Who was it who said the unexamined life is not worth living? Aristotle? Plato? Socrates? One of them. It’s a non-biblical saying, but certainly is in accord with Biblical sentiment – 2 Cor. 13:5; 1 Cor. 11:28 teach the concept of personal introspection. It was not long into life on earth before man was encouraged to examine himself. The first counsellor was God, and it seems He likes to ask questions, not for His own benefit or information, but for the counselee – Where are you? Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree? What is this you have done?.
Some time later He comes to Cain with questions:- Why are you angry? Why has your countenance fallen? If you do well won’t you be accepted? Where is Abel your brother? What have you done? What is God up to? He’s trying to get man to stop, look, and listen. To reflect. (cf. Prov. 30:20 – Such is the way of an adulterous woman, she eats, she wipes her mouth, and says, I have done no wickedness.)
God wants man to reflect; to think about why he behaves like he behaves – to examine his life and his choices. Not for mental exercise, but obviously to change his sinful ways. But self-examination is apparently not the natural thing for man to want to do. Man is perfectly willing to justify himself and leave it at that – as the Proverbial writer said all the ways of a man are right in his own eyes. Change and growth are not easy. Cain wasn’t the only person God had trouble getting through to. What about Jonah? I don’t know how successful God was in getting Jonah to see the unreasonableness of his anger (4:4,9). Naaman’s servants had to deal with him when he was in a rage (2 Kings 5:11-13), and by appealing to common sense they managed to turn him around. What about God and Elijah? Elijah was holed up in a cave and God asks What are you doing here? Seems there was some success here for after the second time Elijah picked up his bundle and went off to do the Lord’s will (1 Kings 19:9,13).
David was a man after God’s own heart, but there were other sides to him (cf. 1 Kings 2 – sounds like a Mafia godfather giving his hit list to Solomon to take care of. Perhaps we could judge him too harshly and his concerns for Solomon’s security were uppermost in his mind, not personal vendettas). But apparently he was a tough nut, and those that counseled him were wary of him. Remember when Nathan comes with a parable after the adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband (2 Sam. 12:1ff). What about when Joab comes to David after the death of Absalom (2 Sam. 19:1ff)? He talked some sense into David but he lost his job over it.
When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered he reaped a terrible legacy as a result. We reap what we sow, and some crops don’t come up till the next generation. Parents can lose credibility – remember how Lot seemed as one who joked when he urged his family to leave Sodom? David’s son, Amnon, rapes his sister Tamar and David is very angry. You can imagine a conversation as David speaks to Amnon, “You just can’t have any woman you like!”, with Amnon replying, “Yeah, Dad, just like you”. According to Josephus because David had extraordinary affection for Amnon, for he was his eldest son, he was compelled not to afflict him. Perhaps he also felt it would be hypocritical of him to punish Amnon in view of his own repercussions over Bathsheba. Then Absalom kills Amnon for what he had done to Tamar, and again you can imagine a conversation as David remonstrates with Absalom “You just can’t go around having people killed because it suits you!”. To which Absalom could have said “Yeah Dad, just like you”, or maybe he reasoned something like “Well if you’re not going to do anything about it then someone’s got to!”
Now David is suffering. A daughter has been raped! A firstborn is lost – the young man cut down with, as far as we can tell, the vilest of sins unforgiven on his head! The popular flower of the family, the avenger of a sister’s wrong, now in a foreign land, find refugee from a father’s wrath with the heathen! As the Pulpit Commentary says, Fathers and mothers, read the lesson well, and seek for grace to be in the home pure and wise and loving, like unto the Holy Saviour. Home is the proper place for a man to find refreshment after toil, but pity the man whose domestic problems come in such form as to impair his strength for the battle of life – A house-cross is the heaviest of all earthly crosses.
In time David’s sorrow for Amnon was assuaged but his anger against Absalom was not abated. Some difficulties are posed by the text as evident by the various translations. 2 Sam 13:38 is often translated as the soul of king David longed to go forth unto Absalom. However, the Syrian, Vulgate and Septuagint give the verb its ordinary meaning of ceasing…. so they read: As for King David, there was a ceasing to go forth after Absalom, for he was comforted concerning Amnon. It is possible that he had tried to get Absalom to return home but Talmai had refused to let him go.
14:1 has …the king’s heart was toward Absalom.. The proposition does not mean toward but against as it is rendered in v.13. The whole phrase occurs only again in Dan. 11:28 and certainly there implies enmity. The whole attitude of David toward Absalom was one of persistent enmity as is seen by the fact he would not see Absalom for two years after he returned to Jerusalem.
So Joab sets out to try to do something about the situation. He gets a wise woman from Tekoah to come before David with a concocted story of a family tragedy. As we know, David was a sucker for a good story (cf. Nathan’s parable in 2 Sam. 12 concerning the Bathsheba incident). It is a story of her two sons – they had gotten into an argument and one had killed the other. The relatives were insisting that the other son forfeit his life (he was probably holed up in a city of refuge at the time and so the mother hadn’t seen him since the incident). So, she had lost one son and she didn’t want to lose the other as well. Having received from David a guarantee that her remaining son would live, she then points out his inconsistency in not receiving Absalom home- v.13 why don’t you do for Israel and for yourself what you are willing to do for me?
Verse 14 has such a wise observation – for we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. What do these words mean? Simply that life’s too short and we won’t get to do it again. This is not a practice world. Every day, every week, every month and every year will not be regained. We trade a day of life for everyday we live – whether we use it for good or whether we waste it. We are as “water spilt” (akin to our “water under the bridge”) – it soaks in and is gone. So Moses asks God in Ps.90:9-12 to “teach us to number our days” and James reminds us (4:14) that we are like vapour, and so the stewardship of life demands action.
There are lots of ways we waste a life away. We lose our way by losing our focus – taking our eyes off the road. We can develop the habit of procrastination and indecision. Then there is fear that leads to laziness (Prov. 22:13; 26:13 – I cannot go outside there is a lion in the street – I shall be slain.). Grudges have crippled many a life (Gal. 5:15) – Nelson stepped between two fighting sailors and pointed across the sea, “The enemy is out there!”
2 Sam. 14:21-24 is the sad sequel to the story. Absalom was forgiven but not forgotten. He was allowed to return to Jerusalem but David would not see him. This went on for two years before David gave him audience, but it was too little too late. Before long Absalom was David’s mortal enemy, tries to seize the throne and dies. David’s lament upon his death made all the more pitiful over what could have been.
