2 Sam. 5:1-10
Moved by a spirit of vengeance against Ishbosheth, Abner had commended David to the eleven tribes: "Jehovah has spoken of David, saying, By My servant David will I save My people Israel out of the hand of the Philistines, and out of the hand of all their enemies" (2 Sam. 3:18). In one sense Abner was a messenger of the Lord to bring the hearts of the people back to His anointed; but there was a great gulf between his functions and his moral condition. We can find instruction for ourselves here. God may act through a man who proclaims truths that are according to God although in heart he has no relationship to God Himself. It was becoming for Israel to listen to Abner's words, but it was not becoming that they should be attached to his person. When we listen to those who present the Word of God we must be careful to distinguish between the person and the message he announces, and we must not attribute to the person an importance which belongs to the Scriptures alone. How happy it is if we see that the conduct of the one speaking is consistent with his doctrine and inseparable from it! Such was the case of Timothy with respect to the apostle Paul; he could know and follow both his doctrine and his conduct (2 Tim. 3:10) because both were in such close accord in the great apostle to the Gentiles. It is well to insist on this point: gift is distinct from moral condition. When a man has a gift he must judge himself before God continually, so that his moral state may be consistent with the gift entrusted to him. If on the one hand there is great danger for listeners to follow a man because of his gift, on the other hand there is an equal danger that the one who speaks may act without having his heart and walk consistent with the truths which he presents.
Indeed, Abner's words had no real effect on the people because the Spirit of God was not at work in their hearts. In no way did they change their behavior until Ishbosheth had been removed from the scene and only then, when their prop had been taken away from them, did "all the tribes of Israel [come] to David to Hebron" (2 Sam. 5:1).
What is remarkable about the state of these tribes is that they knew and had always known what God thought of David. The people say: "Even aforetime, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel; and Jehovah said to thee, Thou shalt feed My people Israel, and thou shalt be prince over Israel" (2 Sam. 5:2). They knew this perfectly well, but this knowledge had had no effect on their consciences. The same phenomenon occurs today among Christians. God's Word is familiar to them; they know God's thoughts concerning His Son and His Church, but these truths have no practical effect on them. These truths have not sunk into their consciences. This is where we must look for the main reason for the divisions existing among God's children. One follows one group, another follows another; one accepts this doctrine, another an opposite doctrine; one boasts in a certain man, another in another man. Such differences are not due so much to the state of their understanding as to the state of their consciences, and the fact that they do not feel it necessary to walk according to the truth they know.
The first three verses of our chapter show us that Israel lacked one more thing. They had had no affection for David; their affection had been for Ishbosheth. When the heart is turned to the world it cannot be turned to the man according to God. How can one possibly unite Christians around Christ when their thoughts are taken up with earthly things and their hearts are unreached by the Lord's grace and beauty? His person has little value for a divided heart; that heart does not seek after Him. But if consciences are reached, soon hearts will be reached also: "Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh" (2 Sam. 5:1). Now these Israelites proclaim their relationship to David; they had been well aware of this relationship, but they had failed to recognize it as a fact that should govern all else. Then all at once they remember what God had said concerning His beloved. When the Spirit begins to work in souls the conscience speaks up, the heart turns to Christ, and one is led to acknowledge His sovereignty and His rights. "They anointed David king over Israel" (2 Sam. 5:3). "David made a covenant with them in Hebron before Jehovah" and by this pact recognized Israel as being his people from that time forth.
This chapter inaugurates the second period of David's reign. From this time onward he is king over all Israel at Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit underscores this distinction in verse 5: "In Hebron [David] reigned over Judah seven years and six months; and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty-three years over all Israel and Judah." (2 Sam. 5:5)
So it will be for Christ: this book considered in the light of prophecy is of particular interest as a history typifying the establishment of Christ's reign. In the Second Book of Samuel, let us repeat, it is not a question of the kingdom being established (such will not be the case until Solomon), but rather it is a question of founding the kingdom in the person of David, which is quite another thing. Therefore we find here God's ways in founding David's throne, gathering the twelve tribes around him, and bringing the nations into submission to him by subjugating his enemies.
Now that David has been recognized as king by all Israel, we see a series of events taking place in relation to this proclamation.
The first of these events is of prime importance (2 Sam. 5:6-9). Often facts of immense bearing are treated by the Word in a very few verses. We cannot measure the value that God sets on an event by the length of the account about it. Sometimes a short parenthesis contains a vast amount of most profound truths, for example: the parenthesis in the first chapter of Ephesians which unfolds the counsels of God concerning Christ and the Church (Eph. 1:20-23). Likewise the first three verses of Rev. 21 introduce us into all the glories of eternity. And again, Psa. 23 in six verses gives us the entire life, conduct, and experiences of the believer on earth from the cross to his introduction into the house of the Lord. We could vastly multiply these examples. We find one such example in the passage before us now. It concerns the capture of Jerusalem. This is the beginning of an entirely new manner in which God now acts: it is the establishment of His grace in the person of the king—power united with grace in order to accomplish God's intentions when on man's side everything has failed.
The Book of Judges and the First Book of Samuel (not to mention the books of Moses) have already presented this latter truth: the complete ruin in man's hands of all that God had entrusted to his responsibility. Israel placed under the law was ruined as a people; the judges were ruined, the priesthood was ruined, and the kingdom according to the flesh was ruined; all this was now irrevocably ended. Faced with all this ruin, "What hath God wrought?" (Num. 23:23). Once the end of the people's history under law has been manifested, His grace is manifested. Grace would not he grace if it did not concern itself with fallen creatures. Its fullness bursts forth when the people's history in responsibility has ended in irremediable ruin. God chooses the moment when the king according to His own heart is proclaimed to take possession of Jerusalem and give it to David.
What reason did God have to interest Himself in this place more than in another? There was no reason whatsoever except that He loved this city which had been under the power of the Jebusites, the enemies of Jehovah and of His anointed. His heart was attached to this place, for this is where He desired to definitively establish the throne of His grace on earth. "Jehovah hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His dwelling: this is My rest forever; here will I dwell, for I have desired it" (Psa. 132:13-14). "His foundation is in the mountains of holiness. Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion more than all the habitations of Jacob" (Psa. 87:1-2).
This is what God says of Zion: He loved it. When His eyes looked out over the earth they rested on this special place in view of making it His dwelling place. "Why do ye look with envy, ye many-peaked mountains, upon the mount that God hath desired for His abode? Yea, Jehovah will dwell there forever" (Psa. 68:16). This is therefore the place which God chose, the place of His good pleasure, because this is where He in grace introduces and establishes His king. Is it not also the place where the Son of David would lay the foundation of eternal salvation? Jesus, the Root of David, is the King of grace when all is ruined, just as Jesus, the Offspring of David, the true Solomon, will be the king of glory.
Mount Zion offers the most complete contrast to Mount Sinai. In Heb. 12:22 The apostle tells the Jews who had been delivered from the law and become Christians: "Ye have come to mount Zion; and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem." This is an absolute change in God's ways concerning Israel. 2 Sam. 5:6-9 indicates to us the moment in history when this change took place, when God chose a new mountain in contrast to Sinai in order to establish the stronghold of David there forever. In actual fact, this transfer could not he realized for Israel at that time on account of the unfaithfulness of the king in responsibility, and the people must wait for the establishment of Christ's reign in order to be introduced into the blessings of this new covenant. For us Christians this transfer has already taken place. "Ye have come to mount Zion," says the apostle. None of the requirements, none of the terrors of Sinai exist any more for those who believe. While yet here on earth we have found the mountain of grace in that place where the cross of Christ was set up. We have set our foot on this sure foundation, the first rung for ascending up into all the heavenly blessings, from "the city of the living God" to "the assembly of the firstborn who are registered in heaven." All these things belong to us now; soon we will possess them in glory.
The various passages of this chapter correspond to other passages in First Chronicles, which sometimes gives us additional details concerning these events. The capture of Jerusalem is related in 1 Chron. 11:4-9. In our present chapter the Jebusites say to David: "Thou shalt not come in hither, but the blind and the lame will drive thee back" (2 Sam. 5:6). They were so sure of their walls and of their impregnable stronghold that they did not judge it necessary to use sound, healthy men to repel the king's attack; even these disabled people would be well sufficient for this task, they thought. "But David took the stronghold of Zion" (2 Sam. 5:7). Not another word about it; the project succeeded as simply as if it had cost nothing. In effect, this victory costs God nothing. This is how He will fight all man's enmity against Himself and against His Anointed. What divine irony! "Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us!" God answers: "He that dwelleth in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision!" (Psa. 2:3-4).
David is indignant at these outrageous words of the Jebusites and his indignation is according to God. When we see the world occupying God's domain while yet the enemy of Christ, our hearts moved by the Holy Spirit may well he filled with indignation. We can ardently desire that the Lord might at last have the place that is His by rights, that He be no longer scoffed at by the world which has rejected Him, and that His reign may he established on earth after the judgment of the living nations. To feel thus is in order.
But we find another emotion, one we can approve of less, in David's heart. Besides that which he typifies in his person, he is the energetic man to whom God has entrusted power. His authority is contested; he is indignant—and his words display it (1 Chron. 11:6): "Whoever smites the Jebusites first shall he chief and captain." What happens? "Joab the son of Zeruiah went first up, and was chief." Joab, the man whose craftiness we have seen from the very beginning; Joab, whose wickedness David had recognized, whom he had branded with the name "wicked man" before all the people, on whose head he had invoked God's judgment (2 Sam. 3:28-30), whom he had declared to be "too hard for me": this Joab is the man whom David's word gave occasion to become general in chief.
The fact that Joab is elevated to be head of the army is one of the most unfortunate events of David's reign, and here we see the king's weakness. A single word not dictated by the Holy Spirit and which stirred up fleshly rivalry brought such consequences in its wake. How easily man abuses the power which God has entrusted to him, using it in an independent manner! This fact should make us reflect. A fleshly word often results in more dangerous fruit than does an evil act.
At the end of 2 Sam. 5:8 we read: "The lame and the blind hated of David's soul...! Therefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house." Who is it that speaks like this? It is David himself. How he differs from Christ in this point! Coming into the world, the Lord Jesus did exactly the opposite: "Blind men see and lame walk" (Matt. 11:5). He cannot meet a single one of these unfortunate souls but what His love and His power unite to give healing. Even when His wrath, divine wrath, is expressed, is it not marvelous to see it opening up the floodgates of His grace? "And Jesus entered into the temple of God, and cast out all that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold the doves. And He says to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of robbers. And blind and lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them" (Matt. 21:12-14). His wrath and indignation are expressed in the zeal of God's house which devoured Him (Psa. 69:9), but He purifies His house, not to prevent the blind and the lame from entering it like David, but in order to introduce them there by healing them. We find a second example in the parable of the great supper. All the guests excused themselves from coming. "Then the master of the house, in anger, said to his bondman, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring here the poor and crippled and lame and blind" (Luke 14:21). The master's anger against his guests results in seating the blind and the lame at the table of his great feast.
The same thing has happened to us. The Master's wrath against this people who would not hear His call of grace has opened the door of the marriage supper to poor Gentiles, strangers to His promises, incapable of seeing Him or going to Him.
All these facts prove how important it is if we are to have a proper understanding of this portion of Scripture to maintain the distinction between David as a man and David as a type of Christ.