Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
2 Samuel 14:30

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 2 Samuel 14:30. Go and set it on fire — This was strange conduct, but it had the desired effect. He had not used his influence to get Absalom to court; now he uses it, and succeeds.

ADDITIONAL observations on ver. 2 Samuel 14:26: -

"And at every year's end, he (Absalom) polled his head; and he weighed the hair at two hundred shekels."

The very learned Bochart has written a dissertation on this subject (vide Bocharti Opera, vol. iii., col. 883, edit. Lugd. 1692) in a letter to his friend M. Faukell. I shall give the substance in what follows.

There is nothing more likely than that corruptions in the Scripture numerals have taken place. Budaeus de Asse (lib. ii., p. 49 and 51, also lib. iii., p. 67 c.) complains loudly of this.

This might easily have happened, as in former times the numbers in the sacred writings appear to have been expressed by single letters. The letter ר resh stands for two hundred, and might in this place be easily mistaken for ד daleth which signifies four but this may be thought to be too little, as it would not amount to more than a quarter of a pound; yet, if the two hundred shekels be taken in the amount will be utterly incredible; for Josephus says, (Antiq. lib. vii., cap. 8), Σικλους διακοσιους, οὑτοι δε εισι πεντε μναι, i.e., "Two hundred shekels make five minae," and in lib. xiv., cap. 12. he says, Ἡ δε μνα παρ' ἡμιν ισχει λιτρας β' και ημισυ; "And a mina with us (i.e., the Jews) weighs two pounds and a half." This calculation makes Absalom's hair weigh twelve pounds and a half! Credat Judaeus Apella!

Indeed, the same person tells us that the hair of Absalom was so thick, c., ὡς μολις αυτην ἡμεραις αποκειρειν οκτω, "that eight days were scarcely sufficient to cut it off in! "This is rabbinism, with a witness.

Epiphanius, in his treatise De Ponderibus et Mensuris, casts much more light on this place, where he says, Σικλος ὁ λεγεται και κοδραντης τεταρτον μεν εστι της ουγκιας, ἡμισυ δε του στατηρος, δυο δραχμας εχων; "A shekel, (i.e., a common or king's shekel, equal to half a shekel of the sanctuary), which is called also a quarter, is the fourth part of an ounce, or half a stater; which is about two drachms." This computation seems very just, as the half-shekel, (i.e., of the sanctuary,) Exodus 30:13, which the Lord commanded the children of Israel to give as an offering for their souls, is expressly called in Matthew 17:24, το διδραχμον, "two drachms:" and our Lord wrought a miracle to pay this, which the Romans then exacted by way of tribute: and Peter took out of the fish's mouth a stater, which contained exactly four drachms or one shekel, (of the sanctuary), the tribute money for our Lord and himself.

The king's shekel was about the fourth part of an ounce, according to what Epiphanius says above; and Hesychius says the same: Δυναται δε ὁ σικλος δυο δραχμας Αττικας; "A shekel is equal to, or worth, two Attic drachms." The whole amount, therefore, of the two hundred shekels is about fifty ounces, which make four pounds two ounces, Troy weight, or three pounds two ounces, Avoirdupois. This need not, says my learned author, be accounted incredible, especially as abundance of oil and ointments were used by the ancients in dressing their heads; as is evident, not only from many places in the Greek and Roman writers, but also from several places in the sacred writings. See Psalms 23:5; Ecclesiastes 9:8; Matthew 6:17.

Josephus also informs us that the Jews not only used ointments, but that they put gold dust in their hair, that it might flame in the sun; and this they might do in considerable quantities, as gold was so plentiful among them. I must own I have known an instance that makes much for Bochart's argument: an officer, who had upwards of two pounds of powder and ointments put on his head daily, whose hair did not weigh a fourth part of that weight. And Absalom, being exceedingly vain, might be supposed to make a very extensive use of these things. There are some, however, who endeavour to solve the difficulty by understanding שקל shakal to mean rather the value than the weight.

Bochart concludes this elaborate dissertation, in which he appears to have ransacked all the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman authors for proofs of his opinion, by exhorting his friend in these words of Horace: -

_____ Si quid novisti rectius istis,

Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.

To me the above is quite unsatisfactory; and, with due deference to so great a character, I think I have found out something better.

I believe the text is not here in its original form; and that a mistake has crept into the numeral letters. I imagine that ל lamed, THIRTY, was first written; which, in process of time, became changed for ר resh, TWO HUNDRED, which might easily have happened from the similarity of the letters. But if this be supposed to be too little, (which I think it is not), being only seven ounces and a half in the course of a year; let it be observed that the sacred text does not limit it to that quantity of time, for מקץ ימים לימים mikkets yamim laiyamim signifies literally, "From the end of days to days;" which Jonathan properly renders, מזמן עדן לעדן mizzeman iddan leiddan, "at proper or convenient times," viz., when it grew too long or weighty, which it might be several times in the year. Besides, this was not all his hair; for his head was not shaved but polled, i.e., the redundancy cut off.

But how was it probable that these two numerals should be interchanged? Thus; if the upper stroke of the ל lamed were but a little impaired, as it frequently is both in MSS. and printed books, it might be very easily taken for ר resh, and the remains of the upper part of the lamed might be mistaken for the stroke over the ר, which makes it the character of two hundred.

But how could מאתים mathayim, two hundred, in the text, be put in the place of שלשים sheloshim, thirty? Very easily, when the numbers became expressed by words at length instead of numeral letters.

The common reading of the text appears to me irreconcilable with truth; and I humbly hope that what I have offered above solves every difficulty, and fully accounts for all that the sacred historian speaks of this vain-comely lad.

Ver. 2 Samuel 14:27. "Absalom had a daughter, whose name was Tamar."

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

David’s family troubles begin (13:1-14:33)

The first of the foretold disgraces that fell on David’s family followed the same pattern as David’s own sin: sexual immorality followed by murder, with the murderer carefully plotting how to get rid of his victim.
Amnon, David’s eldest son, tried to seduce his half-sister Tamar, but when Tamar resisted him he raped her (13:1-14). Cruelly, Amnon then drove Tamar away, and the young princess cried bitterly at the loss of her virginity in such circumstances (15-19). David knew what had happened but did nothing. Tamar’s brother Absalom also knew, and waited for an opportunity to take revenge on behalf of his sister (20-22).
After two years Absalom got the opportunity he was looking for and had Amnon murdered (23-29). While news of the murder was sent to David (30-33), Absalom fled to the safety of his mother’s family in Geshur (34-39; cf. 3:2-3). David had now lost two sons - an adulterer who was dead and a murderer who was in exile.
Joab apparently wanted to see some stability restored to the royal household, with one man firmly recognized as heir to the throne. That man, in Joab’s opinion, was Absalom. David made no attempt to bring Absalom back from exile, because this would require him to sentence him to death for murder. Joab therefore laid a plan that would enable the king to bring Absalom back safely (14:1-3). He used a woman to win from the king a judgment that in certain circumstances it was not wrong to show mercy to a murderer (4-11). The woman then used this principle to show that David should allow Absalom to return (12-17).
Although David realized that he had been tricked by Joab into making this judgment (18-20), he stuck to his decision and allowed Absalom to return. However, he did not allow Absalom to enter the royal court. In this way he showed firstly that he had not forgiven his son, and secondly that he did not consider Absalom a suitable person to succeed him as king (21-24).
Whatever David’s opinion of Absalom might have been, the people in general were impressed by his handsome appearance (25-27). He was also ambitious and was becoming impatient for power. He had spent three years in exile (see 13:38) and another two years back in Jerusalem, yet he had still not been accepted by the king (28). He decided he would wait no longer. When Joab showed an unwillingness to give him further help, he persuaded Joab to take notice of him by burning Joab’s fields. Without delay Joab arranged for him to meet the king, with the result that he received the king’s pardon. His fierce ambition had at last brought him back into the royal court (29-33).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

ABSALOM AND DAVID WERE FINALLY RECONCILED

"So Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem, without coming into the king's presence. Then Absalom sent for Joab, to send him to the king; but Joab would not come to him. And he sent a second time, but Joab would not come. Then he said to his servants, "See, Joab's field is next to mine, and he has barley there; go and set it on fire." So Absalom's servants set the field on fire. Then Joab arose and went to Absalom at his house, and said to him, "Why have your servants set my field on fire"? Absalom answered Joab, "Behold, I sent word to you, `Come here, that I may send you to the king, to ask, "Why have I come from Geshur? It would be better for me to be there still." Now therefore let me go into the presence of the king; and if there is guilt in me, let him kill me.'" Then Joab went to the king and told him; and he summoned Absalom. So he came to the king, and bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king; and the king kissed Absalom."

The two-year confinement in his own house had been very effective, because even Joab was afraid to call on Absalom, but it galled the impatient Absalom. As long as he was prohibited from seeing the king's face, people would shun him, avoid him, and refuse to have anything to do with him. Absalom decided that he would rather die than to continue to live in that circumstance. He very properly concluded that the king would not have the guts to do his duty and execute him, as God had commanded. And, sure enough, the king restored him to his full position of trust and honor, as indicated by the king's kissing him. This was a shameful act on David's part!

As Matthew Henry noted:

"Three years in Geshur and two years in Jerusalem Absalom had been an exile from the presence of the king; yet his spirit was not humbled, his pride was not diminished. He was not grateful that his life had been spared, but only angry and frustrated that his honored place at court had not been restored. He pretended to love his father the king and to desire the privilege of again coming into his presence; but his pretensions were a base lie. He only wanted his honors restored in order to promote his campaign to replace his father as king of Israel."Matthew Henry's Commentary, p. 518.

"If there is guilt in me, let him kill me" How could Absalom have believed that there was no guilt in himself? His cold-blooded premeditated murder of Amnon cried out to God for punishment, but Absalom admitted no crime, accepted no feeling of shame or guilt for himself and had the audacious arrogance to present himself to David as one worthy of his full confidence and trust. From the human aspect of it, David was a fool to have trusted him.

"And the king kissed Absalom" "It must have been a kiss of treachery on the part of Absalom. He never intended to keep the peace with his father."The Interpreter's Bible, op. cit., p. 1121. This in another important particular in which David stands in the O.T. as a type of that Holy One, Jesus Christ himself, who was also betrayed by a kiss.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 14

So Joab realizing that David is proud and stubborn and really wants to see his son, but won't make the first move, got hold of a widow woman in Tekoah, and he said to her, Now you go and tell David this story. [Tell him that you had, tell him you had two sons, and they got in a fight, you're a widow, and your two sons got in a fight. And they were out in a field, and there was no one around to separate them, and one of your sons hit the other and killed him. Now the rest of the family is wanting to put your one son to death. But if he dies then you don't have anybody, there's no descendants, there's no one to carry on the family name, and it's just the end. And so tell them that they are not to take revenge against my one son.] So this woman came to David, and she told the story, My two boys they were out in the field fighting, and they were really going at it, no one to separate them, and the one killed the other, and now the avengers of blood are trying to kill the one son. But if he's gone I won't have anybody, I'll be left. [And so forth] And David said, Your son will be pardoned, he's forgiven. And so she said to him, Well why should it be to me, and not to my master's house ( 2 Samuel 14:1-9 )?

She brought the fact, the fact to David that much the same thing had happened, if he would forgive her son the avengers of blood because of the murder, then why wouldn't he forgive his own son, and bring him back. David realized he had been caught up in the same kind of a thing that Nathan caught him in, tell the story, and give a judgment. David's quite a guy; he sticks by his judgments.

So he said, one thing before you go, I want to ask you this, and I want you to tell me straight, is Joab behind this? And she said, O surely you have the knowledge of an angel no one can hide anything from you, yes Joab is behind it. And so Joab sent for Absalom to come back, but David refused to see him. He can go back to his house, but David still ( 2Sa 14:19-20 , 2 Samuel 14:23-24 ),

This pride thing and all, isn't it stupid this pride of ours? The thing we really want to do we won't do because we just, you know, we want to stop the fight, we don't want to go on. "But I'm not gonna say I'm sorry first! She's got to say it before I'm gonna say it!" I'm really miserable, and I really don't like this going on, and I really want it to be all over, but "I'm not gonna say it first, no way! She's got to come to me!" We do these stupid things, because of our stupid pride. We allow things to go on and simmer; we allow things to go on in turmoil just because of our own stupid pride!

So Absalom isn't the kind that you can just ignore, and he wanted Joab to come over, and to set up a meeting with his dad. But Joab wouldn't even come to see him. He sent several messages to Joab to come, and Joab refused to come. So he said to his servants, "Well, these barley fields are getting pretty dry, go over and set them on fire." So his servants set Joab's field on fire, and Joab came storming over, "What's the big idea your servants burning my field?"

He said, "Well I wanted to see you, I told you several times, you never would answer. So here you are."

And so he told Joab, I want you to make arrangements for me to see my father. And so Joab came, made the arrangements, and David saw Absalom ( 2 Samuel 14:32-33 ).

There was the forgiveness the weeping, the rekindling of love and so forth. Except that Absalom began at that point to conspire against his own father. "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Absalom’s return to Jerusalem 14:21-33

Joab’s masquerade proved effective. David agreed to allow Absalom to return to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 14:21). However, even though he did not execute him, neither did David restore Absalom to fellowship with himself (2 Samuel 14:24). His forgiveness was official but not personal. This led to more trouble. Thankfully God both forgives us and restores us to fellowship with Himself.

2 Samuel 14:25-27 give information about Absalom that helps us understand why he was able to win the hearts of the people. He was not only handsome but also a family man.

"A strong growth of hair was a sign of great manly power . . ." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, p. 411.]

"What Absalom proudly considers his finest attribute will prove to be the vehicle of his ultimate downfall (cf. 2 Samuel 18:9-15)." [Note: Youngblood, p. 985.]

How often this proves to be true. Two hundred shekels (2 Samuel 14:26) equal five pounds in weight. Absalom was attractive physically, but not correspondingly attractive to God spiritually, because he put his own ambitions before God’s plans. In these respects he was similar to Saul.

Absalom then lived in Jerusalem for two years, about 982-980 B.C. (2 Samuel 14:28; cf. 2 Samuel 13:38). During these years he resented David’s treatment of him. He regarded himself as a prisoner in Jerusalem. He was willing to suffer death for his murder of Amnon or to receive a true pardon, but the present compromise was unbearable (2 Samuel 14:32). When Absalom pressed for a personal reconciliation with his father, David finally conceded (2 Samuel 14:33), which David should have done at least two years earlier.

I believe David handled Absalom as he did partly because David’s conscience bothered him; he himself had sinned greatly. This seems clear from 2 Samuel 14:1-20. David’s approach offended Absalom and contributed to his desire to seize the throne from his father.

The entire chapter is the story of a father and king caught between his responsibilities to be both just and merciful. Every parent and leader eventually finds himself or herself in David’s position. God Himself had to find a solution to this dual responsibility. The chapter deals with how to discipline. David’s solution was to compromise. He tried to punish Absalom by keeping him in exile but not executing him. Then he allowed him to return to Jerusalem but not to have fellowship with himself. Both of these compromises failed and only made the relationship worse. God’s solution is to be merciful, to forgive and welcome back warmly and quickly (cf. 2 Samuel 12:13; Matthew 6:12; Matthew 6:14-15; Luke 15:11-24). Perhaps David was reluctant to pardon Absalom because his son did not repent. At least the text says nothing about his doing so. Nevertheless, David’s lack of true forgiveness bred a bitter attitude in Absalom that resulted in his organizing a coup to overthrow his father (ch. 15). The law demands justice, but "mercy triumphs over justice" (James 2:13). A police officer who pulls you over for speeding can give you justice (a citation) or mercy (a warning). A murderer on death row can receive justice (execution) or mercy (a governor’s pardon). The offender’s attitude plays a part in the decision in every case, but ultimately the choice belongs to the person in power. A godly person will plan ways so the estranged may come back into fellowship (2 Samuel 14:14).

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Therefore he said unto his servants,.... That did his business for him in the field, in keeping his flocks, and tilling his ground:

see Joab's field is near mine: for great personages in those days attended to husbandry:

and he hath barley there, go and set it on fire; it being ripe, and so capable of being fired, and therefore must be some time in March or April, when barley harvest began; he served Joab as Samson did the Philistines, Judges 15:4; which shows him to be a bold, and revengeful, and ungrateful man, to use his friend, and the general of the king's army, after this manner:

and Absalom's servants set the field on fire; as their master had bid them, and which is no wonder; for as they murdered Ammon at his command, they would not stop at burning Joab's field, when he bid them do it; see 2 Samuel 13:28.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      28 So Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem, and saw not the king's face.   29 Therefore Absalom sent for Joab, to have sent him to the king; but he would not come to him: and when he sent again the second time, he would not come.   30 Therefore he said unto his servants, See, Joab's field is near mine, and he hath barley there; go and set it on fire. And Absalom's servants set the field on fire.   31 Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said unto him, Wherefore have thy servants set my field on fire?   32 And Absalom answered Joab, Behold, I sent unto thee, saying, Come hither, that I may send thee to the king, to say, Wherefore am I come from Geshur? it had been good for me to have been there still: now therefore let me see the king's face; and if there be any iniquity in me, let him kill me.   33 So Joab came to the king, and told him: and when he had called for Absalom, he came to the king, and bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king: and the king kissed Absalom.

      Three years Absalom had been an exile from his father-in-law, and now two years a prisoner at large in his own house, and, in both, better dealt with than he deserved; yet his spirit was still unhumbled, his pride unmortified, and, instead of being thankful that his life is spared, he thinks himself sorely wronged that he is not restored to all his places at court. Had he truly repented of his sin, his distance from the gaieties of the court, and his solitude and retirement in his own house, especially being in Jerusalem the holy city, would have been very agreeable to him. If a murderer must live, yet let him be for ever a recluse. But Absalom could not bear this just and gentle mortification. He longed to see the king's face, pretending it was because he loved him, but really because he wanted an opportunity to supplant him. He cannot do his father a mischief till he is reconciled to him; this therefore is the first branch of his plot; this snake cannot sting again till he be warmed in his father's bosom. He gained this point, not by pretended submissions and promises of reformation, but (would you think it?) by insults and injuries. 1. By his insolent carriage towards Joab, he brought him to mediate for him. Once and again he sent to Joab to come and speak with him, for he durst not go to him; but Joab would not come (2 Samuel 14:29; 2 Samuel 14:29), probably because Absalom had not owned the kindness he had done him in bringing him to Jerusalem so gratefully as he thought he should have done; proud men take every service done them for a debt. One would think that a person in Absalom's circumstances should have sent to Joab a kindly message, and offered him a large gratuity: courtiers expect noble presents. But, instead of this, he bids his servants set Joab's corn-fields on fire (2 Samuel 14:30; 2 Samuel 14:30), as spiteful a thing as he could do. Samson could not think of a greater injury to do the Philistines than this. Strange that Absalom should think, by doing Joab a mischief, to prevail with him to do him a kindness, or to recommend himself to the favour of his prince or people by showing himself so very malicious and ill-natured, and such an enemy to the public good, for the fire might spread to the corn of others. Yet by this means he brings Joab to him, 2 Samuel 14:31; 2 Samuel 14:31. Thus God, by afflictions, brings those to him that kept at a distance from him. Absalom was obliged by the law to make restitution (Exodus 22:6), yet we do not find either that he offered it or that Joab demanded it. Joab (it might be) thought he could not justify his refusal to go and speak with him; and therefore Absalom thought he could justify his taking this way to fetch him. And now Joab (perhaps frightened at the surprising boldness and fury of Absalom, and apprehensive that he had made an interest in the people strong enough to bear him out in doing the most daring things, else he would never have done this) not only puts up with this injury, but goes on his errand to the king. See what some men can do by threats, and carrying things with a high hand. 2. By his insolent message (for I can call it no better) to the king, he recovered his place at court, to see the king's face, that is, to become a privy counsellor, Esther 1:14. (1.) His message was haughty and imperious, and very unbecoming either a son or a subject, 2 Samuel 14:32; 2 Samuel 14:32. He undervalued the favour that had been shown him in recalling him from banishment, and restoring him to his own house, and that in Jerusalem: Wherefore have I come from Geshur? He denies his own crimes, though most notorious, and will not own that there was any iniquity in him, insinuating that therefore he had been wronged in the rebuke he had been under. He defies the king's justice: "Let him kill me, if he can find in his heart," knowing he loved him too well to do it. (2.) Yet with this message he carried his point, 2 Samuel 14:33; 2 Samuel 14:33. David's strong affection for him construed all this to be the language of a great respect to his father, and an earnest desire of his favour, when alas! it was far otherwise. See how easily wise and good men may be imposed upon by their own children that design ill, especially when they are blindly fond of them. Absalom, by the posture of his body, testified his submission to his father: He bowed himself on his face to the ground; and David, with a kiss, sealed his pardon. Did the bowels of a father prevail to reconcile him to an impenitent son, and shall penitent sinners question the compassion of him who is the Father of mercy? If Ephraim bemoan himself, God soon bemoans him, with all the kind expressions of a fatherly tenderness: He is a dear son, a pleasant child,Jeremiah 31:20.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

Why Do Bad Things Happen? (The Barley-Field on Fire) April 3, 1864 by

C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

“Absalom sent for Joab in order to send him to the king, but Joab refused to come to him. So he sent a second time, but he refused to come. Then he said to his servants, "Look, Joab's field is next to mine, and he has barley there. Go and set it on fire." So Absalom's servants set the field on fire. Then Joab did go to Absalom's house and he said to him, "Why have your servants set my field on fire?" [2 Samuel 14:29-31 ]

I trust that you remember the historical narrative. Absalom had fled from Jerusalem fearing David’s anger, and in time he was permitted to return, but he was not admitted into the presence of the king. Sincerely desiring to be restored to his former posts of honor and favor, he begged Joab to come to him, intending to ask him to act as mediator. Joab, having lost much of his fondness for the young prince, refused to come; and, though he was sent for repeatedly, he refused to submit to Absalom’s desire. Absalom therefore thought of a most wicked, but most effective plan of bringing Joab into his presence. He commanded his servants to set Joab’s field of barley on fire. This made Joab very angry and caused him to go to Absalom to ask the question, “Why have your servants set my field on fire?” This was all that Absalom wanted; he wanted an interview with Joab, and he was not scrupulous as to the method by which he obtained it. The burning of the barley-field brought Joab into his presence, and Absalom’s ends were accomplished.

Ignoring the sin of the deed, we have here a picture of what is often done by our gracious God in His wisest and best plan. He often sends for us, not for his benefit, but for ours; he wants us to come near to him and receive a blessing from his hands, but we are foolish, and cold-hearted, and wicked, and we will not come. Knowing that we will not come by any other means, He sends a serious trial-he sets our barley-field on fire, which he has a right to do, seeing that our barley-fields are far more his than they are ours. In Absalom’s case it was wrong: in God’s case he has a right to do what he pleases with his own. He takes away from us our most choice pleasures, on which we have set our heart, and then we ask him, “Why do you contend with me? Why am I struck with your rod? What have I done to provoke you to anger?” And thus we are brought into the presence of God, and we receive blessings of infinitely more value than those temporary mercies which the Lord had taken from us. You will see, then, how I intend to use my text this morning.

As the pastor of this large Church, I am constantly brought into contact with all sorts of human sorrow. Frequently it is poverty-poverty which is not brought on by laziness or wickedness-but real poverty, and a most distressing and afflicting poverty too, because it visits those who have valiantly fought the battle of life, and have struggled hard for years, and yet in their old age scarcely know where the next meal will come from, and are trusting in the promise, “Your bread will be given to you, and your water will be sure.” Members of our church come to me, sometimes as fast as they came to Job, bearing sad tidings concerning their lives. One says, “Sir, I ask for your prayers for me; God has been pleased to take away my wife with a stroke; she now lies in the cold grave.” Another cries, “O sir, my wife is very sick, and the physician says that there is very little hope: pray for her, that she may be strengthened in the hour of her death, and for me, that I may be enabled to praise the Master’s wisdom.” Then comes another, “My son is very sick; he is to undergo a painful operation; pray that the surgeon’s knife may not cause my son’s death, but that he may be enabled to bear up under it.” And when I have sympathized with all these sad situations, more suffering brothers and sisters will be waiting at the door. How few families experience life without severe trials: hardly a person escapes for any period of time without tribulation. With an impartial hand sorrow knocks at the door of the palace and the cottage. Why does all of this happen? The Lord, we know, “Does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men” without reason. Yet we wonder why he uses so many frowning servants, and so often sends out his usher of the black rod? Why is this? Perhaps I may be able to give an answer to this very important question, and it may be that I can be as helpful to the afflicted as the jailer was to Paul and Silas, when he washed their wounds.

I will use my text, first of all, in reference to believers; and then, with regard to the unconverted. O for help from above!

I. First of all, brothers and sisters, let us apply the text WITH REFERENCE TO BELIEVERS IN CHRIST.

My beloved brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, we cannot expect to avoid suffering. If other men’s barley-fields are not burned, ours will be. If the Father uses the rod nowhere else, he will surely make his true children feel the sting of it. As Paul said, and as our hymns declare it:

“Illegitimate children may escape the rod, Sunk in earthly vain delight, But the true-born child of God Must not--would not if he might.”

Your Savior has left you a double legacy, He said, “In this world you will have trouble, but in me you will have peace.” You enjoy peace: you must not expect that you will escape without the privilege of the trouble. All wheat must be threshed: and God’s threshing-floor witnesses to the weight of the beating as much as any other. Gold must be tested in the fire: and truly the Lord has a fire in Zion and his furnace in Jerusalem.

But you, beloved, have four very special comforts in all your trouble.

Christ was made a curse for us, and we call his cross the accursed tree, but truly since Jesus hung on it, it is most blessed; and I may now say concerning the cross of affliction, “Blessed is every man who is hung on this tree.” The cross may be very heavy, especially while it is green, and our shoulders unused to carrying it; but remember, though there may be a ton of sorrow in it, there is not a single ounce of the curse in it. God never punishes his children in the sense of avenging justice: he chastens as a father does his child, but he never punishes his redeemed as a judge does a criminal. It would be unjust to exact punishment from redeemed souls since Christ has been punished in their place. How can the Lord punish twice for one offense? If Christ took my sins and stood as my substitute, then there is no wrath of God for me; and though my cup may be bitter, yet there cannot be a single drop of Almighty wrath in it. I may have to feel the sting, but it will never be beneath the avenger’s rod of justice, but under the Parent’s rod of wisdom. O Christian, how sweet this ought to be to you! There was a time when you were under conviction of sin, when you thought you would rot in a dungeon or burn at the stake most cheerfully, if you could only get rid of the sense of God’s wrath; and will you now become impatient? The wrath of God is the thunderbolt which torments the soul; and now that you are delivered from that tremendous peril, you must not be overwhelmed with the few showers and storms which Providence sends to you. A God of love inflicts our sorrows: he is as good when he chastens as when he caresses: there is no more wrath in his afflicting providences than in his abundant blessings. God may seem unkind to unbelief, but faith can always see love in his heart. Oh! what a mercy that Sinai has ceased to thunder! Lord, let Jesus say what he will so long as Moses is quieted forever. Strike, Lord, if you will, now that you have heard the Savior’s plea and justified our souls.

2. Secondly, we have another ground of comfort, namely, that your troubles are all allocated to you by divine wisdom and love.

As for their number, if God appoints that you have ten trials then there can never be eleven. As for the weight of your troubles, he who weighs the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance is careful to measure your troubles, and you will not have an ounce more than his infinite wisdom sees fit. It may seem that the devil has been turned loose on you, but remember he is always a chained enemy. There is a tether to every trouble, and it can never stray beyond that tether. Nebuchadnezzar may heat the furnace seven times hotter than usual, but God’s thermometer measures the exact degree of heat, and the flame cannot rage beyond that, even though a thousand Nebuchadnezzurs would command, with all their breath and fury, that the flames be made hotter. Consider everything that you have to suffer as the appointment of divine wisdom, ruled by love, and you will rejoice in all your tribulation, knowing that it will reveal to you the loving-kindness and wisdom of your God.

3. You have a third comfort, namely, that under your cross you have many special comforts that are refreshing tonics which God gives to sick saints which he never puts to the lips of those who are in health.

Dark caverns don’t keep back the miners, if they know that diamonds are to be found there: you needn’t fear suffering when you remember what riches it yields to your soul. There is no hearing the nightingale without night, and there are some promises which only sing to us in trouble. It is in the cellar of affliction that the good old wine of the kingdom is stored. You will never see Christ’s face so clearly as when all others turn their backs on you. When you become confused in your suffering that human wisdom is at a loss to explain, then will you see God’s wisdom manifest and clear. Oh! the love-visits which Christ pays to his people when they are in the prison of their trouble! Then he lays bare his very heart to them, and comforts them as a mother does her child. Those who have made Jesus their bed enjoy sweet sleep. Suffering saints are generally the most flourishing saints, and well they may be, for they are in the special care of Jesus. If you want to find a man whose lips drop with pearls, look for one who has been in the deep waters.

We seldom learn much except what is beaten into us by the rod in Christ’s school house under Madam Trouble. God’s vines owe more to the pruning-knife than to any other tool in the garden; extra shoots are sad spoilers of the vines. But even while we carry it, the cross brings comfort for the present; it is a dear, dear cross, completely draped with roses and dripping with sweet smelling myrrh. Rutherford at times seemed to doubt which he loved best, Christ or his cross; but then, good man, he only loved the cross for his Lord’s sake. Humble souls count it a great honor to be thought worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake. If heaven is ever opened at all to the gaze of mortals, the vision is granted only to those who dwell in the Patmos of need and trouble. Furnace-joys glow quite as warmly as furnace-flames. Sweet are the uses of adversity and sweet are its accompaniments when the Lord is with his people.

“‘Mid the gloom, the vivid lightnings With increasing brightness play; ‘Mid the thorns grow lovely flowers Looking so beautiful and gay.

But this is the point to which my text brings me, and everything I have already said is going astray from it, you have this comfort:

That your trials work for your eternal good by bringing you nearer and nearer to your God.

This point we will illustrate by the narrative before us. My dear friends in Christ Jesus, our heavenly Father often sends for us and we will not come.

He sends for us to exercise a more simple faith in him.

We have believed, and by faith we have passed from death to life, but our faith sometimes staggers; we have not yet attained Abraham’s confidence in God; we do not leave our worldly cares with him, but like Martha, we hinder ourselves with our many acts of service. We have the faith to hold onto little promises, but often we are afraid to open our mouths wide even though God has promised to fill them. He therefore calls to us, “Come, my child, come and trust me. The veil is removed; enter into my presence, and boldly approach the throne of my grace. I am worthy of your fullest confidence, cast all your cares on me. Come into the sunlight and clearly read your deed to heaven. Shake off the dust of your cares and put on your beautiful garment of faith.” But, sadly! though we are called with words of love to be blessed by this comforting grace, we will not come.

At other times he calls us to closer communion with himself.

We have been sitting on the doorstep of God’s house, and he commands us to come into the banqueting hall and eat with him, but we decline the honor. He has admitted us into the inner rooms, but there are secret rooms not yet opened to us; he invites us to enter them, but we hold back. Jesus longs to have close communion with his people. It is a joy for a Christian to be with Christ, but it is also a joy for Jesus to be with his people, for it is written, that he “delights in mankind.” [Proverbs 8:31 ]. Now, one would think that all Christ had to do was to merely summon us with his finger and say to us, “Come near, and commune with me,” and we would fly, as if we had wings on our feet; but, instead, we cling to the dust of this world-we are too busy, we have too many cares, and we forget to come, though it is our beloved’s voice which calls us to himself.

Frequently the call is to more fervent prayer.

Don’t you feel in yourself, at certain times, an earnest longing for private prayer? You have felt as if you could not rest until you have drawn near to God and told him all your needs; and yet, maybe, you have quenched the Spirit in that respect, and still have continued without drawing near to God. Every day the Lord commands his people to come to him and ask whatever they want, and it will be given to them. He is a benevolent God, who sits on the mercy-seat, and he delights to give to his people the greatest desires of their hearts; and yet, shame on us, we live without exercising this power of prayer, and we miss the fullness of his blessing which would come out of that abundance of grace-prevailing prayer with God. Oh, brothers and sisters! Most of us are truly guilty of this. The Master calls for us to come to him and pray, and we will not come.

In addition he often calls us to a higher state of holiness.

From this pulpit I have labored to stir you up to nobler attainments; I have pleaded with you to no longer be satisfied with your nominal attainments, but to press forward to things more sublime and heavenly. Haven’t I cried to you, beloved, and commanded you to forget the steps you have already taken and focus on the glorious path ahead of you.

I am persuaded there are Christians living lives of holiness well beyond that of ordinary Christians, just as ordinary Christians lives are beyond the lives of the wicked. There are heights which ordinary eyes have never seen, much less scaled, Oh! there are nests among the stars where God’s own saints dwell, and still many of us are content to go creeping along like worms in the dust:

“Oh that we would have grace to cling to the clouds and climb into the pure blue sky of fellowship with Christ! We do not serve God as we should. We are cold as ice when we should be like molten metal burning our way through all opposition. We are like the barren Sahara desert when we should be blooming like the garden of the Lord. We give to God pennies when he deserves dollars, no, rather he deserves our heart’s blood to be coined in the service of his Church and of his truth. Oh! we are nothing but poor lovers of our sweet Lord Jesus, not fit to be his servants, much less to be his bride. If he had put us in the kitchen to be servants, I fear we would be barely fit for the service, and yet be has exalted us to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, married to him by a glorious marriage covenant. O, brothers and sisters, God often calls us to higher degrees of holiness, and yet we will not come.

Now, why is it that we permit our Lord to send for us so often, without going to him? Let your own heart give the reason in a humble confession of your offenses. O my brothers and sisters, we never thought we could have been as bad as we are. If an angel had told us that we would be so indifferent towards Christ we would have said, as Hazael did to Elisha, “How could your servant, a mere dog, accomplish such a feat?” If any of us could have seen our own history written out by a prophet’s pen, we would have said “No, it can’t be; if Christ forgives me I must love him; if he is pleased to make me his own brother or sister, I must serve him; if I am the recipient of such splendid mercies I must do something commensurate with his gift.” And yet, up till now, we have been ungrateful, unbelieving, and even have refused to listen to his call, or come at his command. He has said, “Seek my face;” and our heart did not respond with, “Lord, I will seek your face.” Because of all this, because we will not listen to the gentle call of God, there comes trouble, just as there came the burning of the barley-field of Joab, because he would not come when the young prince called him.

Trouble comes in all sorts of shapes. It matters little what form it comes in, as long as it answers the purpose of making us obey the divine calling.

This is God’s medicine; and when God’s children take it, they should not think it is sent to kill them, but rather to heal them. A lot of the medicine which the physician gives out makes the person feel even more ill for a while: he is worse with it than he would have been without it; but if he is a smart physician, he knows that this is the consequence of the medicine, and thus he is not at all alarmed by the pain of his patient, for he expects that all of this will work for good, and seek out, as it were, the original disease. When the Lord sends us painful sickness, it will, for a while perhaps make our former spiritual illnesses grow worse, for sickness often causes impatience and murmuring against God, but in due time our proud spirits will be broken, and we will cry out for mercy. Just like a metal file removes rust, so does sickness frequently remove our deadness of heart. The diamond undergoes many cuttings, which causes its value to increase: and so it is with the believer under the loving discipline of God. I have heard it said of many ministers that they preach best after a time of sickness, and their preaching was so much improved that their congregations have hardly regretted all the pains their minister had suffered when they have discovered how good and full of substance his sermons have been. My brothers and sisters, if you will not come to God on your own, then he will send to you a sick bed that you may be carried on it to him. If you will not come running, he will make you come limping. If you will not come when your eyes are bright and your body is full of health, he will make you come when your eyes are dull and heavy, and your body is sickly and sad. But you will come, and if not by other means, sickness will be the black chariot in which you will ride.

Losses, too, are frequently the means God uses to bring home his wandering sheep; like fierce dogs they use fear to move the wanderers back to the shepherd.

One cannot tame a lion if they are too well fed; they must be brought down from their great strength, and their stomachs must be a bit hungry, and then they will submit to the tamer’s hand; and we have often seen that the Christian is made obedient to his Lord’s will by the loss of some of their wealth and easy living. When rich and prosperous, some who profess to be Christians become proud and begin to boast. Like David, they boast, “My mountain stands firm; it will never be moved.” When the Christian is wealthy, has a good reputation, has good health, and a happy family, he too often admits Mr. Carnal Security to feast at his table. If he is a true child of God, there is a rod being prepared for him. Wait awhile, and it may be that you will see his life melt away like a dream. There goes a portion of his estate-how soon the acres change hands. There goes a part of his business-no profits will ever come to him again from that area. A sudden unexpected loss occurs-a customer refuses to pay their debts to him: Oh, how fast his losses come, where will they end? Now as these embarrassments and frustrations come in one after another, he begins to be distressed about them, and goes to his God. Oh! blessed waves, that wash the man on the rock of salvation! Oh! blessed cords, though they may cut the flesh, they draw us to Jesus. Losses in business are often sanctified to enrich our souls. If you will not come to the Lord in your days of wealth, you will come to him in your days of poverty. If God, in his grace, finds no other ways of making you honor him among men, if you cannot honor him on the pinnacle of riches, he will bring you down to the valley of poverty.

Bereavements, too-Oh! what sharp cuts of the rod we get with these, my brothers and sisters!

We know how the Lord sanctifies these to the bringing of his people near to himself. How glad we would be to remember that Christ himself once suffered bereavements as we have. Tacitus, the Roman Historian from the 1st century, tells us, that an amber ring was thought to be of no value among the Romans until the emperor started to wear one, and then right way an amber ring was held in high esteem. Bereavements might be looked on as very sad things, but when we remember that Jesus wept over his friend Lazarus, then we will see that they are choice jewels, and special favors from God. Christ wore this ring: therefore I must not be ashamed to wear it. Many a mother has been caused to live a holier life because of the death of her infant. Many a husband has been led to give his heart more to Christ by the death of his wife. Don’t departed spirits, like angels, summon us up to heaven? “Come, come away,” they say, “this is not your place of rest. I once lived in the same tree, and sang sitting on the same branch, but now I am taken from you; now I rest in heaven. Come up here, you who were once my loving spouse, come up here, for all the trees where you are building your nests are marked for the axe: therefore come away now, and live with me!”

Yes, we must look on the fresh graves of our loved ones in this light, and pray for the Lord to dig into our hearts with the funeral shovel, and bury our sins just like we bury our departed ones.

Trials in your family, in your children, are another form of the burning barley field.

I don’t know, brothers and sisters, but I think a living cross is much heavier to carry than a dead one. I know some among you who have not lost your children: I wished some of you had, for they have lived to become your grief and sorrow. Ah! young man, it would have been better that your mother should have seen you perish during your birth than that you should have lived to disgrace your father’s name. Ah! You, grown man, it would have been better that the funeral procession had gone winding through the streets, carrying your corpse down to the grave, than that you should live to blaspheme your mother’s God, and laugh at the Bible which is her treasure. It would have been better that you had never been born, and better for your parents too. Ah! but dear friends, even these trials are meant to draw us nearer to Christ. We must not make idols of our children, and we dare not do it, when we see how clearly God shows us that, like ourselves, they are by nature children of wrath. Sharper than a viper’s tooth is an unthankful child, but the venom is turned to medicine in God’s hand. God’s birds would often remain in their nests, but he fills their nests full of thorns, and then up they fly, and sing as the lark as they climb towards heaven. You must look on these family trials as invitations from God-sweet pressure to make you seek his face.

Many are afflicted in another way, which is perhaps as bad as anything else-by a deep depression of spirit. They are always depressed; they don’t know why.

There are no stars in the night for them, and the sun gives no light in the day; depression has claimed them for her own; but even this, I think, is often the means of keeping some of them nearer to God than they would be. You know there are some of our plants which grow best in damp, moist places found under trees; if the sun were to shine on them, they would die: perhaps some Christian minds are of the same order. Too many sweets make children sick, and bitters herbs are a good stimulant. A veil is needed for some delicate complexions, lest the sun shine too fiercely on them; it may be, these mourners need the veil of sorrow. It is good that they have been afflicted, even with this heavy depression of spirit, because it keeps them near their God.

Then there is that other affliction, the hiding of God’s face-how hard to bear, but oh how beneficial!

If we will not stay near to our Lord, he is sure to hide his face from us. You have seen a mother walking outside with her little child, when it has just learned how to walk, and as she goes through the street, the little one sometimes runs away to the right, and sometimes to the left, and so the mother hides herself a moment; then the child looks around for the mother, and begins to cry, and then out comes the mother. What is the effect? Why, the little child will not run away from mother any more; it is sure to keep hold of her hand from now on. In the same way, when we start wandering from God, he hides his face, and then, since we have a love for him, we begin crying after him; and when he shows his face again, we cling to him more than ever. So the Lord is pleased to bless our troubles to us.

Now, Christian, what about all this?

Why, just this. Are you under any severe trouble now? Then I pray that you go to God as Joab went to Absalom-“Why have your servants set my field on fire?” “Tell me what charges you have against me.” “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Make this a special time of humbling and heart-searching. Now let every sin that easily entangles us be driven out. When you begin to feel the discipline of the Lord, make it your practice to make a full confession of past sins and pray to be delivered from their power in the future.

Or, do you have no trial today, my friend? Then see if there is not something which may provoke God to send one, and begin now to purge yourself from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit by the Holy Spirit. Prevention is better than a cure, and sometimes a timely searching of the heart may save us many a heartache. Let us see to that then.

Or have we been afflicted, and is the affliction now over? Then, let us say with David, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.” Let us bless God for all that he has done, saying, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted;” let us join together in one common hymn of praise for all the goodness and mercy which God has been pleased to show us in the sharp blows from his rod.

I have said enough I think, to the Christian, to explain the little picture before us. God has burned your barley-field, dear friends, now go to him, and the closer you can approach to him, and the more firmly you can cling to him, the better for your soul’s health and comfort throughout your life. In the end, you and I will sing to the praise of our afflicting God.

II. Now, A few words to the unbeliever will form the second part of our sermon-May God make them mighty to THE SINNER.

God has also sent for you. O unconverted man, O unconverted woman, God has often sent for you. Early in your childhood your mother’s prayers sought to woo you to a Savior’s love, and your godly father’s first instructions were like the many meshes of the net in which it was desired that you should be taken; but you have broken through all these and lived to sin away all the early impressions and promises of God’s Word. Since your childhood you have often been called under the preaching of the Word. Our sermons have not all missed their targets, but sometimes a clear shot has made its way into your conscience and have caused you to tremble; but sadly! the trembling soon gave way to your old sins. Up till now you have been called, but you refused to come to God. The hands of mercy have been stretched out, and you have not paid attention to them. You have had calls too, from your Bible, from Christian books, from Christian friends. Holy zeal is not altogether dead, and it shows itself by looking after your welfare. Young man, your coworker has some times spoken to you; young woman, your friends have wept over you. There are some of you now present who have been called by the most loving of voices in our Sunday-school classes; men and women with deep love for the souls of those committed to them-tender hearts and weeping eyes; you have been wept over that you might come to Christ, but still all the activity that has been employed has been up to this moment without effect, you are a stranger to the God who made you, and an enemy to Christ the Savior.

Well, if these gentle ways will not cause you to come to the Lord, then God will employ other means. Perhaps he has tried them already. If not, if he intends in the divine decree to save you then he will use stronger ways with you, and if a word will not do, he will come with a blow, though he loves to try the power of the Word first. You too, my listener, unconverted and unsaved, have had your trials. You weep as well as Christians. You may not weep for sin, but sin will make you weep. You may detest repentance because of its sorrow, but you will not escape sorrow, even if you escape repentance. You have had your sickness: don’t you remember it, when in the quiet of the night you heard the clock ticking out, as you thought, your last few minutes and foretelling your doom? Don’t you remember those weary days, when you tossed from side to side and moved all around to try to ease the pain but it didn’t really help?

Can you remember your vows, which you have lived to break, and your promises with which you lied to the eternal God? You said that Sunday worship would be your delight, if you were spared, and also that the Church and the people of God would be dear to you and you would seek his face? But you have not done so; you have broken your covenant and have despised your promise made to God. Or, have you had losses in business? You began life well and with great hope, but nothing has worked out well for you. I am not sorry for it, for I remember it is of the wicked and the reprobate that it is written, “They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills.” I am glad that you were plagued. I would sooner see you whipped to heaven than coached to hell. Doubtless many live a life of ease and pleasure and suddenly are killed and sent to hell, while others go sorrowing to eternal glory.

You have had losses: but what are these but God’s rough messengers to tell you that there is nothing beneath the sky worth living for, to wean you from the breasts of earth and cause you to look for something more substantial than worldly riches can give you? And you, too, have lost friends; may I recall those graves, whose turf is freshly laid? May I remind you of children fair and beautiful in your eyes, taken away from you, despite your tears? Will I remind you of the parent who died and went to be with Jesus, of a sweet young sister who withered like a lily because of tuberculosis? Will I bring these thoughts back to you? I really don’t wish to open these old wounds causing them to bleed again, but it is for your own good that I beg you to listen to their solemn voice, for they say to you, “Come to your God! Be reconciled to him!” I do not think you ever will come to Jesus, unless the Holy Spirit will employ trials to bring you. I find that the woman never found her lost coin until she swept the house. The prodigal son never came back till he was hungry. I only hope that these troubles may be blessed to you.

Besides all this, you have had your depression of spirit-if I am not mistaken, I address some who are under such depressions now. You don’t know why it is, but nothing is pleasant to you. You went to the theater last night; you wished you had not: it gave you no joy; and yet you have enjoyed going to the theater many times before. You go with your friends, and going out with them to have a good time has become to you a very painful waste of time. You have lost the zest of life, and I’m not sorry for it if it causes you to look for a better life, and trust in a world to come.

My friends, again I say, this is the burning of your barley-fields. God has sent for you, and you would not come, and now he has sent messengers who are not so easily refused; he has sent these with sterner and rougher words which speak to your flesh, if your spirit will not listen.

Well now, unbeliever, if God is sending these, are you listening to them? My friends, if God has sent these, have you listened to them?

There are some of you of whom I almost have no hope for your salvation. God can save you, but I can’t figure out how he will do it. Certainly the Word does not seem likely to be blessed.

You have been called and pleaded with: early and late in your life we have pleaded with you. Our hearts have yearned with tenderness for you, but up to now it has all been in vain. God knows I have been hammering away at the granite, and it has not yielded yet. I have struck hard at the flint, and it is not broken. Some of you almost break the plow; you are such hard rocks that it seems in vain to plow on you. As for all your troubles, I don’t see that they will likely do you any good; for if you are struck again, you will revolt more and more; your whole head is sick already, and your heart is faint; you have been beaten, till from the top of your head to the sole of your foot, there is nothing but wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores. You are poor-perhaps your drunkenness has made you so; you have lost your wife-perhaps your cruelty helped to kill her; you have lost your children, and you are left a penniless, friendless, helpless beggar, and yet you will not turn to God! What now is to be done with you? O what will God do to you? Will he give up on you? How can he give up on you? How will he make believe? The heart of mercy still yearns after you. Return to God! Return to God! God help you to return, even now!

Others of you have not suffered any of this in the past, but are just now enduring a part of it. Let me beg you by the mercies of God and by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that you do not despise him who speaks to you. God does not continue to send his messengers forever. After he has labored with you for a time he will leave you in your sins and to face his eternal wrath. Patience does not last forever. Mercy has its day. Look, the king runs up the white flag of peace and comfort today, and he invites you to come to him. Tomorrow he may run up the red flag of warning, and if that red flag will not make you turn, he will run up the black flag of execution, and then there will be no hope. Beware! The black flag is not run up yet: the red flag is there now in trials and troubles, which are God’s warnings to you, commanding you to open your heart that grace may enter: but if the red flag fails, the black flag must come. Perhaps it has come! God help you with a broken heart to cry to him that you may be saved, before the candle is blown out and the sun is set, and the night of the dead comes without the hope of another sun rising on a blessed resurrection.

What is the point of all this? My point is this. If right now, some of my words could make you come to the king this morning-I know it won’t unless God the Holy Spirit compels you to do so by his irresistible power-but if he would bless my words, I would rejoice as one who finds great treasure. Why do you resist God? If the Lord has chosen to give you eternal salvation, then your resistance will be in vain, and how will you hate yourself in later years to think that you resisted for so long and enduring all that pain and suffering! Why do you resist? God’s battering-ram is too mighty for the walls of your resistance; he will make them fall. Why do you stand against your God, against him who loves you, who has loved you with an everlasting love and redeemed you by the blood of Christ? Why stand against him who intends to set you free from the slavery of sin, and to make you his rejoicing child? “Oh!” says one, “if I thought there were such mercy as that, I would yield.” If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, this will be evidence that such mercy is ordained for you. O that the Spirit of God would enable you, sinner, to come just as you are and put your trust in Christ. If you do so, then it is certain that your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that you were chosen of God and are precious to him, and that your head is one on which the crown of immortality is to glitter forever. O that you would trust Christ! The joy and peace it works in the present is worth more than money could ever buy, but oh! the glory, the overwhelming glory which will come after death will belong to those that trust in Jesus! May God give you this morning the faith to cast your souls upon the finished work of Jesus. His blood can cleanse; his righteousness can cover; his beauty can adorn; his prayer can preserve; his coming will glorify; his heaven will make you blessed. Trust him! God help you to trust him; and he will have all the praise, both now and forever. Amen and Amen.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

In the sketch proposed of these books of scripture there is of course no pretension to notice every point of interest they contain, but only a general comprehensive view, as far as the Lord enables me to present, of their main course and objects. The most careless reader must perceive, that as Saul holds a considerable place in the First Book of Samuel, so Absalom occupies not a little space in the Second, and both of them in collision with David. Now the nature of inspiration supposes that God, in selecting such persons or facts as are regarded there, had a divine object before Him. It is the main business of an interpreter to learn and set out according to his measure the design that the Spirit of God appears to have had in view.

It is clear on the face of it that the chief feature of Absalom's history is, in the end of it at least, opposition to David: he stood in the nearest relationship to the king, but he was none the less an antagonist. Now as David all through, whether in the First or in the Second Book of Samuel, is a type of the Lord Jesus, there ought not to be a question, as it appears to me, that the Spirit of God is giving us, in the adversaries of David, antichrists. Only the antichrist has qualities in his type, which differ quite as much as those of the antitype will, in express scripture or in reality. Thus in the New Testament, where he is brought before us directly and as a matter of doctrine or prophecy, John describes the antichrist first as one that denies the Christ; then as going on with a growing audacity (and this is more particularly his opposition to the Christian revelation) to deny the Father and the Son. For he is the liar and the antichrist. He denies Christ both in Jewish relations and in personal dignity. He sets aside therefore in Him the glory of Israel, and also the fulness of divine grace as now shown in Christianity. For we must remember that the Lord Jesus in the variety of His glories displays God in many ways; for instance as Messiah King of Israel, and, when rejected by the Jews, as the Son of man, ruler of all tribes, peoples, nations, and tongues in the world. The unbelief of the Jews in rejecting the Lord was and will be thus used by God still more fully to display Christ's glory and His own counsels.

Now as John refers to the two characteristics of the last antagonist of Christ, so I think it will be found that in the First Book of Samuel Saul stands forth as the chief adversary of David before he came to the throne. After it Absalom holds a similar place in the Second; and of the two, Absalom was the more dangerous and daring, as the enormity in him was incomparably worse. The nearness and character of his relationship to the king made the guilt of his conduct the more dreadful before God and man. It is this which to my mind explains the large space that is given both to king Saul's jealous persecution on the one hand, and to Absalom's attempt at usurping the power of David on the other. It is true that at first Absalom by no means shows out the violent form which his wickedness was finally to take. He uses a certain craft which no doubt succeeded with the simple though repulsive to the upright. Before his treason we hear the details of his blood-thirsty cruelty, which no provocation could palliate, not even that most gross conduct of Amnon towards his sister Tamar. It will be so with antichrist. All his evil will not come out fully at once. Surely then it is a most solemn consideration for all our souls the moral principle which we see in these cases. Nearness to what is good invariably develops evil in its worst features. There could be no such thing as antichrist if there were not Christianity and Christ. It is the fulness of the grace and truth that is revealed in the person of the Lord Jesus that brings out the worst evil in man. And even Satan himself could not accomplish his designs against the glory of God save by rising up against the Man who is the special object of God's delight and of His counsels in glory.

Hence we find a pretty full answer to all this in the twofold type: first, Saul the adversary of David in his earlier career, when he had not been yet seated on the throne; then Absalom, not all at once, but by degrees coming out, though no doubt full of craft and blood-thirstiness before he turned against his father. The liar and the murderer is betrayed even in the earliest account of him which scripture brings before us. God, on the other hand, was judging the family of David, and speaking to David's own heart and conscience in the sin and shame and scandal that covered as a whole the family with reproach; and this it is that lets us see Absalom. He will avenge his sister's wrong himself. He has made up his mind to shed his brother's blood; he cloaks it under fair pretences. Amnon is ensnared to his ruin. (2 Samuel 13:1-39)

But there is more than this; there is a magnificent display of divine mercy shadowed in the way in which Absalom was brought home; and here again we have another witness of the same truth that has been often referred to. It is only after God has shown His rich mercy that Satan and man mature and work out their deepest malice. The woman of Tekoah was employed by the subtle Joab, who knew well that the heart of the king was yearning after his guilty son. At the same time he knew that the king had difficulty in conscience, for he was the executor of the law of God. To him God had entrusted the sword in Israel, and Absalom had brought the stain of blood on the people and the land of God, as well as on the family of the king.

On every ground therefore David was called upon to assert what was due to God against his own son. But this is only one of a number of instances that strew the whole line of divine history where God, while He does insist on righteousness and resent all failure in maintaining it here below, never abdicates grace, but always holds the title of divine mercy above the claims of earthly righteousness. And certainly David was one who could not resist such an appeal There might be a certain struggle; and the very fact too that Absalom was his son would to an upright mind make the struggle harder: was it really possible for David to deny that grace which was his only ground and chief boast before God? This then was what Joab, who had not the slightest appreciation of grace himself, would nevertheless know to be the surest avenue to David's heart: and this it was that the woman of Tekoah therefore pleads. She comes before the king, who asks her what was her sorrow. She puts in a parabolic way the position in which she stood, saying, "Thy handmaid had two sons, and they two strove together in the field, and there was none to part them, but the one smote the other, and slew him. And, behold, the whole family is risen against thine handmaid, and they said, Deliver him that smote his brother, that we may kill him, for the life of his brother whom he slew; and we will destroy the heir also: and so they shall quench my coal which is left, and shall not leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the earth. And the king said unto the woman, Go to thine house, and I will give charge concerning thee. And the woman of Tekoah said unto the king, My lord, O king, the iniquity be on me, and on my father's house: and the king and his throne be guiltless. And the king said, Whosoever saith ought unto thee, bring him to me, and he shall not touch thee any more. Then said she, I pray thee, let the king remember Jehovah thy God, that thou wouldest not suffer the revengers of blood to destroy any more, lest they destroy my son. And he said, As Jehovah liveth, there shall not one hair of thy son fall to the earth."

Having thus secured the ground, the woman begins to open the secret. The king had now pledged his royal word. Grace was very dear to his heart. His feelings were moved and stirred deeply. It was no new thing for him, as his procedure to Mephibosheth could attest. Who knew or valued so highly the "kindness of God"? He had known the need of it himself. Of this then Joab had taken advantage in putting forward this woman to plead before David the imaginary trouble of her house. Now the king's conscience might be relieved. If he would spare another's house, spite of guilt, would he not spare his own? This was what calmed his fears. Nothing could be more artfully devised. Hence we see how the woman gradually begins to explain what it was that was really aimed at. "Then the woman said, 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." It was no question of her son, but of the king's banished. "For we must needs die," she adds, "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 may not be expelled from him."

It is the way of grace she pleads. Impossible for David to resist this. If God devises means that His banished should return, who was David to differ from God? If God, with all His unstained holiness, with all His jealous regard to righteousness, nevertheless devises His efficacious means (and David knew it well), who or what was David that he should hold out against the pitiful case of his banished one? of Absalom driven to another land because of the blood of Amnon, the blood of the guilty brother that he had shed in avenging his sister's dishonour? So it was then that the king, moved by it, listens to her. "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 Jehovah thy God will be with thee."

Yet righteousness was not guarded here, as God does perfectly in Christ. Hence a suspicion arises that all was not straight. The king accordingly says, "Hide not from me, I pray thee, the thing that I shall ask thee. And the woman said, Let my lord the king now speak. And the king said, Is not the hand of Joab with thee in all this? And the woman answered and said, As thy soul liveth, my lord the king, none can turn to the right hand or to the left from ought that my lord the king hath spoken: for thy servant Joab, he bade me, and put all these words in the mouth of thine handmaid: to fetch about this form of speech hath thy servant Joab done this thing: and my lord is wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God, to know all things that are in the earth." Where the eye is single, the whole body is full of light. There could be no doubt that the allegory was admirably drawn. Alas! it was the parable of one whose heart was not in the matter. How solemn a thing it is, my brethren, to see from time to time in the course of scripture history, as we may in fact now, that there are natural minds who can sometimes see more clearly what becomes a saint of God than saints themselves feel. But it is only those who know how to turn the grace of God to their own purpose when it suits them. This is what Joab was now doing by the woman of Tekoah. He held the truth in unrighteousness, we shall see with what result as far as Absalom was concerned.

But the king, when he did discover the aim, did not swerve from his word. He says to Joab, "Behold now, I have done this thing." He, indebted to grace, and to nothing so much as grace, could not possibly disavow the appeal of grace. Hence his command, "Go therefore, bring the young man Absalom again." Joab thanks the king, and acts. But David is not indifferent to the guilt contracted by the past, and Absalom is forbidden to come near. "The king said, Let him turn to his own house, and let him not see my face. So Absalom returned to his own house, and saw not the king's face."

Next the Spirit of God gives us the description of the person of Absalom. There was everything to attract the eye, everything to meet the natural desires, of one who would wish the comeliest person in Israel to be the king. Nature had wrought formerly in the choice of Saul. It was repeated again with Absalom. (2 Samuel 14:1-33)

In the next chapter (2 Samuel 15:1-37) the wicked plans of the traitor begin to ripen and unfold themselves, and this, it will be marked, only after the richest grace had been shown him. This indeed was necessary. It was not till the banished one had found means in the grace of the king to return; it was after that which answers as much as anything could to the grace of God in the gospel. Then, consequent on all the mercy shown him, does a more terrible character of antichrist display itself in Absalom than had ever been seen in king Saul. What then appears to be the distinction intended? Is it not that Saul show; us antichrist more as the consequence of Jewish apostasy; Absalom more as the consequence of Christian apostasy? Both these traits must be found in the antichrist of the last days; and this is one reason too why, although there were antichristian features when the Lord Jesus was found here below, the full display of the antichrist could not be until after all the grace of God in Christianity had been fully brought out.

This also explains why there should be a double type of antichrist one in each of these two Books of Samuel. We have the display of the fullest possible evil of man one in pride and real envy and affected contempt, and at last of murderous hatred toward David. All this was found in Saul. But in Absalom's case there was a still deeper character of lawlessness, as there was a nearer and more dependent tie to the king. Besides, there had been the richest manifestation of mercy to himself. The most dreadful wickedness on his own part had been met by greater love and grace on the part of David. After all this then we find Absalom laying his plots and carrying out his schemes for the purpose of supplanting the king his father.

This was the manner of the man: "And it came to pass after, that Absalom prepared him chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him. And Absalom rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate: and it was so, that when any man that bad a controversy came to the king for judgment, then Absalom called unto him, and said, Of what city art thou? And he said, Thy servant is of one of the tribes of Israel. And Absalom said unto him, See, thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee." Two principal objects are apparent: the undermining of the king, and this in order to the glorifying himself. Hence as the readiest way he Hatters the people, whom he never loved as David did, but despised, and assuredly none so much as those taken in his nets of fair words and good speeches. "Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice I And it was so, that when any man came nigh to him to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took him, and kissed him. And on this manner did Absalom to all Israel that came to the king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel." It need not be argued at length that there was neither righteousness nor love in all this; neither the righteousness that discriminated the mutual relationships of himself and of those that came, and yet more of all to the king, without which there could not be anything right; neither was there the love that sought the good of others instead of its own things, but unbridled will and the loftiest ambition. His object was himself, and himself too for the vilest purposes for his own exaltation by the overthrow of his father, whom God had anointed king of Israel. "And it came to pass," it is said, "after forty years, that Absalom said unto the king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow, which I have vowed unto Jehovah, in Hebron. For thy servant vowed a vow while I abode at Geshur in Syria, saying, If Jehovah shall bring me again indeed to Jerusalem, then I will serve Jehovah."

Observe here the profanation of the name of Jehovah, which always accompanies the worst evil of men on the earth. "And the king said unto him, Go in peace. So he arose, and went to Hebron. But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, As soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall say, Absalom reigneth in Hebron. And with Absalom went two hundred men out of Jerusalem, that were called; and they went in their simplicity, and they knew not any thing. And Absalom sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David's counsellor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he offered sacrifices. And the conspiracy was strong; for the people increased continually with Absalom." Another character is here which was necessary to complete the character of antichrist; that is, the combination of kingly power in Israel with spiritual pretension. There will be the highest assumption of a religious sort. The antichrist is not barely infidel. Infidelity there will be, but always a show of religion along with it, whether in the same personage or in one that is joined with him in type. That which brings in an evil spiritual power is necessary to give the true and full character of the antichrist. Hence Ahithophel is associated with Absalom. So, as we know, the second beast, or false prophet, in the Revelation symbolises this same personage. Notably he has two horns like the lamb. There is a double character of power. It is not simply that he is or has a horn. He is not a mere king, but a beast with two horns. And at this time it would seem that it is no longer a question of imitating the priestly power of Christ, but he will pretend to have not only a kingly place but a prophet character, an understanding of the mind of God, just as Ahithophel here, as we see, who had been David's counsellor before but is now Absalom's. There is thus a combination of the false prophet with royalty. These at the close will be united in the antichrist.

I am not now speaking of the great imperial power, the beast, in those days that bring on judgment For this we must look elsewhere; for it will not have its seat in Jerusalem, nor will the sphere of its dominion be the land of Israel. There will be the place where the final conflict takes place; there the scene of the destruction of the beast and the false prophet, and of the associated kings that are with them.

Such are a few of the leading points which may help, not only to guide souls, but also to preserve from mistakes too often made, to which we are as liable as any. There is no power of preservation in the truth except by simple subjection to the word of God. If we begin to give ourselves credit for anything like a definite system of truth, more particularly when it takes a traditional shape carried on from one to another, I am persuaded that the Lord will not be with the enterprise. Of all men, we need most to walk in sustained subjection to God and His word. No doubt all the children of God do; but if God has brought us out from the creeds and stereotyped forms of human arrangement, be assured we are not the less in danger. It is not meant in the least that there is no security. Who can overlook the fact that those who have trusted creeds and formularies have little to boast of their orthodoxy at this present time? We can well see too that there is no end of inconsistency; yea, the grossest contradiction of that which is avowed and confessed may be and is carried on, though one may be thankful for whatever check there is to deadly error; for the value of a creed at best is chiefly in its protest against heterodoxy. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God," not by a creed. And the infidelity of men who subscribe all the old creeds is so glaring that mere lawyers and men of the world in general are ashamed at the scandal. This is not said to wound any one, nor as a busy body in other men's matters, but rather for our souls' profit, believing that there are none whom God will hold more decidedly to what we profess.

But is it not our joy, and the sure means of security, to cherish continual and unqualified subjection in our souls to the truth of God as He has revealed it not to the thoughts that we may receive through others, however striking or helpful? Let us be grateful for their help; yet it is our duty to judge all by the word. Let us thankfully enjoy whatever of truth the Lord's servants can minister to us, but no deductions can ever be a ground of faith. Whatever may be taught by this one or preached by that must be brought to the touchstone of scripture, instead of being taken out of its place and made a test of the truth. The word of God is not only the great source, but the only standard, of the truth. Do we desire from God the truth? We have His precious word to teach us that truth with certainty. Ministry in the word is a blessed help; and it would be proud and base to despise the help of God's servants ungrateful towards Him, haughty toward them, and injurious to our own souls. "They shall be all taught of God" is true of all saints, but it in no way excludes teachers and other ordinary means, though there may be extraordinary instances where they are taught without this or that aid. But it is in general an unfounded pretension to have learnt directly from God through His own word, independently of those He has set in the body of Christ for this express purpose. And it will be found, in fact, that those who boast of not having learnt through such means as He usually employs know little, being really too proud to be taught. To the word of God then we need to pay heed if we would have the assurance of divine teaching, even if it be only a question about the antichrist. It is, of course, apart from those foundation truths that are immediately bound up with our own relationship to God; and we may bless Him that so it is and must be in His wisdom. Still we must remember that it is by the truth that we are sanctified. Nor can we afford, for the Lord's name sake, any more than for our own souls' good, to admit lightly any thought into our minds which is not of Him. Indeed, no matter how distant, where any thing is received into the heart that is not the truth of God, as being false, and a foreign ingredient, it will work evil in various ways; it will surely embroil other scriptures, and make us to confound things that differ. The consequence will be that we know not what the effect of even a trifling departure from the truth may be in thus destroying the symmetry and the perfectness of the truth of God in His word. The fact is that the truth is one, and therefore, where any one part is misapprehended or rejected, there is danger of weakening the rest. I am now speaking, of course, not of that which concerns our own souls with God, but merely of profitably using every part of God's word.

Thus then, if we have been guided aright in what is before us, there is in the type the union of both on the one hand royal power (and this was what Absalom was affecting for himself); but along with it there was joined with him a falsely prophetic character typified by Ahithophel. The two were connected together, just as we saw Saul himself at the last finding his resource in the witch of Endor. There was an evil spiritual adviser of the lowest kind to which he was driven. See too Pharaoh and the magicians, also Balak and Balaam. So constantly are these two characters linked in opposition to the Christ of God.

However this be, Absalom is seen successful apparently at first; and there speedily follows the solemn sight of the king obliged to be a fugitive from the throne, and the capital, and the sanctuary of Israel. "David said to Ittai, Go and pass over. And Ittai the Gittite passed over, and all his men, and all the little ones that were with him. And all the country wept with a loud voice, and all the people passed over: the king also himself passed over the brook Kidron, and all the people passed over, toward the way of the wilderness. And lo Zadok also, and all the Levites were with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God: and they set down the ark of God; and Abiathar went up, until all the people had done passing out of the city."

How beautiful the contrast with a former scene, but too familiar! The people and priests in their panic before the Philistines brought out the ark of God, if peradventure it might serve as a charm against the swords of their enemies; but here David refuses to employ it selfishly and irreverently, whatever his need and peril a man, if ever there was one of old on earth, with living faith in God, and real reverence for the sign of His presence in Israel; for there was no one that ever showed such a value, and this believingly, for the ark of God, as king David. Nevertheless in this supreme hour of his deepest extremity and greatest humiliation he refuses to jeopard the ark of God. He will not allow for his own sake the smallest shade cast upon it. What! he, David, call the ark of God out of Jerusalem? Far from it! David bids the sons of Zadok and the Levites carry it back to the city, where it is destined for ever to rest, once the Lord Jesus establishes it; and on this affecting and unselfish ground: "If I shall find favour in the eyes of Jehovah, he will bring me again, and show me both it, and his habitation: but if he thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him." Was not this a heart, my brethren, which in the face of all his faults accepted his humiliation, taking it from the hand of God to justify Him? He was one who knew that, whatever the grace of God already shown to him, it was not exhausted yet. Far from yielding to a suspicion of God's goodness to him, questioning his own manifold shortcomings, or palliating his gross failure, we see one prepared to bow to whatever God would do, and to bless Him for it. David would plead for the honour of God, cost what it might to himself. And this is faith, which appropriates to its own need and joy what it sees in God. But just because it is faith, it will never allow that what its little range of vision takes in can equal, but must ever be surpassed by the grace that is in Him. In short, faith, as it always gets what it seeks, so it is always assured that there is more, never pretending to reach up to the fulness of the grace of God. At the same time it does not listlessly stop short, satisfied with what it has, however thankful. But it confesses that faith in man is never a match for grace in God, so to speak; draw as it may, it can never fathom His goodness. It may dive more and more in, but it can never get to the bottom.

In this spirit it was that we find the king going up by the ascent of mount Olivet. It may remind us of a greater than he; but the One greater than David, though He knew tears as none ever did, did not then go up weeping. Not that His heart was not filled with the deepest feelings of love yet of sorrow for man and Israel, for His own too in their midst, soon to enjoy the Comforter He would send down from heaven as the seal of redemption. But for David it was a day of shame, not only for the people and his guilty son, but not without ground for himself personally; it was a day when he could not deny the righteous hand of God stretched out over him and his seed in the correction of faults neither few nor light. He "wept" therefore "as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot: and all the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up."

But furthermore one told David, saying, "Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom." David turns to God. He knew the gravity of the tidings, but this very thing brought before him the spring of his confidence, as surely as he saw the hand of Satan in it. A father's love might abstain from pleading against Absalom; but David could now unburden his heart to God. Therefore he says, "O Jehovah, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness." And Jehovah heard, and answered.

Nevertheless, the king was not without comfort and joy. He was not without that which consoled, soothed, and cheered his spirit in the day of his calamity. This is brought out before us in the next chapter (2 Samuel 17:1-29),where "Ziba the servant of Mephibosheth met him, with a couple of asses saddled, and upon them two hundred loaves of bread and an hundred bunches of raisins, and an hundred of summer fruits, and a bottle of wine. And the king said unto Ziba, What meanest thou by these? And Ziba said, The asses be for the king's household to ride on; and the bread and summer fruit for the young men to eat; and the wine, that such as be faint in the wilderness may drink." And so it is, beloved friends, that, where grace is in the heart, the Lord will give the opportunity to show it. This He is giving to us at the present time, while Jesus is still despised; and He is despised, although they own Him in words to be seated on the throne.

So too, when we are gone to heaven, will He give to the godly remnant at the end of this age, and accept the sweet fruits of faith which shall display themselves in those that refuse what is false and of the enemy, as they look through clouds and difficulties, no doubt, but not without assurance, to the bright day of the kingdom that is about to be set up here below. This is what is figured by the faith that wrought by love, that we are shown in thus providing for David. But when the king arrives at Bahurim, he is subjected to a fresh trial in the way of insult; for these two things may now be together, fruits of grace and works of flesh inspired by Satan. Here Shimei "cast stones at David, and at all the servants of king David: and all the people and all the mighty men were on his right hand and on his left." The mighty men naturally knew no small indignation; but we hear the voice of the humbled king reproving his followers, too hasty to shed blood. No; it was from God that the humiliation came, and David accepts it thoroughly. Shimei shall not provoke him so as to lose a grain of the profit. The arm that would have crushed Shimei in a moment would have deprived David of a lesson never to be forgotten. If then a trusty warrior proposes to punish the wanton insolence of Shimei, the king breathes the spirit of meekness, even at that moment when the basest of men poured contempt on him. "Then said Abishai unto the king, Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head. And the king said, What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah? so let him curse, because Jehovah hath said unto him, Curse David. Who shall then say, Wherefore hast thou done so?" We must remember that, before the Lord Jesus comes out as King, others will be put to the proof, and their faith and patient grace be tried in their measure as truly as ours. For us indeed the trial of our faith should be always. They will have it for a brief season, and severely. But now there is everything calculated to seduce us into the world, and cause us to overlook the moral glory of our calling, to forget Christ's rejection and cross.

Indeed, the relationship seen here will apply fully to the latter-day saints, whereas it can only be ours in general spirit. For Christ is own Lord and Head. David was truly the king, and there was none other. But we know that, although the Lord Jesus be not yet sitting on His own throne, He is crowned with glory and honour. We know Him on what is after all a greater throne, and on a deeper title than that of Messiah; we know Him possessed of a larger glory and in a higher sphere; we know that it is He that will confer glory on the throne, instead of merely receiving glory from it; but for this very reason we have the opportunity of showing how far our faith in Christ exceeds and makes as nothing all Satan's allurements to serve the world and forget our rejected Master. But the same thing in principle will be true for those that shall follow us. They will not, of course, have the same form of relationship to the Lord Jesus as we have; and the special part of the word of God that will bear on their souls and circumstances will be quite different from that which God intends for us now. There is a common groundwork, but much that is distinctive of each. And this is of great importance. It shows convincingly that it is not merely a question of God's word, but of His Spirit; and the same Spirit who brings out the truth, and leads into our relationship with Christ above, will bring out to the souls of the righteous godly Jews by and by the expectation of the true King to come for the overthrow of antichrist with every other enemy at the close of the age, and to reign over Israel and the earth in the age to come.

This will furnish them with opportunities similar in principle to those which the Lord gave to Mephibosheth on the one hand, and of which Shimei took advantage on the other. There will be room both for despite and for reciprocation of grace between the Messiah and all who have waited for Him in that day.

In the end of the chapter we have another scene still reminding us of the great crisis. Hushai goes to Absalom and opposes in every way the counsel of Ahithophel. Thus also in those future days will the Lord know how to defeat all the plans of the devil. There was no doubt that Ahithophel of the two was the subtler the one best of all calculated to further the plans of Absalom; but the time was not yet come for anything but a shadowy effort.

There was then as now one "that letteth." It was not yet the hour for apparent success. God confounds the plans accordingly, and Ahithophel is vexed to the utmost, and more and more as he finds there is one near Absalom who brings to nothing all his devices. This is set fully before us in2 Samuel 17:1-29; 2 Samuel 17:1-29. The result was that "when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and get him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father."

The next chapter (2 Samuel 18:1-33) brings the solemn crisis before us. The battle takes place, and he that lifted himself up so proudly, he that had fawned on Israel to gain them over as his partisans against his father, he who sought dominion but not from God, setting himself against the glory of God and the king of Israel, dies a death of special shame and curse, hanging on a tree. Lifted up, as we know, by the very hair of his head which had been his vanity, as it was a part of his personal beauty, Absalom died as a fool dies; so had Jehovah Himself in His providence ordered the result, as he fled from the scene of his defeat. The king betrays the natural affection of a father's heart, but, it may be, with too little sense of his son's impious rebellion, or of God's righteous retribution This is brought before us in the most touching manner.

What need of details now? Suffice it to say that Joab comes in to reprove the king as he gives way to unmeasured grief, and cries with a loud voice, "O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!" The very people that had gained the victory for him could not but be vexed as they read an implied reproof in the king's laments and tears. Joab therefore ventures to say, "Thou hast shamed this day the face of all thy servants which this day have saved thy life, and the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters, and the lives of thy wives, and the lives of thy concubines; in that thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends For thou hast declared this day, that thou regardest neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well. Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants: for I swear by Jehovah, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry one with thee this night." How evident that not yet did the king reign in righteousness; else Joab had never dared so to speak. Thus every type falls short of the truth. It must be so in the nature of things; and is it for us to find fault with the plain truth that the Lord Jesus is thus unapproachable? For what does it tell? The tale of all scripture the failure of the first man. The only one worthy of all homage and praise, of all confidence and love, is the second Man, the last Adam.

Then the king was pleased to sit in the gate. "And all the people came before the king, for Israel fled every man to his tent." And then king David sends "to Zadok and to Abiathar the priest, saying, Speak unto the elders of Judah, saying, Why are ye the last to bring the king back to his house? seeing the speech of all Israel is come to the king, even to his house. Ye are my brethren, ye are my bones and my flesh: wherefore then are ye the last to bring back the king? And say ye to Amasa, Art thou not of my bone, and of my flesh? God do so to me, and more also, if thou be not captain of the host before me continually in the room of Joab. And he bowed the heart of all the men of Judah, even as the heart of one man; so that they sent this word unto the king, Return thou, and all thy servants. So the king returned, and came to Jordan. And Judah came to Gilgal to go to meet the king to conduct the king over Jordan." And there it is that the blaspheming Shimei cowers before the returning king; for now those that had rendered a feigned obedience are being made manifest. Here too the king shows that he was by no means equal to the task that will be taken up and carried out in full by the true David only; for, wrought on by his feelings, he swears to Shimei that he shall not die an oath that could not avail when Solomon comes to the throne, as we learn from another book of scripture.

Next we find Mephibosheth and his sorrowful tale; and Barzillai the Gileadite comes before us with his grace in due season. The result of all is that the men of Israel come to the king and say, "Why have our brethren the men of Judah" for it becomes now a rivalry of care and affection and honour for the king "Why have our brethren the men of Judah stolen thee away, and have brought the king, and his household, and all David's men with him, over Jordan? And all the men of Judah answered the men of Israel, Because the king is near of kin to us: wherefore then be ye angry for this matter? have we eaten at all of the king's cost? or hath he given us any gift? And the men of Israel answered the men of Judah, and said, We have ten parts in the king, and we have also more right in David than ye." The king is now their portion and boast. If here we find nature again, nevertheless what a change as the king returned! He is borne forward to Jerusalem by the returning affections of the people. Another traitor is discovered in the person of Sheba overthrown still by the prompt zeal, as well as by the courage of Joab and all was order afresh in the kingdom. The latter part of this chapter shows us that the efforts of the enemy only turn to the greater honour of king David now reinstated in Jerusalem and the throne.

But in 2 Samuel 21:1-22 an instructive scene is introduced to us to which we may turn our attention for a moment. Whatever may be the grace and faithfulness of God, for the very same reason God is jealous of His word, and deals righteously wherever His name is pledged. We are all familiar with the fact that in the days of Joshua the Gibeonites had deceived the heads of Israel. They had palmed themselves off on Joshua as coming from a far country, having for their own ends hidden the truth that they belonged to the accursed races of Canaan. The result was that Joshua and the other leaders of Israel committed the name of Jehovah, through the deceit of the Gibeonites, to sparing their lives, though in consequence of that deceit they were reduced to the condition of hewers of wood and drawers of water for the sanctuary. But Saul in his spurious zeal for God lost sight of what was so solemnly assured to the Gibeonites. Are you surprised that the king who would have taken away the life of his own son because of his rash oath, which Jonathan knew not, should feel lightly the oath that had been sworn by Joshua and the other leaders of Israel in the olden time? Wonder not; for the flesh, which here overstrains, there breaks down altogether.

It was no doubt long ago, and there are those who would ignore what is past for present ease. But time makes no difference, any more than place, in the things of God. What He looks to is His name, and by this are we also bound to keep His word and not deny His name. Saul forgot it. Can we not easily understand this? In him was no living faith whatever. There was only form, and this will sell the Lord when it suits for the price of a slave, though it may at the same time make the greatest show of devotedness. Doubtless Saul could vaunt his own superior zeal for the Lord in this that he at least was not going to be carried away by a mere name, and an obligation so long ago as to be obsolete. If the Gibeonites were Canaanites, woe be to them from king Saul! And so it was that there was a famine, not immediately after, but now in the days of David for three years. Two things particularly may well arrest attention in this as a great moral truth It was a long time since the name of Jehovah was pledged; but does God ever forget? Secondly, it was by no means a short time since Saul had done the bloody deed, and yet no chastening had yet come from Jehovah. The chastening did not follow till a considerable time after. Such patience tests souls thoroughly. The chastening fell not in the days of Saul, but in those of David. Why? Because God will have all to enquire of Him; He will exercise His people in their common and continuous responsibility; He will make us feel and judge our forgetfulness of heart, our lack of looking to Himself. The evil might have been dealt with personally on Saul; but the patience of God on the one hand, and the solidarity of the people on the other, was more impressively taught when the blow fell in the days of David. People and king were thus forced to review what had been soon forgotten because taken too lightly when done. He at least is occupied with our ways, and the discipline may tarry a long time. He would have His people learn the reason why His hand was upon them.

If they confide in His righteousness, they will learn why it was the fitting time, and according to the wisdom of God, that the chastening should fall in the days of David rather than in those of Saul. If it had fallen in the days of Saul, the Lord had not been so enquired of. Here was one that felt for the honour of Jehovah. The blow came. If David had felt the sin, if the people had confessed it, if Jehovah's name had been cleared about it, the famine might not have befallen them as it actually did. The evil was done by another who was personally guilty. It is granted that neither David nor they were responsible for his acts, but they were responsible to feel and confess the wrong. It was done publicly by king Saul in Israel. Had they mourned the deed as tarnishing Jehovah's glory? There is no appearance that there was any such confession; and the Lord now will compel them to take up that sin most seriously under the pressure of a famine, repeated till He was glorified in the matter where the wrong was done. In fact the king was guilty, but had the people shown godly horror at his profanation of Jehovah's name? They were careless about it, one cannot doubt; and David wakes up now in answer to the call; and he, chastened of God, does truly feel it, as all Israel had at any rate to smart under the consequences. So then the famine comes, and David enquires of Jehovah. It is very evident that it required a heavy and prolonged dealing from God to make them feel; for it is said, "The famine came in the days of David three years, year after year." It is not that God takes pleasure in inflicting a sore plague on His people; but anything is good that leads us to draw near to God in self-judgment for a dishonour done to His name. It seems plain then that this scourge was required year after year to rouse the conscience of Israel, possibly even of David also. At length he enquires of Jehovah, who distinctly answers, "It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites."

What a solemn lesson that God will not only not suffer unrighteousness to be done to the people that He loves, but even to the enemies that deceived them! "The righteous Jehovah loveth righteousness." It would be hard to see or ask a more patent proof of the delicacy and also the tenacity of God's holding to righteousness than His dealing in this very case with Israel for the oath passed to the Gibeonites. Every one can understand how He must feel about Israel or about David; but that God should be jealous for a wrong done under such circumstances, and so long ago, to the Gibeonites, is to my mind a most wholesome lesson of the God with whom we have to do.

Nor this only. "And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make an atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of Jehovah?" This is another important point: their consciences must be satisfied, their hearts consoled and at rest for the wrong that had been done to them. Yet there is no disguise as to the people in question. Now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel. The Spirit of God expressly calls our attention to their origin and race. They were "of the remnant of the Amorites" and you know what the Amorites were "and the children of Israel had sworn unto them, and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah." An excellent thing, is it not zeal for the people of God? But zeal only for God's people, or nominally for God Himself, can never sanctify disrespect to His name, even if through trickery only that name had been pledged to His worst enemies. For in truth it was not a question of those to whom the name was pledged, but of His name that was sworn thus. If Jehovah's name was given as a shield to any, Jehovah would be the unswerving and most righteous guardian of its sanctity.

Then of the Gibeonites when they come, David asks, "What shall I do for you? And wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of Jehovah? And the Gibeonites said unto him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that will I do for you. And they answered the king, The man that consumed us, and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel, let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto Jehovah in Gibeah of Saul, whom Jehovah did choose. And the king said, I will give them. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of Jehovah's oath that was between them." We must carefully look to this, and we shall always find God with us in it. Never should we sacrifice one duty in doing another. However important it may be for instance to pay God homage outside, we must never let slip God's honour at home in the family. It is a blessed thing to serve Him abroad, but there will be a sorry maintenance of His glory outside the house if He is not honoured within. And if we find therefore the Gibeonite's oath from Jehovah on one side, there was no less the oath to Jonathan, Saul's son and his seed on the other. No doubt a hasty spirit would have sacrificed the one for the other; the wisdom of God enables us to maintain both This is fairly seen in the conduct of David.

And further, the very execution of divine judgment introduces the deeply pathetic story of Saul's concubine: "And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night. And it was told David what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done." This was not a slight thing to David. No doubt God's name demanded vindication, and it was right. It was due to the Gibeonites that they should be satisfied. God was compelling them to judge the case that the guilt might be expiated; but it was more than right it was beautiful and suitable that Rizpah should thus spread the deep sorrow of her heart before God. At this conjuncture David shows too on his part what v,-as lovely and becoming in the king of Israel. Far was he from insulting the memory of the late king; for the very one that had given up his sons to die went and took the bones of Saul: this was the very time that he took them showing the last honour to the departed king of Israel and his family. "And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from the men of Jabesh-gilead, which had stolen them from the street of Beth-shan where the Philistines had hanged them, when the Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa: and he brought up from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son; and they gathered the bones of them that were hanged. And the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son buried they in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the sepulchre of Kish his father: and they performed all that the king commanded. And after that God was intreated for the land."

The close of the chapter tells us of the prowess of some of David's servants on behalf of the waning strength of the king.

But at this point it were well to heed the remarkable manner in which the Spirit of God has put together the two next chapters. Certainly such a conjunction is not after the manner of men. 2 Samuel 22:1-51 consists, as is well known, of portions substantially given again in the Book of Psalms. ThusPsalms 18:1-50; Psalms 18:1-50 is made here more striking because it is put along with the last words, as they are called, of David, in 2 Samuel 23:1-39. Now a comparison of these two will reward every spiritual mind. For what is the distinctive point of 2 Samuel 22:1-51? The identification of Israel's history with David as the type of the Messiah. Nothing can be more striking to any person that would patiently and intelligently meditate the chapter than the remarkable way in which the grand events of the history of Israel their deliverance from Egypt, their being brought through the Red Sea, the defeat of their enemies are all blended with the Messiah, first entering into the sorrows and troubles of the people, then brought out of them at last to be their deliverer, the head not only of Israel but of the Gentiles. Here therefore we find a course of sorrow and of suffering that ends in joy and triumph.

How different is the character of2 Samuel 23:1-39; 2 Samuel 23:1-39! "These be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds (the anticipation of the day of Jehovah Himself); as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow."

Thus we find two things the bright expectation of the kingdom, with the solemn sense that the time was not yet come. No man felt it more than king David. The fact that God put into his mouth the anticipations of the Messiah that he himself knew that he in a striking manner (the most so of any man up to that day) was made the progenitor and type of the Messiah this very fact made his own shortcomings, errors, and sins more poignantly felt. Well he knew that those failures of himself were darkly shadowed out, and retributively brought to mind, in the grief and shame and dishonour of his house. Thus we find a double current in the heart of David his faith bright and undimmed in the joy that was coming with the true king who would surely sit upon his throne; but meanwhile his was the softened spirit, the broken and the contrite heart, of a man that knew what moral humiliation means as regarded himself and all his house. What in David could be more lovely in itself, or more suited to the actual state of things, than these two facts, both made true in his soul? And should it not be the very same thing with us now? Is it not important to see that the sense of our failure, as well as of what we are, is never meant to interfere with the brightness of our confidence in the Lord? Conscience must be exercised unhinderedly; and so must faith also, Grace provides for both in the believer's heart. It is excellent thus to look onward, the eye filled with the glory of the Lord Jesus, and the heart resting on His grace. But there should also be the unsparing judgment of ourselves in the light, and consequently due and suited confession. Where this is, there will be the lowliness that becomes men who have no standing-place but in grace. God forbid that this should be wanting in any Christian. It is hard to preserve the balance of truth; but at least it is well to desire it. Let us beware of having the appearance of one-sidedness. To be cast down with the constant sense of shame because of what we are, to hang our heads as bulrushes, is a poor testimony to the love of Christ, and to the victory God gives us through Him. But it is a worse state where the recognition of His grace is misused to enfeeble conscience and destroy sensibility as to sin, above all as to our own sins.

It is well that we should know that the path of faith is far removed from either of these two things. For we are entitled to enjoy the brightness of what Christ is and has done for us; but there is also the unfailing and never-to-be-forgotten sense of what it cost Him so to suffer for us.

David then anticipated the two things as perhaps no Old Testament saint as far as I am aware up to that day had ever done. It is evident too that, as he began with a very simple confidence in the Lord, so he went through a most heart-breaking process in his experience.

The kingdom is before him here. He sees clearly the judgment of the wicked. "The sons of Belial," as he says, "shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands: but the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place." This will never be till Jesus execute the judgment.

Then follow the names of his mighty men, and certainly there is one act among them that may well read a lesson of the gravest kind to us. I do not allude now to the brave men that broke through the army of the Philistines, and brought to David of the water of Bethlehem that he longed for. I speak of the grace which, when it was brought, refused to touch it, of the faith that could look on that water, much as he had longed for it, as the blood of those mighty men that had risked their lives. Oh for more of this self-renouncing power of faith!

On the great deeds of these heroic men we need not dwell now, save to make this simple remark: God looks for another kind of might now. It is not so much the worth of doing that He values as the lot of suffering, what one of our own poets has called in prose "the irresistible might of weakness." We may well covet this in the name of the Lord Jesus that power which is most of all shown in being nothing that Christ may be magnified, in accepting whatever of scorn, shame, loss or persecution, the Lord sees meet for us to bear, because we take our side unqualifiedly with Him and with His truth in a day when not merely the world, or man in general, but even Christendom is departed from Him. And there is no trial so great as this, because in it we see those that the Lord loves taking part against His name with those that hate Him.

To appear even to blame the children of God ought to be a pain to us. To differ from, and by differing to condemn, in word or deed, those we esteem better than ourselves, must lead to searching of our own heart, but not to question the unerring word of God rather to confirmation of faith; but not the less ought the testimony He gives us to be taken up and borne unflinchingly, only let us be sure that it is the will of the Lord. There is nothing that gives such firmness both to do and to suffer as the certainty of what the will of the Lord is. May we learn it! This was what these brave men felt and proved. This assurance nerved their arm with might; this by grace gave them victory. It was not their strength, nay, it was their faith, and there are no victories so precious in the eyes of God. But, beloved brethren, I believe that we have and that all the children of God have as bright an opportunity, yea a brighter still. For have not you now the path marked out for you in the world? Oh, may your faith win victory! But remember the only victories that God now registers as precious in His eyes are those won under the shadow and in the power of the cross of Christ those that most take their stamp from His death. This is our one sign: with this let us conquer in faith. We shall reign with Christ by and by; let us be content to suffer with and for Him now: what can the world do if we suffer? To it an evident token of perdition, to us of salvation.

2 Samuel 24:1-25 brings before us one scene more, with which the book closes. "And again the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah. For the king said to Joab the captain of the host, which was with him, Go now through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, and number ye the people, that I may know the number of the people." Oh, what a forgetfulness of the Lord! He was everything to David, and everything to Israel, yet David was now repeating the sin of Saul in principle. The people would have a king, when God was their king; and the king thinks of the people only as his own. The people forgot their highest portion was God, and wanted to be like the nations; and the king whom God gave now sought a people just like a Gentile. It was the worst unfaithfulness in David, now evidently a snare to the king. It was judged in Israel; how much more judged in David! Even Joab was alarmed and shocked. He felt that it was not only a crime, but (what he cared for far more) a blunder. Joab would not have stuck much at a sin if it had seemed useful politically; but Joab was too good a politician to be guilty of a blunder, and his quick eye soon perceived that the numbering of Israel was a fatal mistake; not that he cared to please Jehovah, but he would avoid His displeasure, and felt for the interests of the kingdom of David his uncle.

The king proceeds, spite of Joab's remonstrance; the number is taken, and God seems as if He saw it not and heard it not. Months and months passed on, and the king's will and word was still being carried out; but then comes the heavy sentence from God, and David has to choose which of three strokes of His anger he will have. David, guilty as he was, chose like a man of faith; for the believer shows his faith even after he had been so faulty. David under any circumstances prefers God's hand, though it were stretched out against him, to man's hand. But God's hand did not slacken. For very love, for His own name's sake, God could not, would not, spare; and the plague swept over the land and people as a terrible scourge. But in the midst of judgment mercy rejoiced against it, and that very Jerusalem from which the guilty order went forth was the place where the hand of judgment was stayed; and if grace thus would prove itself mightier than judgment and it always will grace would prove itself in every way, for it was to David that God listened. The guilty one that had brought the plague on Israel pleads and is heard. It was at the threshing-floor of a poor stranger of a Gentile that the uplifted hand of the angel was stayed. This purchased possession of the king God would make the site of His house, the blessed connecting link between heaven and earth, between God and man, in days yet to dawn on a world still groaning, but to be surely blessed under the Lord Jesus.

To dwell further on the book is scarcely my task now. I leave the blessed subject with yourselves. God alone can give you a taste of the sweetness and of the power of His own truth through our Lord Jesus.