Bible Commentaries

Joshua 15:8, the valley of the giants].

19. And David inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I go up to the Philistines? wilt thou deliver them into mine hand? And the Lord said unto David, Go up: for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into thine hand.

20. And David came to Baal-perazim, and David smote them there, and said, The Lord hath broken forth upon mine enemies before me, as the breach of waters. Therefore he called the name of that place Baal-perazim [the place of breaches].

21. And there they left their images, and David and his men burned them [took them away].

22. And the Philistines came up yet again, and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim.

23. And when David inquired of the Lord, he said, Thou shalt not go up; but fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees.

24. And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines.

25. And David did 2 Samuel 5:3). It is legitimate to inquire into the typology of the whole case. Being the father of Christ according to the flesh, it will be to our edification to ask where the lines coincide, where they become parallels, and where they again touch one another. The study will be at once interesting and profitable.

"David was thirty years old when he began to reign" ( 2 Samuel 5:4). How old was Christ when he entered into his public ministry? Was he not thirty years old? The full meaning of this it is impossible to find out; nevertheless the coincidence itself is a lesson: we stop, and wonder, and think. Providence thus reveals itself little by little, and we are permitted to take up the separate parts, bring them together, and shape them into significance.

"And they anointed David king over Israel" ( 2 Samuel 5:3). Is that the word which is used when men are made kings. Is there not another word which is employed usually? Do we not say, And they crowned the king? The word here used is anointed,—a better word, a word with more spiritual meaning in it, and more duration. The oil penetrated; the oil signified consecration, purity, moral royalty. There was a crown, but that was spectacular, and might be lost. Was not Jesus Christ anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows? Have not we who follow him and share his kingship, an unction, or anointing, from the Holy One, through whom we know all things?

David reigned forty years. Forty is a perfect number. There are many numerals which represent perfectness, and forty—the four tens—is one of them. Or making the whole life seventy years we come again upon another aspect of perfectness: perfectness in the life and in the royalty: perfectness in both senses and in both aspects. And is not Jesus Christ to come to a perfect reign? Has he not his own forty and his own seventy—his own secret number, which represents to him mysteriously the perfectness of his reign? He must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.

The Jebusites mocked David when he would go and reign in Jerusalem; they said, "Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither" ( 2 Samuel 5:6). In other words: If you can overcome the lame and the blind, you may enter into Jerusalem, but other soldiery we will not interpose: even they will be strong enough to break the arms of David. Has no defiance been hurled at the Messiah? Has he not been excluded from the metropolis of the world? Are there not those who have mocked him and wagged their heads at him? Are there not those who have spat upon his name, and said, We will not have this man to reign over us? Let history testify, and let our own conscience speak.

David advanced more and more. The tenth verse has a beautiful expression:—"And David went on, and grew great" The words are short, but the meaning is boundless. David was a persistent man—he "went on." It is the man who steadfastly goes on, who enters the city and clears a space for himself, in all departments and outlooks of life. And is not Jesus Christ going forth from conquering to conquer? Is he not moving from land to land, from position to position: "And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.... And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS." "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ." Go on thou mighty Son of God!

Then we read in the eleventh verse, "And they built David a house." Even those who were averse to him came to this at the last. And is no house being built for Christ? Once he said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Is it to be always so? or is not the whole earth to be the house of the living Christ, the sanctuary of the crowned Lord? This is the voice of prophecy; this is the testimony of all history: in this inspiration we pray our bolder prayer and utter our grander hope. Jesus shall reign, and a house shall be built for him, and it shall be called the house of God.

"But when the Philistines heard that they had anointed David king over Israel, all the Philistines came up to seek David; and David heard of it, and went down to the hold" ( 2 Samuel 5:17). Christ has enemies today. There are Philistines who are banded against him: they want to deplete his name of all spiritual meaning, to take away from him all the glory of his miracles, to deny even his incarnation, to treat him as a myth, a vision, or a dream; but still he goes down to the hold, and still he advances his position.

Having overthrown the Philistines in one conflict, we read in the twenty-second verse, "And the Philistines came up yet again." These words have modern meaning—namely, the words "yet again." The enemy is not easily foiled. One repulse is not enough. The victory is not secured until the enemy is under foot—no truce, no compromise, no modification, no temporising, no living by mutual concession. David said, Shall I go up again as before? And the Lord said, No, let it. be otherwise: "Thou shalt not go up; but fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees,"—vary the method. Sometimes when you are not apparently working you may be working most and best of all: in fetching a compass you may appear to be running away from the enemy, but in reality you are laying a strong line far out beyond him which means his enclosure and destruction. The Church of the living God should be a skilful strategist: the Christian Church should be inventing methods; it should be adapting itself to the varieties of circumstances which mark the history of the current day; it should have a thousand plans. Herein is the weakness of the Church: we suppose that we must work only according to one method—once stereotype a plan, and revert to that under all circumstances. The Lord says, No: vary your method, change your operation: sometimes there must be direct conflict, and sometimes the fetching of a compass, sometimes great tumult and shock of arms, sometimes long patient waiting, but always having in view the same purpose, marked by majestic steadfastness—a complete, unchanging purpose to destroy the enemy. The Lord said a signal would be given: "And let. it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself"—literally, then thou shalt be sharp, quick, eager; for a long time wondering if the sound has come, listening with the soul's ear, wanting to hear the sound. We should be in an attitude of attention when we cannot be in an attitude of fighting. Soldiers should always be on the strain—should always be earnest. So God signals to us from heaven. He signals to us through human events. He says, by this occurrence or by that, Now is the time to arise. If there is great discontent amongst the people, he says: You have an answer to that discontentment—speak it. If there is great mental doubt, difficulty, unrest, the Lord says to the Church: You could hush the tempest and bring in a great calm—not by argument, but by deeper consecration, by larger generosity, by tenderer love, by holier purity: work the miracle! May we have understanding of the times, and know when there is a sound in the tops of the mulberry trees, that we may not be working behind the event, or in front of it, but with it, having understanding hearts, and knowing what Israel ought to do.

Selected Notes

"King David made a league with them in Hebron" ( 2 Samuel 5:3).—Hebron is picturesquely situated in a narrow valley, surrounded by rocky hills. This, in all probability, is that "valley of Eshcol" whence the Jewish spies got the great bunch of grapes ( Numbers 13:23). Its sides are still clothed with luxuriant vineyards, and its grapes are considered the finest in Southern Palestine. Groves of gray olives, and some other fruit trees, give variety to the scene. The valley runs from north to south; and the main quarter of the town, surmounted by the lofty walls of the venerable Haram, lies partly on the eastern slope ( Genesis 37:14; comp. Genesis 23:19). The houses are all of stone, solidly built, flat-roofed, each having one or two small cupolas. The town has no walls, but the main streets opening on the principal roads have gates. In the bottom of the valley south of the town is a large tank, one hundred and thirty feet square, by fifty deep; the sides arc solidly built with hewn stones. At the northern end of the principal quarter is. another, measuring eighty-five feet long, by fifty-five broad. Both are of high antiquity; and one of them, probably the former, is that over which David hanged the murderers of Ish-bosheth ( 2 Samuel 4:12). About a mile from the town, up the valley, is one of the largest oak-trees in Palestine. It stands quite alone in the midst of the vineyards. It is twenty-three feet in girth, and its branches cover a space ninety feet in diameter. This, say some, is the very tree beneath which Abraham pitched his tent; but, however this may be, it still bears the name of the patriarch.

"Except thou take away the blind and the lame" ( 2 Samuel 5:6).—Jebus possessed a secret supply of water, which enabled its inhabitants to stand out a siege of any length, probably in the form of subterranean access to perennial springs. It was absolutely necessary to cut this off, in order to take the strong castle. This seems to be alluded to in a peculiar term employed by the Scriptural narrative: "David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the tsinnor and smiteth the Jebusites and the lame and the blind, that one hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain" ( 2 Samuel 5:8). Now what may be the meaning of this term tsinnor, which besides occurs only in Psalm 42:7. where it is translated "water-spouts"? It has been explained by such various conjectures as "precipice," "the cliff or portcullis which Joab climbed," "the ravine by which the stronghold was girt," "canals," "outlet for water," "trough," "water-pipes," or, according to The Speaker's Commentary, "the water-course, the only access to the citadel being where the water had worn a channel—some understand a subterranean channel." Dr. Kennicott, however, seems to have given the best and most acute explanation, rendering the passage thus: David said, "Whosoever smiteth the Jebusites, and through the subterranean passage reacheth the lame and blind." He adds: "Most interpreters agree in making the word signify something hollow, and in applying it to water, as we have in Josephus "subterranean cavities." Jebus was taken by stratagem. It seems to have been circumstanced like Rabatamana, in having also a subterranean passage." Strangely enough, in the excavations made during the year1867 , Captain Warren, near the top of this eastern ridge and about opposite the Fountain of the Virgin, discovered a rock-cut passage descending from the surface by a series of pits, stairways, galleries, leading from the surface down to the water-level, at a point about fifty feet inward from the Fountain. At another time he penetrated from the Fountain inward to the same point, the bottom of a shaft not far from forty feet in depth. This the Rev. Mr. Birch seizes upon as the long-lost tsinnor of Jebus. Somehow, he thinks, David learned how the Jebusites obtained their supply of water.. Evidently there was no chance of taking the stronghold by assaulting its walls. Would any one try the desperate expedient of first pushing through the horizontal water-channel, at the imminent risk of being drowned, then of scaling the upright shaft, where a single stone dropped from above would bring certain death, and afterward of penetrating into the fortress through the narrow passage, which two or three men might readily hold against a hundred? The plan seemed desperate; but, as there was no alternative, David issued a proclamation to his followers that whosoever first got up through the tsinnor—the name at that time of this subterranean rock-cut passage—and smote the Jebusites should be commander-in-chief.

Mr. Birch suggests that Joab never could have performed the feat of penetrating to Jebus through the tsinnor, much less through the difficult passage discovered by Captain Warren, without aid from within the town. In other words some confederate among the Jebusites must have helped Joab in what otherwise would have been really an impossible undertaking. Who, then, was this confederate and, really, traitor to his people? With whom did Joab, whose craft was even greater than his prowess, negotiate for the secret betrayal of the stronghold of Zion, and on whom depend for aid in ascending the pits? What was the bakhshîsh promised and given to the ally of the followers of David the king? He answers only by casting suspicion over a spotless name hitherto. Years after, near the close of David's reign, we find a Jebusite of rank, by name Araunah, still in possession of the threshingfloor just outside the city of David: possibly he may have been the traitor, and retained this valuable possession as his reward. Josephus says: "Araunah was not slain by David in the siege of Jerusalem because of the goodwill he bore the Hebrews and a particular benignity and affection which he had to the king himself." Had we a Jebusite account of the fall of the fortress, perhaps it might contain some story which would scarcely justify the noble and spotless character from a Jebusite standpoint we give him. Certain it 2 Samuel 5:10.

Greatness that comes by growth is the most permanent.—The proverb says some men have greatness thrust upon them; such greatness often falls off like an incubus, being wholly out of proportion to the man to whom it is momentarily attached.—"Went on,"—step by step, little by little, sometimes patently, sometimes imperceptibly, still to the eye that could see all vital processes the progress was continual and uninterrupted, and in one definite direction.—"Grew,"—did not force himself, acted in co-operation with the laws of nature and the laws of society; grew in knowledge, grew in wisdom, grew in capacity.—The result of such going on and such growing was greatness: not greatness in mere bulk, but greatness in the highest qualities,—greatness in mind, thought, feeling, purpose, beneficence.—When a man grows great physically, socially, and officially, and does not keep up a corresponding growth of intelligence and sympathy, he grows towards tyranny and selfishness; but when the official and the moral keep pace, then all the greatness achieved by the growing man is so much contributed to the welfare of society.—The reason of David's progress and growth is given, "the Lord God of hosts was with him."—It was, then, a religious greatness, and it was such greatness as God himself created and approved; God set the crown upon the head of this loftiness, and glorious was the man who was to be the king of Israel.—Glory that is not connected with the Lord God of hosts is a feeble flicker; it dies whilst it shines; it is merely superficial; it is not connected with the great fire-system of the universe.—The difference between a lighted candle and the sun at midday, is that the one is a continually decreasing quantity, going out by the very effort of shining, exhausting itself by giving itself away: but the sun in the heavens is as brilliant now as when he first shone upon the system which he rules.—The man who is religiously great has bread to eat which the world knoweth not of: he is not dependent upon circumstances for his progress and growth: he grows from the centre towards the circumference: he grows from the inward to the outward; he grows from lofty and tender spiritual conceptions towards broad and generous charities.—When God has resolved upon a man's greatness the world cannot hinder that man going straightforward to the throne.—He may be interrupted, he may be criticised, he may be violently opposed, he may be traduced; yea, all the army of darkness may set itself in array against him, but the Lord of hosts being upon his side, his enthronement and coronation are guaranteed.—What is true of all good men is true of all good causes; they have to undergo the whole process of scrutiny, suspicion, criticism; but just in proportion as they are good will they rise above all cloud and storm, and pass through every difficulty, and establish themselves in the confidence and gratitude of society.