Read Time: 5 minutes2 Samuel 14
Joab sees the king’s heart leaning toward the banished Absalom and sends a wise woman of Tekoah with a parable. She feigns mourning: her two sons quarreled, one killed the other, and now the family demands the survivor’s life — would the king not spare him? David grants it, and she turns it, as Nathan did, upon the king himself: by sparing her son he condemns his own refusal to bring back his own banished one. The king is caught again by a story that makes him judge his own case.
In the woman’s plea lies one of the great sentences of Scripture. We must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him. Death is irreversible as spilled water, and God plays no favorites — yet he is the One who devises means that the banished are not finally cast out. The whole gospel is folded into that line: a God who contrives a way to bring the exile home.
But the reconciliation David grants is only half a reconciliation. Absalom is brought back to Jerusalem, yet let him not see my face; for two years the son lives in the city estranged from the father, neither banished nor received. A half-welcome is no welcome; the unresolved distance will curdle into the revolt that follows. To bring the exile near but withhold the face is to leave the wound open.
Absalom’s beauty masks the danger growing in him. From the sole of his foot to his crown there is no blemish, and his heavy hair is the wonder of the city — the very glory of the flesh in which he trusts. He burns Joab’s field to force an audience, and at last kisses the king; but the unblemished prince is the coming destroyer, and his pride is the snare that will one day hang him. Beauty without obedience is only a more handsome rebellion.
Death is spilled water no man can gather — yet God devises means that his banished be not expelled; but a half-reconciliation that withholds the face only festers toward revolt.
Jeremiah 18
Yahweh sends the prophet down to the potter’s house to learn at the wheel. The vessel the potter is shaping is marred in the hand of the potter, so he makes it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. The lesson is spoken plainly: cannot I do with you as this potter? saith Yahweh… as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand. The marred clay is not discarded; while it is soft it can be reworked — the sovereignty that judges is also the sovereignty that remakes.
That sovereignty answers to repentance, not caprice. If Yahweh speaks against a nation and it turns from its evil, he relents of the harm; if he speaks good of a nation and it does evil, he withdraws the good. The potter’s freedom is no fatalism — it bends toward mercy the moment the clay yields. Paul will take up this very figure of the potter and the clay (Rom 9) to defend the same freedom of God.
But this clay has set itself hard. There is no hope… we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart — they choose the very deceit Jeremiah named the day before, the hardened heart that will not be reshaped. Even nature shames them: the snow of Lebanon does not forsake the rock, the cold streams do not fail, yet my people hath forgotten me. The one unnatural thing is a people abandoning the One who made them.
And so they answer the prophet with a plot. Come, let us devise devices against Jeremiah… let us smite him with the tongue — the word that called them back is met with slander and conspiracy, the messenger attacked for the message. The hardened clay turns on the potter’s hand; the prophet, like his Lord after him, is hated for telling the truth.
While the clay is soft the potter remakes the marred vessel — but a heart set hard turns on the hand that would reshape it, and plots against the word that calls it home.
Romans 1–2
Paul opens with the gospel that was promised long before it came. It is the good news of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power… by the resurrection from the dead. The Son came in David’s line and in our nature, and was marked out as Son of God in power when God raised him. This gospel is the power of God unto salvation to Jew first and Greek, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed — and *the just shall live by faith (Hab 2:4).
Then the indictment of the Gentile world, who knew God and would not honor him. When they knew God, they glorified him not as God; they exchanged his glory for images, and so God gave them up — to uncleanness, to vile affections, to a reprobate mind. The downward slide begins not in ignorance but in suppressed knowledge; idolatry is the root, and the long catalogue of corruption is the fruit of a creature who worshipped the creature rather than the Creator.
But the moralist who judges has no escape either. Thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou… doest the same things. The Jew who names the Gentile’s sin commits it under a better name; and the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, not to presumption. God will render to every man according to his deeds, and he is no respecter of persons.
The true mark of belonging is inward, not in the flesh. The Gentile who keeps the law’s substance by conscience may outweigh the Jew who has the letter and breaks it; he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly… but… he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit. It is the same heart Jeremiah pointed to — the law written or unwritten on the heart, the inward reality God reads behind the outward sign.
The gospel is God’s Son in David’s line and our flesh, raised in power; and before it both the idolater and the moralist stand condemned, for God reads the heart, not the badge.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day turns on the means God devises to bring the banished home. The woman of Tekoah names the human plight exactly — we are as water spilt that cannot be gathered, and God shows no favoritism — and then names the hope: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him. Romans is the unfolding of that means: the gospel of God’s Son, in David’s line and our flesh, raised in power, the power of God to bring exiles home. What David could only half-grant — Absalom near but barred from the face — God grants fully in his Son.
But the clay must yield to the hand. Jeremiah’s potter remakes the marred vessel while it is soft, and Paul shows both Gentile and Jew as clay gone hard — the one through idolatry, the other through a judging that does the same things. The banished are not expelled, yet the hardened heart turns on the hand that would reshape it, as Judah plotted against the prophet. The means are devised; the question is whether the clay will be remade or set itself against the wheel.
So come home by the means God devised, and come as soft clay. Do not be the moralist who names another’s sin while doing it, nor the hardened vessel that plots against the word; let the goodness of God lead you to repentance. The One who devises means that his banished be not expelled has revealed those means in his risen Son — be gathered, be reshaped, and let the circumcision be of the heart.
God has devised the means that the banished come home — his Son in our flesh, raised in power; yield to the hand like soft clay, and do not, like the moralist or the hardened heart, turn on the wheel that would remake you.