40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 15:13-37 (Episode 278)

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

David flees Jerusalem with his servants as Absalom approaches. David finds more loyalty among the gentiles than his own people. David's top advisor has sided with Absalom, but David has one friend left who might be an answer to his prayers. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. The Christ Key Book 1517 Podcast Network Regional Event in Las Vegas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you go to the events page and register for the event in Las Vegas. The Here We Still Stand regional event in Las Vegas, two-day event, October 15th and 16th. You want to come to that because it's only $65. Chad will be there. I'll be there. That $65 includes your lunch on Saturday.

If you are in the Southwest especially, you've got to drive on over. Make sure that you register and come hang out with us. We're going to be talking about assurance. You know you need some of that. chad what's going on man hey i'm uh well i i was mentioning earlier to you i just kind of been back in the saddle again i was gone for like three weeks in a row so i'm uh back home and uh writing about jacob there you go it's my next book so been spending some time uh in genesis kind of flipping back from there to second samuel having to go back listen to our past episodes

figure out what's going on with jacob say about that you want to contradict yourself so so in my uh in my home congregation my pastor and i have been actually talking about second samuel stuff we did a kind of a team teaching deal so we talked about the whole uh uriah and bathsheba debacle and psalm 51 so uh i was like trying to remember what exactly did we say on the podcast because i've slept a few times yeah so it probably would have been helpful to go back and actually listen to uh listen to myself but uh you know anyway uh yeah it's a it's been kind of fun to go back to genesis and relive all of those episodes we covered what four or five years ago something like that is it safe to say that genesis is your

favorite book of the bible yeah i mean i do go back and forth between genesis if i had to pick my top three it'd be genesis exodus and psalms um and there for a while i would i would have answered exodus but yeah i just i find myself going all all the way back to genesis just almost every single time i'm writing on something or researching something or you know presenting a paper or whatever it might be genesis just has this kind of magnetic attraction to me i keep going back there all the time yeah yeah i'm the same way like oh i like this book and this book but at the end of the day like genesis is for the old testament uh genesis is it's hard to beat it's pretty hard to it's john for the new testament for you right oh yeah oh yeah yeah if i was if

i'm taking if i'm only allowed to have one of the four gospels i'm taking john you might be a matthew guy because you know so matthew's so dedicated to uh finding prophecy fulfillment in the most obscure and insane places that you possibly find it yeah i do find myself yeah i do find myself going back to to matthew as far as uh as far as the gospel goes although you know the the lectionary for the church is a follow lectionary he's been in mark quite a bit this year mark's underrated mark has his own attraction you know he's he's different he's rushed he's always immediately immediately immediately uh but he's also adds color that sometimes luke and matthew won't so he's got he's he has his own of course they all have their own perspective but i will say

doing my weekly videos on Mark this year has increased my interest in Mark. Let me put it that way. Yeah, we're actually going through Mark in 30 minutes in the New Testament right now. Oh, yeah. So people, if you're like, oh, Mark, yeah, maybe Mark's underrated.

Go check it out. It's good. But the thing with John is I'm just attracted to the way I think that John writes. This is all subjective. John's the best writer. Yes. When you read John, you know, John has a way of writing

you're like this guy can really write you know yes he can anyway well where are we at here in the uh in the book of second samuel last week we left off where uh absalom has a conspiracy underway looks like it's been pretty successful he is uh he's pretty angry still seems to me that he sort of gave his father, David, an opportunity to do something to convince him not to do this. And David did not give him a reason not to do this. In fact, probably reinforced that this is what Absalom was going to do. And now Absalom has done it. He's stolen, as it says, the hearts of the people and somehow went from 50 guys in a chariot to convincing massive amounts of people that Absalom had all the people on his side and that if you weren't on his side that you're

probably going to be found in the minority and nobody wants that word is about to come back to David that the people think that Absalom should be king when really the majority of people didn't think that before Absalom sort of made them think that. Yeah, this is like a classic case of being able to manipulate the facts and the rumors to your advantage. So everything's worked so far for Absalom. At least his plan has been working. So he goes down to Hebron, which as we talked about last time, was the place where David too was anointed as king. And so he is, as it were, in a perverse sort of way following in the footsteps of his father perverse sort of way of course because he's taking trying to take that away which the lord gave to to his father and

this begins with him going down to hebron the very same city in which david had been anointed as king and so there he is uh proclaimed as proclaimed as king and yeah word begins to spread so you mentioned that verse where it says that absalom stole the hearts of the men of israel and that's kind of where it picks up here with verse 13. David, who presumably to this point knew nothing of what was going on, all of a sudden gets this messenger who runs up and has a very brief but a very weighty message. He says the hearts of the men of Israel are with Absalom or have gone after Absalom. So these stolen hearts that Absalom had taken in by, you know, he was trying to get them to think that he would give them a good judgment. And he was, he was being very political, meeting

him at the gate, all this kind of stuff that worked because, you know, people are what they are. They're kind of easily taken in by flattery and false promises. And we, we, we witnessed this about every four years in the election cycle. I mean, this is just kind of the way it works in a democracy. We're all aware of this. You know, candidates are trying to get us to vote for them and so they make all these kinds of promises, many of which are just, you know, completely unrealistic.

This is just kind of the way it works with political candidates. And I think I brought up the fall of the Roman Republic previously, but one of the things that's interesting is the way that the Roman Republic begins to sort of get undermined is you have these populist candidates that come in that, you know, they're going to really represent the people. So these are the representative of what they would call the plebs. These guys become really popular when they run because they just promise all kinds of things for the people. Initially, the way that this is counteracted, the first time that sort of one of these guys starts becoming

really, really popular and they think he's actually going to get elected, is they just run a different candidate and they say, listen, whatever he promises the people, you just promise double. That's what you do. Whatever he says, you just say something crazier. And you just promise twice as much

as he promises, and then once you get elected, we just won't do any of it. And this is the first time this sort of happens. And this is what you... That definitely set a precedent. Yeah, I mean, this only works for so long once people realize that you're not actually going to follow

through. But this is sort of what Absalom has done, is just figured out what is it that people want? I'll just promise them all of it. And the other thing is... Yeah, all his promises are basically unrealistic. He's saying to every single person, oh, if I were king, if I were the judge, and you came to me, I would

decide in your favor. You can't do that. Because you have two different parties you're going to have to be deciding for. Yeah, you can only sort of do this extreme, you know, if you're in a situation like Rome was in where no one had ever done that before and or a situation like Israel's in where this guy is trying to steal the hearts of people and no one's really ever campaigned to

be king before like in Israel never I mean Saul was declared king made king then David was made king neither of them like stood up and said I want it they never even asked to be king never mind made promises or tried to convince you to make them king the other thing that's interesting about this is you had saul and then you had david you don't really have like a a monarchy here yet i mean so that some people you might be like well you know the king's son is going to try to overthrow the king that's a pretty common thing throughout history it is but not in israel yet because you've only had two kings and they weren't related and so uh this is also an interesting thing where you have the first i mean the first time in israel's history that you're about to

probably have a son follow his father as king that son is trying to overthrow his father i mean how quick does that happen i mean literally the first time yeah there's so many novelties in this this particular narrative that uh if you're like if you were a first-time reader or not certainly experiencing this firsthand you wouldn't have any idea what's going to happen no i mean of course at moment you might think well obviously absalom is one because he's taken over the city uh so that's what makes this this narrative interesting as you're working your way through it uh if you can kind of for for a for a moment kind of set aside what you know is going to happen and pretend as if you're living in the moment you're you're finding out verse by verse what is up what is

going to transpire it creates this tension this these these questions and you're always wondering what's what's right around the corner what's what's going to happen next what's going to be the eventually uh outcome of this this rapidly deteriorating situation yeah and you have to put yourself in a place where when you read these stories you sort of think back to some kind of like medieval time or something you have to sort of remove that too because you're talking about people who are very inexperienced with having kings they don't have a long history of having a king and so they don't know what's going to happen here there's not a lot of precedent set for how this goes yeah it's almost uh almost an experiment in in a in a way you know because

yeah this is this is all fresh this is all new so uh what's what's gonna happen it's gonna work or is it not gonna work it's almost like god told them that this having king's business was gonna be messy yeah they're they're eating their words yes give us a king so we can be like all the other nations well here you go yeah great grandpa who was there clamoring for a king is like man i don't know maybe maybe old Samuel was probably on to something when he said that this was a bad idea yeah maybe maybe we should listen to the prophet for once so what's going to happen well uh verse 14 second Samuel 15 verse 14 after David receives this message but that the hearts of the men of Israel have gone after Absalom he basically says we got to go he says to his servants who are with

him at Jerusalem, arise and let us flee. Now, we have not heard this particular verb, flee, applied to David for quite some time, but I did a word search on this, and it turns out that it occurs over and over and over in 1 Samuel. David is always getting up and fleeing, and of course, the person from whom he was fleeing was Saul. So this is, as it were, David going back in time. He fled from Saul over and over as he was pursued from city to city all over the wilderness he had to get up he had to run away get up run away now after all this time of having his kingdom established and having all the tribes behind him and of course capturing jerusalem establishing his kingdom there and years upon years of relative stability and peace certainly no you know near and imminent threats

from any of the adversaries around him or anybody in his own kingdom. After all that, he's reliving his youth, as it were. He's got to go back to the time when he's fleeing from someone who wants to take his life, except in this case, it's no longer his father-in-law, but it is his own flesh and blood. So David is once more going into exile. He was exiled in his early years, fleeing from Saul. now he's exiled in his elderly years fleeing from his own son Absalom and he says let's get up let's go or else there will be no escape for us from Absalom go quickly lest he overtake us quickly

and bring down ruin on us and strike the city with the edge of the sword so I assume that he either just fears that Absalom has too many people with him or knows that Absalom has too many people with him, such that the forces that are with David in the city of Jerusalem will not be able to withstand an attack. That, I guess, is what's going on in the mind of David. Now, Jerusalem is a city that is positioned to withstand a pretty long siege, and there were some pretty long sieges throughout the history of Jerusalem, just the way that it was constructed, the wall around the city, And then later on, we had the, you know, the tunnels dug so they could have access to water. Jerusalem was a, if you were going to be attacked, Jerusalem was a pretty good city to be in.

It had natural defenses that had the walls so that you could, could sustain yourself for quite some time. But for whatever reason, David realizes we got to get out because if we don't, then the city is going to be destroyed. So David, in this case, is thinking, thinking of others. He doesn't want others to be struck with the edge of the sword, so he decides he's going to take his chance in the open country. And everybody agrees with him. It says the king's servants said, hey, we're servants. We're ready to do whatever our lord the king decides. Yeah, it's interesting that, you know, at this point, David hasn't been out on the battlefield or fought in quite a while.

And so the idea, I think, let's fight with my son is, you know, David's an older guy now. and it's been a minute since he's done this and i don't know where joab is but i don't know that he asked him about it you know he doesn't he doesn't come up right here um that's a good question where is joab and all this i mean this seems like the guy that's in charge of this yeah this seems like the guy you're gonna ask you know like hey like how many people does he actually have like you're in the know man like i can't wait like and this is your general i mean this is the guy that's probably gonna be doing the fighting if you do the fighting but he's not a part of this i don't guess uh he doesn't he doesn't come up it doesn't say that this would be the joe would be the first

person i would be having a meeting with oh absolutely yeah he's been kind of the mastermind behind a lot of the the more recent political victories right he's been the yeah he's been the general that you that you turn to yeah and i don't know if it's that david doesn't trust him because it was him that sort of put together the whole the whole ruse to get uh absalom back so You just think that you can't trust him. You think possibly this was Joab's plan all along. This was the long, slow-burning revenge for you shaming him after he had had his revenge killing. I don't know what's going on, but David seems like he talks to some servants and he decides he's not going to do this.

And maybe part of the reason that he's not going to do this is maybe that he is cautious of Joab, who is going to have to lead his army against Absalom. Absalom. And maybe that's also something that David isn't interested in finding out if Joab is loyal or not. Yeah, at this stage, if you're David, you've got to have a million different things bounce around inside your head. You know, you've got what you do know, what you don't know, who you can trust, who you cannot trust, and all kinds of question marks beside a lot of people's names. Because as we're going to find out as we work our way through the rest of this chapter, a lot of people that David assumed would actually be on his side actually turn to Absalom's side.

and he can't even know who he can actually trust that comes to him because as we'll see in just a minute uh mephibosheth's servant comes to him and we honestly don't know whether we can trust what he says or not so david's in a precarious situation he's got all kinds of people either turning against him returning to him presumably coming to him but then he doesn't even know if You can trust those people. So it's a perilous situation for David, to put it mildly. So the servants say, whatever you decide, we'll go with you. So verse 16 says that's what they did.

The king went out, all his household after him, and the king left 10 concubines to keep the house. Now, this is one of those cases we've seen these multiple times where something seems to be added almost parenthetically, and it turns out this parenthetical comment is highly significant as the rest of the narrative develops so this wasn't thrown in it's just kind of a footnote oh yeah by the way he left these uh these 10 women to take care of the house after while he was gone this this is not just adding color to the text these 10 women are going to feature prominently in absalom's take over the

kingdom in in a few more verses so the king went out all his good people go with him and leaves the ten concubines and it says they halted at the last house presumably kind of on the outskirts of outskirts of jerusalem so the last house and they're at the edge of the edge of the city verse 18 says that all his servants passed by him by the way that that hebrew verb that is used there for pass or for pass by is going to recur multiple times in this particular part of the story. And it's used to often refer to the crossing of the Jordan, but it also occurs in the kind of Exodus, this idea of passing through or crossing over. And there is sort of an Exodus theme or motif to this because David is doing what? He's going into his own sort of Exodus. He's going

into his exile. And if you think of David as the embodiment of the nation, which is kind of what the king is, he is the, we still talk about people being the head of a nation, right? The head kind of being the one who represents the entire body. Well, in passing over and going out and being exiled, Israel is in a sense going into exile again. They've been in the Holy Land, they've been Jerusalem. They've been represented by David. And now as David, the head of the nation goes in exile, all the nation, as it were, goes into exile with him. And so in a way, you can see what's happening here to the life of David as almost a prefigurement of what's going to happen in national history later on. Where does David go? He leaves Jerusalem when he's attacked by

his enemies, and he goes east. The same thing's going to happen later to Israel when they go into Babylonian exile. They're going to go east to Babylon, and all these exiles of David and then of Israel, all these are together prefigurements of what's going to happen to Christ, who is, of course, the head of the church and the embodiment of Israel and humanity. He's going to go into his own exile. And we're going to see, as the story goes on, that the gospel writers actually pick up on this idea there. They like to show Jesus as engaged in a David-like exile. We'll see that especially here toward verses 22 and 23. Now, and who's with him? So all the servants pass by him, and it's the Karathites and the Pelathites and the 600 Gittites who followed him from Gath,

who pass on before the king this is another kind of fascinating detail we've encountered these groups before so the the charithites and the pelethites are like the king's royal guard but here's the here's the detail that's significant the charithites pelethites and these 600 gittites gittite just means you're from gath all of them are gentiles all of them are gentiles so david is being pursued by his own flesh and blood by fellow israelites and with whom does he find solidarity who are the people who end up sticking close to him gentiles yeah that's why david finds a home among the gentiles this is a another one of these details i think which is significant when you review the son of david's life in light of david

himself his life because david found solidarity with the gentiles and we see this happening in the gospels multiple times where jesus will be rejected by his own and who is it that ends up receiving him, Gentiles. Jesus will do this where he'll perform some miracle. The religious leaders will have all kinds of insane questions for him and not accept the miracle for what it is, as a good thing from God. And then the next verse will be like, and then Jesus passed into the region of Tyre and Sidon or something like that. It's like he immediately leaves that and just goes and hangs out with some gentiles yeah this is this is a not just a theme i mean you may have people may have noticed this in the gospels but this goes way back this this is happening in the

life of david these these gittites the so that's this is one of the crazy things these are these are philistines at least the people from gath and gath is where goliath was from so david has this strange relationship with the philistines it's like he'll on the one hand like yesterday he's fighting with the philistines and today he's drinking beer with them it's it's it's a weird kind of relationship that he has with the philistines so he's known as the killer of goliath he's known as the one who killed all these philistines he even paid his dowry with the foreskins of all these philistines so the one hand he's like their arch enemy and the other hand it's like they can't get enough of him he's like legendary right yeah it's it's sort of a i don't

know it's like they can't decide whether they want to love him or hate him and so a lot of them end up evidently leaving leaving the philistine territory and deciding they're going to follow the follow david's at least 600 of them are going to be his close guard and then david says to one of them a guy named itai verse 19 the king said to itai the get tight why do you also go with us By the way, there's a play on words there. Itai means like with me. That's very close to the Hebrew meaning of with me. And then David says, why do you go with us? So it's kind of a play on words there with his name. he says go back stay with the king for you are a foreigner and also an exile from your home you came only yesterday and shall i today make you wonder about with us since i go i don't know where go back and take your brothers with you and may the lord show you chesed may the lord show you

steadfast love and and faithfulness so david's basically saying listen you just got here i mean whether it was yes i don't think it means literally yesterday but he's saying like listen you just you recently showed up here you're in exile from your own country and and now what you're going to go into exile again with me just go back home go back to jerusalem and stay there so what does he say verse 21 it's i answered the king as yahweh lives and as my lord the king lives wherever my lord the king shall be whether for death or for life there also will your servant be oh it sounds like a like a marriage vows it does yeah i was gonna say this i i read that verse and i'm immediately hearing an echo of of course what ruth ruth says to naomi and it's it's kind

of the same situation too where you have you have a foreigner itai who's joined himself to an israelite to david just like you have ruth who has now joined herself to naomi in israelite and in both cases, so two women, two men, and in both cases, the foreigner says, look, I ain't going anywhere. Where you are, I'm going to be, whether it's for life or for death, whatever the situation might be, I'm sticking close to your side. So this is a very Ruth-like speech that Ittai says to David. And David says, basically, okay, go then, pass on, let's go. So Ittai the Gittite goes on with all his men, all his little ones who were with him. So the Philistines are going to stick close to David

while he's attacked by his fellow Israelites. Verse 23, all the land wept aloud as the people passed by. And notice this detail, the king crossed the brook Kidron and all the people passed on toward the wilderness. So if you kind of picture the city of Jerusalem on the east side of the city of Jerusalem, you're going to have this big drop off that's called the Kidron Valley, or sometimes called the Brook Kidron. So if you're leaving

Jerusalem eastward, you're going to drop down to this lower elevation, the Kidron Valley, the Brook Kidron, then you're going to go up. And as you go up, what you're going up is the Mount of Olives. So as you're moving eastward from Jerusalem, those are the two geographical features that you're going to encounter. And as we'll see in just a minute, the Mount of Olives is actually going to be mentioned by David. And I'll go and say it here because I don't want to save it for later. This is precisely the path that Jesus followed

on the night he was betrayed. So Jesus celebrates Passover with his disciples. And then what do they do? They leave Jerusalem. They cross the Kidron Valley. Moving eastward, they go up the Mount of Olives. And it's on the Mount of Olives, of course, where they spend the night,

And it's on the Mount of Olives where Jesus' own Ahithophel, his own betrayer, Judas, brings the soldiers to arrest Jesus. So what you're seeing here in the life of David is this template or this pattern that's going to be replicated in the life of Jesus. So this whole account, 2 Samuel 15 onward, I think should be read in tandem with what's happening in the Gospels. So what's happening with this, this David is going to happen with the son of David. He has his betrayer Ahithophel. Jesus has his betrayer Judas. And in the end, both David and the son of David are going to go into their respective exiles.

David is going exiled to the Transjordan area. Of course, Jesus is going to be exiled into death itself. But both then brought back, both elevated back to the throne. David, of course, just returning to the city and then Jesus being brought back from the exile of death and his resurrection. So it's pretty cool when you can find something like this in 2 Samuel and you can see how God is framing the narrative so that it's a prefigurement of what's going to happen in the Gospels. Okay, so verse 24, Abiathar came up, and behold, Zadok also came with all the Levites, and they're carrying the Ark of the Covenant of God. So I'm thinking that, I mean, they didn't do this because David told them to. Presumably they think, what, that it would be best that the Ark of God went with David for military purposes so that it wouldn't be taken by Absalom.

but we're really not told but they're they're not just coming they're bringing the ark of god with them and they set down the ark of god until the people had all passed out of the city and here's what the king says to to zeta verse 25 he says 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 them do to me what seems good to me. So David, probably thinking back to some of the earlier episodes with the Ark of the Covenant and how things didn't go so well when they brought the Ark with them into battle, is thinking, you know what? Just take it back. Leave it there. It doesn't need to go with

me uh i'm gonna i'm gonna put my trust not in the ark of god being with me but i'm gonna put my trust in god himself and if he wants me to come back i'll come back if he doesn't want me to come back then i then i won't come back yeah it seems that he's probably recalling that moving the ark around is not the best idea and uh it is interesting though that that that they decide you as David's leaving, that they decide, hey, we better take the ark with us. I mean, so they're thinking that they're out. I mean, they're like, we're leaving. This is almost like a move that you would make,

not if you thought Israel was going to continue as normal, but almost like if you were getting overthrown by like a foreign enemy, right? So you're like, take the Ark and get rid of it. We'll bring that with us because who knows what they'll do with that. That's a move that you would make if you had a foreign power overthrowing you and you were fleeing and you would bring your religious things with you. It seems to me that in the mind of the priests, that's sort of how they view Absalom is sort of this outside force

that is doing something and they cannot trust that he's going to continue the religious practices. or they don't know what he's going to do yeah but they uh they they act as if everything is coming unraveled so it's not as if hey okay there's a coup another israelite king is going to take over yeah it's almost as if absalom is being treated as a as a foreigner uh and that could be just because of the way he's acting it could be because of course he had at least partially non-israelite blood because his his mom was a non a non-israelite whatever the reason And yeah, the priests are acting as if everything is over.

Jerusalem has been lost. Israel has been lost. And so we're going to go with the true king and bring the ark of the true God along with us. But David says no. So he has this first speech in which he says, go back. He repeats himself. He picks up the discussion when there's no response from Zadok by saying, well, the ESV has this. are you not a seer? The Hebrew there is a little bit fuzzy. And so you're going to see this

translated a number of different ways. So ESV has, are you not a seer? Some of the translations will have something like, don't you see, or you see, or something like that. So it's not necessarily David saying, aren't you a seer to Zadok, who is a priest. He's probably saying something like, don't you see what's happening? Don't you understand the ramifications of everything that's transpiring here? Go back to the city in peace with your two sons, your two sons Ahimaaz and then Jonathan, the son of Abiathar. And David has a better idea. He says, look, I'm going to wait at the fords of the wilderness until word comes from you to inform me. So David has a plan here. David is going to send them back because he wants there to be kind of a spy

network in place so he can learn what's happening in the city when he is in the the fords of the wilderness. So what happens? Zadok and Abiathar, they follow his orders, they carry the ark of God back to Jerusalem, and that's where they stay. Verse 30, now we get to the Mount of Olives. so david goes up this uh ascent of the mount of olives and he's weeping as he goes he's barefoot and he's got his he's got his head covered so david is maybe it's of course a very uh emotional scene you can just kind of see him there as all the reality of everything that's happening begins to sink in and i mean i i don't know i put myself in david's shoes it's hard not to imagine that his whole past history is, is on his shoulders. Now he's thinking not only about

what happened with, with his son, but he's also thinking about everything that happened with Bathsheba, everything that happened with Uriah, everything that happened with the rape of his daughter, the, the killing, the revenge killing of, of, of Amnon, all this stuff has come home to him, I'm assuming, and part of this is based upon his reaction to some other events that are coming up, but he's going up the mountain. He's going to Mount of Olives. He's crying. He's barefoot. He's got his head covered. Everybody with him is the same. They're covering their heads. They're weeping as they go along. An extremely moving scene as we see everybody going into this exile. In verse 31, just when you think it can't get any worse,

then we find out what i alluded to earlier and that is that ahithophel is among the conspirators with with absalom so ahithophel is this close close advisor to uh close advisor to david and so the loss of him as well as we'll hear in just a second ahithophel's counsel is like the most trusted counsel in the land what he says is basically like god speaking to you he's he's that high within in the regard of the israelites so when david finds this out then of course he just he's he becomes even more fearful of what might happen but here's what he does this is this is interesting uh this is verse 31 and then 32 so david prays oh lord please turn the council of Ahithophel into foolishness. Now, this is the fascinating part. So this is a prayer that David

prays, and then notice what happens immediately after this. It's as if God hears the prayer, and then God immediately answers it. So he says, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness, and verse 32, while David was coming to the summit where God was worshiped, behold, Hushai, the Archite, came to meet him. Now, the reason I say this is an answer to prayer is we're going to see in this dialogue between David and Hushai that Hushai is going to be the one who's going to return to the city of Jerusalem, be a counselor for Absalom alongside Ahithophel, but Hushai is actually going to be working for David secretly. So Hushai is going to be the one responsible for basically answering the prayer of david husha is going to be the one who turns the

counsel of a hit the fell into into foolishness yeah so it's pretty cool how you see david praying this and then it's almost immediately answered yeah i mean i mean we don't know a ton about this this guy but it does seem that this is this really worries david right i mean that he's got someone advising him that david really respects as an advisor and he's like that's not good because this guy's got good ideas, right? I'm not just going up against Abel now, I'm going up against the best advisor I've got. Yeah, so he's lost his son, now he's lost his advisor, and David is understandably worried because everything seems to be stacked against him. So God answers his prayer.

He sends him Hushai, the archite, who comes with his coat torn. He's got dirt on his head. And David says, here's my idea. So if you go with me, you're going to be a burden. But if you return to the city and say to Absalom, I will be your servant, O king. Just like I've been your father's servant in times past. No, I'm going to be your servant now. So if you go back and you say that, Hushai, then you will defeat for me the counsel of Ahithophel.

So David, two things are going on at once. God behind the scenes is answering the prayer of David by providing him Hushai. David at the same time is also acting. It's kind of a double causation situation. God causes Hushai to show up at this exact moment. David responds by saying to Hushai, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go back. I want you to pretend to be now on the side of my son, Absalom.

And in this way, you're going to defeat his counsel. And then he goes on to say, Zadok and Abiathar, the priest there, whatever you hear from the king's house, so you're going to be my ears. Whatever you hear, I want you to tell it to Zadok and Abiathar, the priest. And then their two sons, Ahimaaz, Zadok's son, and Jonathan, Abiathar's son, they will be the ones who relay the message to me. so here's the way it's going to work who's shy is david's inside man he's going to go back and then whatever he hears he is going to report it to zadok and bithar the priest they're going to tell their sons their sons are going to then relay that message to david and the chapter ends this way so who shy david's friend which is kind of an official title probably doesn't mean just

like his buddy but probably his his uh his counselor his friend and that's sort of official capacity, came into the city just as Absalom was entering to Jerusalem. I think that designation is really interesting, that it could call him any number of things, and that it calls him David's friend, at a time when David's real short on friends. And so he's got one, and that's important. Yeah, he's got this one friend, it's gonna be the one who kind of saves the day in the end yeah yeah david was very short on friends and here he has he has the one friend that makes that's going to make all the difference for for david yeah and that's it man we got to end right there we are out of time we did make it through the chapter though so next week we will uh we'll

see how this all plays out uh with david his friend his son all of that uh eventually we'll hear from joe ab again don't know where he is he will play a role and so uh we'll see you next week all right see you then