David, “Reassignment, not Retirement.”
2 Samuel 21:1-22
Vs. 1-14 Going through dry spells
Vs. 15-22 Going through faint spells
Intro
The 21st chapter doesn’t seem to follow a chronological order but rather gives us two stories offering a different glimpse of life under David’s reign.
- The first story (verses 1–14) appears to look back to a time when David first became king of the united nation around the time when he took in Mephibosheth.
- The second story (verses 15–22) was written at a time near the end of David’s life.
But the question is, why are these not written in order? My opinion is that the author wanted to show David, from two different perspectives, how he made tough decisions and how he equipped others to do the same.
But these stories serve another purpose by way of application as they reveal to us how to handle two very difficult seasons in life, dry spells (verse 1) and faint spells (verse 15). If we are granted long life, then rest assured we will go through some dry spells and some faint spells, yet in David’s actions we see that he didn’t resign; he didn’t retire from life; he was simply reassigned.
Going through dry spells
Vs. 1-6 The first story centers on a three-year famine that occurred in the days of David. Now this is an interesting story for three different reasons:
- We have the situation: The land is plunged into a famine where they have had three successive years of drought and supplies are running short. Agriculturally, Israel for the most part practiced what would be common in Eastern Montana called “dry land farming,” in which they would grow crops in an area that had as little as 15 inches of rain a year. This is accomplished by leaving stubble standing after the harvest of the crop so that it would catch and hold moisture in the soil. Now, with proper management of resources, it would be possible to survive a drought for a few years, but after that, they would be in big trouble. But here there was something about this prolonged drought as David sought the Lord that indicated to him that this wasn’t just bad weather patterns. I’m not sure what to make of this but to say that David, who was a man after God’s own heart, must have had something pressing in his spirit that indicated that the reason for the famine and drought was greater than natural occurrences. Hey saints, in times of adversity in our lives, it is a wise thing to seek the Lord so we can determine what’s going on, and to continue to do so until we have an answer. Jesus said in Matt. 5:45 that our heavenly Father “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust,” so why not seek Him concerning the sun and the rain?
- Second, why did it take David so long to seek the Lord? You see it says that “David inquired of the Lord… and the Lord answered,” so David literally sought the face of God for the situation, and the answer came immediately after doing so, but why did he wait three years? Hey saints, perhaps the dry spell in our land is because of a dry spell in prayer? Could it be that we have not heard from the Lord because we have not sought the Lord concerning our situation?
Finally we are given the reason for the famine: “It is because of Saul and his bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites.” There are three things that we often think give us an out concerning our sin:
- Time: First, the events of Saul’s sin of killing the Gibeonites in order to break the treaty are years removed without any incident. The point is that time doesn’t lessen the effects of sin, and although God is amazingly patient, our sin always finds us out.
- Knowledge: Second, this massacre isn’t recorded anywhere in 1 Samuel, but apparently some time during Saul’s reign he killed a lot of the Gibeonites. Which tells us that the lack of knowledge doesn’t lessen the effects of sin. In Joshua 9 (400 years before David), Israel swore an oath to God not to harm the Gibeonites, and God expected His people to keep their promise even though the Gibeonites had tricked Israel into making the agreement. Further, even though Saul has died, the nation is suffering because they looked the other way when he did it.
- Omission: Finally, the famine upon the land was because of Saul, and Saul is dead, so what’s the problem? The events spoken of had nothing to do with David, yet he was suffering under the effects of them. Though that is true, there were none who stood up and stopped it, nor were there any willing to make it right, until the famine brought about the truth. We are prone to think that if we didn’t commit the act, then we bear no responsibility. There are sins of “commission” and sins of “omission,” and all that needs to happen for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Take, for instance, Paul, who stood by with others’ coats at his feet while they stoned Steven.
This story also reveals three truths:
- God expects us to keep our promises: The Gibeonites were the people who made a deal on false pretenses with Joshua by faking their proximity to Israel, and having signed a treaty with Israel, Joshua promised to let them live among them in peace, albeit they would have to be Israel’s servants. Now of further interest is that they were to be servants in the area of gathering the wood and water for the temple sacrifices. You see, oftentimes God will use our foolish decisions to forever gather fuel for our devotion. He will use our relationships with people we shouldn’t have been hanging with to wash our hearts.
- Time does not diminish our obligation. Here is what we see based upon this: God expected Israel to honor their covenant (even if they were tricked into it, and even if it wasn’t David’s fault, and even if many years had passed). So why all the fuss now? Well, God doesn’t sweep anything under the carpet, and He had been waiting for the opportune time to deal with all concerning the matter. In 2 Peter 3:9 we are told, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
- God will keep His promises and corrections: It is safe to assume that what Saul did was some sort of misguided zeal, but good intentions don’t undo bad actions, and reconciliation and restitution must be sought. Notice verse 2, that Saul’s zeal was before man and not the Lord; it is in his being a man pleaser, not a God pleaser, that this sin was committed. Many believe that this occurred after his refusal to kill the Amalekites, as he tried to look right before the people by killing the Gibeonites. As difficult as this passage is to us in as much as we don’t know all the details, we must interpret the scripture not on what we don’t know but rather upon what we do know, and that is according to Gen. 18:25. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” What I find interesting is that David sought only the reason for the famine, not the solution. For this he needed to seek the offended Gibeonites. My point is that knowing the problem is not enough; we still need to seek the solution.
Vs. 3-6 So in verse three, we see that David initiated reconciliation by coming to them; no doubt the famine encouraged this. David didn’t come as a king but rather as a servant seeking to atone for Saul’s and the nation’s sins. “How can I make this right with you and with God?” David asks. And the Gibeonites immediately say, “We can’t be bought off from the gold or silver of Saul, nor can you execute just anybody in Israel.” “What do you want? Name it and I’ll do it,” David said. “We want the man that did this to our families to have the same done to his family; take seven men of his descendants and we’ll hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose.” So David said, “Alright, you’ll have them.”
Vs. 7-9 Mephibosheth was the most notable descendant of Saul, and it would have made the most sense for him to be the first of the seven to be delivered for execution, but David promised Jonathan to protect and bless Mephibosheth, and he would not fulfill one promise at the expense of another. So he took two sons of Rizpah (a concubine of Saul), Armoni and Mephibosheth, whom Jonathon’s son was named after. And five sons of Merab, the daughter of Saul, whom Saul had promised as a reward for the man that killed Goliath, and afterward had given her to Adriel instead of David, according to 1 Sam 18:19. The fact that these sons are said to have been Michal’s instead of Merab’s (verse 8) tells us that Merab must have died, as it says that Michal “brought them up for Merab’s husband, Adriel.”.
Furthermore, we know that Michal remained barren according to 2 Sam 6:23, and here even the boys she raised died. Now we cannot be certain, but it appears that these seven were part of the “bloodthirsty house” of verse 1, and were somehow involved in the killings, which is further indicated by David’s agreement without any hesitation as he knew that these descendants had directly benefited from the massacre. According to Numbers 35:30-34, “the shedding of innocent blood defiles the land.” Only the shedding of blood would give legal retribution for the crime, not just any blood, the blood of the one who had committed the crime. So seven of Saul’s grandsons are given to the Gibeonites, and seven is the number of completion, so sin unrepented will come to completion if we don’t deal with it.
Saul’s life is a puzzle, as he refused to obey the Lord and kill the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 13, yet he tried to exterminate the Gibeonites whom Joshua promised to protect. Making this even more bizarre is that Saul’s great-grandfather was himself a Gibeonite, so Saul is killing his own relatives, and we know that Gibeon became a Levitic city within the borders of Saul’s tribe of Benjamin. Hey saints, oftentimes we think that God, by His silence, is unconcerned with our rebellion and disobedience, but His patience doesn’t mark His indifference but rather grace that we will on our own address our sin. But if we continue to not deal with it ourselves, He will take action on our behalf to drive us to the throne of grace.
Vs. 10-14 So these seven were given to the Gibeonites, who hanged them altogether. The law required the bodies to be taken down by sundown and buried, but to be certain that Saul’s crime had been dealt with, David allowed the bodies to remain until the rain came. Interestingly, only Rizpah came and spread sackcloth upon the rock from May to October, not allowing the birds or wild animals to get at them, but there is no mention of Michal doing so. But after the rains came, David went and got the bones of Saul and Jonathan from the men of Jabesh Gilead, who had taken them and brought all of their bones and buried them in the tomb that belonged to the father of Saul.
There is a good lesson for us in this story, as oftentimes we go season after season in dryness, wondering why nothing is growing in our lives. Times when we are thirsty and hungry but the things we are trying to satisfy ourselves with just aren’t fulfilling. So what do we do? Well, like David, nothing until the situation gets so desperate that we finally ask the Lord to search our hearts, and when we reckon the old man to be dead, He will send refreshment upon our lives, and things spring back to life.
Going through faint spells
Vs. 15-22 Here is the story of David and his continual conflict with the descendants of Goliath; it kind of reminds you of the Rocky sequels. We are about six years before David’s death, and it’s been a while since he had gone out to battle, but we find him out fighting with his army beside him, impressive considering his age, but he is not physically up for the fight. David was holding his own against one of the sons or brothers of Goliath whom David had slain as a teenager, but he was faint, not from fear but fatigue. Ah, the heart was willing, but the flesh was weak.
Now if you hang around the people God uses long enough, you will discover that they are not “supermen.” The greatness we observed was not their own; rather, it was what David will say in the next chapter in verses 36-37. “Your gentleness has made me great. You enlarged my path under me, so my feet did not slip.” There is a difference when we see weakness in a servant based upon physical imitations and one that is based upon character, as even great effective men of God grow old!
Hey saints, I personally would rather wear out from use than rust out from inactivity. In Psalm 139:14, we are told, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” In Eph. 2:10, Paul told us that we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” I have wasted far too much time on myself and have not spent enough time “walking in the good works,” so why not make a “New Years” resolution to see more of “the good works God prepared beforehand”? As that relates to David, he is in his 60s, and the good work is not the giant killer he once was, as his presence on the battlefield became a liability instead of an asset.
We are told in verse 17 that Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, came to his aid and rallied around his king and supplied what David could not. In other words, God put another person in a place where he could make up what the other needed to complete the work God had. Consider the words of Solomon in Eccl. 4:9–12 when he says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up . . . Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him.” Apparently one of the four born to Goliath had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, a condition known as “hexadactyly,” a congenital defect.
The other side of this is what Clint Eastwood’s character Dirty Harry said in the movie Magnum Force: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” It was time for David to walk into a new work that God had prepared beforehand, and hang up his shield and sword. God raises up three other fellows to take care of Goliath’s descendants’. David was a light for the nation; his purpose was to continue to reveal the way in which the nation was to go but not necessarily clear the path ahead, and if he was involved in clearing the path, he would risk quenching the lamp and plunge the nation into darkness.
Now here’s what’s cool. Based upon verses 18–21, it is clear that the nation could slay giants without David’s hand upon the sword, but the time had come that people stepped up to fill the void. In Eph. 4:15-16 we are told that the head of the body is “Christ; from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” We are to be “joined and knit together by what every joint supplies.” It is by this that the effective working of the Holy Spirit causes us growth in His love. So you see God rose up three giant killers to replace the one that was too old. Sibbechai (weaver’s beam), Elhanan (the grace of God), and Jonathan (the gift of God). Hey, don’t miss this, as the purpose and plan of God is to continue to raise up folks that will slay giants, and that is why we are called to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. You see David’s legacy was not only in what he accomplished but also in what he left behind, “a people prepared for victory.”
In verse 22, David is given some credit for killing the giants along with these other servants, and rightly so, as it was David’s example and guidance that had an influence upon the new batch of giant slayers. Oh to God we had more of David’s, who after a long season slaying giants didn’t see their job as finished and instead provided the light and guidance enabling a new generation to slay giants.
So David is found fighting even at the end of his life, which tells us two very important things:
- There will be giants in our lives all the way to the end.
- There is no such thing as retirement in the army of God, just reassignment.
Next we will see the “lamp of Israel” writing a song of God’s faithfulness and then move into some of the final words of David’s life.