2 Samuel, Chapter 19 - Beyond Victory | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] Shalom friends and welcome back to the Prophets of Israel Daily. This is the second book of [music] Samuel, chapter 19, brought to you by the land of Isisrael Network at the land of Isisrael.com. I am Arya Bramwoods here with Jeremy Compel somewhere in America. Good to see you, Jeremy. I'm not just somewhere in America. I'm in your hometown in America right now, Houston, Texas. And I thought that you were a Zionist, but now I realize you were just escaping the weather here. It's so hot and it's so humid at the same time. You lived in a sauna. Of course, you had to make a >> Yeah. No, it was more It was the armpit of America. That's what it is. Totally. Yes. It's good to see you, Jeremy. It's good to see you. Um, all right. So, let's dive in. Yesterday, the war ended. Ab shalom. Davided's own son, the son who stole the hearts of Israel and drove his father barefoot and weeping out of Jerusalem, is dead. caught [clears throat] by his hair in the branches of the great oak. Three spears through his heart. The rebellion is over. David has won. And this is exactly where you'd expect the trumpets of victory, the parade, the king riding home in triumph across the Jordan. But you'd only expect that if you just joined us right now on this journey. But if you know anything about the heart of David, you know that he could never celebrate a victory achieved with the blood of his own son. Instead, chapter 19 opens with a sound no soldier expected to hear from a victorious king. Weeping. Verse one. Beni. Abshalom. Beni. Beni. Abselum. My son. Absalom. My son. My son Absalom. If only I had died instead of you. Absalom. My son. My son. The whole army hears it. And watch what happens to them. The text says the victory turned that day into mourning for all the people. The soldiers who risked their lives to save the king. They come slinking back into the city disoriented and confused and demoralized [clears throat] because their king is grieving. The very man they put their lives on the line to defeat. And into that unbearable silence walks Yo, the general of David's army. The same Yav who against Davided's explicit orders drove those three spears into Abselum himself. And he doesn't comfort the king. He confronts him. Verse seven, you have shamed the faces of all of your servants today. For today I know that if Abselum were alive and all of us were dead today, it would be right in your eyes. And as um as heartless and irreverent as it may be to speak like that to the anointed king of Israel, it's hard to claim that he's saying anything that's not really true. But you know what really jumps out at me is that you look at where he goes to weep. The first verse says that he goes up up to the chamber over the gate. He climbs above the city, above the people, above the crown, just to a private place up there somewhere where he can just be a broken father. And what does Yov force him to do? Forces him to come down. Come down and sit in the gate. Because in the ancient world, the gate isn't just an entrance. The gate is where the king does justice. It's where Ab Shalom stood when he stole the hearts of the people. The gate is where the nation is led. And the whole drama of this moment is summed up right there. Up is where David goes to be a private man with a shattered heart. the gate down below, but out in the open, that's where he has to be a king. And Yav is saying, you don't have the luxury of climbing above your people right now. A leader's tears wept in the wrong place at the wrong time can drown an entire nation in despair. I mean, your grief is real, but you have to carry it back down to the gate. You have to let your private heartbreak stay private. Now, you need to be a king because the public needs your strength. And you know, there's something even more painful about the fact that the man who's delivering this truth is the same man who caused the grief. It's the message that sometimes the person who wounded you is the very one holding the truth you most need to hear. >> Yeah. And David to his eternal credit listens. Right. Verse eight, he rises and he sits in the gate. The people are told, "Behold, the king sits in the gate and all the people come before him." So the king has come back down to his people as you said, Jeremy, right? The healing can begin. But now the story shifts from grief to the delicate politics of of coming home. Because here's the strange thing. The nation that chased David out, right? They chased him out. And now that Abshalom is gone, the tribes are standing around arguing with each other about weather and how to bring him back. And notice who's dragging their feet. Yehuda. David's own tribe. His own flesh and blood. So David sends a message to the elders of Yehuda through the priest Sadoken of Yatar and he says,"You're my bone. You're my flesh. Why are you the last to bring back your king?" Right? And in a breathtaking act of of political daring, he offers the position of army commander Yo's job to Amasa. Now, just to remind you, Amasa was David's nephew, the son of Avigal, David's sister, and a cousin of Yaf. Right? So, here's like a tang of tangled web that we're weaving here, right? And of course, a little last detail here. Amasad joined the rebellion and served as the general of Av Shalom's rebel army. Think about that. The king reaches past his loyal warrior Yoo and the long-standing commander of his army and hands leadership of his military to the enemy's general, I think, in hopes of knitting the nation back together. And it works. Yehuda's heart turns as one man. And they come down to Gilgal, that ancient place where Israel first crossed the Jordan under Yahosua to escort the king back across the water. Which means David's return is being written as a second entry into the land, a second crossing of the Jordan, redemption after exile all over again. And waiting at that river are three men. And I really think that the way David treats each one of them tells you a lot about the kind of king and the kind of nation that is being reborn. Because David's been through so much. He's a different person now. Right. The first is Shimmy bin Gara. Remember him, Jeremy? He he this guy lives in my mind. I just have visualized him for the last 30 years of my life. Right? When David fled Jerusalem in disgrace, Shimmy walked alongside him throwing stones, kicking up dust, screaming curses, and just calling him a man of blood. And now that David's back on top, Shim comes racing down with a thousand men of beinyamin, throws himself at the king's feet, and begs for his life. And Avishi, Yo's brother, says, "He's cursed. He cursed God's anointed, let him die." And uh listen to David's answer. Verse 23, Israel. Should shall any man be put to death this day in Israel? For do I not know that today I am king over Israel? >> You know Ari, I just want to stop for a second because that line, today I am king over Israel. That's a statement of true leadership. It's just so easy to read by the words and keep moving forward without reflecting on what they really mean and what David was trying to do. Because David isn't only saying, "I'm the king. I have the power to pardon." What he's trying to do is to create the day and how it's remembered and understood by the nation. Because there are days that carry a certain weight, days that get to define a nation for a generation and for generations to come. And David understands with total clarity that the day of the return of the king, it can't be a day of bloodshed, the day you re-enter, the day the exile ends, the day the people are finally coming back together. You don't open that day with an execution. And here's what shows that that decision was really about crafting the day more than anything else. Because years later on his deathbed, David tells his son Solomon to settle that account with Shimmy. You don't come and curse the king of Israel and get away with it. But it just wasn't the right timing. So this isn't really about forgiveness. David never pretended the curses didn't happen. What he did was more sophisticated than that. He separated the demands of long-term justice from the needs of this day. And he was saying there's a time of reckoning, but the day you're trying to make a fractured people one again, it's just not the day. >> Yeah, true. And the second man at that river, let's go back to the river, Jeremy. The second man is Mephiboset, the crippled son of Yhonatan, right? David's beloved friend, the son of Saul. And the text gives us this heartbreaking detail. From the day David fled until the day he returned in peace, Mephib Bush had not cared for his feet, had not trimmed his beard, had not washed his clothes. He had been in mourning the entire time the king was gone. His loyalty was written all over his neglected body. Right? And the third man, the one I think is the most interesting, Barzili Hagiladi. Barzeli the Gileadite, an 80-year-old man who when David was at his lowest when he was a fugitive king hiding in Mahanim with nothing. Barzeli was really there for him. He sustained him. He fed him and he provided for him and he asked for nothing. And David wants to repay him. Come to Jerusalem, he says, come live in the palace at my table. And listen to how Barzili answers. I am 80 years old today. Can I still tell good from bad? Can your servant taste what he eats and drinks? Can I still hear the voice of singers, men and women? Why should your servant be a further burden to my lord the king? Right? Just just let me cross the river with you. He says, just let me walk you a little way and then let me go back and die in my own city by the grave of my father and my mother. But here, take Ham, this young man, and let him go with you. That's what Barzi is. >> Yeah. I just want to quickly point out something about Barzili because it's easy to miss. I mean, you look for a moment, everyone else is standing at that river. Yehuda and Israel are fighting over who gets more of the king. Shimmy is scrambling to save his own neck. Zea is just angling for land. I mean, even the loyal ones are in some sense positioning themselves for the new administration. And everyone at the Jordan wants something from the returning king except for one old man. Barzili is the only person in the whole chapter who gave everything and wants nothing. And the king offers him the palace, the dream everyone else is fighting for, and he turns it down. And that's not false modesty out of a kind of clarity that only comes with age and wisdom at 80 years old. He knows exactly who he is, exactly what he can still enjoy, and exactly what he doesn't need. And then he does the deepest thing of all. He says, "Listen, take my boy. Send this young man in my place. send Kim Kam. He's he takes the reward he earned and then he hands it to the next generation. That's the man who sustained David in the wilderness. And I think it's not an accident that the person who held up the king in his exile is the one with the least agenda of anyone in the story. I mean, the people who quietly carry us through our Mahanim moments. I mean, in our you and I have had a lot of Mahanim moments. It's like the moments we're hiding and we're in refuge. the people that come to us then they're almost never the ones that are asking for the palace afterwards. That's true loyalty and that's what David's followers represent right here. That's so true. We we definitely have had our Mahaniah moments. That's right. And then right at the end of the chapter comes a moment which really captures my attention. At least my attention or at least it it should capture all of our attention if we're looking closely because David has been brought home. Grief has been carried, right? enemies have been forgiven. And what does the chapter end on? An argument. The men of Israel and the men of Yehuda start fighting over the king. We have 10 shares in the king. We're more than you, but he's our flesh and our blood. And the text tells us in verse 44 is the words of the menhuda were harsher than the words of the men of Israel. Do you feel how I I don't know how demoralizing that is? They've just survived a civil war. The unity is one hour old and already the brothers are snarling each other over who loves the king more. And if you know what comes next, the very next chapter, you know this quarrel doesn't just stay a quarrel. It ignites the rebellion of Shv Benri, the nation that was uh the the the leader, right? He nearly tore the nation apart by Abselum just ripped the nation apart and then Sheva comes in. He's going to do it all over again, right? And he's not an enemy. It's not an enemy that ripped it apart, but by wounded pride between brothers. And here's what I feel this chapter really is talking about us today on some level. Because in some ways, we're living in the ache, in the pain of Samuel 2, chapter 19 right now. on some level. Unfortunately, we're a nation that knows what it is to grieve sons, too many sons, and still be commanded to rise the next morning, come down to the gate, and keep leading, keep building, keep defending. We buried our children and got up and went back to the borders. That is David's terrible burden, and it's been ours. And we're also a nation that seems to be to keep learning again and again that bari at the river with the and and the quarrel with Yehuda. They're both still inside us. We saw it after October 7th. In the worst moment, we became one people overnight. Mahanim, everyone sustaining everyone. No one asking what tribe you were from. Just love at that point. And then the moment the immediate danger eased, the old arguing came racing back. 10 shares versus flesh and blood. Who's more loyal? Who sacrificed more? Who really owns the kingship and deserves authority and control? Right? Chapter 19 is teaching us the deepest secret of the return. The war with Abshalom was the easy war, an external enemy, a clear front. The hard war is the one at the river after the victory. The war for reconciliation. The discipline to say not today to the man who cursed you. The grace to hand positions of power, leadership, or authority to yesterday's enemy. The humility to let the old man who carried you keep his dignity. Right? And and the terrifying ease with which brothers who just bled together can turn on each other over what seems like nothing. Right? David crossed the Jordan a second time to teach us that coming home is not the end of the story. It's the beginning of the harder work. Anyone can win a war. The question the text leaves ringing in our ears then and now is whether a people can win the peace, right? Whether we can hold the king and hold each other without the words growing harsher between brothers. That's the redemption that's still being asked of us. That's what I believe. And I pray that we may be that generation that can finally answer it, my friends. And if this journey is speaking to you, if you feel these ancient words reaching across 3,000 years into our very moment, come home to our global fellowship at the land of Isisrael.com. Every [music] week from these hills in Judea, people from more than 35 countries, we gather together to learn and to [music] pray and to hold on to one another during these crazy times. It's really like nothing else on earth. Miz Radashm, we'll see you tomorrow [music] for chapter 20.