Bible Commentaries
2 Samuel 1

Verse 18

THE SONG OF THE BOW

‘Also he bade them teach the children of Judah the use of the bow.’

2 Samuel 1:18

I. The Song of the Bow.—We never come to this Song of the Bow without being struck afresh with its beauty, its pathos, its lofty patriotism, its tender recollection of a dead friend, and, perhaps, best of all, its generous forgetfulness of all that is bad in a dead enemy. The news has just been brought to David that his archenemy Saul is dead; and David, anointed by God to be Saul’s successor, has been for seven years outcast. An outlaw in daily fear of his life, surrounded by a company of men desperate as he, and yet he has never lifted his hand against his enemy because he was God’s anointed. And now at last the end has come—David is free from persecution, he is free at last to take his long-appointed place as king. But when the truth is established he and his six hundred outlaws stand, with their clothes rent, mourning, and weeping, and fasting. Then at last David rouses himself to action, and he finds vent for his grief in two ways—first of all in the exaction of the life of the unhappy messenger, according to the fierce temper of those times; and then in that touching song of lamentation to which he gives the title ‘The Song of the Bow.’ You will remember, as David must have remembered as he sang it, how Jonathan in the days gone by gave to him his bow as a present, and how it was by the use of the bow, too, that Jonathan warned David to flee from the jealous anger of Saul, and so the first command of the new king was to order that the ‘Song of the Bow’ should be taught to all God’s people from henceforth to keep green the memory of Saul and his son.

II. The note of the song.—This is the beautiful note of the song. The excitement of action is over, and all suffer because their natural head is cut off, and the singer suffers because, beyond the sorrow at the death of his early benefactor and of his truly loved friend, he has only recollection now of the valour and splendour of the departed king. ‘Tell it not in Gath,’ etc. His heart is sorry, and he calls on nature to join him in his mourning. ‘Ye mountains of Gilboa,’ etc. Even the earth should feel with him, he thinks. In his passion of sorrow he calls upon the beautiful fertile country to go into mourning and never again to produce tempting harvests for sorrow, that nature should feel that the arms of the dead king can no longer give battle. But, if he is dead, still there is comfort in thinking of those brave men as he knew them—their love for one another, their faithful comradeship. As you read all this, in the light of the twentieth century, you think the praise of the king unnatural and stilted. At any rate, the words in which he commemorated his dead friend are beautiful indeed. Then comes that strongly generous reminder of how greatly Saul’s successful wars had benefited the nation—‘Ye daughters of Israel,’ etc. He praises Jonathan for his bravery and skill in war, and for his fidelity to his father, and the singer gives a tender thought to his love for himself—‘I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan.’ You cannot but see the beauty of the song; you cannot but feel that in their defeat and death Saul and Jonathan are happy.

III. The purpose of the song.—Yet this song is not religious poetry, it is not a psalm, it is not a hymn. The Name of God never once occurs in it; it is simply a battle-song. But God has put it in for a purpose, as He has put everything in the Bible. Nothing in this book refers only to the circumstances of the moment; all that is there is a teaching or a warning, a reproof or a blessing, for all time. And so here, underlying the sorrows of David, there are lessons for us in the twentieth century. One of them is that we must not usurp the prerogatives of God. It is God’s place to judge; it is ours only to remember the good of the departed, and to leave the rest to Him. Another lesson surely is that a pure, self-denying love is the greatest of all great blessings.

Illustrations

(1) ‘The poem seems to suggest some simple thoughts on genuine friendship. When a friend is taken from us, what are the things we should love to recall; what are the things we should grieve to recall? I believe one of the most grave thoughts for any of us is this—these who are my friends—if one of them were to die to-morrow could I answer the question, Has he helped me to be better, nobler, purer, more of a Christian, more of a man; was there anything in what passed between us which could smoothen and define the paths of life and ennoble them? The thought is simple and trite, and yet we scruple not to press it. Your friendship may have begun early in life; you hope it will continue to the end; it is the delight and pride of your life; but your friend is suddenly taken away. You stand beside his grave, literally as he is slowly lowered into it, or afterwards in the coldness of thought, and you ask yourself whether you can find anything which has ennobled your life, and whether what you gathered from him was worthy of the stately name of friendship. If not, if the bond was unholy or unprofitable, what shame, what grief is yours as you think of your departed friend.’

(2) ‘ “In Memoriam” calls us back to the wild and stormy times when the Hebrew race was emerging from the troubled and anarchical period of the era of the Judges, and was on the verge of the more settled and ordered stage of national life which begins with the reign of David. We seem as we turn to it to be leaving behind us all the broad, rich, harvest-fields of later and of Christian teaching, and to be mounting, as it were, to the misty highlands of the remote past, where every light is broken and uncertain, and every track may mislead or baffle. Yet those far-off times, even as those mountain scenes, have a colour, and a life, and a freshness of their own; and they remind us not only how all Scripture was written for our instruction, but of the links that bind together human hearts, alike in those far-off days that knew not Christ, and now in our own, near nineteen centuries since the Prince of Peace was born.’

“

Verse 26

CLOSER THAN A BROTHER.”

‘I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.’

2 Samuel 1:26

Two great qualities were combined in Jonathan, courage and faith. With such qualities, who could be more fit to succeed to the sceptre of Israel? And yet Jonathan waived all claim on behalf of the man whom he loved; he recognised in David qualities for rule greater than his own, and without a particle of envy he stood aside to make way for him. He had the true humility of soul which is content to take the lower place, and which is commended by our Lord in the Gospel.

I. The real friend will be like Jonathan, and true friendship is best described by the same words in which true charity is described.—True friendship envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not easily provoked, rejoiceth in the truth, and never faileth. In the world, with its sorrows and its sufferings, its trials and temptations, there is nothing more truly precious than a real friend, such a friend as Jonathan was to David and David to Jonathan.

II. There is one Friend who is ever near at hand if only we will seek Him.—In the Lord Jesus Christ are joined all the qualities of true friendship, He is a firm Friend, a constant Friend, a Friend that giveth good counsel, a Friend who has laid down His life on our behalf.

—Canon Rawnsley.

Illustrations

(1) ‘This poem owes much of its admirableness to the fact that it combines the passionate love of country and the true love of a friend. If ever a man was born for friendship it was David the king. Once and once only during his long eventful life did he find a man he could love with the multitudinous energy of his heart; and this man was the king’s son, the darling of the nation, the “beauty of the forest” they called him, as like a gazelle he bounded from crag to crag in the mountains or dashed through the thickest of the wood. The homage paid by the poet to the beauty and the strength and the glorious prowess of his friend must be supplemented by the homage we know that he paid to the noble generosity of his friend. Such was David’s In Memoriam to the one personal friend of his life. He delighted to think of his friend’s brilliancy, his strength, his courage; he was the champion of Israel, the protector of his countrymen against the natural enemy, and now the enemy was triumphant and the young hero was slain. The poem suggests some thoughts on friendship.’

(2) ‘There have been in our time—and let us be thankful for it—illustrious friendships, the fragrance of which still remains, and many of these there are still. In all such cases the bond has been a life with God. You must have known, you must still know such friendships. They are not ended on this side of the grave; for true Christian friendship we believe there is no death. “What shall this man do?”—askest thou for thy friend? He has worked for his Master here, and for every cause his Master loved while He was on earth and loves still, and now that the end cometh the friend of man and the friend of Christ is called to other work yet more beneficent.’

(3) ‘A time will come, and has indeed come to many of us, when death will lay his finger again and again on what to us seemed a charmed circle, and then there will be sad gaps in that circle. The time will come for many of us when all that made up our earthly joy will have faded away, and our home will become what the kindly-hearted poet has described: “I have had friends, I have had companions, in my days of childhood and in my schooldays. All are gone—the old familiar faces.” And then it will indeed be a dreary thing that the friendships of the past have left no remembrances on which our heart can dwell thankfully.’