II Samuel 15:1-16:14
Dear RTB’ers,
I said yesterday that Absalom was not looking good. Today we see an even worse side of his behavior. And tomorrow we’ll see that there are no real limits to his bad behavior. Day by day for us, Absalom goes from bad to worse to worst. But I’m getting ahead…
Absalom asks leave of David to go to Hebron. You may recall that Hebron was where David first became king: David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years. (II Samuel 5:4-5) So Absalom begins his rebellion in David’s homeland. Presumably he figures that if Hebron will follow him, then the rest of Judah will go along, then the remaining eleven tribes will also follow.
David is on the run – again! He has had relative peace these many years since Saul’s death, but now it’s Absalom pursuing him. It’s honorable of David to leave Jerusalem instead of making the capital city the site of the fiercest fighting. Plus, David is leaving it with the Lord: Then the king said to Zadok, “Carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the LORD, He will bring me back and let me see both it and His dwelling place. But if He says, ‘I have no pleasure in you,’ behold, here I am, let Him do to me what seems good to Him.” (vv. 15:25-26)
In all this David is a good model for us to follow. He could have stayed in Jerusalem and fought and either won or lost. But rather than pursuing his own ends, He relies on the Lord to act. In the face of adversity I often find it hard to make a decision one way or the other. I reason things out the best I can and pray hard that God will guide me, “Not my will but Your will be done.” Rarely do I get a solid yes-or-no from the Lord, and in the end I must act. Somehow, in moving forward I get the sense that I am either on the correct path or that I have made a wrong decision. Either way, the Lord has been leading me instead of me charging forward on my own. David is a good model to follow.
Blessings!
See also: April 14 (2023) / II Samuel 15:1-16:14; Psalms 3, 7.