The Battle of Gibeon is a perplexing episode in Israel’s
history.
Let me set the stage:
Saul, the first king of Israel, is dead. The nation has not formally
acknowledged a new king but instead is slipping back into tribalism. David has
the anointing of God, but lacks a unanimous mandate from the people. His
kinsmen in Judah formally recognize David as rightful king, but that
probably says less about their spirituality than it does about their sense of
family loyalty.
Of course you’d want
your guy at the top of the heap. Everybody does.
Dubious About David
The rest of the nation
remains dubious about David. Taking advantage of the political instability, Saul’s
former general Abner decides to put one of Saul’s sons on the throne of Israel.
It’s a pretty standard move in a monarchy, and most of the nation is satisfied
with it. King Ish-bosheth reigns over Gilead, the
Ashurites, Jezreel, Ephraim, Benjamin and “all Israel”. King David reigns
over Judah.
You have to know that won’t last.
The situation comes to a crisis point
around the pool of Gibeon, where David is notably absent. I suspect had he been
on the scene, things would have gone very differently.
They Fell Down Together
Israelite General Abner says to Judah’s General
Joab, “Why don’t we let the young men test themselves in front of us?” Joab
agrees, and twelve young soldiers from each force meet in battle.
Here’s the remarkable part. Why don’t I just let the writer of 2 Samuel
narrate?
“Then they arose and passed over by number, twelve for Benjamin and Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, and twelve of the servants of David. And each caught his opponent by the head and thrust his sword in his opponent’s side, so they fell down together.”
Now what do you figure are the odds of that?
A Stunning Improbability
Twenty-four young men improbably decide to employ
exactly the same strategy at exactly the same moment and all twenty-four are simultaneously
impaled and die together by the pool. I’m a math guy, but it doesn’t take one
to see how astoundingly unlikely the whole scenario must have been.
The narrator of God’s word doesn’t call it
miraculous, but if we were to acknowledge those twenty-four deaths as a sign of
God’s immense displeasure in the proceedings, I don’t think we’d be going too far.
Israelite against Israelite. Brother
against brother. Not God’s will by a long shot.
Dead Right
This episode triggers a battle that rages
all day and results in 360 dead Israelites and twenty dead from Judah. That’s an
astounding casualty ratio of 18:1, which would incline us to think God was with
Judah rather than Israel: fighting for David rather than Ish-bosheth.
In fact, we know this to be true. God had
initiated David’s original anointing over Israel through Samuel years before. David
was walking with God, seeking his will, and had only gone up to Hebron and been
anointed king over Judah because God had given him those specific instructions.
But having God on our side doesn’t mean we
can always expect to get off without a scratch. Often, we are getting exactly
what we deserve.
When Everybody Gets Hurt
Perhaps the episode reminds us how easy it
is to find ourselves trying to accomplish the purposes of God in the absence of his Spirit’s initiative and power. “In
the flesh,” as the New Testament writers are fond of putting it. Pursuing godly
ends through means that are nothing more than natural energy, human strategy
and carnal emotions.
Doing the right thing the wrong way.
It’s the same attitude that sometimes corrects
my son in anger, rather than out of love. It’s the same mindset that confronts
my brother in Christ over his sin out of suppressed jealousy rather than overflowing
faithfulness. It’s the same spirit that waves a secretly-satisfied goodbye to a
departing faction of church malcontents because we cannot be bothered to really
give an ear to their concerns.
It’s Joab and Abner at the pool of Gibeon,
and everybody gets hurt. We all fall down together.
No Less Dead
The fact that Judah was on the Lord’s side
and doing the Lord’s work did not make its general wiser or nobler than Israel’s
general (in fact, the opposite was the case). It did not make the bravado with which both generals sacrificed
their young men pleasing to God. It did not make having Israelites at one
another’s throats a good thing. It wasn’t.
Most notably, it didn’t make those twenty
soldiers from Judah any less dead. An 18:1 fatality ratio might be awfully impressive
to a tactician, but it provided small consolation to the men, women and
children of Judah whose brothers, sons or fathers were slain on the way to a
great victory.
When God’s people divide, everyone loses.
When God’s people divide, everyone loses.
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