STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 40

2 Samuel 1:1-16

September 2, 2001

Text Comment

We return this evening to our interrupted studies in Samuel. Tonight we begin 2 Samuel, though, as you remember, that division of the Book into First and Second is artificial and has nothing to do with the narrator's own organization of his material. In fact, chapter 1 of Second Samuel really completes the section on the demise of Saul that began in 1 Sam. 28. The account of Saul's death has been given in 1 Sam. 31 and David hears about it in 2 Samuel 1. Remember, these latter chapters of Samuel have been about the spiritual preparation of David for the throne and the final outworking of God's judgment against the house of Saul for his faithlessness.

v.1 If you remember, the narrator, in the last few chapters, has been more interested in and impressed with David's successful waging of war against the Amalekites than the events that lead up to Saul's death, an anti-climax after the long narrative of the king's decline and the many statements of the fact that God had taken the throne from him and given it to David. The narrator follows his account of Saul's death with a reminder of what David has been doing so successfully and reminds us that Gilboa was no great defeat for Israel so much as it was, for David, a clearing of the way to the throne. Israel could not have God's blessing until David was her king! By the way, the narrator is continuing his contrast of the two men, even after Saul's death. The word the NIV renders "defeating" is the same word used in 1 Sam. 15:3 where Saul was commanded to strike the Amalekites. David did what Saul had not.

v.2 The man's dress is probably to be thought of as part of the act he is going to put on.

v.6 Remember, the Philistine chariots had functioned with great success against Saul's army in the plain of Jezreel, so, when the battle went against them, the Israelites fled to the mountain behind where the chariots could not maneuver. Saul's wound had come from an archer (1 Sam. 31:3) and this story, that the chariots were almost upon him, may have been completely made up. But, doubts now begin to rise in the mind. Who just "happens to be" on a battlefield in the heat of battle?

v.9 That is, he had been wounded and was dying, but wanted to die before being captured.

v.10 Now our narrator, of course, has let us in on the fact that this man is lying. He did not dispatch King Saul, because we have already learned in the account of the king's death given in the previous chapter, verse 4, that Saul died by his own hand. When Saul's armor bearer had refused to do what this Amalekite claimed to have done, Saul fell on his own sword. The Amalekite came on the scene later and figured that here was an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the new most powerful man in Israel and the warrior who had shown himself more than the match of the Amalekite army. No doubt he was hoping for some reward.

In other words, he was a looter and happened to be first on the scene. The crown he took would have been not the fancy one used at the palace, but one used for battle. With the band it was the insignia of the crown and proved that he had actually seen the body of the king.

v.13 The Amalekite's reply that he was the "son of an alien" is important. That term, "alien" [ger] refers to someone who was a foreigner but who lived in Israel, with certain limited rights and obligations. Think of someone with a "green card". He was a resident of Israel, in other words. As such a resident, he was obliged to respect and honor the king's person. Whether the man really was a resident alien we are not told. He may have lied about that too and in so doing tied the noose around his own head. He would have been better to bury Saul's body or drag it off to prevent desecration by the Philistines.

v.15 Remember Doeg the Edomite who had killed the Lord's priests. Now the Amalekite who struck down the Lord's king was to be punished for a similar crime.

v.16 David is here found in the role of a judge, as military commanders in the field sometimes are. He is careful to note that he had evidence and that it had been provided by the accused himself. You will note that David refers to Saul as the Lord's anointed. Not once had the Amalekite even referred to Saul as the king.

Now this, and the lament that follows in the second half of chapter 1 completes the account of Saul's life and the struggle between the two men. Beginning in chapter 2, the focus shifts to David's struggle to consolidate his throne. But, what we are given in chapter 1 is the final picture of a man who is ready to assume that throne. You will remember that in the later chapters of 1 Samuel, David passed through a process in which he came fully to realize the necessity that the king of Israel be himself a righteous man. We pointed out the importance of this in regard to David's being both the progenitor and the enacted prophecy of the coming Messiah. He would be a righteous man! But in David's case, as in the case of Jesus a thousand years later, the righteousness of the king had a great deal to do with returning blessing for cursing and not sinning when provoked by unrighteous enemies. This is the higher righteousness of the truly righteous. In those episodes we considered some months ago, David learned that he was not to take vengeance upon the Lord's anointed and that, instead, he was to trust his cause to the Lord his God.

The great importance of this first chapter of 2 Samuel is the demonstration it provides that David had not only learned that lesson but was in this most important respect a thoroughly righteous man who was worthy to mount the throne of the people of God. If the great and climactic demonstration of the purity of Christ's heart and the love that motivated him to such great sacrifice was his praying for the forgiveness of those who crucified him and mocked him while he was hung up to die, then the demonstration of a similar kind of purity and love in the Lord's great ancestor is found here in the consideration and the love and the respect he showed for the man who had been so long and so cruelly and so unjustly seeking his life. We have no difficulty believing that David genuinely mourned the death of Jonathan who was, after all, David's close friend, and had helped David in important ways and sacrificed his own cause for David's.

But, that David mourned for Saul, and at the last protected his right and honor as the King of Israel, is another matter. That is the love of enemies, the true, the indelible mark of the Christian in the world. The Lord Jesus would be the perfect exemplar of this powerful virtue. But it was he who taught us that this would be the distinguishing mark of his followers as well. Even pagans can love people who love them, he pointed out, but to love the enemy, truly to love him or her, that takes the grace of God. Think of Stephen praying for those who were stoning him to death. That is the snapshot of true Christian virtue and righteousness, distinct from anything the world can manufacture on a natural basis.

Perhaps the first evidence that there was going to be something very special about the life of Francis of Assisi came when, as a young man, he was captured in battle with a small company of others. Apparently there was one among the captured group who was thought to have contributed if not caused the disaster. That man was shunned by everyone else, except Francis, who extended to him the same cheerful fellowship that he extended to everyone else in that cell. [Chesterton, St. Francis, 47]

You and I are always making the mistake of supposing that the higher reaches of Christian holiness, the more demanding requirements, are found only in occasional, even rare moments in the Christian life. We are told to turn the other cheek, but rarely does anyone actually slap us on the cheek, indeed, many of us have never had it happen. And so we think regarding the love of enemies. Oh no! These great images of that love: David mourning Saul, Stephen praying for his murderers, or Christ asking grace for those who crucified him, are just pictures in bold and living color of that grace that ought to be in our lives every day.

But, you say, I have no enemies. Do you not? Do you really think so? If only for a moment, if only on occasion, everyone who stands in your way, everyone who bothers you, everyone who provokes you to envy, everyone who disappoints you, everyone who causes you to feel smaller in some way, everyone who surpasses you, everyone who fails you, in that is your enemy and has slapped you on the cheek. Of yes, you have enemies, even if they are folk who may have no active interest in your harm but who, in one way or another, stand in the way of your happiness or whom you are hell-bent on resenting. And it is yours to turn the other and bless in return for the curse - real or only perceived on your part - and to love that enemy. How unnatural that is for us. How hard! But that is the truly righteous life. That was our Savior's life, that was the righteousness our salvation required. And that is the example he left for us to follow in his steps. That is the life that we will live if we wish to honor him and love him. That is the life to which true faith will always aspire.

And how different a life it must be if we respond to every enemy - even if that "enemy" is only so in our own minds - with love, respect, regard, consideration, and blessing. Do not tell me if wouldn't make a difference. The world and the church see so little of this that it cannot help but be noticed and commented on and wondered at.

This Amalekite easily supposed that since Saul had been trying to kill David, he would find an appreciative audience for his story of ending Saul's life. He hadn't exactly murdered him, after all; he was careful to soft-pedal his part in the demise of the king. But surely David would be glad to get the news and reward the man who had had a part in dispatching his long time enemy. That is how little this young man imagined that David would be, even after all that Saul had done, Saul's supporter and defender of Saul's honor and office. People don't see this often enough ever to anticipate it.

When you are loving your enemies, at that moment supremely, you are living the Christian life by Christian principles; you know the Spirit of God is at work in your heart; you know that Christ is pleased with your life. You and I should set out to do that - love our enemies, real or perceived - on a regular basis. It is the righteousness that is commended to us in the Word of God. It is the righteousness that made David fit to be king, that made our Savior fit to be the sacrifice that takes away the sin of the world, and it will be the righteousness that truly distinguishes us as the followers of the Lord Christ.

You make it a point this week to show real kindness and consideration to a Saul in your life and ask God to make the Amalekite take notice!

Listen to this from the autobiography of Russell Baker, the journalist and humorist for the New York Times and, latterly, host on PBS's Masterpiece Theater. He is describing the aftermath of the sudden death of his father when he was a boy of five years of age.

"For the first time I thought seriously about God. Between sobs I told Bessie [the family housekeeper] that if God could do things like this to people, then God was hateful and I had no more use for him.

Bessie told me about the peace of Heaven and the joy of being among the angels and the happiness of my father who was already there. The argument failed to quiet my rage. 'God loves us all just like his own children,' Bessie said. 'If God loves me, why did He make my father die?'

Bessie said that I would understand someday, but she was only partly right. That afternoon, though I couldn't have phrased it this way then, I decided that God was a lot less interested in people than anybody in Morrisonville was willing to admit. That day I decided that God was not entirely to be trusted.

After that I never cried again with any conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic." [Paul Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless, 146]

There are a lot of people who think and live that way. And the fact is, the only thing, humanly speaking, likely to change their viewpoint is to encounter a divine love themselves. It is only when a person knows that God loves mightily that he can trust God to visit him and others with great trials and still believe in God. And what is the distinguishing mark of that divine love? It is love given to those who don't deserve it, to those an ordinary person would never expect to get such love from such a person. We are to be envoys of that love, exemplars of it. Every day; all the time. It is the most powerful thing you can do as a Christian in the world. Do it!