? Who can compare with David? Who so great, so magnanimous? Surely he is in a great lineage: what if after this there shall arise a Man unlike all other men, who shall be hailed and blessed and worshipped as "the Son of David"?

Now another enemy arises. David was educated in the school of hostility. The experience of David was enough to make a poet of him, if the divine faculty were slumbering within him. Sorrow oftentimes makes us take the harp down as well as hang it up; sometimes we can have no comfort but in the harp; if the Gospel is to come to us at all it must come through the medium of music The next enemy is Abner. "Now there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of David" ( 2 Samuel 3:1), not open standing battles: for such conflicts we can prepare ourselves. The "long war" was not a succession of fights in the open field, but vexatious war, hostility in which there was no possibility of renown: the little mischievous fretful chafing wars which make life so rough. When Saul spake he was misunderstood; when David spake he was misunderstood: the people on both sides did everything they could to irritate one another. That is the meaning of the long war; and this course of petty vexation was varied by open battle, great conflict and clash of arms. The leader of the host of Israel was Abner. He was inspired by the spirit of opposition. He was the hope of the followers of Saul. Not a man to be closely looked into, from a moral point of view. In the very height of his pride, in the very boasting of his strength, Ish-bosheth brought him to the ground. Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, charged Abner with an evil deed. He put the thing before him in plain words. Let us have no hinted accusations. Men cannot answer such impeachments. Ish-bosheth put the case before Abner in terms that could not be misundertood, and Abner, like many a hard-hearted hypocrite, started into indignant self-defence, and asked if he was "a dog's head" which could do the thing that was charged upon him, and sought to shut the mouth of Abner by telling him what 2 Samuel 3:27). The king was the great man; the servant was the inferior man. It is true that Abner had done many a wicked deed, true that he was an enemy of the crown and throne of David. Now that he is dead, how does David view the circumstances? He will be secretly glad. That would only be a human frailty. But there is no proof of it. "King David himself followed the bier" of Abner. He went to his funeral. "They buried Abner in Hebron: and the king lifted up his voice, and wept at the grave of Abner; and all the people wept" ( 2 Samuel 3:32). Tears are infectious. Why all this tearfulness on the part of David now—so valiant, so strong, so daring, at home and on the mountains, domesticated in the wilderness, counting a cave a palace? Why so broken down now? Because it is not in human nature to stand more than a certain amount of pressure. The old man weeps easily. Old soldiers often find their tears near at hand; they have had such discipline, such wearing experience, they have suffered so many losses, they have been pressed and pushed and driven with violence so extreme and unpitying, that there comes a time of reaction; they never shed tears in the fight; they were stronger than lions, they were swifter than eagles, in action, but there comes a time of recall, and then who can keep back the river of sorrow? There comes, too, a time when a man cannot bear to see all his contemporaries cut down one after another, even though in some respects they were hostile contemporaries. Their death makes him a stranger. He does not know the men who are coming on behind him. He has been accustomed to certain faces, salutations, messages, reciprocations, and now that men are falling on the right hand and on the left he feels a strange sense of solitude. What wonder if even the most valiant soldier-spirit should often break down in a child's tears?

How did David treat the dead Abner and estimate him?—

"And the king said unto his servants, Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?" ( 2 Samuel 3:38).

If these considerations applied to David only, we might dismiss them as not bearing upon our immediate life, but they bring with them a present and urgent application. David was the most illustrious type of Christ. In a sense, he was the father of the Saviour of the world. "Son of David," said the poor, the blind, the distressed, "have mercy on me." Jesus himself spake about David in relation to sonship and lordship, and propounded a great question concerning the relation between David and himself. When did Christ rejoice over his enemies? We cannot point to a single instance in which he was glad when evil befell his foes. When did he rejoice, saying, Behold their harvest fields are blighted, their fountains are dried up, all their ships are sunk, and their fortunes are scattered by an avenging wind? When did one malevolent word escape the lips of this Son of David? What was Christ's doctrine concerning the treatment of enemies? He said: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." He was in very deed David's Lord. He advanced beyond the poet and stood forth as the inspirer. All the beautiful things we find in the Old Testament that are beautiful by reason of moral quality and value culminate in Jesus Christ. They are incomplete in themselves; they say, if we could hear them distinctly, Follow us; we are leading up to our own consummation that will be found in the Son of God. What view of his enemies did Christ take at the very last? Now that he hangs upon the tree he will speak what he feels. In his great agony his very soul will utter itself. In that hour he said: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Are we not right, therefore, in thinking of David in all these historical details as more than an actor in a vanishing scene—even as a type and forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ? What was dim yet beautiful in David, is bright and divine in Christ.

Now observe the point of weakness referred to at the outset:—

"And I am this day weak, though anointed king; and these men the sons of Zeruiah be too hard for me: the Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness" ( 2 Samuel 3:39).

Selected Note

"Rend your clothes, and gird you with sackcloth, and mourn" ( 2 Samuel 3:31).—Sacks are usually made of hair in the East, whence we may understand that where sackcloth is mentioned, haircloth is intended. Hence the idea is different from that which we, whose sacks are not of the same material, would affix to the term. That this is correct, seems to be confirmed by the fact that the use of haircloth as a penitential dress was retained by the early Oriental monks, hermits, and pilgrims, and was adopted by the Roman Church, which still retains it for the same purposes. Haircloth was, moreover, called "sackcloth" by the early Greek and Latin fathers, and this seems conclusive. Perhaps, in a general sense, the word means any kind of very coarse cloth, but undoubtedly more particularly cloth of hair than any other. There is a reference to this practice of assuming a mortifying dress as an expression of grief or repentance in Exodus 33:4. The principle is so obvious that there are few nations among which, in mournings for the dead some kind of mortifying habit has not been adopted. We do not know that sackcloth is now much used for this purpose in the East; but ornaments ate relinquished, the usual dress is neglected, or it is laid aside, and one coarse or old assumed in its place.

Prayer

Almighty God, our hearts live in the great hope that all flesh shall see thy glory. The clouds are very dark, and there are many who do not like to retain God in their thought. Broad is the road that leadeth to destruction, and many there be who walk its perilous way. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Yet amid all these discouragements thou dost lift up thy voice like a trumpet and say that thy kingdom shall come and thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. How this is to be lieth not within the scope of our poor imagining. The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it—this is our one and our indestructible trust. We rest in thy promise,—a nation shall be born in a day, the little one shall put the great down, and the strong one shall be smitten by the weak hand. We know that thou doest all things excellently, with a suddenness that doth startle our ignorance and with a completeness which none can amend. The earth is thine and the fulness thereof; thou lovest the little wandering star, thou dost leave the uncounted host that have not fallen from their orbits and thou hast come after that which was lost, and thou wilt not return until thou hast found it.

Behold us in prayer; look upon us inspired by one expectancy, as uttering one cry: "Even 2 Samuel 3:10.

That is to say, to hand over the kingdom from one man to another. The kingdom was to pass from the house of Saul to the house of David, and David was to be king "over Israel and over Judah, from Dan even to Beersheba." The thought is that kingdoms of an earthly kind change hands, and therefore they are to be regarded as belonging to things temporary and mutable, and not to things eternal and unchangeable. What hast thou that thou hast not received? The kingdom did not belong to Saul, except in a secondary sense, for God still retained the kingdom in his own hands; he setteth up, and he bringeth down; he creates the prince, and he sets the beggar in his lowly place. By long use men come to entertain the idea of sole proprietorship, and thus the sense of monopoly increases. Our children are not ours, they are God's; our lives are not our own, they belong to the Creator; we have nothing, except in the sense of stewardship and in the sense of involving responsibility for the use we make of it. Blessed is he who can say, amid the transition of kingdom and influence of every name and kind, "He must increase, but I must decrease." It is well that men can only reign for a certain time; it would be well if royalty could change its point of origin, so that human vanity might be checked and human ambition might be baffled in many a course. We are not to think of earthly kingdoms alone as meaning political sovereignties; we are to think of personal influence, institutional functions, and all arrangements made to meet the necessity of the present day: all these things must be changed in order to be purified; the direction may be altered in order that attention may be wakened; those who imagine themselves secure for ever must be shaken out of their security, that they may learn that there is no permanence but in God. The Lord reigneth. All men reign under him, and are subject to his will. They only are happy who use the world as not abusing it, and who hold it with so light a hand that at any moment they can lay it down again.

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"I am this day weak, though anointed king."— 2 Samuel 3:39.

Here is a remarkable distinction between the human and the official. What a tone of humiliation there is in the latter part of the text! Two men seem to be speaking here—the one the man pure and simple, the other the man clothed with royal purple and loaded with a royal crown. Officialism does nothing towards the sustenance of humanity. Sometimes a man's office is greater than a man's strength. In all these circumstances it is the man who is to be considered, and not the officer. As the life is more than meat, so the man is more than the king; as the body is more than raiment, so the soul is more than the sovereign. It is most instructive to listen to the confessions of weakness made by kings and men who have all that the world can give them. It is too frequently supposed that if we had crown, and throne, and sceptre, and gilded palace, we should be content and strong, yea, even riotous in the overflow of power: nothing of the kind. All history shows us that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. We suppose that only poor men complain of being weak; yet here we have a king telling us that weakness has invaded the palace, and that weakness has thrown into contempt all the glamour and pomp of courts. Periods of weakness may be so used as to be the occasions of growing strength. One man was enabled to exclaim, "When I am weak, then am I strong." When our weakness is rightly felt we are driven to God for the renewal of our strength. All our springs are in him. He only can recover the soul from its moods of dejection, and build up our flesh into reality of power. So, again and again, in all conditions and varieties of life, we are brought back from heart-wandering and self-trusting to simple dependence upon the living and eternal God.