were public mourning, not gladness. The victorious soldiers stole back into the city as if ashamed to show

themselves - as if after a defeat, not after a brilliant and decisive triumph.

It was more than Joab could endure. Roughly forcing himself into the king's presence, he reproached him for

his heartless selfishness, warning him that there were dangers, greater than any he had yet known, which

his recklessness of all but his own feelings would certainly bring upon him. What he said was, indeed, true,

but it was uttered most unfeelingly - especially remembering the part which he himself had taken in the death

of Absalom - and in terms such as no subject, however influential, should have used to his sovereign. No

doubt David felt and resented all this. But, for the present, it was evidently necessary to yield; and the king

received the people in the gate in the usual fashion.

The brief period of insurrectionary intoxication over, the reaction soon set in. David wisely awaited it in

Mahanaim. The country recalled the national glory connected with his reign, and realized that, now Absalom

had fallen, there was virtually an interregnum equally unsatisfactory to all parties. It certainly was neither

politic nor right on the part of David under such circumstances to employ the priests in secret negotiations

with the tribe of Judah for his restoration to the throne. Indeed, all David's acts now seem like the outcome

of that fatal moral paralysis into which he had apparently once more lapsed. Such, notably, was the secret

appointment of Amasa as commander-in-chief in the room of Joab, a measure warranted neither by moral nor

by military considerations, and certainly, to say the least, a great political mistake, whatever provocation

Joab might have given. We regard in the same light David's conduct in returning to Jerusalem on the

invitation of the tribe of Judah only (2 Samuel 19:14). Preparations for this were made in true Oriental

fashion. The men of Judah went as far as Gilgal, where they had in readiness a ferry -boat, in which the king

and his household might cross the river. Meantime, those who had cause to dread David's return had also

taken their measures. Both Shimei, who had cursed David on his flight, and Ziba, who had so shamefully

deceived him about Mephibosheth, went over Jordan "to meet the king."  30 As David was "crossing,"  31 or,

rather, about to embark, Shimei, who had wisely brought with him a thousand men of his own tribe, Benjamin

- the most hostile to David - entreated forgiveness, appealing, as evidence of his repentance, to his own

appearance with a thousand of his clansmen, as the first in Israel to welcome their king.

In these circumstances it would have been almost impossible not to pardon Shimei, though David's rebuff to

Abishai, read in the light of the king's dying injunctions to Solomon (1 Kings 2:8, 9), sounds somewhat like a

magniloquent public rebuke of the sons of Zeruiah, or an attempt to turn popular feeling against them. At

the same time, it is evident that Shimei's plea would have lost its force, if David had not entered into separate

secret negotiations with the tribe of Judah.

Ziba's motives in going to meet David need no comment. There can be little doubt that, well-informed as

David must have been of all that had passed in Jerusalem, he could not but have known that the bearing and

feelings of Mephibosheth had been the reverse of what his hypocritical servant had represented them

(comp. 2 Samuel 19:24). All the more unjustifiable was his conduct towards the son of Jonathan.32

Both the language of irritation which he used towards him, and the compromise which he attempted (19:29),

show that David felt. though he would not own, himself in the wrong. Indeed, throughout, David's main

object now seemed to be to conciliate favor and to gain adherents - in short, to compass his own ends by

his own means, which were those of the natural, not of the spiritual man; of the Oriental, though under the

influence of religion, rather than of the man after God's own heart. For, at the risk of uttering a truism, we

must insist that there are only two courses possible - either to yield ourselves wholly to the guidance of the

Holy Spirit, or else to follow our natural impulses. These impulses are not such as we may, perhaps, imagine,

or suppose them to have become under the influence of religion. For the natural man always remains what

he had been -what birth, nationality, education, and circumstances had made h im. This consideration should

keep us from harsh and, probably, erroneous judgments of others, and may likewise serve for our own

warning and instruction.