do but shadow out those eternal sufferings of your souls, for your foul and unnatural disobedience. Absalom is dead: who shall report it to his father? Surely Joab was not so much afraid of the fact as of the message. There are busy spirits that love to carry news, though thankless, though purposeless: such was Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok, who importunately thrust himself into this service. Wise Joab, who well saw how unwelcome tidings must he the burden of the first post, dissuades him in vain: he knew David too well to employ a friend to that errand. An Ethiopian servant was a fitter bearer of such a message, than the son of the priest. The entertainment of the person doth so follow the quality of the news, that David could argue afar off, "He is a good man, he cometh with good tidings." O how welcome deserve those messengers to be, that bring us the glad tidings of salvation, that assure us of the foil of all spiritual enemies, and tell us of nothing but victories, and crowns, and kingdoms! If we think not their feet beautiful, our hearts are foul with infidelity and secure worldliness. So wise is Ahimaaz grown by Joab's intimation, that though he out-went Cushi in his pace, he suffers Cushi to out-go him in his tale, cunningly suppressing that part which he knew must be both necessarily delivered, and unpleasingly received. As our care is wont to be where our love is, David's first word is not, How fares the host? but, "How fares the young man Absalom?" Like a wise and faithful messenger, Cushi answers by an honest insinuation, "The enemies of my Lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is;" implying both what was done, and why David should approve it being done. How is the good king thunder-struck with that word of his blackamoor; who, as if he were at once bereaved of all comfort, and cared not to live but in the name of Absalom, goes, and weeps, and cries out, "Omy son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee! O Absalom, my son, my son!" What is this we hear? that he, whose life Israel valued at ten thousand of theirs, should be exchanged with a traitor's: that a good king, whose life was sought, should wish to lay it down for the preservation of his murderer. The best men have not wont to be the least passionate. But what shall we say to that love of thine, O Saviour, who hast said of us wretched traitors, not " Would God I had died for you!" but, I will die, I do die, I have died for you. O love, like thyself, infinite, incomprehensible, whereat the angels of heaven stand yet amazed, wherewith thy saints are ravished! "Turn away thine eyes from me, for they overcome me. O thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice; cause us to hear it;" that we may in our measure answer thy love, and enjoy it for ever. CONTEMPLATION IV. SHEBA'S REBELLION. It was the doom which God passed upon the man after his own heart, by the mouth of Nathan, that the sword should never depart from his house, for the blood of Uriah : after that wound healed by remission, yet this scar remains. Absalom is no sooner cast down into the pit, than Sheba, the son of Bichri, is up in arms. If David be not plagued, yet he shall be corrected; first by the rod of a son, then of a subject. He had lifted up his hands against a faithful subject; now a faithless dares to lift up his hand against him. Malice, like some hereditary sickness, runs in the blood: Saul and Shimei, and Sheba, were all of an house : that ancient grudge was not yet dead; the fire of the house of Jemini was but raked up, never thoroughly out; and now that, which did but smoke in Shimei, flames in Sheba; although, even through this chastisement, it is not hard to discern a type of that perpetual succession of enmity which should be raised against the true King of Israel. O son of David, when didst thou ever want enemies? How wert thou designed by thine eternal Father, for a sign that should be spoken against! "How did the Gentiles rage, and the people imagine vain things! The kings of the earth assembled, and the rulers came together against thee." Yea, how do the subjects of thine own kingdom daily conspire against thee! Even now, while thou enjoyest peace and glory at thy Father's right hand, as soon shalt thou want friends as enemies upon earth. No eye of any traitor could espy a just quarrel in the government of David; yet Sheba blows the trumpet of rebellion; and while Israel and Judah are striving who should have the greatest part in their reestablished sovereign, he sticks not to say, "We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse ;" and while he says, Every man to his tents, O Israel," he calls every man to his own: so, in proclaiming a liberty from a just and loyal subjection, he invites Israel to the bondage of an usurper. 66 That a lewd conspirator should breathe | of reasons of state, which, if they were pritreason, it is no wonder: but is it not won- vate persons, could not be easily put over. der and shame, that, upon every mutinous It is no small wisdom to engage a new reblast, Israel should turn traitor to God's conciled friend, that he may be confirmed anointed? It was their late expostulation by his own act; therefore is Amasa comwith David, why their brethren, the men of manded to levy the forces of Judah. Joab, Judah, should have stolen him from them. after many great merits and achievements, Now might David more justly expostulate, lies rusting in neglect: he, that was so enwhy a rebel of their brethren should have tire with David, as to be of his counsel for stolen them from him. As nothing is more Uriah's blood, and so firm to David, as to unstable than the multitude, so nothing is lead all his battles against the house of Saul, more subject to distates than sovereignty; the Ammonites, the Aramites, Absalom, is for, as weak minds seek pleasure in change, now cashiered, and must yield his place so every light conceit of irritation seems to a stranger, late an enemy. Who knows sufficient colour of change: such the false not that this son of Zeruiah had shed the dispositions of the vulgar are! Love cannot blood of war in peace? But if the blood be security enough for princes without the of Absalom had not been louder than the awfulness of power. What hold can there blood of Abner, I fear this change had not be of popularity, when the same hands that been. Now Joab smarteth for a loyal diseven now fought for David to be all theirs, obedience. How slippery are the stations now fight against him, under the son of of earthly honours, and subject to contiBichri, as none of theirs? As bees, when nual mutability! Happy are they who are they are once up in a swarm, are ready to in favour with him, in whom there is no light upon every bough, so the Israelites, shadow of change! being stirred by the late commotion of Ab- Where men are commonly most ambisalom, are apt to follow every Sheba. It tious to please with their first employments, is unsafe for any state, that the multitude Amasa slackens his pace. The least delay should once know the way to an insurrec-in matters of rebellion is perilous, may be tion the least track in this kind is easily irrecoverable. The sons of Zeruiah are made a path. Yet, if Israel rebel, Judah not sullen: Abishai is sent, Joab goes uncontinues faithful; neither shall the son of sent, to the pursuit of Sheba. Amasa was David ever be left destitute of some true in their way, whom no quarrel but their subjects in the worst of apostasies. He, envy had made of a brother an enemy. that could command all hearts, will ever be Had the heart of Amasa been privy to any followed by some: God had rather glorify cause of grudge, he had suspected the kiss himself by a remnant. of Joab; now his innocent eyes look to the lips, not to the hand of his secret enemy; the lips were smooth: "Art thou in health, my brother?" The hand was bloody, which smote him under the fifth rib; that unhappy hand knew well this way unto death, which with one wound hath let out the souls of two great captains, Abner and Amasa: both they were smitten by Joab, both under the fifth rib, both under a pretence of friendship. There is no enmity so dangerous as that which comes masked with love. Open hostility calls us to our guard; but there is no fence against a trusted treachery. We need not be bidden to avoid an enemy; but who would run away from a friend? Thus spiritually deals the world with our souls: it kisses us and stabs us at once; if it did not embrace us with one hand, it could not murder us with the other only God deliver us from the danger of our trust, and we shall be safe. Great commanders must have active thoughts: David is not so taken up with the embroiled affairs of his state, as not to intend domestic justice. His ten concubines, which were shamelessly defiled by his incestuous son, are condemned to ward and widowhood. Had not that constupration been partly violent, their punishment had not been so easy; had it not also been partly voluntarily, they had not been so much punished: but how much soever the act did partake of either force or will, justly are they sequestered from David's bed. Absalom was not more unnatural in his rebellion than in his lust: if now David should have returned to his own bed, he had seconded the incest. How much more worthy of separation are they, who have stained the marriage-bed with their wilful sin! Amasa was one of the witnesses and abettors of Absalom's filthiness; yet is he, out of policy, received to favour and employment, while the concubines suffer. Great men yield many times to those things, out : Joab is gone, and leaves Amasa wallowing in blood. That spectacle cannot but stay all passengers: the death of great persons draws ever many eyes. Each man says, have we known female hearts in the breasts of men, and, contrarily, manly powers in the weaker vessels! It is injurious to measure the act by the person, and not rather to esteem the person for the act. She, with no less prudence than courage, "Is not this my lord Amasa?" Wherefore do we go to fight, while our general lies in the dust? What a sad presage is this of our own miscarriage! The wit of Joab's followers hath therefore soon both removed Amasa out of the way, and covered him, not regarding so much the loss, as the eye-challengeth Joab for the violence of his assore of Israel. Thus wicked politics care not so much for the commission of villany, as for the notice. Smothered evils are as not done: if oppressions, if murder, if treasons, may be hid from view, the obdured heart of the offender complains not of remorse. Bloody Joab, with what face, with what heart, canst thou pursue a traitor to thy king, while thou thyself art so foul a traitor to thy friend, to thy cousin-german, and, in so unseasonable a slaughter, to thy sovereign, whose cause thou professest to revenge? If Amasa were now, in an act of loyalty, justly, on God's part, paid for the arrearages of his late rebellion; yet that it should be done by thy hand, then and thus, it was flagitiously cruel: yet behold, Joab runs away securely with the fact, hasting to plague that, in another, whereof himself was no less guilty. So vast are the gorges of some consciences, that they can swallow the greatest crimes, and find no strain in the passage. sault, and lays to him that law, which he could not be an Israelite and disavow-the law of the God of peace, whose charge it was, that, when they should come near to a city to fight against it, they should offer it peace and if this tender must be made to foreigners, how much more to brethren? So as they must inquire of Abel ere they battered it. War is the extreme act of vindictive justice; neither doth God ever approve it for any other than a desperate remedy; and, if it hath any other end than peace, it turns into public murder. It is therefore an inhuman cruelty to shed blood, where we have not proffered fair conditions of peace, the refusal whereof is justly punished with the sword of revenge. Joab was a man of blood; yet, when the wise woman of Abel charged him with going about to destroy a mother in Israel, and swallowing up the inheritance of the Lord, with what vehemence doth he deprecate that challenge! "God forbid, God forbid it me, that I should devour or destroy it." It is possible for a man to be faithful Although that city, with the rest, had ento some one person, and perfidious to all gaged itself in Sheba's sedition, yet how others. I do not find Joab other than firm zealously doth Joab remove from himself and loyal to David, in the midst of all his the suspicion of an intended vastation! private falsehoods, whose just quarrel he❘ How fearful shall their answer be, who, pursues against Sheba, through all the tribes upon the quarrel of their own ambition, of Israel. None of all the strong forts of have not spared to waste whole tribes of revolted Israel can hide the rebel from the the Israel of God! It was not the fashion zeal of his revenge. The city of Abel lends of David's captains to assault any city ere harbour to that conspirator, whom all Israel they summoned it: here they did. There would, and cannot protect. Joab casts up be some things that in the very fact carry a mound against it, and having environed it their own conviction; so did Abel in the with a siege, begins to work upon the wall; entertaining and abetting a known conspiand now, after long chase, is in hand to dig rator: Joab challenges them for the offence, out that vermin, which had earthed himself and requires no other satisfaction than the in this borough of Bethmaachah. Had not head of Sheba. This matron had not dethe city been strong and populous, Sheba served the name of wise and faithful in had not cast himself for succour within those Israel, if she had not both apprehended the walls; yet of all the inhabitants, I see not justice of the condition, and commended it any one man move for the preservation of to her citizens, whom she had easily pertheir whole body: only a woman undertakes suaded to spare their own heads in not to treat with Joab for their safety. Those sparing a traitor's. It had been pity those men, whose spirits were great enough to walls should have stood, if they had been maintain a traitor against a mighty king, too high to throw a traitor's head over. scorn not to give way to the wisdom of a matron: there is no reason that sex should disparage, where the virtue and merit are no less than masculine. Surely the soul acknowledgeth no sex, neither is varied according to the outward frame. How oft Spiritually the case is ours: every man's breast is as a city inclosed; every sin is as a traitor that lurks within those walls: God calls to us for Sheba's head; neither hath he any quarrel to our person, but for our sin. If we love the head of our traitor Q above the life of our soul, we shall justly perish in the vengeance. We cannot be more willing to part with our sin, than our merciful God is to withdraw his judgments. Now is Joab returned with success, and hopes, by Sheba's head, to pay the price of Amasa's blood; David hates the murder, entertains the man, defers the revenge; Joab had made himself so great, so necessary, that David may neither miss nor punish him. Policy led the king to connive at that which his heart abhorred. I dare not commend that wisdom which holds the hands of princes from doing justice. Great men have ever held it a point of worldly state, not always to pay where they have been conscious to a debt of either favour or punishment; but to make time their servant for both. Solomon shall once defray the arrearages of his father. In the mean time, Joab commands and prospers, and David is fain to smile on that face, whereon he hath, in his secret destination, written characters of death. CONTEMPLATION V. THE GIBEONITES REVENGED. THE reign of David was most troublesome towards the shutting up, wherein both war and famine conspire to afflict him: almost forty years had he sat in the throne of Israel with competency, if not abundance, of all things; now at last are his people visited with a long dearth. We are not at first sensible of common evils: three years' drought and scarcity are gone over, ere David consults with God, concerning the occasion of the judgment; now he found it high time to seek the face of the Lord. The continuance of an affliction sends us to God, and calls upon us to ask for a reckoning; whereas, like men stricken in their sleep, a sudden blow cannot make us to find ourselves, but rather astonisheth than teacheth us. David was himself a prophet of God; yet had not the Lord, all this while, acquainted him with the grounds of his proceedings against Israel; this secret was hid from him, till he consulted with the Urim: ordinary means shall reveal that to him which no vision had descried; and if God will have prophets to have recourse unto the priests for the notice of his will, how much more must the people? Even those that are inwardest with God must have the use of the ephod. Justly it is presupposed by David, that there was never judgment from God, where hath not been a provocation from men; therefore, when he sees the plague, he inquires for the sin. Never man smarted causelessly from the hand of divine justice. O that, when we suffer, we could ask what we have done, and could guide our repentance to the root of our evils! That God, whose counsels are secret, even where his actions are open, will not be close to his prophet, to his priest: without inquiry, we shall know nothing; upon inquiry, nothing shall be concealed from us, that is fit for us to know. Who can choose but wonder at once, both at David's slackness in consulting with God, and God's speed in answering so slow a demand? He, that so well knew the way to God's oracle, suffers Israel to be three years pinched with famine, ere he asks why they suffer. Even the best hearts may be overtaken with dulness in holy duties; but O the marvellous mercy of God, that takes not the advantage of our weaknesses! David's question is not more slow, than his answer is speedy: "It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites." Israel was full of sins, besides those of Saul's house; Saul's house was full of sins, besides those of blood: much blood was shed by them, besides that of the Gibeonites; yet the justice of God singles out this one sin of violence offered to the Gibeonites, contrary to the league made by Joshua, some four hundred years before, for the occasion of this late vengeance. Where the causes of offence are infinite, it is just with God to pitch upon some; it is merciful not to punish for all: well near forty years are past betwixt the commission of the sin, and the reckoning for it. It is a vain hope that is raised from the delay of judgment: no time can be any prejudice to the Ancient of days: when we have forgotten our sins, when the world hath forgotten us, he sues us afresh for our arrearages. The slaughter of the Gibeonites was the sin, not of the present, but rather of the former generation; and now posterity pays for their forefathers. Even we men hold it not unjust to sue the heirs and executors of our debitors: eternal payments God uses only to require of the persons, temporary ofttimes of succession. As Saul was higher by the head and shoulders than the rest of Israel, both in stature and dignity, so were his sins more conspicuous than those of the vulgar. The eminence of the person makes the offence more remarkable to the eyes both of God and men. Neither Saul nor Israel were faultless in other kinds; yet God fixes the eye of his revenge upon the massacre of the Gibeonites. Every sin hath a tongue, but that of blood overcries and drowns the rest. He, who is mercy itself, ahhors cruelty in his creature above all other inordinateness: that holy soul, which was heavy pressed with the weight of a heinous adultery, yet cries out, "Deliver me from blood, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall joyfully sing of thy righteousness." If God would take account of blood, he might have entered the action upon the blood of Uriah spilt by David; or, if he would rather insist in Saul's house, upon the blood of Abimelech the priest, and fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod: but it pleased the wisdom and justice of the Almighty rather to call for the blood of the Gibeonites, though drudges of Israel, and a remnant of Amorites. Why this? There was a perjury attending upon this slaughter: it was an ancient oath, wherein the princes of the congregation had bound themselves, upon Joshua's league, to the Gibeonites, that they would suffer them to live-an oath extorted by fraud, but solemn, by no less name than the Lord God of Israel. Saul will now, thus late, either not acknowledge it, or not keep it; out of his zeal, therefore, to the children of Israel and Judah, he roots out some of the Gibeonites, whether in a zeal of revenge of their first imposture, or in a zeal of enlarging the possessions of Israel, or in a zeal of executing God's charge upon the brood of Canaanites: he that spared Agag, whom he should have smitten, smites the Gibeonites, whom he should have spared. Zeal and good intention is no excuse, much less a warrant for evil: God holds it a high indignity, that his name should be sworn by, and violated. Length of time cannot dispense with our oaths, with our vows: the vows and oaths of others may bind us; how much more our own? There was a famine in Israel: a natural man would have ascribed it unto the drought, and that drought, perhaps, to some constellations: David knows to look higher, and sees a divine hand scourging Israel for some great offence, and overruling those second causes to his most just executions. Even the most quick-sighted worldling is purblind to spiritual objects; and the weakest eyes of the regenerate pierce the heavens, and espy God in all earthly occurrences. So well was David acquainted with God's proceedings, that he knew the removal of the judgment must begin at the satisfaction of the wronged. At once, therefore, doth he pray unto God, and treat with the Gibeonites: "What shall I do for you, and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord?" In vain should David, though a prophet, bless Israel, if the Gibeonites did not bless them. Injuries done us on earth, give us power in heaven: the oppressor is in no man's mercy, but his whom he hath trampled upon. Little did the Gibeonites think that God had so taken to heart their wrongs, that for their sakes all Israel should suffer. Even when we think not of it, is the righteous Judge avenging our unrighteous vexations. Our hard measures cannot be hid from him; his returns are hid from us. It is sufficient for us, that God can be no more neglective than ignorant of our sufferings. It is now in the power of these despised Hivites to make their own terms with Israel; neither silver nor gold will savour with them towards their satisfaction: nothing can expiate the blood of their fathers, but the blood of seven sons of their deceased persecutor. Here was no other than a just retaliation: Saul had punished in them the offence of their predecessors; they will now revenge Saul's sin in his children. The measure we mete unto others, is, with much equity, remeasured unto ourselves. Every death would not content them of Saul's sons, but a cursed and ignominious hanging on the tree; neither would that death content them, unless their own hands might be the executioners; neither would any place serve for the execution but Gibeah, the court of Saul; neither would they do any of this for the wrecking of their own fury, but for the appeasing of God's wrath: "We will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul." David might not refuse the condition: he must deliver, they must execute. He chooses out seven of the sons aud grandchildren of Saul. That house had raised long an unjust persecution against David; now God pays it upon another's score. David's love and oath to Jonathan preserve lame Mephibosheth: how much more shall the Father of all mercies do good unto the children of the faithful, for the covenant made with their parents? The five sons of Adriel the Meholathite, David's ancient rival in his first love, which were born to him by Merab, Saul's daughter, and brought up by her barren sister Michal, the wife of David, are yielded up to death. Merab was, after a promise of marriage to David, unjustly given away by Saul to Adriel: Michal seems to abet the match, in breeding the children. Now, in one act, |