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Context No. 2652 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

Context · Reflection

2 Samuel 15:14-18: in context

14David said to all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, “Arise! Let’s flee, or else none of us will escape from Absalom. Hurry to depart, lest he overtake us quickly and bring down evil on us, and strike the city with the edge of the sword.” 15The king’s servants said to the king, “Behold, your servants are ready to do whatever my lord the king chooses.” 16The king went out, and all his household after him. The king left ten women, who were concubines, to keep the house. 17The king went out, and all the people after him; and they stayed in Beth Merhak. 18All his servants passed on beside him; and all the Cherethites, and all the Pelethites, and all the Gittites, six hundred men who came after him from Gath, passed on before the king.

As Absalom's rebellion gathers, David flees Jerusalem with his household to avoid a bloodbath. It is a low moment, a king driven from his own city by his own son. And as the loyalists file past him out of the city, one group stands out: six hundred Gittites, foreigners from Gath, who had attached themselves to David and now go with him into exile, sharing his humiliation and danger when his own son has turned against him.

Notice who stays. David's own son leads the betrayal, but these foreigners, outsiders with no blood claim on Israel's throne, walk out of the city with him into an uncertain, dangerous flight. Loyalty like that is proven not in a leader's triumph but in his fall. Anyone will follow a king on his throne; these men followed a king running for his life. It is a picture of the friendship that counts, the kind that shares the adversity, not only the success. And it raises a searching question about the kind of friend I am, and the kind I have, when the fortunes turn.

Am I the kind of friend who stays with someone in their humiliation and adversity, not only their success, and who has stayed with me in mine?

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