Scripture Daily

Context No. 1381 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

Context · Reflection

2 Samuel 18:23-27: in context

23“But come what may,” he said, “I will run.” He said to him, “Run!” Then Ahimaaz ran by the way of the Plain, and outran the Cushite. 24Now David was sitting between the two gates; and the watchman went up to the roof of the gate to the wall, and lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, a man running alone. 25The watchman shouted and told the king. The king said, “If he is alone, there is news in his mouth.” He came closer and closer. 26The watchman saw another man running; and the watchman called to the gatekeeper and said, “Behold, a man running alone!” The king said, “He also brings news.” 27The watchman said, “I think the running of the first one is like the running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok.” The king said, “He is a good man, and comes with good news.”

The battle in which Absalom's rebellion was crushed is over, and David sits waiting between the two gates of the city for news. A watchman on the roof sees a lone runner and calls down; if he is alone, David reasons, he brings news. A second runner appears behind the first. The watchman thinks the leading runner has the gait of Ahimaaz, a man David knows, and the king says, he is a good man and comes with good news. David waits, reading the signs of the approaching messengers, hoping for good word, though the news that comes will break his heart, for the victory he waits to hear of is also the death of his son.

There is something deeply human in this picture of David waiting for news, and in the way his hope shapes what he expects. He is a good man, David says of the runner, and comes with good news, as though a good messenger could only carry good tidings. We do the same, straining to read the approaching signs of what we are waiting to hear, and letting our hope lean the interpretation toward what we long for. And the poignancy of the scene is what David does not yet know: that the good news of the battle won is bound up with news that would break a father's heart, the death of his rebel son whom he still loved. The victory and the loss came in the same report. It is often so with the news we wait for; what we receive is rarely the unmixed good we hoped, but a tangle of gain and loss, answered prayer shadowed by grief. That is not a reason to wait without hope, but a reason to hold our hopes with open hands, and to entrust our waiting to God, who alone sees the whole of what is coming toward us. David sat between the gates hoping for good news; what came would test whether he could still trust God when the good news carried grief inside it. We wait as he waited, and we do well to bring our hopes and our dread alike to the God who holds the outcome.

As I wait for news I cannot control, do I hold my hopes with open hands, entrusting my waiting to God who sees the whole of what is coming, ready to trust him even when the news that arrives is a tangle of gain and grief?

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