his fillltbom, Rnd not have driven his l!OOond ie too great for ua to eay that such o. modo son into terrible orime. He had not done of rendering it mu~t be wrong. And if the ■o beo1mse his own sins had tied his hands. grammar be difficult., the sense put upon Yee; David had good rea■on for weeping the worde by the vereione is excellent. 11ore. Literally they are, .A.1 t,o King David tluire Vere. 37, 38.--So Absalom fled. The wa. a ceaaing to go fm-th after .Ablal~; fOf' triple repetition of these words, and the he u,a, comforted, etc. At firet he had fragmentary 11tyle, make it probable that we demanded of To.Imai the eurrender of the hR ve here an abridgment of a longer no.rra- offender, and, when To.Imai refused, David tive. So in ver. 34 the words probably are tried other meane ; but in time, when his a summary of n more oircumstantinl account gTief for Amuon was assuoged, he desisted of Absalom's doings after !,is young men from his efforts. But oven so it required had slain Amnon. (On Talmni and Geshur, much subtlety on Joo.b's po.rt to obto.in Ab- s<.'e notes on oh. iii. 3.) sa.lom's recall, which would scarcely ho.ve Ver. 39.-And (the soul of) king David been ~he case if David's soul was longing longed to go forth unto Absalom. This for his son's· return; and, even after his translation has the support of the Je~ish coming, David long mo.into.inedan unfriendly •rargum, ,md, as the verb is feminine, the attitude. Amuon was his firstborn, and insertion of the added word is possible, evidently deo.rly loved, but David's culpable though the sense seems to require "anger" leniency had borne bitter fruit. And a.gain inst<.'.e.d of "the soul." But the versions he acts without thoughtful sense of justice, (Septuagint, S~·riac, and Vulgate) all give and though at first he would have given the verb its ordino.ry meo.ning of "ceasing," Absalom merited punishment, yet gradually and, though there is something harsh in paternal feeling resumed its swe.y, unhappily taking it impersonally, yet their authority only to be misero.bly abused.
HOMILETICS, Vers. 1-22.-.77ie firstjruits of iniquity. The facts are: 1. Amnon entertains an improper affection for his half-sister Tamar, and meditates evil. 2. Making known his secret passion to Jonadab, he is prompted to a device for securing a personal inter- view with her. 3. The king, visiting Am.non in his pretended sickness, kindly arranges that Tamar should wait upon him with special food in his chamber. . 4. Seizing au opportunity in the absence of attendants, he accomplishes his purpose in defiance of her protests and pretexts. 5. By a sudden revulsion of feeling, he now hates her, and causes her to be driven away in disgrace. 6. Her trouble becoming known to the king and to Absalom, the one is very wroth and does nothing, and the other conceals his cherished hatred and revenge. The rather long account given of the base sin of Amnon is no doubt intended to show how the chastisements pronounced by Nathan (eh. xii. 10, 11) were brought about. In this way the spiritual character of the narrative shines through all the details, which in themselves seem worthy of being for ever lost in oblivion. It is in connection with the evil, and often through the evil, of life that the righteousness of God is historically revealed. Those who object to such passages as these in the Bible know not the principle on which it, as a book, is constructed. It is not the deeds that are the object of thought and instruction, but the fulfilment of the righteoW! judgments of God, brought to pass in the fact and consequences of their occurrence. In the deeds here recorded we have a graphio description of the firstfruits of the dreadful sin of David. I. ALL SIN 600!.'EB OB LA.TEB BEABB FBUIT IN HUMAN SOCIETY. "Sin" is a term descriptive of the moral quality of thought or action. It is a demonstrable fact in the sphere of mind and life, that every distinct thought and mental act, to say nothing of the outward expression of it, is a power or force contributed towards a modification of the existing forces at work in the world. No mental life is the same after a given thou!!ht has been formed as it would have been had some other been in its place. The law ;;f dynamics, by which every wave of motion produces an effect for ever, holds good in the mental and moral sphere. Sin is a wave of evil, a force in an oblique direction, or as a seed to germinate and reproduce its kind. David's dreadful deed could not but be an instance of this inevitable law. Other counter-influences of good might arise, Lut they would not annihilate the fact of the evil influence, and social life would not be the sawe as it would have been in case his energy had all gone in the line 011. xm. 1-30.J THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMU EL. 829