Remembering Jonathan

II Samuel 1

I am reading David's "Song of the Bow" where he mourns Saul and his dear friend Jonathan. This man Jonathan is the best example of true friendship in the Bible (apart from Christ Himself).

Jonathan represents selfless, disinterested friendship--and there isn't much of that in the Bible (though Ruth and Naomi come to mind). There are plenty of examples of false or failing friends. Laban, Judas Iscariot, Amnon's friend Jonadab, Job's friends. If we are honest, we will all admit it is hard to overcome the Adamic nature that wants only our good, and cares very little about the good of others. Jonathan is a true hero because he conquers that selfishness in himself. The Bible says Jonathan loved David "as his own soul." Is that not what the second greatest commandment is...to love our neighbor as ourselves? Maybe this is why Jonathan stands out in Bible history as a sterling example, as a picture of Christ, even.

Let's face it, most of us feel a little twinge of jealousy when we see someone excell in our own field. Yet that is what Jonathan saw when he watched David fight Goliath. Jonathan's reaction was, surprisingly, genuine delight! He was glad to see someone of enough pluck to fight God's battles. How different this was from David's brothers' jealousy and suspicion.

I started thinking of ways that Jonathan is a type of, or at least points to, Christ. Here is a son of a king. He gives up the coat off his back, his bow, and his sword for a poor shepherd boy of low birth (not even the firstborn). He helps David to escape death by Saul. (There's a parallel...Christ Son of a King, giving up his glory for men of low repute, saving them from the wrath of his Father.) He rejoices in the fact that David will be exalted. He is not the least bit jealous. (Christ elevates us to reign with Him. Christ prays that God the Father would love us as He has loved Christ Himself.)

I stand in awe of Jonathan's friendship. I wish I could be as selfless, as eager to rejoice in the successes of others, as eager to give all I have for them. Jonathan was actively and clearly "for" David. He cheered him on, helped him, befriended him. It must have meant a great deal to David that Jonathan came to him secretly when he was fleeing from Saul, to encourage him.

I thought what it would mean to have a friend like Jonathan. Then I remembered that Jonathan's friendship is a picture of Christ's friendship. I do have a friend like Jonathan, only better. That is what Christ is like.

That is what Christ is like, and not an accusing friend like Job's friends. Not a trickster who messes with my emotions and my life like Laban. Not someone who will ultimately betray me like Judas. I have a friend that would give me the coat off his back, who would give me the best weapons of war (His Word, His promises, His Spirit), who rejoices in what I will become (though I am no where near it now), and who comes to me when I am most discouraged to strengthen me. Amazing!

An Amalek Shortie

II Samuel 1

Amalek seems to play a large part in the "Saul and David" saga. I was reading the part where an Amalekite comes up to David, holding Saul's crown, and claims to have finished him off. David angrily has him put to death, asking, "Were you not afraid to touch the Lord's anointed?"

No, he wasn't afraid. Remember, he was an Amalekite, and they are quite free from moral hang-ups. They have no fear of God and do whatever brings them the most gain. Of course, he really didn't kill Saul. He just wanted to ingratiate himself to David, perhaps hoping to get a reward.

Anyway. I read a little more closely and discovered that he was the "son of a stranger, an Amalekite." Yet he was with the camp of Israel. Perhaps he was the product of intermarriage between Israel and Amalek, which God had forbidden. Maybe this is another window to the heinousness of Saul's sin--Israel was befriending and intermarrying with Amalek, and God wanted it stopped!

Personal application here: Let us not accept what causes God's wrath and indignation. Let us not allow "little" sins and let our spiritual borders become fuzzy (intermarry with Amalek). Let us be valiant for the truth, and not sin in refusing to completely purge evil from our lives.

David and Authority

Painting of Saul and David by Rembrandt

Here is one of those "moral dilemmas" that is solved in so Christ-like a way in the life of David. Throughout their relationship, David maintained respect and deference to Saul, though that became increasingly difficult. Saul was his authority on the one hand (as the annointed king of Israel), but was his mortal enemy and out of fellowship with God on the other. What was David to do? He could have reasoned that any king so murderous (killed the Levites that helped David), so mentally unbalanced, and so disobedient to God deserved judgement. Why couldn't that judgement come at the hand of David, who had been annointed king himself? But...and forgive the LOTR allusions...as Gandalf tells Frodo, not all that deserve life get it, and not all that deserve death get it. Is it Frodo's job to give it to them?

David knew he was not God, and that God had the situation under control. As the situation got worse, David may have been tempted to solve it to preserve his own life. But he trusted God enough to leave his life in His hand. Many times David may have been able to convince himself that this was his chance...God was handing Saul over to him. In fact, his men encouraged him twice that this was God's timing and David could finally avenge himself. They would even do the dirty work themselves. But David did not allow it. The situations where he could have killed Saul were not honorable...he would be stabbing a man in the back, or spearing him while he slept. David was patient, waiting for God's timing.

And then...when Saul died (and this just blows me away), instead of thinking..."whew...so glad that's over. I've suffered enough. Thank you Lord for getting rid of that wicked man who dogged my every step for the last decade,"....he writes him an elegy, possibly the most beautiful little gem of OT poetry extant.

He couldn't have faked that. He really loved Saul. Like Samuel, he saw the tragedy in Saul's disobedience and mourned what could have been. Above all, I think his trust in God allowed him to maintain respect for Saul. Again and again he refers to Saul as "the Lord's anointed." He will not touch a man who has been placed in leadership by God.

Amazing. And we are so easily provoked by little faults in our authority... whether a parent, or boss, or spouse. We see sinful actions in them as grounds for rebellion.

Now, if our authority is really and truly wrong, and even threatens our wellbeing by their decisions, we ought to follow David's example and remove ourselves from the situation. David didn't just stay around waiting for a spear to pin him to the wall. However, do try to prove to the authority that you are willing to be submissive. David did this twice, taking the spear and water jug and cutting Saul's robe. His appeals to Saul on both occasions were humble and creative!

Here's a personal application for wives out there: Seek to respectfully restore your spouse when he is really and truly wrong. Restrain your own flesh when he has not sinned, and you are just picking at non-issues or being irritable. Most of all, remember that a loving God has placed him in leadership.

Sorry, and I just have to add this post script: this does NOT mean that your spouse is perfect and represents "God's will on earth." (Saul certainly wasn't a good reflection of God.) It does mean that you are getting a chance to honor God by your trust in Him.

Amalekites, Gollums of the OT

II Samuel 1
The first verse of this chapter struck me--"after the death of Saul, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites..." Saul lost God's favor for not utterly destroying the Amalekites and all they had. Now David has finished the job.

Some trivia about the Amalekites--they were descendants of a grandson of Esau (at least the ones during this time of history. Another group of people is called "Amalekites" as early as the days of Abraham). Esau's children and grandchildren were given Mt. Seir (meaning "rough, hairy") by God. In fact later in the minor prophets God equates the giving of Mt. Seir to Edom with the giving of the Promised Land to Israel. It was Esau's portion. The Amalekites came from a union between Esau's son Eliphaz and an "aborigine," a woman whose Horite tribe had previously inhabited Mt. Seir. "Horite" means "cave-dweller." Apparently the Mt. Seir area is full of limestone caves.

It seems to me the Amalekites were sort of the cave-dwelling Gollums of the OT--cowardly, sneaking, and opportunistic. You'll remember that Gollum found his prey among the orcs who had wandered away from their group or were trapped and helpless. There's something of this kind of a national personality seen in the two instances of Amalekite attacks...killing the helpless and weak in the rear of the camp of Israel as they entered the Promised Land, and attacking David's village when all the men were gone to war. Is it any mistake that the man who deceitfully claimed to have killed Saul--to have finished off a dying man-- was an Amalekite? Jewish writers say that whereas the other Gentile nations believed in false gods, Amalek believed in nothing. It would follow that they had no moral code, no "right and wrong" to govern their actions. Therefore the Amalekites were basically cowards and sneaks--doing whatever was expedient and that they could get away with. Sort of Stinkers and Slinkers.

God doesn't miss much when it comes to these pagan nations, though He is merciful with them, even at the expense of his own chosen people. Israel stayed in bondage for 400 years, partly because the "iniquity of the [pagan nations] was not yet full." They were not yet wicked enough to warrant losing their lives and their land. So, when God says a nation should be destroyed, be sure He has given them plenty of chances. The Amalekite king was no doubt a wicked man, worthy of death, but Saul, like a soft judge, let him off on good behavior. This king was a smooth talker...he came to Samuel delicately, saying "Surely the bitterness of death is past." Samuel did the right (though messy) thing and carried out the capital punishment he deserved.

The point is, God wanted this wicked nation destroyed, and David carried out His judgement. David was interested in being an instrument of God's divine program. Saul was interested in his own self-promotion. Another point from this story: David's reason for destroying the Amalekites was a personal motive God gave him. They had burned his city, Ziklag. So the Ziklag incident actually served two purposes, in retrospect: cutting ties to the city so David and his men could move on, and giving them a strong reason to carry out God's mission.

Saul and Unbelief

Modern psychoanalysis might say Saul was just insecure in his worth. It seems there's a lot of evidence for that. Here is a humble guy, no pretensions toward greatness, looking for his father's donkeys and listening to the advice of a servant. Though he's tall and striking in appearance, he's not stuck on himself. In fact he hides in the baggage when Samuel tries to present him as Israel's new king. In God's own words, he is "little in his own sight." But this seemingly winsome bashfulness is disguising a root of unbelief. Saul did not fundamentally believe in God's wisdom and love for him. This started the "way down" (to quote Berg's phrase from Quieting a Noisy Soul). First panic that led to sin (think waiting for Samuel to come perform the sacrifice), then depression, then maniacal rage (trying to pin his son to the wall), obsessions (chasing David), paranoia, despair, and turning to unthinkable sources to relieve his problems (witch of Endor.) All this because he did not believe God was in control, and that God did not love him. Contrast Saul's youthful hiding among the baggage to David's youthful courage in the face of a giant. The difference was not a superiority in personality. It was a difference in trust.

I don't see how anyone can really hate Saul. If we're honest we can all see some of his failures in ourselves. His unbelief in God's goodness and love led to the destruction and twisting of his personality, gifts, calling. It destroyed his family and brought his nation to its knees. I can't think of a better or clearer warning against seemingly "harmless" unbelief. (After all, it's not a malicious thing like murder or adultery...right?)

The more I read, the more "relevant" I find the OT to be! Maybe I relate to stories and examples better than plain principle. Or maybe it's the woman side of me that just gets into a good messy soap opera. At any rate, I'm really enjoying my previously-dry OT readings. :)

Wages of Saul

II Samuel 1

Here's where Saul's sin, which has been growing up like weeds during most of his reign, finally chokes him. The OT is full of illustrations of the principle of sowing and reaping. The principle never fails. Even if the reaping doesn't come in your lifetime, it comes later. Think of Solomon and his idolatry. Nothing really happened to Israel or to him in his lifetime, but God told him that it was because of HIS sin, not the cumulative sin of thousands of Israelites that were yet to be born, that Israel would be taken into captivity. It took several hundred years, but Solomon's sin bore fruit and Israel was taken into Babylon.
Anyway, here is Saul's sin, which has been pretty fruitful throughout his life...causing him a depressed mental condition, making a rift in his relationships with his own son and his right-hand-man David, ruining the fellowship he could have had with Samuel, separating him from God's leading...now bearing the ultimate wages, death. With him fell his son Jonathan and the best of the Israelite soldiers.

Saul had many sins, but the root seemed to be vanity, a concern with surface things, something I recognize in myself. His personal god was "honor before the people." He forgot even the heinousness of his own sin in light of this god. When he offered the sacrifice before Samuel arrived, he said something like "Sure I've sinned. Sorry. Could you please still honor me before the people? I've got to save face here." The one thing that turned him against David was not necessarily jealousy of David's talents. It was the idea that public opinion honored David more than himself. Saul's obsession with the opinions of others showed up early on, when he hid among the baggage just before being presented to Israel as king. His desire for approval, and fear that he wouldn't get it, led him to hide. In fact the difference between Saul, collossal failure, and David, hero of the faith, was that David repented, not caring who knew. Saul could not let go of his love of approbation.

But to get back to the principle of sowing and reaping...no matter what the sin, it ALWAYS works. It isn't even interrupted by confessing and forsaking. David felt the consequences of his adultery for the rest of his life. Manasseh, even though he repented, still brought down God's judgement on Israel for his deeds. You might say, well, that was the OT. Now we have the NT, where we are not made to suffer the consequences for sin. The God of the New is a lot more forgiving than the God of the Old.

But think a minute...God is "the same yesterday, today, and forever," and it's not like Him to break His own rules. Like the "Deep Magic" in the Narnia tales, His law cannot be changed and must be satisfied. The wonderful truth is that God put his Son in our place to take the consequences. We sowed, Christ reaped. Now whatever consequences come to us from our sin are to discipline us for our own good, not to damn us. That gives me a great feeling of freedom when I am being chastened.

Ziklag

Birdseye view of Ziklag

I began keeping a Bible-reading journal about where David runs off to the Philistine king to hide from Saul. So I'm starting "in medias res" at that point.

I Sam. 30

God uses gentle chastening to teach David to trust him. The men's wives and children were taken captive and David's city was burnt. This city of Ziklag had been given to David by Achish, and David never should have lived in it anyway. It represented his compromise with Achish of Gath!--and it's no mistake that it was Achish of GATH, the same city of Goliath's origin. In fear, David had given up hiding from Saul and said "now surely Saul will kill me," and fled to the enemy. God in His mercy burned the city...he didn't want David settling there...yet spared all the captives and the men's belongings.

What I learned: God is so merciful! He uses just the amount of force needed to get the job done...no more or less. He didn't allow David's wives or his men's wives and families to be killed to make His point. He burned the bridges...the city they may have been tempted to return to...and prepared them to move out. Shortly after this, the Phillistines marched against Israel, and David was spared from fighting his own people by God's intervention. In this great battle Saul was killed and David was able to finally gain the throne.

If God had left Ziklag intact as a home for the long-homeless followers of David, it may have been hard to get them moving on to the next part of God's agenda. God means for us to be willing to leave attachments behind that are not part of his ultimate plan for us. Often he helps us to that end in ways that seem catastrophic, but are for our good and His glory.

This story has a very personal application for me. For many of my growing-up years, we lived in an "ancestral home" in SC that was built by my great-grandfather just after the Civil War (and here's an odd fact I happen to know...with the help of a former slave named Simon). This same home had seen births and deaths in my mother's family for three generations. The problem was, the place was falling in around us. The gloom of it seemed to affect (or reflect?) our family life, and I developed an unhealthy fixation on somehow fixing it up, making it new again. I even read up on carpentry and chimneys and such. (I didn't get very far.) During college I would come home in the summers and get depressed all over again at the state of the place. I felt like if I could fix that old place up, the pain of my growing-up years would be fixed in some way too. The years passed, and my dream of fixing up the house grew faint. It left behind a feeling of unfinished business, unanswered prayers, unresolved problems. I felt God had failed me somehow.

Last summer the place burned down. To my surprise I felt immense relief at the news. No one was hurt...my parents had been visiting my grandmother at the time. Nothing of great material value was lost or even missed...except perhaps the photo albums, and we gradually began to replace them with the help of friends and relatives. My dad, who had been living practically alone while my mom cared for my grandmother, now moved in with them. Over the months I saw the three older people get used to living together. My grandmother, at 90, seemed to rally in health and spirits with the constant care my mom was able to give her. My parents were together again as they should be. No one was obligated to decide what to do about the old decaying house. God had mercifully decided for us, and He had freed me from the past...several generations of it...to move on to the future.

As I thought over what had happened, I remembered how many of my prayers and thoughts had been expended on that old house, and how during all that time I had forgotten that it was God's. I had made a sort of idol of renewing the old house. He showed me that He has greater things ahead for me in the future, and I must forget the past. He can take care of it, and even through calamity create a better solution for everyone involved.

Insights

I decided to start a blog to record my insights and "interesting facts" about my readings in the Old Testament. As a layman I realize my entries may be occasionally skewed or shallow. However, I wanted to put these thoughts online so I could have them in a manageable format as a record of what I've learned.

I remember vividly the morning when I decided "I will read the Bible today." I was four. I opened the huge book with the black cover and started out. "In the"--got that much. Easy. That third long word stumped me and I had to quit. As I grew older I made it a goal of mine to read through the Bible. It hasn't always made sense to me, especially the O.T. Now on my fourth or fifth reading, some things are finally starting to make sense. I used to read the stories as what I call an "exercise in recognition." I'd be reading along, some of the text unfamiliar or incomprehensible, and there, in the middle of all those odd circumstances and unpronounceable names would pop up a familiar story like "David and Goliath." There was instant recognition and anticipated pleasure in reading over the events I knew would happen. "Here's the part where he picks up five stones." Of course it had to be five. That was the story. "And here Goliath says he will feed David to the birds. Ha! He'll find out better in a few lines." I was reading as if I were watching a flannelgraph presentation. Here's David, here's Goliath, here's the famous slingshot, and the five stones.

Maybe it was the literature classes in grad school. Maybe it was a more mature understanding of life. Anyway, this time around, I began to see the characters as real people, with real motivations, fears, faults, and a complex environment. It was enlightening and thrilling to newly appreciate stories like David and Goliath, realizing all the characters were real people and were at least as complex as I am. I started to think about what it meant to a camp of hardened soldiers to have a giant like Goliath threaten them. I learned about the history of the giants (or Rephaim), and how they had been symbols of wicked tyranny in generations past. I learned how God wanted them systematically destroyed. I imagined what it meant for David to offer to fight one single-handedly.

I began keeping a journal and writing down my insights. I began looking up all the cross-references, checking out archeological sites, and creating a backdrop for the dramas recorded in the Bible. I began seeing the characters as real people, with "like passions" such as mine. As I told my husband about the things I was discovering, he told me I needed to write them down--others might be interested. It could be he's just biased, but at any rate I wanted to record these things down for myself. I don't want to lose the blessing of discovery and the strengthening of my faith that has come as I read about Bible heroes. I don't want to lose the sinking feeling of self-recognition as I read about the failures. So, hoping no true Bible scholars hurl any projectiles at me, I'm recording my insights here.



Youthful David by Andrea del Castagno