Read Time: 7 minutes2 Samuel 19
The chapter opens with a king so drowned in grief that he turns a victory into a funeral, and Joab is the one who pulls him out of it. Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants… in that thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. The rebuke is harsh and not wholly fair, but it carries a true edge: there is a mourning that must give way to the work, and the king who has been given back his throne must go and sit in the gate.
The great theme of the chapter is the bringing back of the king. Why are ye the last to bring back the king? — and the question runs through the whole second half. Judah is won over, Israel contends for its share, and the tribes quarrel not over whether David should return but over who has the greater right to bring him home. A king restored after exile is a picture the prophets never let go of: the anointed driven out, then carried back over Jordan to his own place amid the people’s joy and the people’s strife.
Three men meet David at the river, and each is a study. Shimei, who had cursed him in his flight, falls down and begs pardon, and David swears he shall not die — mercy at the hour of return, judgment held back for another day. The man who deserved death by the law is spared by the word of the king on the day of his restoration.
Mephibosheth comes down unwashed, his feet still lame, mourning since the day the king left. Ziba had slandered him; David, weary, splits the land between them; and Mephibosheth answers with the line that settles the matter: let him take all, forasmuch as my lord the king is come again in peace to his own house. He does not care about the field. He cares that the king is back. The lame man at the king’s table (chapter 9) wants nothing but the king — and that is the posture the chapter holds up for praise.
Barzillai the Gileadite — man of iron — is fourscore years old, and fourscore is the edge of natural strength (Ps 90:10): the days of our years are seventy, and if by reason of strength they are eighty, even then it is labor and sorrow. Barzillai knows his strength is spent. Can I discern between good and evil? can thy servant taste what I eat? He will not go up to the city; he sends Chimham in his place and turns home to die by his father’s grave. The old man steps back and sends a younger in his stead to the king’s table — strength spent, but the place at the table kept and passed on.
The whole chapter is one question — who will be quick to bring back the king? — and the lame man who wants only the king’s return is the one who answers it best.
Jeremiah 23
After the failed kings of chapter 22, Yahweh turns on the shepherds who scattered the flock. Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! The kings were meant to feed Israel and instead devoured them — and so Yahweh takes the work into his own hands: I will gather the remnant of my flock… and will set up shepherds over them. The failure of the shepherds becomes the promise of the true Shepherd.
Out of that promise comes the chapter’s mountain peak. I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. The Branch — the tsemach — is the green shoot from the felled stump of David’s house, the King who will do at last what every son of David in chapter 22 failed to do. He is the answer to Coniah’s barren throne: the line looked dead, and a living Branch comes up out of it.
And his name is the doctrine. This is his name whereby he shall be called, Yahweh-Tsidkenu — Yahweh our Righteousness. The compound is a compression: the righteousness Israel could never produce by the works of the law is carried in the Name of the King himself, and given to his people. And the contrast is pointed: Zedekiah, the king then reigning, bore the name Tzidkiyahu — the righteousness of Yah — and wore it while doing none of it; the Branch is that same name made true and handed to his people. Hold that name; Romans is about to unfold it. The King is not merely righteous — he is our righteousness, the thing reckoned to those who are in him.
The back half of the chapter is the long indictment of the false prophets, and it is brutal. I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. They steal Yahweh’s words one from another; they say I have dreamed; they cry peace, peace to those who despise him. Against their borrowed dreams Yahweh sets the weight of the real word: is not my word like as a fire? and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? The dream is straw; the word is fire and hammer. The false shepherd soothes; the true word breaks and burns and builds.
The shepherds failed, so Yahweh raised the Branch whose very name is our righteousness — and his word is the fire that the dreamers’ straw cannot survive.
Romans 10–11
Paul picks up Jeremiah’s righteousness and names where Israel went wrong: they being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. They wanted a righteousness they could produce. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth — he is the King who bears that Name, Yahweh our righteousness, the righteousness held out to faith that Israel could never produce.
The word is not far off and unreachable. The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart — and the gospel boils down to one confession and one belief: that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised him from the dead. Then Paul reaches for Joel: whosoever shall call upon the name of Yahweh shall be saved (Joel 2:32). The Name called upon for salvation is the Name carried in the Branch. And so the chain follows — how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they hear without a preacher? — down to the anchor: faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The same word that is fire and hammer in Jeremiah is the seed of faith here.
Has Yahweh then cast away his people? Far from it. Paul points to himself — an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham — and to the seven thousand in Elijah’s day who never bowed to Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. The election is real and gracious and corporate: a faithful kernel preserved within the nation, exactly the good figs of the basket, exactly the children of the promise within Israel.
Then the great figure — the olive tree. Some natural branches were broken off; a wild olive, the Gentiles, was grafted in contrary to nature and made partaker of the root and fatness of the tree. And Paul’s whole point is a warning against pride: boast not against the branches… thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. The Gentile grafted in by faith stands by the same faith that broke the others off — and if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. The grafting is conditional, kept by faith; it is not a secured possession to boast in.
And the broken branches are not cast off. God is able to graff them in again; the blindness of Israel is in part, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved. The chapter closes not in a system but in worship: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.
The righteousness Israel chased by works is the Name of the Branch, received by faith; the remnant is kept, the wild branch is warned not to boast, and the whole purpose ends in a doxology, not a ledger.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day is built on one motion: the King brought back, and his righteousness reckoned to his people. David is carried over Jordan to his throne while the tribes contend for the honor of bringing him; Jeremiah lifts the eyes from the failed kings to the Branch whose name is Yahweh our Righteousness; Romans shows that Name held out to faith — Christ is the end of the law for righteousness — and the people of the King gathered into one olive tree, Jew and Gentile, root and graft. The restoration of David is the small picture; the restoration of the whole household to the true King is the large one.
And the readings agree on how a person comes to belong to the returning King. Not by natural claim — Israel’s quarrel over who had the greater right to bring David back is exactly the boasting Paul forbids the grafted Gentile. Not by works of righteousness we establish for ourselves — that is the road Israel took into the ditch. It comes by faith that calls on the Name and by mercy that breaks branches off and grafts them in. Mephibosheth has the posture: lame, slandered, robbed of half his land, and content — let him take all, forasmuch as my lord the king is come again in peace. He wants the King, not the field.
So the warning of the olive tree is the warning of the day. The Gentile branch stands by faith and can be cut off by unbelief just as surely as the natural branch was; the grafting is kept by continuing in his goodness, not banked as a possession to boast in. The dreamers cry peace, peace; the true word is fire and hammer, and it will not flatter us into thinking our place is secure apart from faith. But to the one who calls on the Name and keeps low, the King comes again in peace, and brings his own righteousness with him.
Want the King more than the field. Stand by faith, never by boast — and call on the Name that is itself our righteousness.