_There remains still a fourth and a last element in Barzillai's
honoured, life and happy old age--his attitude towards God_.
Though we are never distinctly told so, we cannot doubt that he was a
religious man. And as it was in gratitude to God for all that He had
done to him, that he first showed kindness to God's anointed, so it was
in the same humble and trusting spirit that he accepted old age, and
all that it involved when it came. That is by no means always the
case. Are there not some, who, as they look forward to the time of old
age, if God should ever permit them to see it, do so with a certain
amount of dread? They think only of what they will be called upon to
abandon--the duties they must give up, the pleasures, so dear to them
now, they must forego. But to Barzillai, the presence of such
disabilities brought, as we have seen, no disquieting thoughts. He
could relinquish, without a sigh, what he was no longer fitted to
enjoy. He desired nothing but to end his days peacefully in his
appointed lot. Enough for him that the God who had been with him all
his life long was with him still.
Happy old man! Who does not long for an old age, if he is ever to see
old age, such as his? But, if so, it must be sought in the same way.
Every man's old age is just what his own past has made it. If, in his
days of health and vigour, he has lived an idle, careless, selfish
life, he must not wonder if his closing years are querulous, and
bitter, and lonely. But if, on the other hand, he has devoted himself
to good and doing good, if he has made the will of God his rule and
guide amidst all the difficulties and perplexities of his daily lot,
then in that will he will find peace. God wilt not forget his "_work
and labour of love_" (Heb. vi. 10): and in him the old promise will be
once more fulfilled--"_Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar
hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry
and will deliver you_" (Isa. xlvi. 4).
[1]In view, however, of the difficulty of reconciling the two passages,
and of the fact that Shobi is not mentioned elsewhere, it has been
conjectured that for "Shobi the son of Nahash" in 2 Sam. xvii. 27, we
should read simply "Nahash," see Hastings' _Dict. of the Bible_, art.
"Shobi."
[2]Stanley, _History of the Jewish Church_, ii., p. 154.