Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom.
Grace for the graceless
Bishop Hall thus descants on this--What means this ill-placed love? This unjust mercy. Deal gently with a traitor. Of all traitors, with a son? Of all sons with an Absalom? that graceless darling of so good a father? And all this, for thy sake, whose crown, whose blood, he hunts after? For whose sake must he be pursued, if forborne for thine? Must the cause of the quarrel be the motive of the mercy? Even in the holiest parents nature may be guilty of an injurious tenderness, of a bloody indulgence. But was not this done in type of that immeasurable mercy of the true King and Redeemer of Israel, who prayed for his persecutors. “Father, forgive them. Deal gently with them for my sake.” When God sends an affliction to correct his children it is with this charge, “Deal gently with them for my sake”; for He knows our frame.
