Read Time: 5 minutes2 Samuel 16
Ziba meets the fleeing king with provisions and a slander. He brings donkeys laden with bread and fruit and wine, and when David asks after Mephibosheth, Ziba says his master stayed in Jerusalem hoping to day shall the house of Israel restore me the kingdom — a charge David believes too quickly, handing Ziba all his master’s land. In the rush of crisis the king judges an absent man on one servant’s word; the rejected king is not above a hasty injustice.
Then Shimei comes out cursing, and David will not let him be silenced. The Benjamite throws stones and dust and curses — come out, thou bloody man… Yahweh hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul — and Abishai wants to take off his head. But David restrains him: let him curse, for Yahweh hath said unto him, Curse David… it may be that Yahweh will look on mine affliction. The king bears the reviling without striking back, receiving it from Yahweh’s hand — as the greater Son, when he was reviled, reviled not again (1 Pet 2:23). The stones thrown at the rejected king fall again on the servant stoned in the vineyard parable (Mark 12:4) and on the Son at whom they took up stones in the temple (John 8:59); the anointed bears the stoning meant for his shame and answers it with silence.
Meanwhile Absalom enters Jerusalem, and the counsel he takes seals the old prophecy. Ahithophel tells him to go in unto thy father’s concubines… in the sight of all Israel, and a tent is spread on the roof for the deed. The roof where David watched Bathsheba is now the roof where his own house is shamed in the open sun — before the sun, exactly as Nathan foretold (12:11–12). The sin done in secret returns in daylight, measure for measure, upon the man who committed it.
Ahithophel’s word is treated as the very voice of God. His counsel was as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God — so high stood the wisdom of the friend now turned traitor. The deepest betrayals come clothed in the greatest credibility; the counsel that should have served the king now arms the rebellion, and the wise man bends all his gift to evil.
The rejected king bears the curse without striking back, leaving it to Yahweh; and the sin once done on the roof returns upon it in open daylight, measure for measure.
Jeremiah 20
Pashur the priest answers the prophet’s word with a beating and the stocks. The chief officer of the temple smites Jeremiah and locks him in the stocks by the high gate; when he lets him out, Jeremiah renames him Magor-missabib — terror on every side — for Babylon will carry off all he trusts. The man with power to bind the prophet cannot bind the word; he only earns himself a name of dread.
Out of the stocks pours the rawest lament in the book. O Yahweh, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed — the prophet feels overpowered into a calling that brings him only derision. He resolves to speak no more in the Name — and cannot. His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. The word will not be held in; to carry it is agony, and to swallow it is worse.
Faith and despair wrestle in the same breath. He knows Yahweh is with me as a mighty terrible one, and breaks into praise — sing unto Yahweh… for he hath delivered the soul of the poor — and then, in the next lines, curses the day he was born: wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow? The man of God is not made of stone; he holds trust and torment together, the honest darkness of one who keeps speaking the word that costs him everything.
This is the prophet as the suffering servant in miniature. Beaten, mocked, set in the stocks, given over to derision, yet unable to stop because the fire burns in his bones — Jeremiah foreshadows the One who would be smitten and spit upon and still set his face to speak. The true word has always been carried by men the world would silence, and has never yet been silenced.
The word is a fire shut up in the bones that no beating can quench; the prophet holds praise and despair in one breath, the suffering servant who cannot stop speaking what costs him everything.
Romans 5–6
Justified by faith, we are brought into peace and standing with God. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and access into a grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope. Even tribulation works for us, breeding patience and experience and hope, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And the proof of that love is its timing: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us — not for the deserving, but for the ungodly.
Then Paul sets the two men whose acts decide the race. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned — Adam’s disobedience brought sin and mortality on the whole line, and all, sinning, die. Over against him stands the one man Jesus Christ, whose obedience and free gift abound to many: as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Two heads, two harvests — death in Adam, life in Christ.
So the gospel cannot be a licence to sin. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? The answer is the meaning of baptism: so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death… buried with him by baptism into death, that we might walk in newness of life. Going down into the water is a burial with him; rising from it is a resurrection to a new walk — the old man crucified with him, the body of sin disarmed.
The choice is whose servant you will be. Once slaves of sin, the believer is freed to be a servant of righteousness; sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. And the two masters pay in two coins: the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Sin pays out death — the wage earned, the end of life; God gives, as a gift, the life that sin can never earn.
While we were yet sinners Christ died for us; baptized into his death we rise to a new walk — for sin pays the wage of death, but God gives, freely, eternal life in Christ.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day is the meeting of the wage and the gift. In David’s house the wage comes due: the sin done in secret on the roof returns in daylight on the same roof, measure for measure, exactly as Nathan said — the wages of sin is death, paid out in the ruin of a king’s house. And the king receives it rightly, bearing Shimei’s curse without a blow, taking the affliction from Yahweh’s hand, like the One who reviled not again. The wage is real; the gift is greater.
Jeremiah and Romans together show how the gift is carried and given. The prophet beaten and in the stocks, the fire shut up in his bones, is the suffering servant in small — a figure of the One who, while we were yet sinners, died for us. And the way that death becomes ours is baptism into it: buried with him, raised to a new walk, the old man crucified, the body of sin disarmed. The suffering borne by prophet and king is taken up and answered in the death we are joined to and the life we are raised to.
So reckon the wage and take the gift. Do not earn what sin pays; be baptized into the death of the One who died for the ungodly, and rise to walk new. Bear what comes as David bore the curse — from Yahweh’s hand, without striking back — and like Jeremiah let the word burn in you past every beating. The roof reaps what was sown there; but in Christ the wage of death is swallowed up in the gift of life.
Sin pays its wage on the very roof where it was sown — but baptized into the death of the One who died for the ungodly, you rise to a new walk; bear the curse as from Yahweh’s hand, and take the gift sin can never earn.