Read Time: 7 minutes2 Samuel 2
David enquires of Yahweh and is sent up to Hebron — the very thing Saul never did. The chapter opens with the question Saul could not bring himself to ask: David enquired of Yahweh, saying, Shall I go up? And he is told to go to Hebron — the name means fellowship, joining, league — the place where the covenant-king will be bound to his people. The beloved takes the throne not by seizing it but by asking and being sent; the contrast with the asked-for king who would not enquire (1 Chron 10:14) governs the whole accession.
Judah anoints David, and his first royal act is to bless the men of Jabesh-gilead. The tribe of the Lion (Gen 49:9) crowns the beloved, and his opening word as king is a blessing on the men who buried Saul with honor — blessed be ye of Yahweh, that ye have shewed this kindness unto your lord. The king who would not strike the anointed now honors those who honored the fallen anointed. Kindness is met with kindness; the new reign begins in chesed.
Abner sets up a rival king, and the kingdom is split in two. Abner — father of light, or my father is Ner — takes Saul’s surviving son and makes him king over the north. The son’s name is given as Ish-bosheth, man of shame (the Chronicler’s Esh-baal, man of Baal, deliberately defaced by the historians so the idol-name is not honoured). Two kings, two houses: the number two here is division, the torn kingdom, the long civil war that flesh and Spirit wage until the one true king is owned by all. First the divided natural, then the united spiritual.
At the pool of Gibeon, twelve fall against twelve, and the field is named for the slaughter. Twelve young men of each side seize one another by the head and thrust swords into one another’s sides, and they fall together — twelve answering twelve, the number of the tribes turned against itself. The place is named Helkath-hazzurim, the field of sword-edges (or of the strong men). When Israel makes war on Israel, the tribal fulness is spent on its own destruction; this is the wound of a kingdom divided against itself.
Asahel, swift as a wild roe, runs to his death pursuing Abner. Asahel means El has made; he is light of foot as a wild roe, and he will not turn aside though Abner warns him twice. Abner kills him with the back end of the spear, and the pursuit dies into a standoff and a truce-call: shall the sword devour for ever? The speed of the flesh, refusing to be turned, runs onto the spear; even a swift and gifted man, set on the wrong pursuit, runs to his own undoing.
The beloved enquires and is sent; he takes the throne by asking, not seizing — while the divided kingdom spends its strength devouring itself.
Jeremiah 8
The bones of the buried are dragged out, and a living nation chooses death over life. The judgment is so total that the graves are opened and the bones of kings and priests spread before the sun and moon and host of heaven they worshipped — the dead given to the very gods that could not save them. And the living, given the choice, choose death rather than life. The flesh, left to itself, prefers the grave; this is the deep perversity Jeremiah keeps pressing.
Even the migrating birds keep their seasons, but Yahweh’s people do not know his ordinance. The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of Yahweh. The creatures of the air keep the order written into them; the covenant-people break the order written for them. Creation rebukes the nation: instinct is more faithful than Israel’s will.
“The pen of the scribes is in vain” — the word handled falsely by those who guard it. How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of Yahweh is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain. They possess the scriptures and falsify them in the using; having the law is no protection when the lying pen bends it. The scribes who should preserve the word are the ones corrupting it — a warning that runs straight to the scribes the Son of David will rebuke.
“Peace, peace; when there is no peace” — the false comfort returns, and now it is named as healing the wound slightly. They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. The lie first met in Jeremiah 6 comes back sharpened: the physicians dress a mortal wound with a word of comfort and send the patient away to die. Counterfeit peace is the cruelest thing the false prophets do — it removes the alarm that might have saved.
“Is there no balm in Gilead?… the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Gilead’s balm was the famed healing resin; the prophet’s question is a lament that the medicine is there and the patient will not take it — is there no physician? And the most desolate line in the book: the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. The season of rescue closes while the people delay. The weeping prophet, for the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt, carries the grief of Yahweh, whose people will not be healed — a figure of the greater Prophet who will weep over the same city.
The healing is there in Gilead and the season is closing; do not let the summer end with the wound dressed in a lie and the soul unsaved.
Matthew 19
“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” The Pharisees test him on divorce; the King answers by going behind Moses to the beginning — he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and the two become one flesh by the joining of God himself. Moses suffered the bill of divorce because of the hardness of your hearts, but from the beginning it was not so. The King reads the creation order as the standard and names the concession as a concession to the flesh.
“Eunuchs… for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” Some are born unfit for marriage, some made so, and some make themselves so for the kingdom of heaven’s sake — a self-denial freely embraced for the kingdom. The King will not pretend the hard saying is easy: he that is able to receive it, let him receive it. The kingdom reorders even the creation-good of marriage around itself.
“Suffer little children… for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” The disciples would turn the children away; the King takes them up — and the placement is no accident, set beside the rich man who cannot let go. The little ones who can only receive are the pattern of the kingdom; the man with much who cannot receive is its counter-pattern. The chapter is teaching the open and the closed hand side by side.
The rich young man goes away sorrowful, and the camel meets the needle’s eye. He has kept the commandments and still lacks one thing — sell that thou hast… and come and follow me. He cannot, for he had great possessions. Then the saying that staggers the disciples: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. The largest beast and the smallest opening — the figure says the flesh cannot squeeze its riches through; with men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. Only God can bring the rich man through, and only by emptying him. The old picture catches the same truth: the needle’s eye was the low side-gate in the wall, and a camel could pass it only by kneeling down and letting its load be stripped away — so the rich man enters on his knees and with his burden gone, humbled and unburdened, which is the very thing God must do for him.
“We have forsaken all” — the hundredfold and the twelve thrones. Peter names what the rich man would not do, and the King answers with the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory and the twelve shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes. Those who left houses and lands receive an hundredfold — the hundredfold of the fruitful harvest (Matt 13:8) — and shall inherit everlasting life. And the seal: many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first — the reversal that the next chapter’s vineyard will unfold.
Receive the kingdom like a child with an open hand; the rich man’s full hand cannot pass through the needle’s eye, but with God the impossible is done.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day sets the open hand against the closed one, and the question of how the kingdom is received runs through all three readings. David enquires and is given the throne; the rich young man clutches and turns away; the kingdom comes to those who ask and receive, not to those who seize or hoard. Hebron means joining, and the King in Matthew 19 reads marriage as a joining that God makes and man must not break — the same word, joined, naming the covenant-bond at the heart of both readings. What God joins, whether king to people or man to wife, is not for the flesh to tear.
A darker thread binds them too: the divided kingdom of 2 Samuel 2 spends its tribal fulness — twelve against twelve — devouring itself, and Jeremiah 8 watches a whole nation choose death over life while the season of healing closes. The flesh, left to itself, divides, hoards, and prefers the grave; the balm is in Gilead and the patient will not take it; the rich man has eternal life set before him and walks away sorrowful. The harvest is past, the summer is ended — and a man with great possessions lets the summer close.
So receive while the season is open. Enquire of Yahweh as David did; take the balm of Gilead while the harvest still stands; come to the kingdom with the open hand of a child rather than the full hand of the rich young man. Let go what cannot pass through the needle’s eye, trusting that with God the impossible is done — for those who forsake all receive the hundredfold now and the twelve thrones at his appearing.
Do not heal your own wound with a comfortable lie, and do not let the summer end with your hand still closed. Open it, follow, and inherit.