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Bloody Joab, with what face, with what heart canst thou pursue a traitor to thy king, while thou thyself art so foul a traitor to thy friend, to thy cousin-german, and, in so unseasonable a slaughter, to thy sovereign, whose cause thou professest to revenge? If Amasa were now in an act of loyalty, justly, on God's part, paid for the arrearages of his late rebellion; yet that it should be done by thy hand, then and thus, it was flagitiously cruel: yet, behold, Joab runs away securely with the fact, hasting to plague that, in another, whereof himself was no less guilty. So vast are the gorges of some consciences, that they can swallow the greatest crimes, and find no strain in the passage.

It is possible for a man to be faithful to some one person, and perfidious to all others. I do not find Joab other than firm and loyal to David, in the midst of all his private falsehoods, whose just quarrel he pursues against Sheba, through all the tribes of Israel. None of all the strong forts of revolted Israel can hide the rebel from the zeal of his revenge. The city of Abel lends harbour to that conspirator, whom all Israel would, and cannot protect. Joab casts up a mount against it, and having environed it with a siege, begins to work upon the wall; and now, after long chace, is in hand to dig out that vermin, which had earthed himself in this borough of Bethmaachah. Had not the city been strong and populous, Sheba had not cast himself for succour within those walls; yet, of all the inhabitants, I see not any one man move for the preservation of their whole body: only a woman undertakes to treat with Joab for their safety. Those men, whose spirits were great enough to maintain a traitor against a mighty king, scorn not to give way to the wisdom of a matron there is no reason that sex should disparage, where the virtue and merit is no less than masculine. Surely the soul acknowledgeth no sex, neither is varied according to the outward frame. How oft have we known female hearts in the breasts of men, and, contrarily, manly powers in the weaker vessels! It is injurious to measure the act by the person, and not rather to esteem the person for the act.

She, with no less prudence than courage, challengeth Joab for the violence of his assault, and lays to him that law, which he could not be an Israelite and disavow: the law of the God of peace, whose charge it was, that, when they should come near to a city to fight against it, they should offer it peace; and if this

tender must be made to foreigners, how much more to brethren? So as they must inquire of Abel ere they battered it. War is the extreme act of vindictive justice; neither doth God ever approve it for any other than a desperate remedy, and, if it hath any other end than peace, it turns into public murder. It is therefore an inhuman cruelty to shed blood, where we have not proffered fair conditions of peace, the refusal whereof is justly punished with the sword of

revenge.

Joab was a man of blood; yet, when the wise woman of Abel charged him with going about to destroy a mother in Israel, and swallowing up the inheritance of the Lord, with what vehemence doth he deprecate that challenge! "God forbid, God forbid it me, that I should devour or destroy it." Although that city, with the rest, had engaged itself in Sheba's sedition, yet how zealously doth Joab remove from himself the suspicion of an intended vastation! How fearful shall their answer be, who, upon the quarrel of their own ambition, have not spared to waste whole tribes of the Israel of God! It was not the fashion of David's captains to assault any city ere they summoned it; here they did. There be some things that, in the very fact, carry their own conviction; so did Abel in the entertaining and abetting a known conspirator: Joab challenges them for the offence, and requires no other satisfaction than the head of Sheba. This matron had not deserved the name of wise and faithful in Israel, if she had not both apprehended the justice of the condition, and commended it to her citizens, whom she had easily persuaded to spare their own heads, in not sparing a traitor's. It had been pity those walls should have stood, if they had been too high to throw a traitor's head over.

Spiritually the case is ours: every man's breast is as a city inclosed; every sin is a traitor that lurks within those walls; God calls to us for Sheba's head; neither hath he any quarrel to our person, but for our sin. If we love the head of our traitor above the life of our soul, we shall justly perish in the vengeance. We cannot be more willing to part with our sin, than our merciful God is to withdraw his judgments.

Now is Joab returned with success, and hopes, by Sheba's head, to pay the price of Amasa's blood; David hates the murder, entertains the man, defers the revenge; Joab had made himself so great, so necessary, that David may neither

'miss, nor punish him. Policy led the king to connive at that which his heart abhorred. I dare not commend that wisdom which holds the hands of princes from doing justice. Great men have ever held it a point of worldly state, not always to pay where they have been conscious to a debt of either favour or punishment; but to make time their servant for both. Solomon shall once defray the arrearages of his father. In the mean time Joab commands and prospers, and David is fain to smile on that face, whereon he hath, in his secret destination, written the characters of death.

CONTEMPLATION V.
The Gibeonites revenged.

THE reign of David was most troublesome towards the shutting up, wherein both war and famine conspire to afflict him almost forty years had he sat in the throne of Israel with competency, if not abundance of all things; now at last are his people visited with a long dearth: we are not at first sensible of common evils. Three years' drought and scarcity are gone over, ere David consults with God, concerning the occasion of the judgment; now he found it high time to seek the face of the Lord. The continuance of an affliction sends us to God, and calls upon us to ask for a reckoning; whereas, like men stricken in their sleep, a sudden blow cannot make us to find ourselves, but rather astonisheth than teacheth us.

David was himself a prophet of God, yet had not the Lord, all this while, acquainted him with the grounds of his proceedings against Israel; this secret was hid from him, till he consulted with the Urim; ordinary means shall reveal that to him, which no vision had descried; and if God will have prophets to have recourse unto the priests, for the notice of his will, how much more must the people? Even those that are inwardest with God must have use of the ephod.

Justly it is presupposed by David, that there was never judgment from God, where hath not been a provocation from men; therefore, when he sees the plague, he inquires for the sin. Never man smarted causelessly from the hand of divine justice. O that, when we suffer, we could ask what we have done, and could guide our repentance to the root of our evils!

That God, whose counsels are secret, even where his. actions are open, will not be close to his prophet, to his priest; without inquiry we shall know nothing; upon inquiry nothing shall be concealed from us, that is fit for us to know.. Who can choose but wonder at once, both at David's slackness in consulting with God, and God's speed in answering so slow a demand? He, that so well knew the way to God's oracle, suffers Israel to be three years pinched with famine, ere he asks why they suffer. Even the best hearts may be overtaken with dulness in holy duties; but O the marvellous mercy of God, that takes not the advantage of our weaknesses! David's question is not more slow, than his answer is speedy: "It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites." Israel was full of sins, besides those of Saul's house; Saul's house was full of sins, besides those of blood; much blood was shed by them, besides that of the Gibeonites; yet the justice of God singles out this one sin of violence offered to the Gibeonites contrary to the league made by Joshua, some four hundred years before, for the occasion of this late vengeance. Where the causes of offence are infinite, it is just with God to pitch upon some; it is merciful not to punish for all: well near forty years are past betwixt the commission of the sin, and the reekoning for it. It is a vain hope that is raised from the delay of judgment; no time can be any prejudice to the Ancient of days: when we have forgotten our sins, when the world hath forgotten us, he sues us afresh for our arrearages. The slaughter of the Gibeonites was the sin not of the present, but rather of the former generation; and now posterity pays for their forefathers. Even we men hold it not unjust to sue the heirs and executors of our debitors: eternal payments God uses only to require of the person, temporary ofttimes of succession.

As Saul was higher by the head and shoulders than the rest of Israel, both in stature and dignity, so were his sins more conspicuous than those of the vulgar. The eminence of the person makes the offence more remarkable to the eyes both of God and men.

Neither Saul nor Israel were faultless in other kinds; yet God fixes the eye of his revenge upon the massacre of the Gibeonites. Every sin hath a tongue, but that of blood overcries and drowns the rest. He, who is mercy itself, abhors

cruelty in his creature above all other inordinateness: that holy soul, which was heavy pressed with the weight of an heinous adultery, yet cries out, "Deliver me from blood, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall joyfully sing of thy righteousness."

If God would take account of blood, he might have entered the action upon the blood of Uriah spilt by David; or, if he would rather insist in Saul's house, upon the blood of Abimelech the priest, and fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod: but it pleased the wisdom and justice of the Almighty, rather to call for the blood of the Gibeonites, though drudges of Israel, and a remnant of Amorites. Why this? There was a perjury attending upon this slaughter; it was an ancient oath wherein the princes of the congregation had bound themselves, upon Joshua's league, to the Gibeonites, that they would suffer them to live; an oath extorted by fraud, but solemn, by no less name than the Lord God of Israel. Saul will now, thus late, either not acknowledge it, or not keep it; out of his zeal therefore to the children of Israel and Judah, he roots out some of the Gibeonites, whether in a zeal of revenge of their first imposture, or in a zeal of enlarging the possessions of Israel, or in a zeal of executing God's charge upon the brood of Canaanites: he that spared Agag, whom he should have smitten, smites the Gibeonites, whom he should have spared. Zeal and good intention is no excuse, much less a warrant for evil: God holds it an high indignity that his name should be sworn by, and violated. Length of time cannot dispense with our oaths, with our vows; the vows and oaths of others may bind us; how much more our own?

There was a famine in Israel; a natural man would have ascribed it unto the drought, and that drought, perhaps, to some constellations: David knows to look higher, and sees a divine hand scourging Israel for some great offence, and overruling those second causes to his most just executions. Even the most quick-sighted worldling is purblind to spiritual objects, and the weakest eyes of the regenerate pierce the heavens, and espy God in all earthly occurrences.

So well was David acquainted with God's proceedings, that he knew the removal of the judgment must begin at the satisfaction of the wronged. At once therefore doth he pray unto God, and treat with the Gibeonites; "What shall I do for

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