Bible Commentaries

Usurpation

1 Kings 1:5). How certainly, then, he will not! "Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself." He did not hear the voice sounding far away in the coming time which said, "Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased" always; by a sweet necessity. May we hearken unto this doctrine, and pray God to incline our hearts to keep the law which it represents. Adonijah was the fourth son of David born in Hebron, but probably he had become the eldest son by the death of his three senior brothers. Even then there was a charm about primogeniture, as there is about many long words. Adonijah said: I am the eldest, therefore I ought to be the richest; Solomon is comparatively young: surely he ought not to stand in the way; I will be king. Did he spring into this self-conceit all at once, or is there a story behind it explaining this development of mischief? Certainly; there always is such a story if we could find it out. You will find that Adonijah was a spoiled child, for "his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so?" ( 1 Kings 1:6). That is the explanation. Every will has to be. broken, and it ought to be broken as soon as possible; it is not as if the will could go on always having its own way, marching from conquering to conquer, going on from throne to throne; it is the law of life, and it is the most solemn fact in personal history, that the will must be broken, in the sense of being subdued, chastened, made to feel that there are other wills in creation, and that peace can only come by mutual understanding and concession. How cruel, then, are parents! They think they are kind, but their kindness is the worst form of cruelty. How would it be in physical matters? You say that a man's hand is out of action, and the doctor says that hand might have been as good as the other if the infirmity or accident had been attended to when the child was young. That we call reason. A child does not see straightly; its eye is somewhat askance; and the doctor again says that eye could have been made perfectly right if it had been attended to when the child was young. When the doctor says that, everybody looks upon him as a wise man. So many things ought to have been done when we were young! Yet we ourselves will not do them to those who are young, and who depend upon us for discipline, education, and general training. When the preacher says, this will, so urgent, so self-regarding, so selfish, might have been made better if the child had been taken in hand in time, the preacher is thought to be a sentimentalist. The doctor was right about the hand, and most learned about the eye; but when the preacher says the same thing about the will he is smiled upon as a man who has certain nostrums by which he thinks the world can be cured; and he knows of course how everybody's children ought to be trained; and generally he is a kind of decent and well-meaning gentleman who ought to be borne with. It is in vain that he points to history. It goes for nothing that he says, You are killing your children. David seems to have been the murderer of all his children: a great public 1 Kings 1:50-51). "Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased." Adonijah, who began by saying, "I will be king," ended by saying, I am a servant. See the end of all vanity, foolish conceit, mistaken and selfish ambition; so 1 Kings 1:52). So Adonijah became a ticket-of-leave man. What a fame! but right. Do not let us mistake this: for we are all ticket-of-leave men. Let there be no boasting. We are all out of hell conditionally. "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." We have no respectability. Our supposed respectability is a millstone round about our neck. Hear the word of the living God, and mistake not the exact position which every man occupies. He is spared on probation, he is watched; if he live as he ought to live, by the grace of God he will be saved; if he serve himself, if he live the earthly life, if he deny the Lord that bought him, if he endeavour to find some way of living without God, he will be lost. Do not let us boast as if we were free men. We are only temporarily free; we are living by permission; our breath is in our nostrils. Hear the word of the Lord: there is but a step between thee and death!