Read Time: 5 minutes2 Samuel 10
David sends kindness to Ammon, and the serpent’s son repays it with shame. Nahash of Ammon dies — Nahash means serpent — and David would shew kindness to his son Hanun for the father’s old kindness. But Hanun’s princes read the grace as espionage; they shave off half the beards of David’s envoys, cut their garments to the buttocks, and send them home humiliated. The seed of the serpent suspects grace and answers it with insult; the kindness of the King is treated as a threat.
David covers the shame and prepares for the war Ammon has provoked. Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown — the king shields his shamed men until they can return with honor. Ammon, knowing it has made itself to stink before David, hires the Syrians, and the kindness rejected hardens into a coalition of enemies. Grace despised becomes war.
Joab divides the army and speaks the word of committed courage. Caught between Syrians and Ammonites, he takes the one front and gives Abishai the other: be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God: and Yahweh do that which seemeth him good. Here is the faith that fights its hardest and leaves the issue to Yahweh — for our people, and for the cities of our God — full effort and full submission held together.
The Syrians regroup, are broken, and make peace. David crosses Jordan to Helam, kills their captain Shobach, and the Syrians who had served Ammon feared to help the children of Ammon any more. The coalition against the beloved cannot stand; the enemies of the King are scattered and subdued.
Grace despised hardens into war; play the man for the people and the cities of our God, and leave the outcome to Yahweh, who scatters the enemies of the King.
Jeremiah 14
A drought grips the land, and the whole creation gasps for water. The dearth is so deep the nobles’ servants find the pits empty and cover their heads; the ground is chapt for lack of rain; the hind forsakes her newborn; the wild asses snuff up the wind on the bare heights. When the heavens are shut, every living thing feels the absence — a picture of the deeper famine, when Yahweh withholds his word (Amos 8:11).
Jeremiah pleads on the Name, and Yahweh again forbids him to pray for them. O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble — the prophet appeals not to their merit but to Yahweh’s name and nature. And the answer comes once more: pray not for this people for their good. The intercessor is silenced; the breach is too wide, and judgment must run. The hope of Israel is also the reservoir of living water in a land of empty pits — the very thing the drought was meant to drive them to.
The false prophets promise peace, and Yahweh disowns them. Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye have famine — so the prophets say, and Yahweh answers, I sent them not… they prophesy unto you a false vision. The lie that there will be no judgment is the cruelest drought of all, drying up the alarm that might have driven them to repent. The true word weeps where the false word soothes.
So the prophet weeps and the remnant clings to Yahweh alone. Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day… for the virgin daughter of my people is broken. And the closing confession is the only ground left: are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain?… art not thou he, O Yahweh our God? therefore we will wait upon thee. The idols cannot give rain; only Yahweh can; the faithful wait on him in the drought.
When the heavens are shut and the false prophets cry peace, the idols cannot give rain — only Yahweh can; so the remnant weeps and waits on the hope of Israel, the savior in time of trouble.
Matthew 25
Ten virgins wait for the bridegroom, and five are shut out for want of oil. All ten slumbered and slept; the difference is that five took oil in their vessels and five did not. At the midnight cry the foolish find their lamps going out, and while they go to buy, the door is shut: I know you not. The oil is what cannot be borrowed at the last moment — the Spirit, the word lived in, the character formed in the waiting; the wedding shuts on those who came unprepared. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.
The talents test what the servants did with what they were given. To one five, to one two, to one one — and the man with one hid his lord’s money in the earth and called his lord hard. The faithful are told enter thou into the joy of thy lord; the slothful is stripped and cast into outer darkness, for unto every one that hath shall be given. The judgment of the household turns not on how much was entrusted but on whether it was used; the buried gift is itself the verdict.
The sheep and goats are the judgment of the nations before the throne of glory. The Son of man sits upon the throne of his glory, and all nations are gathered and parted as a shepherd parts sheep from goats. The division turns on mercy shown to the least of these my brethren — the hungry fed, the stranger taken in, the prisoner visited — done to them, done to him. The reckoning is real and it is moral; the King counts himself one with his afflicted brethren.
The two destinies are life and the loss of it — and the loss is not unending torment but the second death. The righteous go into life eternal; the rest into everlasting punishment — the punishment of the second death, the fire whose work is final, not a torture without end. The kingdom belongs to those blessed of my Father; the others are sent into the destruction from which there is no waking. The weight of the scene is the certainty of the judgment, not its cruelty.
Keep oil in your vessel and use what you were given, for the door shuts at midnight and the King reckons with his household — and he counts mercy to the least of his brethren as mercy shown to himself.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day stands under one word: readiness. Joab plays the man for the cities of our God and leaves the issue to Yahweh; the virgins are shut out or let in by whether they kept oil; the servants are judged by what they did with the gift; the nations are parted by mercy shown or withheld. In every reading the question is whether a life was lived ready — the effort offered, the gift used, the oil kept, the brother fed — against the hour that comes without warning.
Jeremiah names the cost of unreadiness. The drought finds a people who would not repent and prophets who cried peace; the heavens shut, the pits run dry, and only those who wait on Yahweh have any hope. The foolish virgins buying oil too late and the people crying for rain in a drought they were warned of are the same: grace and water are there for the asking, until the door shuts and the heavens close.
So keep the oil, use the gift, feed the brother, and wait on the hope of Israel. The serpent’s son despised the kindness of the King and reaped war; the foolish virgins presumed and found the door shut; the buried talent was the slothful servant’s sentence. Be the wise virgin with oil in the vessel, the servant trading the gift, the sheep who fed the King in his brethren — and play the man for the cities of our God, leaving the outcome to him.
The door shuts at midnight and the heavens close in the drought; keep oil in your vessel and the gift in use, and wait on the hope of Israel, who alone gives rain in the time of trouble.