Read Time: 9 minutes1 Samuel 25
The chapter sits deliberately between the two sparings of Saul, and it teaches the same lesson from the other side: David, who would not avenge himself on the anointed, is here kept from avenging himself on a fool — not by his own restraint but by the wisdom of a woman. Nabal — whose name means fool, and “as his name is, so is he; folly is with him” — is a rich, churlish man of Carmel — the fruitful field, the garden-land — who answers David’s courteous request for provision with insult: a fool sitting on fruitful ground, refusing to share its abundance with the anointed of Yahweh. “Who is David?… shall I then take my bread, and my water… and give it unto men, whom I know not whence they be?” He treats the anointed of Yahweh as a runaway nobody, and David, stung, girds on his sword and swears to kill every male of Nabal’s house by morning. The man who would not lift his hand against Saul is about to shed blood for a personal insult.
Abigail — her name means my father is joy, or source of joy — is Nabal’s wife, “a woman of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance,” and she intercepts David’s wrath with haste, humility, and a gift. She loads the provision Nabal refused, bows to the ground before David, takes the blame on herself, and pleads with him not to stain his coming kingship with avenging blood: “this shall be no grief unto thee, nor offence of heart unto my lord, either that thou hast shed blood causeless, or that my lord hath avenged himself.” She sees what David in his anger has forgotten — that the anointed must not avenge himself, that Yahweh will keep his cause: “Yahweh will certainly make my lord a sure house… the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with Yahweh.” The wise intercessor stays the hand of the king and reminds him of the very principle he held toward Saul.
David recognizes the wisdom as Yahweh’s own restraining hand: “Blessed be Yahweh God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me: and blessed be thy advice… which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.” He receives the rebuke from a woman as from Yahweh, and turns back. The lesson of the cave is repeated and deepened: not only must the anointed not strike the anointed, he must not avenge himself at all, but leave vengeance to Yahweh — “vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith Yahweh.” And the restraint is again vindicated by providence: within ten days Yahweh himself strikes Nabal, whose heart dies within him like a stone when his drunkenness wears off and he hears what nearly came. David did not need to lift a hand; the One who judges righteously dealt with the fool.
The chapter ends with David taking Abigail to wife — the wise woman who interceded becomes the bride of the king-in-waiting. There is a real type here, drawn with care. Abigail stands between the king’s just wrath and a doomed household, takes the blame that was not hers — “upon me let this iniquity be” — bears a gift to turn away anger, and pleads the cause of the guilty until the avenging hand is stayed; and for it she is lifted from the house of the fool and joined to the king himself. It is the shape of the work the Lord does for his people and the people do not do for themselves: an intercessor who comes between the condemned and the righteous wrath of the King, takes the iniquity upon herself, turns away the anger, and brings the spared into the king’s own house as his bride. The mediator who bears the blame and wins the pardon is joined to the one for whom she pleads; the wise bride is bound up “in the bundle of life” with her lord while the fool perishes in his folly. The window is not faint: the fool who despised the anointed dies, and the wise intercessor who honored him and stood in the breach is married to the coming king.
Nabal the fool despises the anointed and is struck by Yahweh; David, kept by wise Abigail from avenging himself, learns that vengeance is Yahweh’s. The intercessor who took the blame and turned away wrath becomes the bride of the king-in-waiting.
Jeremiah 2
The chapter is Yahweh’s great lawsuit against his people, and it opens with a memory of first love turned to betrayal. “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness.” Israel was once the devoted bride who followed Yahweh into the wilderness, “holiness unto Yahweh, the firstfruits of his increase” — and the whole indictment that follows is the grief of a husband whose bride has played the harlot. The marriage figure that Isaiah used for Zion’s restoration Jeremiah uses for her fall: the betrothed who loved has forsaken her first love.
The heart of the charge is the two evils, one of the most piercing images in all the prophets. “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” They have left the living spring — Yahweh himself, the inexhaustible fountain — and dug for themselves cracked tanks that leak away whatever they hold. It is the whole folly of forsaking God laid bare in one figure: to leave the fountain that never fails for cisterns of one’s own making that cannot even keep the rain. Every idolatry, every trust in Egypt or Assyria, every confidence in the flesh is a broken cistern dug by the man who walked away from the spring. The Lord Jesus stood and cried the answer to this verse: “if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” — the fountain of living waters offering himself again to a people who had hewn broken cisterns.
Yahweh presses the lawsuit with astonishment that a nation would change its God at all. “Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.” Even the heathen keep their false gods; only Israel forsakes the true one. “Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this… for my people have committed two evils.” The whole creation is summoned to wonder at a folly without parallel — the bride leaving the husband who is the living spring, the people exchanging their glory for nothing. And their own wickedness will correct them: “thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee… know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken Yahweh thy God.”
The chapter ends with the stain that will not wash out and the vain trust in other helpers. “Though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me.” No outward scrubbing reaches the guilt; the stain is in the heart, marked before Yahweh, and only he can deal with it. And the people who forsook the fountain run to Egypt and Assyria for the waters of Sihor and the river — trusting the very nations that will fail them — when the water they need was the spring they abandoned. “Thou shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.” The broken cisterns leak, the borrowed waters shame, and the fountain stands forsaken — the tragedy of a people who left the only spring that could not run dry.
Israel the bride forsook her first love and committed two evils: she left the fountain of living waters and hewed broken cisterns that hold no water. The stain will not wash with soap; the borrowed waters of Egypt shame — only the forsaken fountain could have satisfied.
Matthew 13
The chapter gathers the parables of the kingdom, and the King now teaches in parables both to reveal and to hide — to give to those who have ears and to leave the hardened in their chosen blindness, “because they seeing see not.” It opens with the sower, the great parable of the word and the soils. The same seed falls on the wayside, the stony ground, the thorns, and the good ground, and the difference is all in the soil — the hard heart from which the birds snatch the word, the shallow heart with no root that withers in tribulation, the choked heart where the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches strangle the word, and the good heart that hears, understands, and bears fruit. The word is sovereign and free; the question the parable presses on every hearer is what soil he is, whether the word takes root and bears, or is snatched, scorched, or choked.
The kingdom-parables that follow show its hidden, mixed, and growing nature in this present age. The wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest — the kingdom in its present form is a mixed field, the children of the kingdom and the children of the wicked one side by side, not separated until the angels gather at the end of the world; the servants are not to uproot now but to wait for the harvest. The mustard seed, least of seeds, becomes a great tree; the leaven hidden in the meal leavens the whole — the kingdom begins almost invisibly and grows to fill its sphere. These are the kingdom in its age of sowing and growth, small and mixed and hidden, before the harvest and the manifest glory.
Two short parables name the kingdom’s surpassing worth. The treasure hid in a field, for which a man sells all he has to buy the field; the pearl of great price, for which the merchant sells all to possess it. The kingdom is worth everything a man has — not bought cheaply, not added to a comfortable life, but the one possession for which all else is gladly let go. It is the strait gate and the narrow way of the discourse, the losing of life to find it, the treasure laid up in heaven; the man who has truly seen the kingdom counts all else loss to gain it.
The chapter ends with the dragnet and the rejection at Nazareth. The net gathers of every kind, and at the end the angels sever the wicked from the just — the same separation as the wheat and tares, the harvest that ends the mixed age. And the scribe instructed unto the kingdom brings forth treasure new and old, the one who holds the old Scriptures and the new word of the King together. Then the King comes to his own country and is despised — “is not this the carpenter’s son?… and they were offended in him” — and “he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” The fountain stood among them and they would not drink; the kingdom was sown and the soil of his own town was hard. The sower’s parable is enacted in his own rejection.
The sower casts the word on every soil, and the question is what soil the heart is; the kingdom grows hidden and mixed till the harvest. It is the treasure worth all a man has — yet his own town despised him, the hard soil that would not receive the word.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day turns on water and the word — the fountain forsaken, the seed sown, the wise intercessor who turns away wrath. Jeremiah names the two evils: Israel forsook the fountain of living waters and hewed broken cisterns that hold no water; Matthew’s sower casts the word on the soils and asks what each heart will do with it; and David, about to avenge himself on Nabal the fool, is turned back by wise Abigail and reminded that vengeance is Yahweh’s. The forsaken fountain, the seed on the soil, and the stayed hand all press the same question — whether the heart will receive what Yahweh gives and leave to him what is his, or forsake the spring, choke the seed, and grasp the sword.
The restraint of the anointed deepens from the cave to the household. David would not strike Saul because he was Yahweh’s anointed; here he is kept from striking Nabal because vengeance is Yahweh’s — not only the office is to be honored but the avenging is to be left to God. And it is a woman’s wisdom, sent by Yahweh, that stays his hand and points him to the keeping he had forgotten in his anger. The lesson runs straight to the Servant of the previous chapter who would not break the bruised reed, and to the fountain of Jeremiah who waits to be drunk from rather than forcing himself on the people: the way of the kingdom is not the avenging hand but the committed cause, not the broken cistern of self-help but the living spring received.
The hope holds its shape — sown, mixed, awaited. The kingdom grows hidden and mixed in this age, wheat and tares together, the small seed not yet the great tree, the harvest and the severing still to come. David is assured the sure house but does not yet sit on the throne; Nabal is struck but the kingdom is not yet established; the fountain offers living water but the nation still drinks from broken cisterns. The saint lives in the age of sowing, the mixed field before the harvest, holding the treasure worth all he has while the tares grow beside him and the net is not yet drawn. The fountain is open; the seed is cast; the harvest is sure but not yet come.
So the exhortation gathers to the fountain, the soil, and the stayed hand. Do not forsake the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns of your own making — every trust in the flesh, in riches, in the help of Egypt, is a cracked tank that cannot hold; come and drink of the spring that never fails. Be the good soil that hears and understands and bears fruit, not the hard, the shallow, or the choked; and count the kingdom the treasure for which you gladly sell all. And learn the lesson of Abigail’s wisdom: leave vengeance to Yahweh, do not grasp the sword for your own cause, but commit your way to the One who judges righteously and will make your house sure. The fountain is open; the seed is sown; drink, receive, and leave the avenging to God.
Forsake not the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns; be the good soil that bears fruit and the merchant who sells all for the pearl. And leave vengeance to Yahweh, as wise Abigail stayed the hand of the king.