he that the Lord tuill look on mine affliction, and that the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day.
IT is thought by many, that situations of rank and eminence are conducive to happiness. But the very reverse of this will be found true for the most part, because persons in authority are beset with number- less temptations, to which their inferiors are scarcely at all exposed. Behold David exalted to a throne ; and see to what trials he was reduced, by those who sought his favour, or envied him his power! It is the unhappy lot of kings to be surrounded no less by lying friends, than by bitter enemies. When David fled from Absalom, Ziba, the servant of Mephibosheth, the son of Saul, met him with a present of needful provisions for himself and followers, under a feigned plea, that his master had joined the conspiracy of Absalom, in the hope of regaining his father's king- dom: and thus he obtained from David an hasty and inadvertent grant of all Mephibosheth's possessions; a grant, which David afterwards, when better in- formed, was constrained to rescind. Scarcely had David been thus betrayed by a pretended friend, before he was fiercely assaulted by a bitter enemy, who now took advantage of his misfortunes to load him with all manner of reproaches. From this evil, however, David escaped with far greater honour to himself. In the former case he was imposed upon, and was led to act with unwise precipitation : but in this latter case, when urged to avenge himself on the delinquent, he forbore ; and thus manifested a disposition of mind that is worthy of universal imitation.
To place David's conduct in its true light, I will set before you,
I. His heavy trial —
His condition, independent of Shimei's conduct, was exceedingly afflictive —
[He was now driven from his throne, and forced to flee for his life. To this he was forced by his own subjects, led on by his most favourite son, Absalom. To be reduced to such an extremity by a foreign foe would have been an exceeding
321.] David's patience and forbearance. 291
great calamity: but to be brought to it by liis own beloved son, at the head of his rebellious subjects, was as afiiictive a dispen- sation as could well be conceived.
But in tliis cup of sorrow there was an ingredient that was incomparably more bitter than even death itself; namely, a consciousness that it proceeded from God, as a punishment of the sin he had committed in the matter of Uriah. Nathan had long since delivered to liim tliis warning from the Lord : " Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine housed" And this judgment had already been executed in part, by Amnon's ravishing of his sister Tamar ; and by Absalom's murder of his brother Amnon ; (in both of which there was an awful correspondence with his own sins in the matter of Bath- sheba and Uriah :) and now it came home more immediately to his own person, in the conduct of Absalom towards himself. This consciousness very deeply oppressed his mind, and added a ten-fold poignancy to all his other stings.]
But the conduct of Shimei greatly aggravated his
misfortunes at this time —
[It came upon him at a time when he was wounded, and disconsolate, under the rebukes of the Almighty*'. And the bitterness of this man's reproaches could scarcely be exceeded. Shimei, being a Benjamite, was zealous for his own tribe, from whence the sovereign authority had been transferred to the tribe of Judah. (Such jealousies, alas ! pervade all ranks and classes of society throughout the world, from rival states to rival districts, communities, towns, families, and parties of every description : and often the feelings subsisting between the adverse parties, are scarcely less acrimonious than those of Shimei himself.) Besides, being of the family of Saul, perhaps Shimei's prospects in life were in a great measure blasted : and therefore, whilst he regarded David as the occasion of his ruin, he considered the Deity himself as vindicating his cause, in the punishment of the usurper. But his accusation of David, as having imbrued his hands in the blood of Saul, was without the least foundation : for it was well known that he had not been in the least degree accessary to the death of Saul, or Jonathan, or of Abner, or Ishbosheth, or of any whose blood was now laid to his charge. But such an accusation, at such a time, was most distressing to the feelings of the royal sufferer : and the rather too, because it brought the more forcibly to his mind the evils which he had indeed committed, and for which God was indeed inflicting upon him this sore punislunent.]