2 Samuel 22:1-20 – Building a deep relationship with God

What we read in 2 Samuel 22 is almost the same as Psalm 18 with very few variations between the two. Both the beginning verses in 2 Samuel 22 and the title of Psalm 18 tell us why David praised the LORD so spontaneously. God not only rescued him from the hand of Saul but also from the hand of all his enemies. Having experienced the abundant deliverance of God, David could not cease praising the Almighty.

Terms such as rock, fortress, deliverer, refuge, shield, horn, stronghold, and savior, bring to our mind a sense of reliability. God is reliable. Like David, we must have Him as the foundation in our lives to be able to stand unmovable in the day of adversity. With Him in one’s life, one will be indestructible, no matter how tough the circumstances one may encounter in life. The many times the personal pronoun “my” is used, speak of the personal and intimate relationship David had with God. And if we are to experience the same level of security David had in life, we also need to cultivate such a personal and intimate relationship with God. Such a relationship will enable us to stay strong and praise the LORD regardless of the magnitude of the storm in life we may encounter. 

In verses 5-6, David described the extent of his troubles. He was surrounded by the ungodly and came face to face with death. The grave seemed imminent. Emotionally he was at his lowest ebb. He felt drained and was filled with sorrow and fear. Many of us probably had all been to that place before. Some of us may be at this place now. Here we can learn from David what to do. In his distress, he lifted his prayer to God and was heard by the Almighty. So like him, we too can lift our cry to the Almighty and know that He will come to our rescue.   

 In highly dramatized language, verses 8-20 David narrated how God had heard his prayer and came to his rescue. God’s fierce anger was seen in the earthquake and the storm. And in a very graphic way, David used the forces of nature to describe the wrath of God shown against his enemies. In narrating how God came to his rescue, David had become God’s instrument to tell us that God will also move heaven and earth to answer the cry of help we will make to Him. Like David, if we are to experience God’s deliverance and to be able to stand openly to praise Him, we must love Him, and totally trust and rely on Him.

Like David, God must be our constant stay, so that in whatever trial we may currently be battling, we know we have a reliable God to lean on. He wants to deliver us so that we can stand firm and praise His name openly. How solidly we can stand in the face of the fierce trials of life will be determined by how we build our relationship with Him. The deeper our root in Him is, the more stable will life be. We can be like a tree planted by the streams of water, whose leaves will not wither and will yield its fruit in its season. Do we really know this Mighty God so intimately?!

2 Samuel 21:15-22 – Be a giant slayer

Goliath whom David had slain as a young lad was not the only giant from the camp of the Philistines. Here in 2 Samuel 21:15-22, we read of four other Philistine giants that were slain by David’s men. In the killing of these remaining four giants, different heroes from David’s camp were highlighted in the passage. In all, we note that David and his men had slain five giants. Some said that these four remaining giants killed were the brothers of Goliath, the one David killed early in his life. They concluded from the fact that David took five stones when he went out to face Goliath. In that account, we were told that he used only one of the five stones. These accounts of the slaying of the remaining four giants were given to provide the basis for the song of deliverance in chapter 22.

In one of the battles, David went out to face the Philistines. He was confronting Ishbi-benob, a giant who carried a spear weighing three hundred shekels of bronze in weight and girded with a new sword. He had the intention to kill David. Verse 15 tells us that in that battle David became weary. Had it not been for Abishai his nephew who came to his aid, he would have been killed in that confrontation. His men then insisted that the king should no longer go into battle with them for fear that he might be killed, thus extinguishing “the lamp of Israel.”

Verses 18-19 briefly describe two battles with the Philistines at Gob. In the first battle, Sibbecai killed the giant named Saph also known as Sippai in 1 Chronicles 20:4. In the second battle at Gob, Elhanan killed another giant. He was identified as Lahmi in 1  Chronicles 20:5. Lahmi was the brother of Goliath, the Gittite. Then the final giant was an unnamed, one with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. He was threatening and defying the people of Israel like the Goliath whom David had slain when he was a lad. However,  he was killed, and Jonathan, David’s nephew was credited to have destroyed the last of the fearsome giants.   

Like the giants that David and the people of Israel faced, we too will face our own “giants” in life. They will come in the form of tough circumstances that will come up against us time and again. How do we face each of them? Will we overcome each one of them and become  “giant slayers” by the help of God?  One thing we must never forget is that in every battle, no matter how huge the giant may be, we have God with us. We need to learn not to focus on the size of the “giant” we are confronting, but the size of the God we worship and serve. Be sure that He is available to see us through each crisis no matter how gigantic each one of them may seem. We need also to note that like David, there are times we cannot fight the giants alone. We need the help of fellow “giant slayers.” Since we are on the journey of life together, let us avail ourselves to bear each other’s burden. Paul puts it so succinctly in Galatian 6:1-2 saying, “Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfil the law of Christ.” Beloved in Christ, we are in the company of “giants slayers”! Let us pick up our pebbles and live like one!

2 Samuel 21:10-14 – Devotion that changes the outcome of life

These verses describe the devotion of Rizpah. She was the mother of Armoni and Mephibosheth, two of the seven members of Saul’s descendants who were handed over to the Gibeonites to be impaled. She was not allowed to take down her two sons and give them a descend burial. If she did so, she would be violating the king’s edict. But her love and affection for her sons whose lives were given on account of Saul’s sin, drove her to do the next best thing. She laid out a sackcloth somewhere near the hanging bodies and kept watch over them. Rizpah wanted to make sure that those bodies were not ravaged by birds in the day nor beasts in the night. She resolutely kept watching over those bodies until the first drop of rain fell, the famine ended, and the land restored.   

On learning of what she had done, David was deeply moved. He then gave two orders to honor her dedication. He first instructed that the bodies of Jonathan and Saul, who were buried by the people of Jabesh-gilead to be moved, and be buried in the tomb of Kish, Saul’s father.  Secondly, he ordered the bodies of the seven impaled members of Saul’s household to be buried in the same tomb. After the men were given a proper burial, God was moved by their prayer for the land.  David's action brought closure to the whole matter. Saul and Jonathan’s bodies were finally brought to their respectable resting place.

Rizpah’s action leaves behind a valuable lesson. Even in her most trying moments in life, she chose to act rightly. There was no hint of her being bitter by what David did to her two sons. She instead did her best by keeping watch over the bodies. Her devotion to her sons and the other impaled bodies moved David so deeply that he had the bodies of Saul and Jonathan brought back from Jabesh-gilaead to be buried with Kish, the father of Saul. David also had the bodies of the seven men buried together at the same place. Rizpah’s devotion had brought about a reconciliation that she did not even anticipate. The healed relationship then brought about the condition for God to hear and answer the prayer of the nation. So we read in verse 10 that God heard the entreaties and was moved to heal the land. Her action had changed the outcome of the nation. What happened to her tells us that there is no need to live an embittered life even in the most trying of circumstances. Choosing to act rightly, she had unwittingly influenced a positive outcome not only in her life but that of the nation. Like her, we can choose to adopt the right attitude and action and experience a positive change to the course of our lives. God is good all the time! He is the rewarder of right living!    

2 Samuel 21:7-9 – God will deal with unrepented sin

First Samuel 21 revealed that during those times when Saul was hot on David’s heel, he was dwelling in Gibeah. It was probably during those times that he had unjustly massacred some of the Gibeonites. A delayed justice took place in David’s reign. God sent a three-year famine to punish the people of Israel. When David had established the reason for this long-drawn famine, he asked the Gibeonites what he could do to atone for Saul’s misdeed. After some arbitration, the Gibeonites asked for seven sons of Saul to be handed over to them to be impaled in the field. David consented.

In 2 Samuel 21:7-9, the seven sons of Saul’s family handed to the Gibeonites were identified. They were Armoni and Mephibosheth, the sons whom Rizpah had borne to Saul. Verse 7 made it clear that this Mephibosheth was not to be mistaken for Jonathan’s crippled son. Then the other five were Saul’s grandsons. They were the five sons of Saul’s daughter, Merab. The Gibeonites took the seven and impaled them in the field during the first day of the beginning of the barley harvest.

It was possible that these seven were involved in the killing of the Gibeonites. Why do we say so? It would be a violation of God’s law to make innocent people pay for the crime they had not committed. Hence, it is safe to assume that the seven handed over to the Gibeonites were involved in Saul’s crime. The two sons of Saul were old enough at that point to be involved in the ethnic cleansing. But what about the five grandsons of Saul. Were they old enough to be part of the crime? Merab was married before David was forced to escape from Saul. At the time of their grandfather’s ethnic cleansing, they would be old enough to be involved in the crime.  

One thing for sure is that in life, our sins will find us out. Nothing is hidden from the eyes of God. He takes notes of everything. The seven descendants of Saul participated in the ethnic cleansing with Saul and must have felt that whatever was done was done long ago. But their wrong had caught up with them. God allowed the famine to expose the wrong and since they were involved in the crime, they became culpable and paid dearly for it. Thankfully, today when we have truly repented of our sins, Christ's efficacious atonement redeems us from our past. We stand covered by His blood that was shed for us. However, let us be sure to keep short accounts with God and not leave any unrepented sin hanging around.   

2 Samuel 21:1-6 – Dealing with the sin of omission

The events of the last four chapters of 2 Samuel were not recorded chronologically. They appear like the appendices of the book. The three-year famine described in 2 Samuel 21 took place at a point in David’s reign. This unusually long famine led him to seek the face of the Lord, meaning he went to the temple in Gibeon to inquire of the Lord using the Urim and Thummim.

It was revealed to David that the famine was a judgment of God for the crime that Saul and his bloody house had committed. Saul attempted to exterminate the Gibeonites and violated the covenant which Joshua made with them earlier. The lives of the Gibeonites were protected by that covenant. (Details of how the covenant with the Gibeonites was made can be found in Joshua 9.) Since Saul’s bloody house violated it and did not receive their just due, the famine was a delayed justice for a crime Israel had committed. At that point, Saul as the king was the representative head of the nation, and what he did had an implication on the nation.   

Wanting to reverse the curse that came upon the land, the inheritance of  the Lord, David sought to right the situation. He asked the Gibeonites, “What should I do for you? And how can I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord?”  He wanted to know what he could do to compensate for the wrongdoing that Israel as a nation under Saul had committed against the Gibeonites. The King was told that no amount of money could right the wrong. Besides, it was not in their place nor position to put to death any person in Israel. In his desire to deal with the famine that had plagued them, David persisted in asking what he could do for them to amend the wrong. At David's insistence, the Gibeonites then asked for the lives of seven members of Saul’s family to atone for the wrong they had committed.  They would then have the seven persons impaled by hanging them before the Lord in Gibeah, the hometown of Saul. David agreed to their request.

Why God did not deal with Saul, since this was a crime that he had committed? Why did God punish Israel during David’s reign for a crime that was committed by Saul? This is almost similar to a question that had often been asked: why must the whole humanity be punished for the sin of Adam? The answer rests in the fact that Adam was the federal head of humanity. What he did, he did as the representative head of humanity. In the same way, Saul was the head of Israel. What he did, he did as a representative of the nation. Remember what Paul so aptly said in Romans 5:17? As the head of mankind, Adam’s sin affected all of us. Now through Christ the new Adam, the head of the new humanity, we who trust in Him are made righteous by His righteousness. Here's another lesson. What happened to the nation of Israel can also be a call of God to reflect on one’s past. There may be sins one has committed by omission, which one remains unaware of. Left undealt with, it could end up like having a dead corpse in one’s closet, that leave behind repugnant stench in life. Seek the Lord to identify and deal with it speedily.    

2 Samuel 20:16-26 - Living wisely

In pursuing Sheba, Joab, who took over the lead after killing Amasa, came and besieged Abel Beth-maacah. Sheba was hiding in that city. So the men led by Joab took a siege ramp and scaled up the wall of the city. What they did was slowly but surely damaging the wall. Realizing that the wall was fast toppling, an unnamed woman wisely called out to Joab and engaged him in a dialogue. When told to speak up,  she responded saying, “Formerly they used to say, ‘They will surely ask advice at Abel,’ and thus they ended the dispute. I am of those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel. You are seeking to destroy a city, even a mother in Israel. Why would you swallow up the inheritance of the Lord?”

She gave four reasons why Joab and his men should stop destroying the city. Firstly, she suggested that the city of Abel was known for her wisdom and was a place where advice was sought, and the dispute would end. Secondly, this city was a peaceful place, and people including her were faithful to Israel. Thirdly, this city was “a mother of Israel”, meaning in this city many Israelites were produced for the nation. And finally, it was an inheritance that the LORD had given. To destroy it was to destroy the inheritance that was given by the LORD to His people.  

Joab then gave her the reason why they were besieging the city. He assured her that he and his men had no intention of destroying the city. All they wanted was the rebel Sheba, whom the city was harboring. Joab promised the woman that if the city of Abel would surrender the rebel, he and his men would withdraw from the city. The woman then promised that  Sheba’s head would be thrown over the wall to them. Turning to the people of Abel, that wise woman explained why they needed to behead Sheba and to have his head thrown over to Joab and his men.  So the people of Abel did as she had said, and they threw the head of Sheba over to Joab. The commander then blew the trumpet and ended the chase. So, Joab returned to Jerusalem.  

The chapter concluded by reiterating the eight key people who served the king. They were: Joab the commander of his army; Benaiah the son of Jehoiada who took charge of David’s personal bodyguards, the Cherethites and the Pelethites; Adoram was like the minister of labor for he took charge of the forced labor, Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was the recorder, Sheva was the scribe, and Zadok and Abiathar were priests, and Ira the Jairite was also a priest to David.

A lesson that stood out in these verses is this: Wisdom is key to life. It is particularly helpful in resolving conflicts. In this account, we see one rebellious man putting the city at risk of destruction, but with wisdom, another person saved it. The unnamed person was a woman who deployed her wisdom and saved the city of Abel. Wisdom helped her see the impending danger, gave her a courageous spirit, and enabled her to negotiate a peace deal. From her wisdom, we see four things which wisdom can help us in effective living. Firstly, wisdom enables us to seize an opportunity. Secondly, it will help us to develop common courtesy in our dealings with others. Thirdly, it will help us to assess a situation aptly and accurately. Fourthly, with wisdom, we can clarify any misconception and come up with the best solution. The Bible leaves us with no uncertainty that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of all wisdom. So let us fear the LORD and operate in the wisdom that He will provide!

2 Samuel 20:11-15 – Walking in integrity

There in the large stone of Gibeon, Joab stabbed the unguarded Amasa. That one stab was enough to cause the victim’s innards to ooze out. And Amasa was left wriggling in the middle of the road reeling in a pool of his own blood. It was indeed a gruesome sight that left Abishai and the men standing still, watching. Just then a young soldier called out to those who were loyal to David to follow Joab’s leadership. Obviously, this soldier was in favor of Joab to take the lead.  

When that soldier saw that no one moved, he took Amasa’s struggling body from the middle of the road and laid in the field beside the road. Then he threw a garment over the ghastly body to cover that horrible sight. Meanwhile, Joab quickly assumed the leadership, with the people taking his lead in pursuit of Sheba. Led by Joab they pursued Sheba throughout Israel and finally came to Abel at Beth-maacah. There they besieged the city, laying a siege ramp against the wall so that they could scale it to enter the city. They were standing on top of the rampart and what they did was fast destroying the wall of the city.

We come back to scrutinize the life of Joab again. It is puzzling to note one so loyal to David yet would act so out of character with that loyalty. He had violated the instructions and desires of the king a few times already. Yet unlike Absalom or Sheba, he was not in rebellion. By and large, he was seen to be for David. Why did Joab behave in such a brazen disregard for the king? Here is the secret. Joab held some secrets of David’s past. He was the one who had executed the king’s order and had Uriah murdered by remote. That knowledge of David's sinful past gave him a hold over the king, and he would use that secret to his advantage. Joab probably knew that David would not do to him what he otherwise would have done if not for the secrets he possessed concerning him. Though forgiven by God, the blotch on David’s life made it difficult for him to deal with the tricky Joab. This is true in life. We can be held captive to one who possesses some secrets of our past. Walking in integrity is the best way to conduct life. When we do that, we need not live in fear that our past will catch up with us. Because of a sinful mistake, David had to tread gingerly with Joab. Don’t put ourselves in such a predicament. Choose to walk in integrity.