X. DAVID AND JOAB

There is another incident connected with this part of the history of David, which I have pondered, alternately accepting and rejecting it, as still further corroborating the opinion I have expressed, that the fortunes of David turned upon this one sin—that having mounted to their high-mark, they henceforward began, and continued to ebb away—this one sin which, according to Scripture, itself eclipsed every other. For though it would not be difficult to name sundry instances of ignorance, of negligence, of inconsideration, of infirmity, in the life of David besides this, it is nevertheless said, that “he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside in anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.” [1 Kings 15:5. See Sanderson, Serm. iv. ad Aulam.] I propose, however, this coincidence for the reason I have said, not without some hesitation; though at the same time, quite without concern for the safety of my cause, it being, as I observed in the beginning of this work, a very valuable property of the argument by which I am endeavouring to establish the credibility of Scripture, that any member of it, if unsound or unsatisfactory, may be detached, without further injury to the whole than the mere loss of that member entails.

This, therefore, I perceive, or think I perceive, that David became thoroughly encumbered by his connexion with Joab, the captain of his armies; that he was too suspicious to trust him, and too weak to dismiss him; that this officer, by some chance or other, had established a despotic control over the King; and that it is not unreasonable to believe (and here lies the coincidence), that when David made him the partner and secret agent of his guilty purpose touching Uriah, he sold himself into his hands; that in that fatal letter he sealed away his liberty, and surrendered it up to this his unscrupulous accomplice. Certain it is, that during all the latter years of his reign, David was little more than a nominal king.

Joab, no doubt, was by nature a man that could do and dare—a bold captain in bad times. The faction of Saul was so strong, that David could at first scarcely call the throne his own, or choose his servants according to his pleasure; and Joab, an able warrior, though sometimes avenging his own private quarrels at the expense of his sovereign’s honour, and thereby vexing him at the heart, was not to be displaced; he was then too hard for David, as the King himself complains [2 Sam. 3:39.] . But as yet, David was not tongue-tied at least. He openly, and without reserve, reprobated the conduct of Joab in slaying Abner, though he had the excuse, such as it was, of taking away the life of the man by whose hand his brother Asahel had fallen. Moreover, he so far asserted his own authority, as to make him rend his clothes, and gird him with sackcloth, and mourn before this very Abner, whom he had thus vindictively laid low; doubtless a bitter and mortifying penance to a man of the stout heart of Joab, and such as argued David, who insisted upon it, to be as yet in his own dominions supreme. Circumstances might constrain him still to employ this famous captain, but he had not at least (young as his authority then was) yielded himself up to his imperious subject. On the contrary, waxing stronger, as he did every day, and the remnant of Saul’s party dispersed, he became the king of Israel in fact, as well as in name; his throne established not only upon law, but upon public opinion too, so that “whatsoever the king did,” we are told, “pleased all the people.” [2 Sam. 3:36.] He was now in a condition to rule for himself, and for himself he did rule (whatever had become of Joab in the mean season); for we presently find him appointing that officer to the command of his army by his own act and deed, simply because he happened to be the man to win that rank when it was proposed by David as the prize of battle to any individual of his whole host, who should first get up the gutter and smite the Jebusites at the storming of Zion [2 Sam. 5:8; 1 Chron. 11:6.] . And whoever will peruse the eighth and tenth chapters of the second Book of Samuel, in which are recorded the noble achievements of David at this bright period of his life, his power abroad and his policy at home, the energy which he threw into the national character, and the respect which he commanded for it throughout all the East, will perceive that he reigned without a restraint and without a rival. Now comes the guilty act; the fatal stumbling-block against which he dashed his foot, and fell so pernicious a height. And hence-forwards I see, or imagine I see, Joab usurping by degrees an authority which he had not before; taking upon himself too much; executing or disregarding David’s orders, as it suited his own convenience; and finally conspiring against his throne and the rightful succession of his line. Again, I perceive, if I mistake not, the hands of David tied, his efforts to disembarrass himself of his oppressor feeble and ineffectual: his resentment set at nought; his punishments, though just, resisted by his own subject, and successfully resisted. For I find Joab suggesting to David the recall of Absalom after his banishment, through the widow of Tekoah, in a manner to excite the suspicion of the King [2 Sam. 14:19.] . “Is not the hand of Joab with thee in all this?” were words in which probably more was meant than met the ear. It is not unlikely (though the passage is altogether mysterious and obscure) that there was then some secret understanding between the soldier and the future rebel, which was only interrupted by the impetuosity of Absalom, who resented Joab’s delay, and set fire to his barley [2 Sam. 14:30.] ; an injury which he must have had some reason to feel Joab durst not resent, and which, in fact, even in spite of the fury of his natural character, he did not resent. Howbeit, he remembered it in the rebellion which now broke out, and took his personal revenge whilst he was professedly fighting the battle of David, to whom his interest or his passion decided him for this time to be true. “Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom,” was the parting charge which the King gave to this dangerous champion as he went forth with the host; in the hearing of all the people he gave it, and to all the captains who were with him. It was the thing nearest his heart. For here it may be observed, that David’s strong parental feelings, of which we have many occasional glimpses, give an identity to his character, which, in itself, marks it to be a real one. The fear of the servants to tell him that his infant was dead [2 Sam. 12:18.] ; the advice of Jonadab, “a subtle man,” who had read David’s disposition right, to Amnon, to feign himself sick, that “when his father came to see him,” he might prefer to him his request [2 Sam. 13:5.] ; his “weeping so sore” for the death of this son, and then again, his anguish subsided, “his soul longing to go forth” to the other son who had slain him [2 Sam. 13:39.] ; the little trait which escapes in the history of Adonijah’s rebellion, another of his children, that “his father had not displeased him at any time, in saying, Why hast thou done so?” [1 Kings 1:6.] are all evidently features of one and the same individual. So these last instructions to his officers touching the safety of Absalom, even when he was in arms against him, are still uttered in the same spirit; a spirit which seems, even at this moment, far more engrossed with the care of his child, than with the event of his battle. “Deal gently for my sake with Absalom.” Joab heard, indeed, but heeded not; he had lost all reverence for the King’s commands; nothing could be more deliberate than his infraction of this one, probably the most imperative which had ever been laid upon him: it was not in the fury of the fight that he forgot the commission of mercy, and cut down the young man with whom he was importuned to deal tenderly; but as he was hanging in a tree, helpless and hopeless; himself directed to the spot by the steps of another; in cold blood; but remembering perhaps his barley, and more of which we know not, and caring nothing for a king whose guilty secret he had shared, he thrust him through the heart with his three darts, and then made his way, with countenance unabashed, into the chamber of his royal master, where he was weeping and mourning for Absalom. The bitterness of death must have been nothing to David, compared with the feelings of that hour when his conscience smote him (as it doubtless did) with the complicated trouble and humiliation into which his deed of lust and blood had thus sunk him down. The rebellion itself, the fruit of it (as I hold); the audacious disobedience of Joab to the moving entreaties of the parent, that his favourite son’s life might be spared, rebel as he was, felt to be the fruit of that sin too; for by that sin it was that he had delivered himself and his character, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of Joab, who had no touch of pity in him. The sequel is of a piece with the opening; Joab imperious, and David, the once high-minded David, abject in spirit and tame to the lash. “Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants. Arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants; for I swear by the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry one with thee this night: and that will be worse unto thee than all the evil that befell thee from thy youth until now.” [2 Sam. 19:7.] The passive King yields to the menace, for what can he do? and with a cheerful countenance and a broken heart obeys the command of his subject, and sits in the gate. But this is not all. David now sends a message to Amasa, a kinsman whom Absalom had set over his rebel army; it is a proposal, perhaps a secret proposal, to make him captain over his host in the room of Joab. The measure might be dictated at once by policy, Amasa being now the leader of a powerful party whom David had to win, and by disgust at the recent perfidy of Joab, and a determination to break away from him at whatever cost. Amasa accepts the offer; but in the very first military enterprise on which he is despatched, Joab accosts him with the friendly salutation of the East, and availing himself of the unguarded moment, draws a sword from under his garment, smites him under the fifth rib, and leaves him a bloody corpse in the highway. Then he calmly takes upon himself to execute the commission with which Amasa had been charged; and this done, “he returns to Jerusalem,” we read, “unto the king,” and once more he is “over all the host of Israel.”

It is needless to point out how extreme a helplessness on the part of David this whole transaction indicates. Here is the general of his own choice assassinated in an act of duty by his own subject, his commission usurped by the murderer, and David, once the most popular and powerful of sovereigns, saying not a word. The dishonour, indeed, he felt keenly; felt it to his dying day, and in his latest breath gave utterance to it [1 Kings 2:5.] ; but Joab has him in the toils, and extricate himself he cannot. The want of cordiality between them was now manifest enough, however the original cause might be conjectured, rather than known; and when Adonijah prepares his revolt—for another enemy now sprung up in David’s own house—to Joab he makes his overtures [1 Kings 1:7.] , having observed him, no doubt, to be a thorn in the King’s side; nor are the overtures rejected; and, amongst other facts developed in this second conspiracy, it incidentally appears, that the ordinary dwelling-place of Joab was “in the wilderness;” [1 Kings 2:34.] as if, suspicious and suspected, a house within the walls of Jerusalem was not the one in which he would venture to lay his head. It is remarkable that this formidable traitor, from whose thraldom David, in the flower of his age, and the splendour of his military renown, could never, we have seen, disengage himself, fell at once, and whilst whatever popularity he might have with the army must have been fresh as ever, before the arm of Solomon, a stripling, if not a beardless boy; who, taking advantage of a fresh instance of treachery in this hardened adventurer, fearlessly gave command to “fall upon him and bury him, that he might thus take away,” as he said, the innocent blood which Joab shed, from him, and from the house of his father; when he fell upon two men more righteous and better than himself, and slew them with the sword, his father David not knowing thereof; to wit, Abner, the son of Ner, captain of the host of Israel, and Amasa, the son of Jether, captain of the host of Judah [1 Kings 2:32.] . But Solomon had as yet a clear conscience, which David had forfeited with respect to Joab; this it was that armed the youth with a moral courage which his father had once known what it was to have, when he went forth as a shepherd-boy against Goliath, and which he afterwards knew what it was to want, when he crouched before Joab, as a king. So true it is, the “wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous is bold as a lion.”

And now can any say that God winked at this wickedness of his servant? That the man after his own heart, for such in the main he was, frail as he proved himself, sinned grievously, and sinned with impunity? On the contrary, this deed was the pivot upon which David’s fortunes turned; that done, and he was undone; then did God raise up enemies against him for it out of his own house, for “the thing,” as we are expressly told, “displeased the Lord;” [2 Sam. 11:27; 12:11.] thenceforward the days of his years became full of evil, and if he lived (for the Lord caused death to pass from himself to the child, by a vicarious dispensation [2 Sam. 12:13.] ,) it was to be a king, with more than kingly sorrows, but with little of kingly power; to be banished by his son; bearded by his servant; betrayed by his friends; deserted by his people; bereaved of his children; and to feel all, all these bitter griefs, bound, as it were, by a chain of complicated cause and effect, to this one great, original transgression. This was surely no escape from the penalty of his crime, though it was still granted him to live and breathe—God would not slay even Cain, nor suffer others to slay him, whose punishment, nevertheless, was greater than he could bear—but rather it was a lesson to him and to us, how dreadful a thing it is to tempt the Almighty to let loose his plagues upon us, and how true is He to his word, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” saith the Lord.

Meanwhile, by means of the fall of David, however it may have caused some to blaspheme, God may have also provided, in his mercy, that many since David should stand upright; the frailty of one may have prevented the miscarriage of thousands; saints, with his example before their eyes, may have learned to walk humbly, and so to walk surely, when they might otherwise have presumed and perished; and sinners, even the men of the darkest and most deadly sins, may have been saved from utter desperation and self-abandonment, by remembering David and all his trouble; and that, deep as he was in guilt, he was not so deep but that his bitter cries for mercy, under the remorse and anguish of his spirit, could even yet pierce the ear of an offended God, and move Him to put away his sin.