Context No. 2935 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

2 Samuel 2:20-26: in context

20Then Abner looked behind him and said, “Is that you, Asahel?” He answered, “It is.” 21Abner said to him, “Turn away to your right hand or to your left, and grab one of the young men, and take his armor.” But Asahel would not turn away from following him. 22Abner said again to Asahel, “Turn away from following me. Why should I strike you to the ground? How then could I look Joab your brother in the face?” 23However, he refused to turn away. Therefore Abner with the back end of the spear struck him in the body, so that the spear came out behind him; and he fell down there and died in the same place. As many as came to the place where Asahel fell down and died stood still. 24But Joab and Abishai pursued Abner. The sun went down when they had come to the hill of Ammah, that lies before Giah by the way of the wilderness of Gibeon. 25The children of Benjamin gathered themselves together after Abner and became one band, and stood on the top of a hill. 26Then Abner called to Joab, and said, “Shall the sword devour forever? Don’t you know that it will be bitterness in the latter end? How long will it be then, before you ask the people to return from following their brothers?”

In the war between the house of David and the house of Saul, the fast-footed Asahel chases the commander Abner. Twice Abner warns him to turn aside, unwilling to kill the brother of Joab, but Asahel refuses, and Abner strikes him dead with the butt of his spear. As evening falls and the pursuit grinds on, Abner calls out to Joab a question worth remembering: shall the sword devour forever?

Do you not know, Abner says, that this will be bitter in the end? How long before you call the people back from chasing their own brothers? It is the wisest line in the chapter, and it comes from a hardened soldier. He sees where this civil war leads, endless bitterness between kinsmen, and he pleads for it to stop. Sometimes the person caught in the middle of a conflict sees more clearly than those driving it that the fighting has no good end, and there is wisdom in being the one willing to call a halt.

Is there a conflict I am driving that I should have the wisdom to stop, before the sword devours everything?

Sources

2 Samuel 2:26: "Shall the sword devour forever? Don't you know that it will be bitterness in the latter end?"
Matthew 26:52: "For all those who take the sword will die by the sword."
Romans 12:18: "If it is possible, as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men."