We’re coming towards the end of our series, ‘Learning from David’.
Last week, we looked at David the king. We saw that in the Bible, the foundation of God’s throne is righteousness and justice. I suggested that if righteousness and justice are the foundation of GOD’S throne – the key requirements for God’s kingship – then they are the key requirements for ANY throne – for any kingship. We looked at how David was committed to those qualities, and the Bible testifies that David displayed them. We also looked at how the Bible looks forward to Jesus and declares that Jesus will display those qualities. One of our famous Christmas verses is Isaiah’s prophecy about Jesus:
‘Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with JUSTICE and with RIGHTEOUSNESS from this time forth and for evermore’ [Isaiah 9:7].
When Jesus lived in Judea two thousand years ago, he didn’t act as judge. But when he comes again, he will.
Today, we’re moving on to David the judge.
Before we look at David as judge, I’d like to talk a little about judging in general.
There are at least three areas where the Bible teaches about judging.
One is the area of personal judgements. We look at people around us and think, ‘Look at how much money he’s got. He’s successful!’ ‘My boss constantly nitpicks.’ ‘The maintenance man is slow and careless.’
A second area of judgement is judgement at church.
A third area is formal judgement, judgement that typically takes place in a court with a judge. We can call this judiciary justice.
The Bible has a lot to say about personal judgements. Basically, it says, ‘Don’t.’ The Bible has quite a bit to say about judgements in church. Basically, it says, ‘Do.’ And the Bible has a lot to say about judiciary justice. Basically, it says, ‘Do.’
It would be great to talk about personal judgement and judgement in church. They’re important subjects. But they aren’t our subject today. Our subject today is judiciary justice. Mostly, we’ll be looking at how David did it. But I’d like to say one big, important general thing about judiciary justice before we do.
At one point, Moses gives instructions to the ancient Israelites about judiciary justice. For example, they have to appoint judges. They mustn’t accept bribes. Moses concludes by telling the people, ‘Justice, and only justice, you shall follow’ [Deuteronomy 16:18-20]. In other words, justice is really important. The people of Israel needed to pursue justice with a laser-like focus.
Let’s turn now to David the judge. You may well say to me, ‘We don’t have anything to do with judiciary justice!’ I have two answers to that.
If you study accountancy, your accountancy course will cover tax accounting and charity accounting and lots of other areas of accountancy. If you want to be an accountant, YOU HAVE TO LEARN these things. It’s part of the training. You might need to know about them. In the same way, God wants us to know about judiciary justice. It’s part of the training. We need to know about it.
Second, many of us can be involved in judiciary justice, if we choose to be. I’ll come back to that.
Let’s turn to David as judge. We’re now looking at the time in David’s life when he was king. This was when he formally had the role of judge. This is mostly covered in the Bible in the book of 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel is 24 chapters long. In other words, the Bible tells us quite a bit about the time David was king. I’m not sure what words you might think of to describe this period. A word that comes to my mind is ‘messy.’
I recently read a review of a movie. The reviewer wrote, ‘This fascinating story is superficially told through saccharine clichés.’ I don’t think the reviewer would write that about how 2 Samuel tells the story of David as king. The writer of 2 Samuel doesn’t tell the story of David as king in a superficial way. We get a lot of detail. The bad news for us is that we have to do some work to take in what’s going on.
David is king. As king, it’s his job to judge. In some cases, the cases he has to deal with are clearcut.
For example, David learns that two men have murdered Saul’s son and successor Ish-bosheth. He has them both executed.
As another example, David learns that in the process of him becoming king, Saul’s grandson Mephibosheth had lost some property that should properly have been his. David promises to restore it.
So, some of the cases David had to deal with were clearcut. But there were other cases which David had to judge which were not at all clearcut.
As I was preparing this talk, I read quite a bit about what commentators and preachers had written on the subject of David as a judge. Without exception, all of them believed that David was a failure as a judge. They believed that there were at least three instances when David should have judged but didn’t. The first was when Joab and his brother Abishai murdered Abner. The second was when David’s son Amnon raped his sister Tamar. The third was when David’s son Absalom murdered Amnon. Joab, Abishai, Amnon and Absalom committed serious offences. But David didn’t judge them or punish them. In the view of the commentators I read, David failed to do his job.
However, the Bible doesn’t take this view. I don’t want to get side-tracked and give a lot of Bible references. The Bible acknowledges that David made a serious mistake in the case of Bathsheba. But it doesn’t give ‘failure to judge' as one of his mistakes. On the contrary, it strongly implies that – with that one exception – David got it right. [If you’re interested, 1 Kings 15:5, 1 Chronicles 18:14 and Acts 13:22 are relevant.]
The Bible’s assessment of David and his judging is much more positive than the commentators’ assessment.
The commentators think that David got it wrong. He should have judged in these cases and didn’t. But the Bible doesn’t share that view.
In the cases of Joab, Abishai, Amnon and Absalom, David didn’t judge. He didn’t punish. David was effectively Lord Chief Justice. It was his job to make sure that justice was done. How could it have been right for David not to judge?
I said that I would describe the time of David as ‘messy.’
Let’s take the case of Joab and Abishai first. Joab and Abishai were David’s nephews. They were the sons of Zeruiah, one of David’s sisters. The fact that they were David’s close relatives immediately introduces a complication.
After Saul is killed in battle, the kingdom of Israel splits into two parts. One part – we’ll call it the house of Israel – sides with Saul’s successor, Ish-Bosheth. The other part – we’ll call it the house of Judah – appoints David as king. For a time, there’s civil war.
In 2 Samuel 2 we read of a battle between the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Joab was commander of the army of the house of Judah and a man called Abner was commander of the army of the house of Israel. In the battle, the house of Judah defeated the house of Israel. But during the battle, Abner killed Asahel – Joab and Abishai’s brother.
Let’s continue to 2 Samuel 3. After the battle, Abner approached David to look for a way to hand the whole kingdom over to him. Joab and Abishai hear about it and murder Abner – taking revenge for their brother.
So, in 2 Samuel 2, Joab brings about a great victory for David’s side. And in 2 Samuel 3, Joab commits murder. The two things follow one after another.
Joab and Abishai have done wrong. David knows it. He doesn’t condone it. He declares, ‘The Lord repay the evildoer according to his wickedness!’
But it’s a messy situation. A VERY messy situation!
First, Joab and Abishai are David’s close relatives.
Second, David is significantly indebted to Joab. He had just led the house of Judah to victory over the house of Israel.
Third, Joab is commander of the army. Practically-speaking, it would be very difficult for David to arrest Joab and have him executed for murder.
David comments, ‘I am weak today, though anointed king; and these men, the sons of Zeruiah, are too difficult for me’ [2 Samuel 3:39, NASB]. In effect, David was saying, ‘I’m king. But I can’t act against Joab and Abishai.’
All the Bible commentators and preachers I read found David at fault for not judging. But it was a very messy situation. I don’t believe David could have judged.
David couldn’t provide justice for Joab during his lifetime. But he didn’t forget that justice needed to be done. Before he died, he handed the job on to his son Solomon and Solomon had Joab executed. So, Joab got justice.
This is relevant to us today.
David’s situation reminds us that the real world is a messy place. We can’t always provide justice when we’d like to.
There are times we might want our courts to judge, to see that justice is done. But for one reason or another the courts can’t.
The courts in Germany have been catching up with Nazi war criminals from the Second World War for decades. No doubt the courts wanted to bring these people to trial much sooner, but they couldn’t.
Last year, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin. No doubt the ICC wants to bring him to trial, but it can’t.
Let’s move on to the second and third cases, relating to Amnon and Absalom. I’m going to look at them together. The crimes are different but the issue that complicates them is the same.
David’s first son Amnon raped his half-sister, Tamar. Two years later, David’s third son, Absalom, murdered Amnon.
It isn’t hard to imagine why David would have found these cases impossible to judge. He was these two men’s father. In the UK, a judge cannot sit in a trial if they have a close family relationship with a party to the case. A judge has to avoid situations in which there’s a conflict of interest or there could be the appearance of bias. If either Amnon’s or Absalom’s cases had come up in the UK, and David was there as judge, David would have had to say, ‘I can’t judge this case.’ In the UK, the judicial system would provide another judge. But David didn’t have that option.
In the UK today there is a principle of ‘separation of powers.’ The executive, the legislature and the judiciary are separate. But there was no separation of powers in David’s day.
The mechanisms we have to prevent judiciary complications didn’t exist in David’s day. The result was a messy situation. It was David’s job to judge. But it wouldn’t have been right for David to judge his sons and pass sentence on them. We can understand David not being willing to do that, and the Bible doesn’t condemn him for not judging in these cases.
What can we learn from all this? What are the takeaways?
One big general thing I want us to remember is what Moses told the people of Israel. ‘Justice, and only justice, you shall follow.’ God loves justice. He wants us to provide justice.
Second. Many of us CAN be involved in judiciary justice, if we want to be. There are issues of justice happening in the UK at the moment. A month or so ago, winter fuel payments were very much in the news. Right now, the assisted dying bill is being discussed. I’ve mentioned Adam Smith-Connor and the matter of silent prayer.
We can make ourselves heard in these issues. We can, for example, write to our MP. We can sign a petition. As of yesterday, 57,900 people had signed an open letter to Sir Keir Starmer to defend freedom of thought following Adam Smith-Connor’s case. I must admit that I haven’t done that. But I should.
Third, and most relevant to what we’ve been looking at today, we need to remember that the world we live in today isn’t so different to the world of David’s day. Situations sometimes ARE messy.
Sometimes, as in the case of Joab, something is wrong, but we can’t fix it – or at least, not immediately. That doesn’t mean we should forget about it entirely. David passed Job’s case on to Solomon and he dealt with it later. We might need to do that.
Sometimes, as in the case of Amnon and Absalom, one duty pulls us in one direction and another duty pulls us in another direction. Fulfilling one duty might mean not fulfilling another duty. We know that if we don’t fulfil some duty, it will cause other problems. But we have to make a choice. Sometimes – often, in fact – we can’t do everything we want to do. It’s impossible. We just have to make our choice and then say to ourselves, ‘No regrets.’
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 27th October 2024, 10.30 a.m. service
