STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 44

2 Samuel 4:1-5:5

October 28, 2001

Text Comment

v.3 Men who make their living plundering tend to be affected by it in sinister ways. They become more heartless and cruel, less and less aware of the moral demands of love and honor. Witness modern terrorists, many of whom got their start in more prosaic forms of warfare.

v.4 This is foreshadowing, as we will, of course, hear of Mephibosheth again. But it is placed here to indicate that there is no one left in the house of Saul who was in a position to revive its fortunes. [Gordon, Com, 222]

v.6 The LXX at this verse reads: "And, behold the porter - or gatekeeper - of the house had winnowed wheat; she had fallen asleep and was dozing, and the brothers, Rechab and Baanah, sneaked inside." The LXX is the more likely reading as the MT is incoherent at several points and seems obviously corrupted, and the LXX reading explains how the deed was done without discovery. Obviously, Ish-Bosheth's situation is grave if a lady porter is his primary protection. And clearly he has been reduced to humble circumstances.

v.7 In other words, they did to Ish-Bosheth what the Philistines had done to his father, Saul.

v.8 Sounding very religious they make the same mistake as the Amalekite in 2 Samuel 1 who brought David the news of the death of Saul and Jonathan.

v.12 David did to those two violent men what they had done to Ish-Bosheth. He was offended by the cowardly way in which they had committed this murder as well as by the murder itself. And by so doing he made public demonstration of the fact that he had had no part in Ish-Bosheth's death and did not condone it. David praised the men of Jabesh Gilead for their loyalty to Saul; he executed these two men for their disloyalty. Of course, being king himself now, or about to be, it was important to impress on everyone what would happen to those who assassinate royalty!

That Ish-Bosheth and Abner should lie in the same grave and that grave lie in Hebron, David's city, is high irony and brings to an end the truly Shakespearean tragedy that overwhelmed the house of Saul.

5:2 Bereft of any leadership the elders of the northern tribes of Israel make their peace with him. They advance three reasons: 1) he is one of their own, an Israelite; 2) even when Saul was king, David was their most effective military commander; and 3) the Lord has chosen him to be Israel's king.

5:3 It is very typical for the OT narrative to alternate between "all Israel" as in v. 1 and "all the elders of Israel" as in v. 3. The latter represented the former and so the people could be said to be present when the elders were present.

The NIV's "compact" is the important Hebrew word berith or "covenant."

5:5 Verses 4 and 5 are like the accession notices given for each of the kings in turn in the Book of Kings. "In such and such a year…so and so became king, and he reigned so many years…"

The house of Saul is now defunct and David is finally King of a united Israel. We are ready for the next stage of this history. What is more, David has behaved righteously throughout the period of civil war. If God has used sin sinlessly to put David on the throne - the murder of Abner and the assassination of Ish-Bosheth - he has protected David from any involvement in the sins of those around him and David is able to demonstrate his innocence in a way that seems to have convinced the generality of Israel that David had nothing to do with Saul's death or the death of his commander, Abner, or his remaining son, Ish-Bosheth. David's magnanimity to Saul's household will be further demonstrated later in his kindness to Jonathan's son, Mephibosheth, but it has been displayed impressively in these early chapters of 2 Samuel. In other words he is being displayed as a man who loves justice and will act to enforce it, who trusts the Lord and will not seek by sinful means to advance the interests of his house or the nation. In this, of course, he is an image of Jesus Christ, who would proceed in his ministry by the way of righteousness and never make use of sinful means to advance his work.

In S.G. DeGraaf's excellent work, Promise and Deliverance, he treats this first section of 2 Samuel under the heading "The Lord subjects the people to their King." He also makes a great point of David's ascension to the throne in the way of righteousness and not in the way of human calculation. Even when David thinks to manage matters to his advantage, as in his negotiations with Abner, it comes to nothing and the Lord raises his king to the throne in his own way. But DeGraaf rightly sees this as a narrative whose great theme is the Lord placing his king over his people.

Now, there are a variety of implications that we could consider in respect to that. We could discuss kingship in ancient Israel or the Lordship of Christ, both of which are taught here, at least in principle. As we have already dealt with the general theme of this narrative - David's ascension to the throne - it becomes possible for us to mine the text for certain other of its lessons. It is good to do that, from time to time, just to remind ourselves how "thick" the Bible is and how many things are taught us in each and every text of God's Word. But, whatever we take from a text must in fact actually be present in it. Whatever doctrine we teach from a text must actually be a doctrine taught in that text. This text has been an important text in previous times for constructing the biblical doctrine of government and the Christian citizen's relationship to his government. That subject is certainly taught in Holy Scripture. The question is: is it taught here?

At certain times in the history of the church, the Bible's doctrine of the state has been a matter of the keenest interest for Christians, notably when they have found themselves at serious odds with the government or have even been attacked by the government and their liberties taken away. The 17th century was such a time in Great Britain and in Europe generally. The Puritans and the Scottish covenanters were consumed with church/state questions. Christians in the United States have not been overly interested in this question for some time, but we are beginning to be interested again as we find our government more and more taking positions that are inimical to our faith and as it becomes easier and easier for us to imagine our own government actually beginning to act against the church and punish her for certain of her doctrines or practices. Does anyone here think we have nothing to fear in coming days from the government in regard to its militant espousal of abortion, or the legal approval of homosexual lifestyles, or our commitment to an all male ministry? It is becoming quite easy for even mainstream Christians to imagine the state deciding that it had what it calls "a compelling interest" in forbidding and then punishing what it sees as discriminatory practices, even if those practices are rooted clearly in the teaching of the Bible. It has, for example, already acted against individual Christians who have not wanted to rent to practicing homosexuals and said so in their advertising of an apartment.

I thought about all of this in regard to the text that we read because Samuel Rutherford and some of the other English and Scottish Puritans made a great deal of 2 Samuel 5:3 and the covenant that David made with Israel's elders that resulted in his being anointed by them as the King.

In his celebrated book, Lex Rex, the book which Charles II ordered burned and the book for which he ordered Rutherford's arrest, Rutherford argued that this text, 2 Sam. 5:3, proved that all legitimate royal government was grounded in a covenant between the king and the people. The concept of government by covenant was important in Calvinistic political thought generally in the 17th century. The covenant was thought both to set limits to the king's power and to provide justification for resistance to the government if it acted against the terms of that covenant by which it had been established. Rutherford saw the elders of Israel here "transferring power to the king" giving him formal authority to govern on their behalf. And, in doing so, he wrote in Lex Rex, "they measure out, by ounce weights, so much royal power, and no more and no less. So as they may limit, moderate and set banks…to the exercise." [Cited in John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford, 164] That meant in turn that what the elders, representing the people, had given, they could also take away. Since the power finally resided with them, the people could rise up against the king if he became tyrannical.

Now, is that right? Can we derive representative government, government by the people from 2 Sam. 5:3? Are we being taught here the true theory of the government of the state? It is important to get every teaching that is found in a biblical text out of it, but it is also important not to import meaning into a text that is not really there. In the case of Rutherford, I think that is the mistake they made. Their first mistake was this: they assumed that Britain was a state like Israel in David's day and that 2 Samuel 5:3 could be applied directly to the British situation. Their second mistake was their interpretation of 2 Sam. 5:3 itself.

Can we really understand what the elders did here as a devolving of kingly authority upon David? Is that what they were doing? Or is it rather, as it was in the case of Samuel's anointing David in the first place, a recognition that God himself had already called and set David apart to the office of king? Clearly the elders of Israel did not make David king! God made him king. The elders admitted as much in v. 2. It was sin on the part of the elders of Israel that they did not acknowledge David's right to rule until they were forced to by developments in the civil war.

In fact, take note of the language at the beginning of verse 3. "All the elders of Israel came to King David at Hebron." The Hebrew has "David" only later in the sentence, the NIV has brought his name forward for clarity's sake. What it says literally is that "all the elders of Israel came unto the king at Hebron." In other words, he was already the king, but they had not yet honored him as their king, acknowledged him as their king, or sworn their allegiance to him as their king.

And, what of this covenant between Israel and David? Well, the most immediately noteworthy detail in v. 3 is that the elders did not make a covenant with David, he made a covenant with them. That is what it says. He was the one in the position of strength. They came as suppliants, not he. He is ending the civil war, bringing them under his rule, and uniting them to Judah. But what is manifestly not happening here is that the elders of Israel were bestowing authority to rule on David. God had given him that and they had, for some years, rebelled against the divine will. Now they were forced to acknowledge it.

In other words, if we are to take our political theory from 2 Sam. 5:3, we should end up not democrats but royalists and believers in the divine right of kings. There is no government of the people and by the people in 2 Sam. 5:3. There is God's anointed king and the elders of the people coming to acknowledge that fact publicly.

But, there was a larger problem with Rutherford's attempt to apply 2 Sam. 5:3 to his own political situation and that was his virtual identification of Israel with Great Britain or Scotland. But the situations are not the same, not at all the same. Israel was God's covenanted people and was obliged to honor the king whom God had chosen for her. That it was David had been communicated to her by Samuel, God's prophet. The theory of government taught here is theocracy administered by kings divinely appointed.

In the world of the New Testament and ever since, though government itself is appointed by God and exercises its authority in obedience to God, there is no theory of government taught. Whatever government there may be, Christians are obliged to obey it so long as that obedience does not require disobedience to God. That was true in the Old Testament and is true today. "We must obey God rather than men." And many times we see the Lord's prophets and others defying faithless and wicked kings in Israel and Judah, just as we see the apostles in the NT defying constituted authority when it clashed with the authority of God. But, as to what government there should be, the Bible does not seem to suggest an ideal. The Lord Jesus himself was subject to local Jewish government in the form of the town synagogue and the national Sanhedrin. But these were not democratic institutions. We don't know precisely how the membership of the Sanhedrin was formed but it seems very clear that the members were not elected by the people. Its membership seems to have been appointed for life and, in all likelihood, the Sanhedrin elected its own members to fill its vacancies, unless the political authorities (Herod or Rome) demanded this right. [Schurer, History…, ii, 211] On the other hand, in the Greco-Roman world there were more democratic institutions, such as the town councils of Greek cities, but there was also the imperial and often despotic government of Rome.

Jesus paid his taxes, even to the imperial power and even though those taxes went to support such things as the cost of maintaining an occupying army in Judea and building a temple to Diana in Ephesus. He was obedient to the powers that were until that obedience conflicted with his loyalty to God his father. We hear nothing from him about politics, political theory, democratic aspirations, the sacred right to vote, and the like.

We American Christians have been long used to the idea that democracy or some republican form of government is the will of God. The best argument for that conclusion is found in the fact that in the New Testament at least, congregations elected their own office bearers. Even the filling of the vacancy among the 12 created by the defection of Judas was done, at least in largest part, by the vote of the members of that small assembly of Christians in Jerusalem before Pentecost. How that vote was conducted we are not told in any detail. Nor is any specific method prescribed later on in the New Testament when popular election of office-bearers is mentioned. And Christian churches have differed in their approach for that reason, just as the USA has extended the privilege of suffrage only gradually to the entire citizenry and, still today, there is an age limit. In churches though the years head of family voting, male only voting, and universal suffrage have all been found. But, the idea that the people elect their rulers is, at least in the broadest brush, a pattern found in the government of the church in the apostolic era.

However, what Americans mean by democracy and what was meant by the election of elders in the New Testament is hardly the same. Elders are servants of the people, to be sure, but they are also under divine orders to teach and then to enforce his will among his people. The notion that laws would change as the will of the people changed is an utterly foreign idea to the New Testament. The Christian church is not a democracy in any sense. It is a theocracy, a kingdom, with a king, Jesus Christ. And those who rule in the church rule at his pleasure and on his behalf. Indeed, in our Reformed doctrine of calling, it has always been held that the church does not so much call men to offices of authority as it recognizes that God has called them and that the church is, therefore, duty bound to submit to them. They do not derive their authority from the people and the people cannot take it from them. Only the body of elders itself, either as the elders of a congregation or of a Presbytery, can withdraw an elder's authority in the church and only because he has proved himself unfaithful to the Lord's charge in some way.

We may be facing difficult times in this next generation. Perhaps this will be the first generation of American Christians that finds itself in active opposition to the American government and suffering punishments from that government for the sake of loyalty to Christ.

If that is so, then it behooves us to think carefully about the biblical doctrine of human government. To do that we must determine what the Bible actually teaches. We are to go as far as the Bible goes and no further. In my judgment, we cannot extract from Holy Scripture a political theory that defines the proper government for the state. We cannot prove biblically that royalty is wrong or that democracy is right. We may have convictions ourselves, and as citizens we certainly have a right to them. We may believe this or that about what makes for the best form of government, what governments are responsible for and what not, how officers of the government should be chosen, how governmental powers should be apportioned, and so on. We grew up as Americans thinking that our political system was almost divinely inspired. But, alas, the luster has been dulled over this past generation and we now know for sure that democratic republicanism can be an engine of pure evil and coercive injustice just as surely as the old totalitarian regimes could be. Many Christians find themselves today wistfully longing for a King like St. Louis who would impose a moral order based on biblical principles and then commend that order to the citizenry by the goodness and purity and generosity and humility of his own life. I have been reading recently an account of the 20th century presidents of our land and have thought to myself over and over again of a number of these popularly elected high officials - and a number long before Bill Clinton: no wonder we are in the moral mess we are in when such men were chosen to lead us.

The Bible provides only the broadest outline of a doctrine of the state. Government has God's imprimatur and is obliged to rule according to his laws. What we can say for a certainty is that magistrates of all kinds, serving in all sorts of different types of government around the world, will all be judged according to the law of God and all are required by that law to rule with justice, honesty, and consideration for the poor and needy. Christians who know the Word of God should make their voices heard and often have been greatly influential in the political arena. The abolition of slavery in the Western democracies is a case in point. Many of the laws protecting workers were first supported by Christians acting in concert to influence the state. The opposition to abortion in our own day as a political force derives almost entirely from Christian convictions. As advocates of God's truth in the world, Christians seek as they can to shed the light of God's Word on political and social questions, both to do honor to God and to bring blessing to their fellow man. Certainly there is nothing unchristian about political activity.

But, primarily our doctrine of the state is this: whatever the form of government of the secular state, it is subject to the rule of the King of Kings. And the one thing his subjects know is that their allegiance to him, their loyalty to him, their obedience to him, trumps all lesser commitments. They obey their national government, even when its dictates are foolish and manifestly unwise, because their Master has instructed them to do so and because he did so himself when he was among us. They disobey the magistrate only when he orders them to disobey their King. There are some who make a great deal of these questions and, to be sure, we all may be making more and more of them as opposition between the government and biblical Christianity stiffens. But it is a comparatively small part of the Bible's picture of Christian life.

How small, of all that human hearts endure,

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Still to ourselves in every place consigned,

Our own felicity we make or find.

Well, not exactly. God and Christ make it for us, and we seek it in obedience to our Lord and Master. What the anointing of David teaches us here primarily is that both the people and her elders owe their allegiance and their unwavering loyalty to the King that God sets above his people. And that king is David's great heir, Jesus Christ.