John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: October 3

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: October 3

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Shimei

1Ki_2:8-9; 1Ki_2:36-46

Joab was not the only man whom the dying charge of David recommended to the unfavorable notice of Solomon. Shimei was another. His words concerning this notorious person were—“Behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, who cursed me with a grievous curse in the day that I went to Mahanaim: but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword. Now therefore hold him not guiltless; for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him; but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood.” We reject the attempts which have been made to modify this translation in order to remove its apparent harshness, believing the meaning to be correctly given. Taking it, therefore, as it stands, the sense appears to be this: David intends to warn Solomon against Shimei, as a dangerous subject prone to break out into disaffection, and whose power of doing harm required that he should be carefully watched. He himself had, for reasons of policy, and in consideration of his meeting him, with a large body of Benjamites, at the Jordan, pardoned him for his gross and treasonable insults at Bahurim. He had pledged his oath to him for his safety. Solomon, however, was not bound to regard him as altogether expurgated from that crime; and, should he be detected in any new offence against himself, he was advised not to excuse and pardon him, as his father had done. We excuse David altogether from the attempt to palter with his oath, on which some found his justification. Those who say that the oath bound only David, but left his successor free to punish the crime he had sworn not to punish, forget that, in matters of grace and justice, the word of a king binds not only the individual monarch, but the crown. Were it otherwise, the beginning of a new reign would be equivalent to a revolution, and would be a reign of terror and dismay throughout the land. David was incapable of the miserable quibble here ascribed to him. Still the law of Christian forgiveness was not in those times known; and we are unable to find it, and have no right to expect it, in the behavior of those ancient kings—not even in David, still less in Solomon. It is a beautiful testimony to the spirit of Christianity, that those who have been brought up under its influence, find much to distress them in transactions which would, at this very day, appear perfectly reasonable, just, and even laudable among eastern nations. The difference is nowhere more emphatically announced than in the words of our Saviour—“Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, that ye shall love your friends and hate your enemies: but I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that despitefully use you and persecute you.” Since our Lord himself announces this as a new doctrine, and declares that it did not exist in “old time”—had no practical operation—it would be in vain to look for its operation in the conduct of men belonging to those times. The greatest men were animated by the spirit of the age in which they lived, and belonged essentially to that age; and we might as well complain that they travelled from Dan to Beersheba upon the slow-footed ass rather than by the rapid rail, as that they were not in all things actuated by the spirit of a later revelation and a later time. We are therefore not anxious to show that there was nothing vindictive in this counsel of David to his son; but we do think that a prudential regard for the safety of that son’s reign, in warning him against dangerous persons, was the predominant motive of his counsel, and the only motive of which he was himself conscious.

Under the like circumstances, a king in the situation of Solomon in almost any country of Europe itself—excepting, perhaps, only in our own country, where “the liberty of the subject” cannot be interfered with—would have shut such a man as Shimei up in some fortress for life; or, in the East, would have put out his eyes, or deprived him of his tongue, or both, or have subjected him to some other infliction to render him harmless; and in either part of the world, any prince who dealt with so suspicious a character not more harshly than Solomon, would be deemed to have acted leniently by him. He put him upon his parole, or rather made him a prisoner at large, assigning him for his residence, however, the largest and the most pleasant city in the land, even Jerusalem, in which many counted it a privilege to dwell. The brook Kidron was assigned him as a limit; and he was solemnly warned that, whenever he ventured beyond this limit, the penalty was death. This was necessary; for, to a man thus laboring under political suspicion, freedom to go beyond the assigned limit whenever he liked, would quite have nullified the object of placing him under surveillance in the metropolis. He might as well have been left entirely at large. And it was equally necessary that the order should have been absolute and indiscriminate; for if any excuse were to be allowed, an excuse could easily be found or created whenever the man desired to be absent.

At all events, Shimei accepted the engagement, and was clearly thankful that the limitations were so lenient and reasonable, and the conditions so easy to observe. As clearly he did not consider himself hardly dealt with; and as he appears to have expected some harsher judgment, we, at this later day, and with no minute knowledge of all the facts, have scarcely the right to censure that conduct towards him, of which he found no reason to complain.

Under this limitation, Shimei abode three years at Jerusalem. At the end of that period three of his slaves ran away from him, and were perhaps encouraged to do so by the notion, that the restriction under which their master lay must prevent him from following them. They were mistaken; for Shimei no sooner heard that they had been seen at Gath, than he saddled his ass, and hastened thither to reclaim them. He returned with them to Jerusalem; but had no sooner arrived than he was summoned before the king, who, after reminding him of his solemn engagement under oath never to quit Jerusalem upon pain of death, and reproaching him with the wickedness “which thine heart is privy to,” gave the signal of death to Benaiah, now captain of the host in the place of Joab, who “went out, and fell upon him that he died.”

Justifying, as we have done, the limitation imposed upon Shimei, we are bound to uphold also this stringent judgment upon its infraction. He had been fully warned of this result, and had accepted the condition. Had he refused, he would probably have been kept in close confinement; but since he had accepted, he was allowed full freedom within the assigned limits. The opportunity of leaving the city was allowed him, simply because he had pledged himself not to avail himself of it. Even so, however, we were formerly disposed, with Dr. Chalmers and others, to regard the transaction as “indigestible,” at least in its closing points. We argued to ourselves, that had Shimei been pursued, overtaken, and brought back, it would have been quite right to inflict the severest judgment upon him; but that, to say the least, it was a hard measure, seeing that he had come back voluntarily, and had thereby evinced the absence of any sinister object, or of any intention to escape. But on closer reflection, it appeared that the restriction put upon him was meant to guard against, not so much his escape (for if he escaped, how was he to be put to death?) as against occasional absences, during which he might plot and conspire, and then return until matters should be ripe for his final disappearance. And as the king had imposed a simple and clear regulation, he was not bound to burden himself with a particular inquiry into the validity of all the excuses which might from time to time be produced for its infraction. How, for instance, in this very case, was the king to know that the slaves had not been sent away, on purpose to afford their master an excuse for visiting a most suspicious quarter?

Upon the whole, it seems to us that in this case, as in many other austere circumstances of Scripture history, the apparent “difficulty” disappears, or becomes greatly attenuated, when all the circumstances are closely weighed; an, when we contemplate the subject not exclusively from our own point of view, but from that of contemporaries, under influences—religious, political, and social—very different from our own, but which some degree of careful study may enable us to realize. The more this is done, the more “digestible” many of the hardest things of Scripture history will appear. One thing is certain, that there is not a word or hint in the sacred books to show that the conduct of David and Solomon to Joab, Shimei, Adonijah, or Abiathar, was regarded as other than perfectly right and just, if not laudable, by the people of the age and country in which David and Solomon lived. Indeed, we may be sure that Solomon was too sagacious to disfigure the commencement of his reign by acts abhorrent to the public opinion of his time. And if he had that sanction—as we are sure he had—we feel that, in matters not affecting any principle of God’s ancient law, we have no right to stigmatize his conduct as unjust or barbarous, although, with our keener sense—with our Christian and occidental perceptions of human obligations, we turn with relief from the grim severities of this blood-stained page.