_DAVID'S DEATH-BED._
1 KINGS ii. 1-11.
"Omnibus idem exitus est, sed et idem domicilium."--PETRON.,
_Satyr._
In the Book of Samuel we have the last words of David in the form of
a brief and vivid psalm, of which the leading principle is, "He that
ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." A king's
justice must be shown alike in his gracious influence upon the good and
his stern justice to the wicked. The worthless sons of Belial are, he
says, "to be beaten down like thorns with spear-shafts and iron."[107]
The same principle dominates in the charge which he gave to Solomon,
perhaps after the magnificent public inauguration of his reign
described in 1 Chron. xxviii., xxix. He bade his young son to
show himself a man, and be rigidly faithful to the law of Moses,
earning thereby the prosperity which would never fail to attend true
righteousness.[108] Thus would the promise to David--"There shall
not fail thee a man on the throne of Israel"--be continued in the
time of Solomon.
With our Western and Christian views of morality we should have
rejoiced if David's charge to his son had ended there. It is painful
to us to read that his last injunctions bore upon the punishment of
Joab who had so long fought for him, and of Shimei whom he had publicly
pardoned. Between these two stern injunctions came the request that he
would show kindness to the sons of Barzillai,[109] the old Gileadite
sheykh who had extended such conspicuous hospitality to himself and
his weary followers when they crossed the Jordan in their flight from
Absalom. But the last words of David, as here recorded, are: "his
(Shimei's) hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood."[110]
In these avenging behests there was nothing which was regarded as
unnatural, nothing that would have shocked the conscience of the
age. The fact that they are recorded without blame by an admiring
historiographer shows that we are reading the annals of times of
ignorance which God "winked at." They belong to the era of imperfect
moral development, when it was said to them of old time, "Thou
shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy," and men had not
fully learnt the lesson, "Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith
the Lord." We must discriminate between the _vitia temporis_ and
the _vitia hominis_. David was trained in the old traditions of
the "avenger of blood"; and we cannot be astonished, though we may
greatly regret, that his standard was indefinitely below that of
the Sermon on the Mount. He may have been concerned for the safety
of his son, but to us it must remain a proof of his imperfect moral
attainments that he bade Solomon look out for pretexts to "smite the
hoary head of inveterate wickedness," and use his wisdom not to let
the two offenders go down to the grave in peace.
The character of Joab furnishes us with a singular study. He,
Abishai, and Asahel were the brave, impetuous sons of Zeruiah, the
sister or half-sister of David. They were about his own age, and it
is not impossible that they were the grandsons of Nahash, King of
Ammon.[111] In the days of Saul they had embraced the cause of David,
heart and soul. They had endured all the hardships and fought through
all the struggles of his freebooting days. Asahel, the youngest, had
been in the front rank of his _Gibborim_, and his foot was fleet as
that of a gazelle upon the mountain. Abishai had been one of the
three who, with jeopardy of their lives, had burst their way to
Bethlehem when David longed to drink of the water of its well beside
the gate. He had also, on one occasion, saved David's life from the
giant Ishbi of Gath, and had slain three hundred Philistines with his
spear. His zeal was always ready to flash into action in his uncle's
cause. Joab had been David's commander-in-chief for forty years. It
was Joab who had conquered the Ammonites and Moabites and stormed
the City of Waters. It was Joab who, at David's bare request, had
brought about the murder of Uriah. It was Joab who, after wise but
fruitless remonstrance, had been forced to number the people. But
David had never liked these rough imperious soldiers, whose ways
were not his ways. From the first he was unable to cope with them,
or keep them in order. In the early days they had treated him with
rude familiarity, though in late years they, too, were obliged to
approach him with all the forms of Eastern servility. But ever since
the murder of Uriah, Joab knew that David's reputation and David's
throne were in his hand. Joab himself had been guilty of two wild
acts of vengeance for which he would have offered some defence, and
of one atrocious crime. His murder of the princely Abner, the son of
Ner, might have been excused as the duty of an avenger of blood, for
Abner, with one back-thrust of his mighty spear, had killed the young
Asahel, after the vain warning to desist from pursuing him. Abner had
only killed Asahel in self-defence; but, jealous of Abner's power as
the cousin of King Saul, the husband of Rizpah, and the commander of
the northern army, Joab, after bluntly rebuking David for receiving
him, had without hesitation deluded Abner back to Hebron by a false
message and treacherously murdered him. Even at that early period of
his reign David was either unable or unwilling to punish the outrage,
though he ostentatiously deplored it.
Doubtless in slaying Absalom, in spite of the king's entreaty, Joab
had inflicted an agonising wound on the pride and tenderness of his
master. But Absalom was in open rebellion, and Joab may have held that
David's probable pardon of the beautiful rebel would be both weak and
fatal. This death was inflicted in a manner needlessly cruel, but might
have been excused as a death inflicted on the battle-field, though
probably Joab had many an old grudge to pay off besides the burning
of his barley field. After Absalom's rebellion David foolishly and
unjustly offered the commandership of the army to his nephew Amasa.
Amasa was the son of his sister Abigail by an Ishmaelite father, named
Jether.[112] Joab simply would not tolerate being superseded in the
command which he had earned by lifelong and perilous services. With
deadly treachery, in which men have seen the antitype of the world's
worst crime, Joab invited his kinsman to embrace him, and drove his
sword into his bowels. David had heard, or perhaps had seen, the
revolting spectacle which Joab presented, with the blood of war shed
in peace, dyeing his girdle and streaming down to his shoes with its
horrible crimson. Yet, even by that act, Joab had once more saved
David's tottering throne. The Benjamite Sheba, son of Bichri, was
making head in a terrible revolt, in which he had largely enlisted the
sympathy of the northern tribes, offended by the overbearing fierceness
of the men of Judah. Amasa had been either incompetent or half-hearted
in suppressing this dangerous rising. It had only collapsed when the
army welcomed back the strong hand of Joab. But whatever had been
the crimes of Joab they had been condoned. David, on more than one
occasion, had helplessly cried, "What have I to do with you, ye sons of
Zeruiah?" "I am this day weak though anointed king, and these men, the
sons of Zeruiah, are too hard for me." But he had done nothing, and,
whether with or against his will, they continued to hold their offices
near his person. David did not remind Solomon of the murder of Absalom,
nor of the words of menace--words as bold as any subject ever uttered
to his sovereign--with which Joab had imperiously hushed his wail over
his worthless son. Those words had openly warned the king that, if he
did not alter his line of conduct, he should be king no more. They were
an insult which no king could pardon, even if he were powerless to
avenge. But Joab, like David himself, was now an old man. The events
of the last few days had shown that his power and influence were gone.
He may have had something to fear from Bathsheba as the wife of Uriah
and the granddaughter of Ahithophel; but his adhesion to the cause of
Adonijah had doubtless been chiefly due to jealousy of the ever-growing
influence of the priestly soldier Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, who had so
evidently superseded him in his master's favour. However that may be,
the historian faithfully records that David, on his death-bed, neither
forgot nor forgave; and all that we can say is, that it would be unfair
to judge him by modern or by Christian principles of conduct.
The other victim whose doom was bequeathed to the new king was
Shimei, the son of Gera. He had cursed David at Bahurim on the day
of his flight, and in the hour of his extremest humiliation. He had
walked on the opposite side of the valley, flinging stones and dust
at David,[113] cursing him with a grievous curse as a man of Belial
and a man of blood, and telling him that the loss of his kingdom
was the retribution which had fallen upon him for the blood of the
House of Saul which he had shed. So grievous was the trial of these
insults that the place where the king and his people rested that
night received the pathetic name of _Ayephim_, "the place of the
weary."[114] For this conduct Shimei might have pleaded the pent-up
animosities of the House of Saul, which had been stripped by David
of all its honours, and of which poor lame Mephibosheth was the only
scion left, after David had impaled Saul's seven sons and grandsons
in human sacrifice at the demand of the Gibeonites. Abishai,
indignant at Shimei's conduct, had said, "Why should this dead dog
curse my lord the king?" and had offered, then and there, to cross
the valley and take his head. But David rebuked his generous wrath,
and when Shimei came out to meet him on his return with expressions
of penitence, David not only promised but swore that he should not
die. No further danger surely could be anticipated from the ruined
and humiliated House of Saul; yet David bade Solomon to find some
excuse for putting Shimei to death.
How are we to deal with sins which are recorded of God's olden saints
on the sacred page, and recorded without a word of blame?
Clearly we must avoid two errors--the one of injustice, the other of
dishonesty.
1. On the one hand, as we have said, we must not judge Abraham,
or Jacob, or Gideon, or Jael, or David, as though they were
nineteenth-century Christians. Christ Himself taught us that some
things inherently undesirable were yet permitted in old days because
of the hardness of men's hearts; and that the moral standards of the
days of ignorance were tolerated in all their imperfection until men
were able to judge of their own deeds in a purer light. "The times
of ignorance God overlooked," says St. Paul, "but now He commandeth
men that they should all everywhere repent."[115] "Ye have heard that
it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But _I say unto you, Love your enemies_," said our Lord.[116] When
Bayle and Tindal and many others declaim against "the immorality
of the Bible" they are unfair in a high degree. They pass judgment
on men who had been trained from infancy in opinions and customs
wholly unlike our own, and whose conscience would not be wounded by
many things which we have been rightly taught to regard as evil.
They apply the enlightenment of two millenniums of Christianity
to criticise the more rudimentary conditions of life a millennium
before Christ. The wild justice inflicted by an avenger of blood, the
rude atrocity of the _lex talionis_, are rightly abhorrent to us in
days of civilisation and settled law: they were the only available
means of restraining crime in unsettled times and half-civilised
communities. In his final injunctions about his enemies, whom he
might have dreaded as enemies too formidable for his son to keep in
subjection, David may have followed the view of his day that his
former condonations had only been co-extensive with his own life,
and that the claims of justice _ought_ to be satisfied.[117]
2. But while we admit every palliation, and endeavour to judge
justly, we must not fall into the conventionality of representing
David's unforgiving severity as otherwise than reprehensible _in
itself_. Attempts to gloss over moral wrong-doing, to represent it
as blameless, to invent supposed Divine sanctions and intuitions
in defence of it, can but weaken the eternal claims of the law
of righteousness. The rule of right is inflexible: it is not a
leaden rule which can be twisted into any shape we like. A crime
is none the less a crime though a saint commits it; and imperfect
conceptions of the high claims of the moral law, as Christ expounded
its Divine significance, do not cease to be imperfect though they
may be sometimes recorded without comment on the page of Scripture.
No religious opinion can be more fatal to true religion than that
wrong can, under any circumstances, become right, or that we may do
evil that good may come. Because an act is relatively pardonable, it
does not follow that it is not absolutely wrong. If it be dangerous
to judge the essential morality of any earlier passage of Scripture
by the ultimate laws which Scripture itself has taught us, it is
infinitely more dangerous, and essentially Jesuitical, to explain
away misdeeds as though, under any circumstances, they could be
pleasing to God or worthy of a saint. The total omission of David's
injunctions and of the sanguinary episodes of their fulfilment by
the author of the Books of Chronicles, indicates that, in later
days, they were thought derogatory to the pure fame both of the
warrior-king and of his peaceful son.
David slept with his fathers, and passed before that bar where
all is judged of truly. His life is an April day, half sunshine
and half gloom. His sins were great, but his penitence was deep,
lifelong, and sincere. He gave occasion for the enemies of God to
blaspheme, but he also taught all who love God to praise and pray.
If his record contains some dark passages, and his character shows
many inconsistencies, we can never forget his courage, his flashes
of nobleness, his intense spirituality whenever he was true to his
better self. His name is a beacon-light of warning against the
glamour and strength of evil passions. But he showed us also what
repentance can do, and we are sure that his sins were forgiven him
because he turned away from his wickedness. "The sacrifices of God
are a troubled spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou
wilt not despise." "I go the way of all the earth," said David. "In
life," says Calmet, "each one has his particular route: one applies
to one thing, another to another. But in the way to death they are
all re-united. They go to the tomb by one path."[118]
David was buried in his own city--the stronghold of Zion; and his
sepulchre--on the south part of Ophel, near the pool of Siloam--was
still pointed out a thousand years later in the days of Christ.[119] As
a poet who had given to the people splendid specimens of lyric songs;
as a warrior who had inspired their youth with dauntless courage; as a
king who had made Israel a united nation with an impregnable capital,
and had uplifted it from insignificance into importance; as the man
in whose family the distinctive Messianic hopes of the Hebrews were
centred, he must remain to the end of time the most remarkable and
interesting figure in the long annals of the Old Dispensation.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] 2 Sam. xxiii. 1-7. It is no part of my duty here to enter into
the extent of David's share in the Psalms; but I think that it is an
exaggerated inference (of Wellhausen and others) from Amos vi. 5, 6
to suppose that he only wrote festal and warlike songs.
[108] Apparently an allusion to Deut. xvii. 18-20. We read of no such
exhortation having been addressed to Saul, or to David.
[109] Chimham accompanied David to Jerusalem (2 Sam. xvii. 27, xix.
37-40), and perhaps inherited his property at Bethlehem, where he
founded the Khan (Jer. xli. 17), in the cavern stable of which it may
be that Christ was born.
[110] Wellhausen, Stade, and others venture on the conjecture that
David never gave these injunctions at all, but that they were
invented afterwards to excuse Solomon for his acts of severity
towards Adonijah's conspirators. I cannot see any valid ground for
such arbitrary re-writing of the history. Shimei had taken no part in
Adonijah's rebellion.
[111] Zeruiah was "a sister of the sons of Jesse" (1 Chron. ii. 16),
and was therefore a sister of Abigail, mother of Amasa; but she is
called "the daughter of _Nahash_" (2 Sam. xvii. 25).
[112] 1 Chron. ii. 17. "Jether (_i.e._, Jethro, 'pre-eminence')
the Ishmaelite" has been altered in 2 Sam. xvii. 25 into Ithra, an
_Israelite_ (see 2 Sam. xix. 13). The way in which names have been
tampered with is an interesting study, and often conceals Masoretic
secrets.
[113] David's enemies thought but little of the fact that David had
spared Mephibosheth. They may have supposed that David spared him,
not only because he was the son of the beloved Jonathan, but because
being lame he could never become king. David's relations to him do
not seem to have been very cordial.
[114] 2 Sam. xvi. 14 (Heb.). For Bahurim, see 2 Sam. xvi. 5, xvii. 18.
[115] Acts xvii. 30.
[116] Matt. v. 43, 44.
[117] There is something analogous to protection _granted only for a
lifetime_ in the fact that the homicide at a refuge city could not be
slain there while the high priest lived. See Num. xxxv. 28.
[118] Comp. Josh. xxiii. 14; Keil, _ad loc._
[119] Acts ii. 29. Josephus says that both Hyrcanus and Herod
opened it to find the treasures which legend asserted to have been
buried there (_Antt._, VII. xv. 3. Comp. XIII. viii. 4, XVI. vii.).
The kings alone were buried in Jerusalem; but legend says that an
exception was made in favour of Huldah the prophetess.