John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: September 2

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: September 2

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David in Hebron

2Sa_2:1-7; 1Sa_31:11-13

The death of Saul with his three eldest sons in the fatal battle of Gilboa, fully authorized David to advance his own claims without the reserve he had hitherto maintained. He was king by right. He had been anointed for the reversion, and he was now entitled to possession. By the same right under which Saul had held his crown, David was now entitled to claim it. Saul had been appointed on certain well understood conditions, which he had violated, and on certain principles, which he had contravened. The forfeiture of the succession of his descendants was the penalty; and that he had incurred. The Lord, therefore, acting on the right reserved from the first, and under which Saul had become king, declared that forfeiture, and nominated David to the succession, and had caused him to be anointed to it by his prophet. This was now known to all Israel; Saul’s heir had acquiesced in it; and Saul himself had acknowledged the constitutional validity of this deposition, although he persecuted the individual on whose head the lapsed crown was to fall. It is useless to argue anything here with reference to the principles and practices of other monarchies. The Hebrew monarchy had a definite constitutional principle of its own, and it is by this that we must judge—that we must call a thing fit or unfit, right or wrong. According to that constitution, David was de jure king; nor was there ever any one by whom, or in whose favor, the jus divinum might with so much truth be urged. The hereditary principle had no application here. But allowing for a moment that it had—the true heir of the house of Saul was Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, who had expressly renounced all claims for himself and his heirs in favor of David.

Still it was not the object of the Divine nomination to force an unacceptable king upon the chosen people. Even Saul had waited until his nomination had been confirmed by the choice of the nation. The claim was good as against any other candidate—but was not intended to be good for military or other compulsory enforcement upon the people. This was very well understood by David, who acted with commendable delicacy and discretion in the somewhat trying position in which he now found himself. He sought not to force himself into the vacant throne by his armed bands—but he presented himself to the choice of the people, clothed with the honor of the Lord’s nomination, for which, by several years of conspicuous triumphs and trials, he had been enabled to show himself worthy.

The crisis was too important for a man like David to move on without taking counsel of God. His first question was, if he could now go into the land of Judah? and this being affirmatively answered, he asked to what place? and Hebron was named. This ancient city of Abraham, was the capital of the tribe of Judah, and the strongest and most important place within its limits. It was also one of the Levitical cities, and therefore strong in the interests of David, not only from the keener perception the priestly tribe would have of the validity of his nomination to the crown, but from their sympathy with the man whose cause, since the massacre at Nob, had been identified with their own.

To Hebron, accordingly, David marched his now considerable army, entering the town with the élite of his force, and stationing the rest with their families in the neighboring villages and towns. He was here welcomed with joy by his own tribe, and with little delay the crown of Judah was tendered to him by the leaders of the tribe, and was accepted by him. They could not offer him more. They had no right to offer him the dominion over other tribes than their own. But that was no reason why they should delay to declare their own sentiments. Their rank among the tribes—the pre-eminence which only Ephraim ventured to question, gave them a right to take the initiative, and they had reason to expect that it would be followed by other tribes.

It seems to have been felt that very much would depend on securing the adhesion of the loosely attached tribes beyond the Jordan. David had reason to think his cause popular there, by reason of the parties from Gad and Manasseh which had joined him, and remained attached to his person. An opportunity of gracefully inviting attention to his claims, was afforded by the men of Jabesh-Gilead, which belonged to Manasseh.

After the battle of Gilboa, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found the bodies of Saul and his three sons. The head of Saul they cut off, that they might carry it about in triumph—a custom too general to need illustration, and which David himself had exemplified when he slew Goliath. The king’s rich armor they removed, and sent to be hung up as a trophy in the temple of Ashtaroth. David in like manner had given the sword, and probably the armor, of Goliath, to be laid up before the Lord. This was a mode in which the ancients acknowledged that their victories were due to the gods they worshipped, or at least as becoming offerings of thanksgiving for such victories. It was especially the custom of the Greeks and Romans—whose usages we know better than those of other nations—thus to adorn their temples. Virgil, who is scarcely greater as a poet than as an antiquary, describes it as an ancient custom of the Latins—

“Around the posts hung helmets, darts, and spears,

And captive chariots, axes, shields, and bows,

And broken beaks of ships, the trophies of their wars.”

Dryden. Note:

Multaque præterea sacris in postibus arma,

Captivi pendent currus, curvæque secures,

Et cristæ capitum, et portarum ingentia claustra

Spiculaque, clypeique, ereptaque rostra carinis.—Æn. vii. 183, seq.

We have ourselves retained what is essentially the same custom, in hanging up in our churches the banners taken from the enemy. In fact, one who is careful to trace the analogies of customs and usages, does not expect to find many that are peculiar to any people.

The trunk of Saul, and the bodies of his sons, not being available as trophies, were gibbeted by way of insult and intimidation, on the walls of Bethshan—a place not far from the field of battle, towards the Jordan. To the Jews, whose law forbade such exposure of a dead body beyond the sunset of the first day, this dreadful spectacle was far more disgusting and horrible than it would, until recently, have been to us, whose roads and shores, and solitary places, have within the memory of living men been defiled with corpses similarly exposed. It is possible that the knowledge of how adverse this practice was to the customs of the Israelites, and how revolting it must seem to them, was among the inducements of the Philistines to treat the body of Saul thus ignominiously.

Shocked as the Israelites were, none ventured to interfere save the men of Jabesh, whose grateful remembrance of their deliverance by Saul at the commencement of his reign, impelled them to undertake the bold and dangerous enterprise of rescuing the remains of their benefactor and his sons from this disgrace. They travelled at least ten miles, and having crossed the Jordan, stole away the bodies by night, in the face, as it were, of a hostile garrison. Returning the same night to Jabesh, they there burned the bodies, and having gathered up the bones, buried them under a tree—and mourned and fasted seven days for their fallen king. It was not the custom of the Jews to burn the dead—as among the Greeks and Romans. There must, therefore, have been some special reason for the men of Jabesh burning the remains of these princes. It was probably to prevent the possibility of the Philistines again maltreating the dead bodies, in case that, finding they had been taken away, they should search after them, and discover the place in which they had been deposited.

This act of devoted attachment was well calculated to impress the susceptible heart of David, especially as one of the corpses thus rescued from disgrace was that of his beloved Jonathan. He wished the men of Jabesh-Gilead to feel, that although Saul had treated him as an enemy, and although he had reaped advantage from his death, such proofs of attachment to the fallen prince were not displeasing to him, but were entirely in unison with his own sentiments. He notified that the tribe of Judah had anointed him king, and intimated that in case they also adhered to him, they might expect his special consideration and protection. This, as we take it, was the purport of his message: “Blessed be ye of the Lord, that ye have showed kindness to Saul your lord, and have buried him. Now, may the Lord show you kindness and truth, and I also will requite your kindness. Therefore, let your hands be strong, and be ye valiant; for though our master Saul is dead, yet the house of Judah hath anointed me king over them.”

This was a very kind and considerate message. It must be admitted that in sending it, David assumes a certain right to acknowledge, officially, a public service, and invites them to recognize his authority. Such an acknowledgment from persons who had evinced so much attachment to Saul, could not but have much weight with others. But what rendered it the more proper was, the probability that the Philistines might attempt to call them to account for the deed they had achieved, in which case he encourages them to hold out, in the assured expectation, notwithstanding his recent connection with the Philistines, that they should receive the same assistance and support from him as they had formerly received from Saul. If this assurance be, as we apprehend, involved in the message of David to the men of Jabesh-Gilead, it must have been full of significance to a wider audience than that to which it was addressed, as it assured the people that his duty to the nation was, in his view, superior to all considerations of recent obligation to the Philistines, and that he should, notwithstanding this, be ready to take arms against them if their conduct presented an adequate reason and provocation. Such an assurance could not, under the circumstances of the time, have been more openly expressed; but if taken in the sense we have defined, it could not but have conveyed a most satisfactory intimation to the people, that he was not at all disposed to reign by mere sufferance of the Philistines, or as their tool or instrument, a suspicion of which might naturally have been engendered by his late intercourse with them, his protection by them, his obligations to them, and the apparent willingness he had manifested to fight under their banners against his own people.