40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 19:16-20:2 (Episode 283)

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

David pardons his enemies (for now). Mephibosheth is overjoyed that David has returned but David misreads his intentions. And the tribes of Israel fight over who has more claim to the king as David remains silent. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen. 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. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you click on the events page and you want to register for that Here We Still Stand event in Las Vegas, Nevada. That's going to be October 15th and 16th. It's going to be a good time. It's coming up. It's going to be right around the corner. I mean, we're only a little over a month away. By the time this releases, it'll probably be exactly a month

away. So make sure that you get signed up. If you're not already, it's only $65. Includes your lunch on Saturday. Chad will be there. I'll be there. A whole bunch of other people will be there. It's going to be a good time. Hope to see you there. Chad, David has retaken the throne. He's about to march himself back into Jerusalem. He's done some weird military changes. He's given over the army to the general of his son who was trying to overthrow him and demoted Joab, which Joab's probably not going to be too happy about that. We'll get to that eventually. but uh right now we got um sort of a bunch of reunions yeah some strange reunions at that yeah so you if if you remember when when absalom staged the coup david of course had to flee

so he takes off and as he's leaving on his his exodus as we as we called it he encounters all sorts of people and one of those people that he encounters is the guy named shemay well when david returns now that absalom has been defeated david is going to encounter shemay once more. But there's sort of a symmetry between his exodus and his return. So he's going to encounter Shammai, just like he encountered him when he left. And just like he also encountered a guy named Zivah, who is the servant of Mephibosheth, now he's going to encounter Mephibosheth himself. And so we're going to have him interact with Mephibosheth, and we'll kind of diagnose exactly which one of those guys, Mephibosheth or Zivah, is actually telling the

truth about the situation. And then David encountered a guy named Ittai, who was loyal to him, and David is going to encounter a guy named Barzillai, who is loyal to him as well. So there's a symmetry between his leaving Jerusalem and his return to Jerusalem. And kind of the question that we need to ask ourselves as we work our way through each of these conversations is, why is David doing what he does and is the decision that David makes in each of these cases wise or foolish because it's a mixed bag between each of these encounters and not only that but especially in the case of Shammai we need to ask ourselves just how oh what's the word I want to use sincere politically motivated was David's decision here because as we'll see in this first

encounter, even though David seems to be very magnanimous toward Shammai, who initially cursed him. As it turns out, when you get farther along in the story, it turns out that David was actually holding a grudge against him. So his magnanimity was not entirely sincere when he showed him mercy. But anyway, that's kind of the question we need to ask ourselves is, how does David deal with each of these situations? Were they wise decisions that David made? And what kind of ongoing repercussions might these have as we work our way through the rest of David's life and then also into Solomon's reign? So the first guy is Shimei, the son of Gerah. So we're in 2 Samuel 19.16. He's a Benjaminite. He's from a town or a village called Bahurim. All these are details we've

already encountered before. So when David left, this Shammai character came out. And if you remember, he just laid into David. He cussed him out. He called him every name in the book. He accused him of murdering Saul and Ish-bosheth and just basically violently taking over the kingdom. And David just kind of took it. He didn't. I mean, he was very passive in this whole situation, even though Shammai came at him with just about as violent a verbal attack as you can imagine. Well, now that David has been restored, Shammai realizes, hey, this might be the end for me unless I do something to try and win the king's favor once more, to grovel before him. So he hurries out to come down and meet David on his way back to Jerusalem. And we're not exactly sure why he does

this but he brings he doesn't come alone he brings a thousand guys with him a thousand other men from the tribe of benjamin maybe as kind of a maybe as protection maybe as his way of showing hey if you're merciful to me then all these other guys who are with me will also be on your side that's probably more the latter than the former ziva is also there uh with uh his his family so they all go down there to the jordan to meet the king and then we read in verse 18 that shemay prostrates himself before the king when he's about to cross the Jordan, and here's his speech of repentance. Let not my Lord hold me guilty, or remember how your servant did wrong on the day my Lord the king left Jerusalem. Do not let the king take it to heart, for your servant knows that I

have sinned. Therefore, behold, I have come this day, the first of all the house of Joseph, to come down to meet my lord the king so there's a couple things i think that are that are noteworthy here uh first of all it's it's interesting to me that so this guy's from the tribe of benjamin but notice how he identifies himself he says i've come to stay the first of all the house of joseph to meet to meet the king now this is uh this is speculation on my part but i can't help but wonder if maybe the reason maybe the reason he doesn't say the tribe of benjamin is to stress the fact that i'm coming from the house of joseph kind of hinting hey joseph remember the the guy who was extremely merciful toward his brothers when they had sinned against him yes so i i'm

i'm with that guy you know i'm i'm joseph like in characters so so please uh you know show mercy to me as joseph showed to to his brothers i mean like i said that's a guess on my part but it is kind of strange that he he says he's from the house of joseph instead of from the tribe of tribe of benjamin and i guess the second thing to point out is that i mean if if this was all we knew about him this particular confession then uh i guess we would say it was completely uh sincere uh given the circumstances it's hard for me to believe that he really feels bad about what he did only because he knows he's gonna lose his head probably if he doesn't try and pacify the king uh maybe i shouldn't question his motives but it just given what he did before and the way

that he attributed bloodshed murder and all of these terrible things to david it's difficult for me to believe that he's had this complete change of heart all of a sudden it's interesting that he comes out with a thousand guys and you might read that and think that that's sort of like some sort of that's is that protection for him is it a threat i i think probably what it is is that he's he's really concerned about losing his head and he's going to try to he's going to perform this sort of repentant act in front of all these people so it's a way of telling david that i'm going to do this in front of all all of the people who are with me right i'm going to do this in front of my whole house and that sort of thing so he makes it very public as opposed to just going

to him in private um there's no way that he'll be able to do this and then go back to his people and pretend like he didn't just you know swear allegiance to david or whatever he does so he does it in front of all them that's that's how i read it anyway yeah i don't think he's trying to flex on david or anything here i think he's trying to make sure that david he's trying to put everything he can in place to make david believe that this is sincere yeah yeah well that yeah and And that completely makes sense given the circumstances. So that's what he does. That's what he says.

Now, verse 21 tells us not of David's reaction at first, but of Abishai's reaction. So you may remember when Shammai verbally attacked David when he was leaving Jerusalem, Abishai, who remember is the nephew of David, the brother of Joab, Abishai, Abishai wanted to go over and cut off his head. That was his, he was, he's the guy for whom violence is always the first and best option. So Abishai wanted to cut off Shammai's head when he was cursing David. This time, Abishai basically says more or less the same thing. He says, shall not Shammai be put to death for this because he cursed the Lord's anointed?

So Abishai's still out for blood. He's a, he's just that kind of character. So David responds to him similarly to how he responded to him initially. So when Abishai wanted to cut off Shimei's head when they were fleeing, David said, just drop it. Leave me alone. I don't have anything to do with your violent tendencies. And he says more or less the same thing here.

He says, what have I to do with you, you sons of Zet-Uriah, that you should this day be as an adversary to me? Literally in Hebrew, that is a Satan to me, uh you know which from which we get our word satan so satan just means adversary and it ordinarily commonly refers to human adversaries so that you should this day be a satan an adversary to me shall anyone be put to death in israel this day for do i not know that i am this day king over israel so the the idea here seems to be that you know often when a when a when a person became a king at their coronation, they would show clemency to people as a way of starting off on the right

foot, as it were. And this seems to be David's idea here. He's like, look, I'm a king over Israel this day, and I've been restored to my throne, and so I'm not going to be going around handing out death penalties. So I'm not going to. This reminds you, this is a little thing that David would probably learn from saul uh because saul does something very similar when when oh yeah back in first samuel yes there's an opportunity to put a bunch of people to death and uh and saul decides to do the the right political thing which is say nope i'm i'm king over everybody and so no even the language is the same where uh nobody's gonna die today yeah you know like so you're coming off the heels of a battle where everyone who died was you know uh from the house of israel

you had david's men fighting with absalom's men and this is david sort of doing the same thing that saul did which is saying no more israelites are dying today yeah yeah i mean it's it's a wise political move it's a magnanimous move it's a it's a it's a gracious move and i mean it's it's it's a great reminder to us that you know it's david could have done anything he could have used his power for murder or for execution but instead he uh like one of the ancient prayers puts it uh i don't know if i have the exact words here but almighty god whose whose power is made known chiefly in showing mercy yeah something like that so the the greatest way to show power whether it's god showing power or whether it's us who have some sort of power or authority is

actually to display mercy so david uses his regained power at this kind of second coronation if you will to show mercy to to uh shimei so that's what he says king says to shimei so he's already addressed abishai now he says to shimei you shall not die and then the king gave him his his oath now here's a strange thing so on this day david shows mercy to to shimei but that's this is what i was referring to a few minutes ago how how sincere was this how true was this this mercy because if you go forward in david's life to literally his deathbed so this is in the the first couple chapters of i think it's the first kings too and the very last instructions that david gave to his son solomon before he died i mean his

death is recorded immediately after this the very last instructions he gave to solomon was basically to deal with shemay so on his dying breath is like hey you know she made that guy that cursed me out i want you to take him out i want you to take care of him and that is indeed what Solomon ends up doing. He doesn't just go and arrest him and have him executed. He kind of sets up a scenario. It's sort of a trap that says, all right, you can live if you don't leave Jerusalem, but if you ever leave Jerusalem, you're dead. And after a while, Shammai, in fact, does, and so he's executed. So on down the road, this mercy that David showed to Shammai is reversed, and he actually ends up being taken out, not by David, of course.

David had given him his oath, but by David's son. Yeah, I think we had mentioned this. I think it was off air, but the more you read the life of David as David gets older and older, and you realize that David is a horrific argument for progressive sanctification. He doesn't get better, he gets worse. Even his deathbed, it's not good.

Yeah, we've seen this in multiple ways. There is this kind of undaviding of David. He's coming undone more and more as time goes on. He makes bad decisions. He makes foolish decisions. He ends up doing things which, whatever his motives might have been, certainly in the big picture are not good symbolic moves. For instance, I mean, the one we already talked about, he says to Joab, you're not going to be my main guy anymore. It's going to be Amasa. Well, that's just a, I mean, even if he was trying to kind of do the political thing by bringing Amasa on board with him and thus all of Amasa's followers. okay fine but you don't have to make him your your uh commander-in-chief you don't have to make him the the head general and he had to have known too what that joab was not going to simply sit idly by when he did that yeah so david is he's making a lot of bad decisions uh at this this stage as he has leading up to this as well okay so that's the first encounter next one is with mephibosheth And Mephibosheth, you remember, is the son of Jonathan. David showed mercy to him.

He's unable to walk. He was injured as a child in his feet. But David showed mercy to him, took care of him, gave him a lot of provisions, gave him Ziba to be his servant. Now, when David was fleeing Jerusalem, Mephibosheth's servant Ziba came out to him and basically said that Mephibosheth had become a traitor and that Mephibosheth was going to the side of Absalom and believed that the kingdom was being restored to him, he, the grandson of Saul, that he was going to be the new king.

Now, that didn't make any sense when Ziba said it, but David, perhaps because of the turmoil of the times, believed him and basically gave over all of Mephibosheth's property to Ziba. Now, Mephibosheth himself shows up. He comes out to meet the king, and we're told right away that he had neither taken care of his feet nor trimmed his beard nor washed his clothes from the day the king departed until the day he came back in safety which is enough to tell us that Mephibosheth was actually the faithful one here so everything that

he was doing these are basically signs of grief and mourning he's not taking care of himself he's not trimming his beard he isn't washing his clothes so he's basically in a perpetual state of of mourning over what has happened to david indicative of the fact that his heart had never been unfaithful to david he had been he had not been a traitor unlike david had been informed so he comes out to meet the king like this and the king says to him why did you not go with me mephibosheth so you know what why'd you stay back in jerusalem in other words implicit here is is this that i've heard about you true and he answers here's what happened my lord oh king my servant deceived me that is the servants ever that had come out lied to david about mephibosheth he

deceived me because i said to him i will saddle a donkey for myself that i may ride on it and go with the king because of course mephibosheth is is lame but he goes on he slandered me to you my king for my lord the king is like the angel of god and then he goes on to say do therefore what seems good to you for all my father's house were men but doomed to death before my lord the king but you set your servant among those who eat at your table what further right have i been to cry to my king the essence of which is basically listen i wanted to come out to you but my servant deceive me. It's obvious to you that I can't simply walk out to see you. I had to ride in order to get here. But that didn't happen because my servant deceived me and left me behind. And

then he came and lied to you. And so my life is basically in your hands. So do to me, deal with me in whatever way that you see fit. So he is hoping, presumably, he's hoping that David will will recognize that his loyalty remained with David and that David will act in such a way that is just and merciful toward him. Now, I got to admit, Chad, David seems conflicted about this, so maybe he has more information than I do, but based on what we know, I am not on Team Ziba in this particular thing. I think that probably what we just heard is what happened, because it seems right in line with what just seems like something Ziba would do yeah yeah and I mean and nothing has been told to us about Mephibosheth whatsoever except what Ziba said that would ever

be an indication that he's not uh fully loyal to David it doesn't make any sense Absalom's not going to give the kingdom to the son of Saul like like that doesn't make any sense to me like his the lie doesn't make sense yeah that was a it was a it was not a credible lie it didn't make any sense uh so the whole rationality behind what he claimed was going on with mephibosheth just does doesn't make any sense so yeah and what mishapethus is saying right here is is so straightforward it makes total sense and sort of his attitude of of saying do whatever you want to me yeah that is i don't recall ziba saying such things no no yeah so everything is is is leading us in that direction now what what therefore what should david do well i guess

david has you know a couple of options one he could say i'll tell you what i'm going to sit down with both of you and we're going to work this out i'm basically going to be a judge and I'm going to listen to both of you, and we'll bring other witnesses if we need to, and we're going to get to the bottom of this, and we're going to figure out who, because one of you is lying. One of you is lying. One of you is telling the truth. We're going to figure out which is which. Or he could have simply said at that point, you know what? What you've said makes a whole lot more sense than what your servant said, so I'm going to restore all of your property and all of your land back to you. He could have said that. What does David do instead? David makes an

immediate decision. And it's not the decision that, at least from my perspective, seems to be either just or wise. First of all, he seems to interrupt him. He says in verse 29, why speak any more of your affairs? So in other words, enough, shut up. I'm tired of listening to you. I have decided. And here's his decision. You and Ziba shall divide the land. So it basically makes it sort of a it's it's one of these sort of solomonic decisions you remember the whole cut the baby in half solomon story yeah so it's like uh you know in that case you've got two women two mothers one with a child dead one with a child alive and david says to his servant take the living child cut him in half give half to this woman give half to the other woman and

that's kind of what david does here maybe that's where solomon learned this this particular trick Now, in the Solomon story, you remember that the real mother said, no, no, no, no, just give the child to the other woman, thus proving by her love and loyalty to her child that she was, in fact, the true one. Now, Mephibosheth does something similar here, but David does not pick up on this. so as soon as david says divide the land mephibosheth mephibosheth said to the king oh let him take it all since my lord the king has come safely home so he's saying basically give him the baby give him all the land because really what matters to me is that you're back safe and sound well as soon as he said that david should have said you know what never mind you get at all yeah well here's what i think is happening here is the ship of death comes out and he's like

he's like not cut he's a mess uh which is i think supposed to show you that he's been uh they i mean he's been suffering great anxiety over this entire thing he's been very concerned about this whole uh the this whole coup what's interesting is that david like sort of interrupts him and said why speak any more of your affairs he didn't speak about his affairs at all he didn't bring a word he didn't say a word about his affairs he didn't come out there and say why is ziba have my land you need to do something about this he come he just comes out there to greet him looking a mess because he's glad that david's home and when david says look i don't want to hear about these affairs anymore it seems that what he's what mishima that's doing right

here is saying well let him take it all this wasn't about the land yeah this wasn't about me this was about you i just want you to know that i didn't try and stab you in the back yeah i don't think he cares about the land what he cares about is david knowing that he was slandered and lied about which is another reason why i just don't i just am not uh i don't believe that at all uh he doesn't seem to care about the fact that his land was now being run by zebra he doesn't seem to care about any of that and and i would think that this is because of that that david would have made a different decision here realizing like oh yeah wait a minute now that i think about it you weren't coming out here asking me for anything you weren't telling me to fix this you i just told you to shut

up about your affairs when you weren't actually bringing up any of your affairs like i i brought them up uh so yeah i don't to me this is like not that difficult but again maybe david has information we don't have but just reading it it seems pretty straightforward to me yeah based on what we do know it seems that this is one more uh one more decision that a younger and a wiser david would not have made but an older and a foolish david does in fact make okay so well that's shemay that's mephibosheth now we meet uh another guy don't meet him we're reminded of him His name is Barzillai. He's from Gilead. And we were introduced to him when David had fled from Jerusalem.

He ends up being actually taken care of by Barzillai and a couple of other people. So Barzillai comes down and he goes with the king to escort him over the Jordan. Barzillai is an old guy. He's 80 years old. Actually, my dad turns 80 years old this year. So it kind of gives me a perspective here on who Barzillai is. And if you remember from Psalm 90, Moses says, you know, God gives us 70 years or 80 if due to strength. So in the Israelite mind, 80 is kind of, you're maxing out there. So 80 is right at the limit.

So we're told he'd given food to the king while he stayed at a place called Mahanaim. He was a very wealthy man, so he was able to provide David and his army with the provisions they needed since they had to flee right away. And David wants to bring him back. He's like, come back to Jerusalem with me. I'll take care of you. And Barzillai basically says to the king, no, no, no, I'm too old for that. He says, I've lived a lot of years right where I'm at, so why should I go with the king? He says, I'm 80 years old.

Then he goes on to say, can I discern what is pleasant, what is not? Can your servant taste what he eats or what he drinks? Can I listen to the voice of singing men and singing women? So in other words, if I went with you, I wouldn't even really be able to enjoy this lavish lifestyle in the capital that you might be able to give to me. I can barely taste my food and my drink. My hearing's gone.

I can't hear the voice of singing men and singing women. So why should I be an added burden to you? I'll go with you a little ways to the Jordan, but why she repay me with such a reward as this. I'll tell you what, verse 37, just let me go home so that I can die in my own city near the grave of my father and my mother. That's really all that I need from you. So thank you, but no thanks. But then he adds this, but you know, I do have, I'm presuming this is his son. we're not told he says here is your servant chimham uh like i said we're not told but i'm

thinking this is probably barzillai's son he says look here's you know here is presumably my son your servant chimham why don't you take him instead of me if you want to show mercy and and and give this kind of life to someone from my family well here you go here's uh you can take him, let him go with my Lord, the King and do for him, whatever seems good to you. And the King says more or less, yeah, good idea. He he'll go with me. I'll do for him, whatever seems good to you and all that you desire of me, I will do for you. So all the people go over the Jordan. The King goes over the King, kissed bars, a lie, blesses him. And then he goes back to his own, his own home. And the king proceeds on with this guy, Chimham. And then at the end of verse 40, we're

told this, all the people of Judah and also not all, but half the people of Israel brought the king on his way. So this is the third of these encounters. First we had Shammai, next we had Mephibosheth, and now we have Barzillai. And at least in the case of Barzillai, everything seems to be uh done properly david does seem to be you know he's showing he wants to he wants barzalai to realize how much he appreciates him going out of his way to take care of him and his men and he's fine with barzalai saying no i'm too old for that but take my servant presumably my son instead so all that you know all that seems to seems to seems to go well where it doesn't go well is at the end where we're told that the all all the people the whole tribe of judah were on

david's side but only half there's kind of an ominous half the people of israel brought the king on his way verse 41 what happens next then all the men of israel so the rest of the people we might say all the other tribes of israel they came to the king and here is where the real problems begin with david so david's has been working his way you can kind of imagine in your mind he's he's on the other side of the jordan he's in the trans jordan he's got he's crossing the river with these people and he's encountered shemay he showed him mercy at least temporarily he encounters mephibosheth makes an unwise decision there splits his property so he moves on a little little farther he does the whole thing with barzillai and now we have a mass gathering

and the the people of judah david's own tribe remember had had come to him at david's request and now we have all these other tribes showing up and we're about to have this huge verbal altercation between all these people basically warring over who does david belong to and is this loyalty only with the tribe of judah or is this loyalty with all of us and the kind of the glaring thing in these last few verses the thing that which is which isn't mentioned explicitly but it's just kind of looming there in the background is this david's silence he doesn't say anything so all the men of israel come to the king and here and notice who they are addressing they said to the king this why have our brothers the men of judah stolen you away and brought the

king and his household over the Jordan, and all David's men with him. In other words, why do we get left out? Why was this just a tribe of Judah kind of thing restoring you? So they ask the king this, but notice he responds. It doesn't say, and the king answered and said. It says, all the men of Judah answered the men of Israel, because the king is our close relative. Why then are you angry over this matter? Have we eaten it all at the king's expense, or has he given us any gift? In In other words, has he shown us favoritism? So that's their response. Then the men of Israel answer the men of Judah.

Look, we've got 10 shares in the king. In other words, there's 10 of our tribes. And in David also, we have more than you. So why did you despise us? Were we not the first to speak of bringing back our king? And then the chapter ends with these ominous words. But the words of the men of Judah were fiercer or harder than the words of the men of Israel. In other words, they just kind of out-shouted them, we might say.

Now, what strikes me as the most important thing here, which I already indicated, is that David says nothing. It's like he's just kind of standing there watching all these guys yell at each other about who is more loyal to David and whether the tribe of Judah kind of has dibs on him and why weren't they involved in bringing David back. And the situation, this is important because of what we're going to see happen in chapter 20. The situation is dire because you have this growing chasm between the tribes. And what's going to happen is we'll see that this chasm widens in chapter 20. And it probably, probably could have been averted had David spoken up and, you know, done what he would have done as a younger man. I mean, when you think about when David became king, what did he do?

He brought all the tribes together, right? He was trying to bring cohesion to the 12 tribes. And here we see him sitting by idly and mutely while once more there's a rift happening between the tribes of Israel. Yeah, I mean, what you have is you have a group of people that feel a little betrayed because they weren't included in the way that they thought they should have been. This also shows you that David's not thinking things through entirely. This is probably a foreseeable thing, but certainly David is the only one who could say something to fix this. And you have to figure out a way to get this family reunion fully going on, and David doesn't do any of that. Yeah, that's a great analogy.

Yeah, so the cousins here are the Israelites, and the brothers are the Judahites. and if you remember back when absalom was kind of stirring the pot and telling people that hey you know if i were in charge you'd be getting justice a lot of the people he focused on were the israelites not the people of judah so there's already kind of and you can see how this would happen there was already kind of this perception that david was a lot more pro-judah than he was pro-rest of the tribes right i mean that was that was what kind of created this this whole horrible uh civil war that was was happening and now i mean we're on the brink of it happening again and yeah in the midst of this family reunion where you have all of these different parties

arguing david doesn't stand up and say listen today's a day for peace listen i i'm the king not just the tribe of judah i'm the king of everybody i'm i'm the king of the entire 12-tribe nation of Israel. So let's rejoice that we are one family. Let's get along. Let's together go back to Jerusalem and be the nation that God wants us to be. I mean, it didn't have to be anything flowery and eloquent. All David had to do was to say something, and yet he doesn't. He stands mutely and idly by. So what happens? Well, we have a chapter break here. We We are just transitioning into chapter 20, but it's a chapter that shouldn't be there, I guess is the way I would put it. I mean, this isn't like some new part of the story.

This is the ongoing story that we've already encountered here at the end of chapter 19. Because verse 1 of chapter 20 begins this way. Now there happened to be there, that is happened to be in the midst of all this going on, a worthless man. We've encountered this several times. this is a nothing good happens when a worthless man shows up in the old testament yeah anytime you have a a son of baliol or as it is here and ish baliol a man of baliol uh it not not gonna be good so like the eli sons of eli were uh worthless guys uh so we have a worthless man here you know yes when that happens things are not going to go well so there's a worthless guy

here his name was sheba sheba however you want to say his name son of bickery he was from the tribe of benjamin and i guess seizing opportunity he decides you know what i'm going to be the one who uh is the next absalom more or less yeah so give me that trumpet so he's gonna do he's gonna he's gonna do this dramatically yeah he's not just gonna like make a speech he grabs a trumpet and he blows the trumpet the same thing that happened back in uh the beginning of the coup of Absalom in chapter 15. Absalom signaled his coup by blowing the trumpet. So Shavuot is going to do the same thing. He blows a trumpet and then he gives this speech. We have no portion in David and we, we meaning him and the other tribes, the non-Judah tribes, we have no portion of David

and we have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. Every man to his tents, O Israel. Now, what's interesting about this particular speech is that if you go forward to 1 Kings 12, so David's dead, Solomon's dead, and his son, Rehoboam, has taken over the throne. So this is Rehoboam, David's grandson. David's grandson Rehoboam when he becomes king he thinks that he's going to be Mr. Tough Guy and he's going to rule with an iron fist

and what happens is it totally rips the kingdom in two and when it does this is the language of 1 Kings 12 16 all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them and the people answered the king in these

words what portion do we have and David. We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel, look now to your own house, David. So they more or less co-opted this speech of Sheba from back in 2 Samuel 20 to signal the fact that they were once more going to break away from the tribe of Judah. And in that case, it worked. In the first Kings 12 case, it worked because at that point, for the rest of the kings we have the northern tribes and the southern tribes we have israel in the north and judah judah in the south now as we'll as we'll see and we'll have to end pretty quickly here as we'll see as the rest of this chapter unfolds it's not going to work out so

well for sheva it did work out at least uh somewhat well for the northern tribes they at least were able to continue for a while but sheva's not going to last very long but that's He's the first one to say this, that we have no portion in David. We have no inheritance, the son of Jesse, every man to his own tents. We're going to take care of ourselves. But you can see here that things could have been different. And I know it's easy to second guess the actions of leaders when they make them in these kind of situations. But everything that we know from this narrative suggests that everything could have been a lot different

If David had not just shown some mercy, but acted with some wisdom as far as bringing some cohesion to the nation. But this is kind of the ongoing impact of the prophecy of Nathan. He said there'd be a sword in your own house. Well, there's a sword that's kind of in the house of Israel, in the big Israel here, because there's more and more of a division happening. Yeah, I mean, it seems like a lot of this is coming from Judah is a little bit skeptical. of the other tribes because that's who absalom went on went after um they did there's a lot of broken trust uh there and so even though everyone's family uh the the family is the circles are getting tighter so they're judas as you know is saying well we've got to protect david a little

bit and uh we know we know that we can trust the the inner circle here and these people have a lot of ground to make up and that is probably not the right move to make uh if you're trying to be a united kingdom no no it's uh it's not gonna not gonna work in fact it's gonna it's gonna uh ricochet back to them in fact and i mean we'll we'll talk about this in the next episode we'll see that you know this this insurrection is uh stomped out by our our friend joab but you know there's really there's there's no healing that takes place i guess is is the point that i want to make um or really won't be any healing for uh for the rest of of israel's history as far as like any kind of cohesive cohesive nation uh but yeah you can you can kind of see

where there's mistrust and and all of that uh brewing in the background here but unfortunately that uh the the problems were not healed we're just kind of uh left there to uh to fester for for some time yeah and uh i guess next week we'll get into uh the ramifications of blowing the trumpet uh and giving this sort of one sentence speech and uh we'll we'll see how this all turns out but uh we'll have to wait till next week for that i'll see you then chad all right see you then