Scripture Daily

Context No. 1431 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

Context · Reflection

2 Samuel 3:31-39: in context

31David said to Joab and to all the people who were with him, “Tear your clothes, and clothe yourselves with sackcloth, and mourn in front of Abner.” King David followed the bier. 32They buried Abner in Hebron; and the king lifted up his voice and wept at Abner’s grave; and all the people wept. 33The king lamented for Abner, and said, “Should Abner die as a fool dies? 34Your hands weren’t bound, and your feet weren’t put into fetters. As a man falls before the children of iniquity, so you fell.” All the people wept again over him. 35All the people came to urge David to eat bread while it was yet day; but David swore, saying, “God do so to me, and more also, if I taste bread or anything else, until the sun goes down.” 36All the people took notice of it, and it pleased them, as whatever the king did pleased all the people. 37So all the people and all Israel understood that day that it was not of the king to kill Abner the son of Ner. 38The king said to his servants, “Don’t you know that a prince and a great man has fallen today in Israel? 39I am weak today, though anointed king. These men, the sons of Zeruiah are too hard for me. May the LORD reward the evildoer according to his wickedness.”

Abner, Saul's former commander who had come over to David's side, has been murdered by Joab out of revenge. David, who had no part in the killing and is grieved by it, leads the public mourning. He orders his men to put on sackcloth, walks behind the bier himself, weeps aloud at the grave, and laments over Abner. He fasts, refusing food until sunset, and the people see that the king had no hand in Abner's death. A prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel, David says, and then, remarkably, he admits: I am weak today, though anointed king; these men, the sons of Zeruiah, are too hard for me.

The striking moment is David's honest confession of his own weakness at the height of his power. He is the anointed king, victorious, ascending; and yet he says plainly, I am weak today, though anointed king; these men are too hard for me. He cannot control Joab and his brother, cannot prevent their violence, cannot bend his own military commanders to his will; and rather than pretend otherwise, rather than project an image of total command, he admits it openly. There is a rare honesty in a leader who can say, in effect, I am not as strong as my position suggests; there are things beyond my control, and people I cannot master. We are more used to leaders who must appear in command of everything, who cannot afford to admit weakness or the limits of their control. David does admit it, and it does not diminish him; it makes him more trustworthy, not less, that he will not pretend to a strength he does not have. There is freedom in that honesty for anyone tempted to project an invulnerable competence. We are not, in fact, in control of everything or everyone; there are situations too hard for us and people we cannot manage, and pretending otherwise is a strain and a lie. David's willingness to say I am weak today, even as king, is the honesty of a man who knows his own limits and does not need the illusion of total control, and who leaves the reckoning, in the end, to God: may the LORD repay the evildoer according to his wickedness.

Can I admit, as David did even as king, that I am weaker than my position suggests, that there are things beyond my control and people I cannot master, or do I strain to project an invulnerable competence I do not actually have?

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