Biblion Bible Commentary
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Kindness for Jonathan's Sake
2 Samuel 9:1-13
1 David said, “Is there yet any who is left of Saul’s house, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” · WEB
A king searches for a rival's survivor in order to bless him — and a crippled man who calls himself a dead dog eats at the royal table for life.
"Is there yet any who is left of Saul's house, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake?" 2 Samuel 9:1.
The question is against every convention of the age. A new dynasty hunted the old one's survivors as a matter of course, and David has both the power and the precedent to do it. What moves him instead is an oath sworn in a field years earlier, when Jonathan asked that his descendants not be cut off 1 Samuel 20:14–15. The covenant is kept after the other party is dead, when nobody could enforce it and no one would have noticed its breach.
The word he uses for what he wants to show is the Hebrew term for covenant loyalty — and he defines it in the next breath as the kindness of God 2 Samuel 9:3, which is to say kindness of the kind God shows: unearned, initiated by the giver, and reaching people who have nothing to trade.
"Jonathan still has a son, who is lame in his feet"... "Behold, he is in the house of Machir the son of Ammiel, in Lo Debar" 2 Samuel 9:3–4.
Mephibosheth is the child dropped by a nurse on the day of Gilboa 2 Samuel 4:4, now grown, living east of the Jordan in another man's house. He is out of sight for a reason: a lame grandson of Saul in the new capital would be either a hostage or a corpse, and he knows it.
He bowed down, and said, "What is your servant, that you should look at such a dead dog as I am?" 2 Samuel 9:8.
His self-description is the language of a man expecting a sentence. And David's answer had already been given before he could speak — don't be afraid — followed by three gifts: the family estate restored, a household of servants to work it, and a place at the king's table continually 2 Samuel 9:7 2 Samuel 9:10. The last is the greatest. Land is property; a seat at the table is a place in the family, and the narrator repeats it four times in thirteen verses.
So Mephibosheth ate at the king's table like one of the king's sons 2 Samuel 9:11.
The episode is one of the clearest pictures in the Old Testament of grace as Scripture defines it: sought out by the king, offered for the sake of another's covenant, given to a man who could not walk to it and had nothing to offer for it, and made permanent by a seat rather than a payment. The chapter's very last words are he was lame in both his feet 2 Samuel 9:13 — the disability is not cured, and it does not need to be. He eats at the table as he is.
Ziba, meanwhile, has been handed a fifteen-son estate to manage on behalf of a master he did not choose, and he is watching. His moment comes when the kingdom is falling apart 2 Samuel 16:3.
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