Monday, September 12, 2005
2 Samuel 14 - Spilled Water
In the middle of this confrontation between Joab and David over the fate of Absalom, this unamed "woman of Tekoa" is recruited by Joab to trick David into showing mercy to his son. The device is similar to the way Nathan tricked David into conodemning himself in the matter of Uriah. But in verse 14, it seems to me that the woman goes off script, or at any rate, she says something personal and profound.
2 Samuel 14:14 We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished forever from his presence.
Matthew Henry comments, "This was poor reasoning, and would serve against the punishment of any murderer" and perhaps that is the reason that, instinctively, I liked it. She is saying that life is lived forward, never backward. This is a condition of our mortality. What is done cannot be undone. Punishment cannot change the past, but God is always in the business of looking for some manner of redemption.
We cannot change the past, but we do not need to be trapped by it. Tthe injustice or oppression we have expreienced or that we have imposed on others is water spilled on the ground. The woman of Tekoa tells us that we have to accept that: our attempts to change the past through vengeance are fruitless. God is about something better: creating a new future.
So, here is Gospel, on the lips of the nameless woman of Tekoa: God is doing something new.
2 Samuel 14:14 We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished forever from his presence.
Matthew Henry comments, "This was poor reasoning, and would serve against the punishment of any murderer" and perhaps that is the reason that, instinctively, I liked it. She is saying that life is lived forward, never backward. This is a condition of our mortality. What is done cannot be undone. Punishment cannot change the past, but God is always in the business of looking for some manner of redemption.
We cannot change the past, but we do not need to be trapped by it. Tthe injustice or oppression we have expreienced or that we have imposed on others is water spilled on the ground. The woman of Tekoa tells us that we have to accept that: our attempts to change the past through vengeance are fruitless. God is about something better: creating a new future.
So, here is Gospel, on the lips of the nameless woman of Tekoa: God is doing something new.
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