Scripture Daily

Context No. 3289 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

Context · Reflection

2 Samuel 14:6-10: in context

6Your servant had two sons; and they both fought together in the field, and there was no one to part them, but the one struck the other and killed him. 7Behold, the whole family has risen against your servant, and they say, ‘Deliver him who struck his brother, that we may kill him for the life of his brother whom he killed, and so destroy the heir also.’ Thus they would quench my coal which is left, and would leave to my husband neither name nor remainder on the surface of the earth.” 8The king said to the woman, “Go to your house, and I will give a command concerning you.” 9The woman of Tekoa said to the king, “My lord, O king, may the iniquity be on me, and on my father’s house; and may the king and his throne be guiltless.” 10The king said, “Whoever says anything to you, bring him to me, and he will not bother you any more.”

The wise woman of Tekoa lays her invented case before David: her two sons quarreled in the field, one killed the other, and now the whole family demands the survivor's life to avenge his brother. But that, she pleads, would leave her a childless widow, quenching her last coal, ending her husband's name on the earth. She begs the king to protect the surviving son, and David grants her his protection.

She is really pleading, by way of parable, for David's own exiled son Absalom, drawing the king to feel for another's son what she wants him to feel for his own. But the principle she leads him to affirm is real: sometimes mercy must temper strict justice, so that a life is preserved and a family is not utterly ended. To insist on the full penalty in every case can destroy more than it heals. She gets David to say for a stranger's son what mercy would have him do for his own: let compassion restrain the demand for blood, so that a future is not wiped out.

Do I let mercy temper my sense of strict justice where insisting on the full penalty would only destroy a life and a future?

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