Read Time: 7 minutes2 Samuel 20–21
The strife at the end of chapter 19 hardens into a fresh revolt, and Sheba the son of Bichri, a man of Belial, sounds the trumpet: We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to his tents, O Israel. It is the same cry the flesh always raises against the anointed — we have no part in David. The rebellion is the old serpent’s quarrel, and the body of the nation tears along the seam again.
The pursuit of Sheba is stained by Joab’s hand. Amasa is murdered with the kiss of a greeting — Joab takes him by the beard as if to kiss him, and his sword spills out the man’s bowels in the way. Joab is the strong man who keeps killing the king’s rivals against the king’s wishes; his zeal for David is real and his hands are full of blood, and the contrast with David’s restraint is the moral spine of these two chapters.
Sheba runs to Abel of Beth-maachah — Abel, a meadow, a place whose very name carries a reputation for wisdom — and a wise woman on the wall stops a siege with a sentence: they shall surely ask counsel at Abel: and so they ended the matter. She will not let the whole city perish for one rebel. Behold, his head shall be thrown to thee over the wall. The city is saved by the cutting off of the one head that troubled it — the body preserved by the casting out of the rebel member, which is exactly the work the saint is called to do with the flesh.
Then chapter 21 opens on a three-year famine, and the cause is buried blood: It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. Bloodguilt defiles the land (Num 35:33), and the land will not yield until the blood is answered. This is not a price paid to buy Yahweh off; it is the law’s requirement that shed blood be reckoned, the defilement put away so the land can live again. Seven sons of Saul are given up and hanged before Yahweh — and seven is the number of covenant: the bloodguilt is covered, the broken oath to the Gibeonites is satisfied, and the rain returns.
Over those bodies keeps the chapter’s most piercing image. Rizpah spreads sackcloth on the rock and guards the dead from the birds by day and the beasts by night, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven. A mother’s love watches the dead through the long dry season until the rain comes — and then David gathers the bones of Saul and Jonathan and these and buries them in their own ground. It is a vigil over the dead held in hope of their gathering: the bodies kept, watched, and at last laid to rest to wait — for the saints do not vanish, they sleep, and they are gathered.
The chapters close on the war with the giants, the seed of the serpent in its rawest form. David grows faint and Abishai rescues him, and the men swear thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel — David is the lamp that must not be put out. Then his men cut down the sons of the giant one by one: Ishbi-benob, Saph, the brother of Goliath, and the man of great stature that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number. Twenty-four sixes of flesh — the man-number heaped up — and he also was born to the giant, and he falls like the rest. The flesh in its most monstrous swelling is still mortal, and the King’s mighty men tread it down. These four and Goliath make five — the five smooth stones David chose at the brook (1 Sam 17:40): one stone felled the champion, the rest were kept for the champion’s house, and so David slew the giant while his men slew the giant’s seed — as Christ destroyed the diabolos and his brethren tread down what remains of it (Heb 2:14).
The body is saved by casting the rebel’s head over the wall; the land lives again when the blood is answered; and the giant, for all his fingers, falls before the lamp of Israel and his men.
Jeremiah 24
After Jeconiah is carried to Babylon, Yahweh shows Jeremiah two baskets of figs set before the temple — one very good, like the figs that are first ripe, the other so bad they cannot be eaten. They are set at the altar of burnt offering, the place Yahweh appointed to meet with his people (Exod 29:42–43): the nation is looked over at the very spot of meeting. And the fig is Israel’s own emblem. The first fig in Scripture is the leaf Adam and Eve sewed to cover their shame (Gen 3:7) — and on a fig the fruit comes before the leaf, so leaves without fruit were the mark of Israel’s doings from the beginning. Here the nation is sorted into two baskets by a single criterion that overturns every appearance.
The good figs are the ones already carried away into captivity. I have sent into the land of the Chaldeans for their good. The basket nobody would have chosen — the exiles, the defeated, the deportees — is the basket Yahweh sets his eye on for good: I will bring them again to this land… I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Yahweh: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. The discipline that looked like abandonment is the mercy that saves them, and the gift at the end of it is a new heart — the very promise that ripens into the new covenant of Jeremiah 31.
The bad figs are Zedekiah and those who stayed, the ones who kept the land and the temple and the appearance of safety. I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt. The basket that looked secure is the basket that rots. The remnant is not the comfortable majority left in place; it is the chastened few carried off and given a heart to know Yahweh.
The good figs are the ones the discipline carried away and the new heart healed; safety in the land was the rotten basket all along.
Romans 12
Paul turns from the great argument of chapters 9–11 to its therefore, and the first word is a body laid on the altar. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. After all the talk of mercy and election, the response asked is not a feeling but an offering — the whole self given, and given living, not slain but consecrated and walking.
The next line is the seam between two ages. Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. The pressure of the present age presses the saint into its own mould; the renewed mind is the only thing that proves what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. The good figs were given a heart to know Yahweh; here is the same gift named in apostolic terms — a renewed mind that can tell the will of God from the dream of the age.
Then the one body, many members — the figure that has run under all our recent readings. The nation tore along its seam under Sheba; here the body holds together because each member has its own gift and its own office, and all members have not the same office. Prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, ruling, showing mercy — the body lives by the diversity of its members serving one another, the very opposite of every man to his tents.
The chapter ends in the hardest discipline of all, and it answers Joab and the Gibeonite blood directly. Recompense to no man evil for evil… avenge not yourselves… for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith Yahweh. Joab took vengeance into his own hand and filled it with blood; the bloodguilt of Saul’s house had to be answered by Yahweh’s reckoning, not man’s. The saint is forbidden the sword of private vengeance and handed instead the only weapon that wins: be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Lay the body on the altar living, let the renewed mind sort the will of God from the mould of the age, and overcome evil the only way that conquers it — with good.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day sets two bodies side by side: a body that tears apart, and a body laid down whole. Israel splits under Sheba’s we have no part in David; the city of Abel is saved only by casting the rebel’s head over the wall; the land lies barren until buried blood is answered. Against all that fracture and bloodletting, Paul holds up the body that does not tear — the living sacrifice, the many members in one body, each serving the rest, vengeance surrendered to Yahweh and evil overcome with good. The contrast is the lesson. The flesh divides, grasps, and avenges; the renewed mind offers itself and holds the body together.
And the sorting of the figs tells us which basket safety lies in. The comfortable who kept the land and the temple were the rotten figs; the chastened who were carried off were the good ones, for I will give them a heart to know me. That is the renewed mind of Romans 12 in its Old Testament dress — the heart given in the furnace of discipline, the very thing that lets a saint prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We are not promised that the safe-looking basket is the saved one. We are promised that the disciplined heart is the one that comes to know Yahweh.
So the day asks for the offering and the restraint. Cast the rebel head over your own wall — the city is not worth losing for the sake of one cherished member of the flesh; better the head goes over than the whole body falls. Do not take up Joab’s sword; vengeance is mine, saith Yahweh. Watch over the dead in hope, as Rizpah watched, knowing the rain comes and the bones are gathered. And present the body — living, holy, walking — as the only reasonable answer to so much mercy.
Give the body whole to the altar, surrender the sword of vengeance, and overcome the evil that divides with the good that builds.