2 Samuel 9 · Story · Kindness
David and Mephibosheth
King David sought out Mephibosheth, the lame son of Jonathan, gave him Saul's land and seated him at the king's table.
Saul's grandson came before the new king face down and called himself a dead dog.
“Do not be afraid,” said David, “for surely I will show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”
- Where
- Jerusalem
- Who
- David, Mephibosheth
Summary
In 2 Samuel 9 King David asked whether anyone was left of the house of Saul to whom he could show kindness for Jonathan's sake. Ziba, a servant of Saul's family, named Jonathan's son Mephibosheth, who was lame in both feet. David told him not to be afraid, restored to him all the land of his grandfather and kept him at the royal table for the rest of his life. The kindness was a promise kept to a friend who had died, and it went to a man who could give nothing back.
- The Hebrew word for David's kindness at 2 Samuel 9:1, 2 Samuel 9:3 and 2 Samuel 9:7 is chesed, the loyal kindness of a covenant.
- Mephibosheth became lame at five years old, when his nurse fled with him at the news of Saul's and Jonathan's deaths and he fell (2 Samuel 4:4).
- During Absalom's revolt Ziba told David that his master hoped to be given back Saul's kingdom, and at the king's return Mephibosheth said that Ziba had deceived him (2 Samuel 16:3 and 2 Samuel 19:26).
- When David handed seven of Saul's descendants to the Gibeonites, he spared Mephibosheth because of the oath before the LORD between him and Jonathan (2 Samuel 21:7).
The King Who Looked for Someone to Be Kind To
Years after Saul and Jonathan fell on Mount Gilboa, David sent for the last son of his friend.
Promises made in a hard hour are easy to forget when the hour has passed and the one who asked is no longer there to ask again.
The story belongs to kindness, which Paul commands of every believer, because it shows kindness given for another's sake and kept through years of testing. It answers a plain question: how far does a promise of kindness reach? The account runs from 2 Samuel 9 through Absalom's revolt to a famine late in David's reign.
Then David asked, “Is there anyone left from the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for the sake of Jonathan?”David's question opens the chapter, and its last words give the reason for everything that follows.
The kindness had been promised years before, when David was fleeing Saul.
Six Events From the Oath to the Famine
Four of the six events fall in the reign of David.
David's kindness to Jonathan's son ran from an oath sworn while Saul still reigned to a famine in David's own reign.
- While Saul reignedJonathan makes a covenant with the house of David1 Samuel 20:14 to 17
- The day Saul and Jonathan diedThe flight from the news of Jezreel leaves Mephibosheth lame2 Samuel 4:4
- After David became kingZiba names Jonathan's son, and the king sends for him2 Samuel 9:1 to 13
- Absalom's revoltZiba's charge against his master during the king's flight2 Samuel 16:1 to 4
- David's return to JerusalemThe meeting at the Jordan2 Samuel 19:24 to 30
- The famine in David's reignJonathan's son is kept out of the Gibeonites' demand2 Samuel 21:1 to 9
A timeline of six events in the order the text tells them, each with its passage and none with a year, since the text gives none.
The Search, the Meeting and the Table
2 Samuel 9 moves from the king's question to a lame man living at the king's table.
Mephibosheth's lameness began on the day of Saul's defeat, and the narrator tells it before the account of the search.
And Jonathan son of Saul had a son who was lame in his feet. He was five years old when the report about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel. His nurse picked him up and fled, but as she was hurrying to escape, he fell and became lame. His name was Mephibosheth.The verse gives his age, the cause of his lameness and his name, which 2 Samuel 9 takes the reader to know.
When David asked a second time, he asked for anyone of Saul's family to whom he could show the kindness of God, and Ziba named Jonathan's son (2 Samuel 9:3).
“Where is he?” replied the king. And Ziba said, “Indeed, he is in Lo-debar at the house of Machir son of Ammiel.”Ziba's answer gives the place and the household where the grandson of Saul was living.
The king had him brought from there (2 Samuel 9:5).
And when Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he fell facedown in reverence. Then David said, “Mephibosheth!” “I am your servant,” he replied.David met the grandson of the king he had replaced by calling him by name.
David told him not to be afraid and made him three promises: kindness for his father's sake, all the land of Saul, and a place at the king's table for life (2 Samuel 9:7).
Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should show regard for a dead dog like me?”Mephibosheth's answer measures the gift by what he believed himself to be worth.
The king then put the land in Ziba's charge. Ziba, his fifteen sons and his twenty servants were to work the ground and bring in the harvest for Saul's grandson. Mephibosheth himself was always to eat at the king's table (2 Samuel 9:9 to 10).
And Ziba said to the king, “Your servant will do all that my lord the king has commanded.” So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table like one of the king’s own sons.The narrator gives the measure of the place David gave him: it was equal to a place among the king's own sons.
The chapter names Mephibosheth's young son Mica and counts the whole house of Ziba as his servants (2 Samuel 9:12).
So Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table, and he was lame in both feet.The last verse sets the table and the lameness side by side, so the chapter ends on the need the kindness met.
2 Samuel 9:6, 2 Samuel 9:8, 2 Samuel 9:11, 2 Samuel 9:13
The Kindness of God
The Berean text renders David's word kindness in all three of his sentences.
Where the same word stands in Jonathan's request, the Berean text renders it loving devotion.
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, took the kindness of God at 2 Samuel 9:3 to mean “the utmost, the highest degrees of kindness”. He added that “this kindness was according to the covenant of God made between him and the family of Jonathan.”
The Greek translation of the Old Testament, in the text Lancelot Brenton printed, renders chesed with eleos in David's first and third sentences and reads eleos Theou in the second. The lexicon gives the meaning of eleos as compassion, human or divine.
Machir and the Honour of David's Court
Machir's house returns in Absalom's revolt, and the king's table is named again at the Jordan and in David's last charge to Solomon.
Machir appears again in David's worst years.
When David came to Mahanaim, he was met by Shobi son of Nahash from Rabbah of the Ammonites, Machir son of Ammiel from Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite from Rogelim.Machir, who had given Jonathan's son a home, came to David at Mahanaim when he fled from Absalom.
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical, wrote that “David reaped the fruit of his kindness to Mephibosheth”, because Machir was one of those who provided for him and his army.
A seat at the royal table was a lasting honour at David's court. Mephibosheth said at the Jordan that the king had set him among those who eat at his table (2 Samuel 19:28). As his death drew near, David charged Solomon to let the sons of Barzillai eat at his table, because Barzillai had stood by him when he fled (1 Kings 2:1 and 1 Kings 2:7).
Chronicles calls Jonathan's son Merib-baal1 Chronicles 8:34 and 1 Chronicles 9:40
The Kindness Tested
Absalom's revolt set Ziba's word against his master's, and a famine set the oath against the Gibeonites' demand.
When David fled Jerusalem before Absalom, Ziba met the king a little beyond the summit with two saddled donkeys loaded with bread, raisins, summer fruit and wine (2 Samuel 16:1).
“Where is your master’s grandson?” asked the king. And Ziba answered, “Indeed, he is staying in Jerusalem, for he has said, ‘Today, the house of Israel will restore to me the kingdom of my grandfather.’”Ziba's answer made Saul's grandson a rebel who hoped the revolt would give him back his grandfather's kingdom.
David believed him and gave Ziba everything that belonged to Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 16:4).
When the revolt was over, Mephibosheth came down from Jerusalem to meet the returning king.
Then Mephibosheth, Saul’s grandson, went down to meet the king. He had not cared for his feet or trimmed his mustache or washed his clothes from the day the king had left until the day he returned safely.Before Mephibosheth speaks, the narrator reports that he had kept the signs of mourning for the whole of the king's absence.
He told David that he had meant to saddle his donkey and ride with him, and that Ziba had deceived and slandered him (2 Samuel 19:26 to 27).
The king replied, “Why say any more? I hereby declare that you and Ziba are to divide the land.” And Mephibosheth said to the king, “Instead, since my lord the king has safely come to his own house, let Ziba take it all!”Mephibosheth's reply gives up his share of the land for joy that the king has come home.
The last test came in a famine of three successive years, which the LORD told David was because of the blood Saul had shed when he killed the Gibeonites (2 Samuel 21:1). The Gibeonites asked for seven of Saul's descendants.
Now the king spared Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the oath before the LORD between David and Jonathan son of Saul.The verse is the narrator's last word on Jonathan's son.
Saul had a son of the same name by Rizpah2 Samuel 21:8 to 9
Rizpah daughter of Aiah had borne Saul two sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth. This Mephibosheth was among the seven handed over to the Gibeonites at the beginning of the barley harvest (2 Samuel 21:8 to 9).
2 Samuel 19:29 to 30, 2 Samuel 21:7
What the Account Leaves Unsaid
Four things the account leaves without an answer bear on how the story is read.
The account gives no year for David's search. It says only that Mephibosheth had a young son by the time he came to the king (2 Samuel 9:12).
It gives no reason for the timing of the search, and it does not say how Ziba knew where his master's grandson was.
At the Jordan the narrator reports Mephibosheth's mourning and gives both men's words, and he passes no verdict on Ziba's charge. David divided the land and did not say which man had lied (2 Samuel 19:24 to 29).
Kindness to One Who Could Not Repay
Jesus named the guests who cannot repay, and Matthew Henry read the king's kindness as a picture of God's.
Jesus told the man who had invited Him to dinner whom to invite to a banquet.
But when you host a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed. Since they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”The lame man at David's table is one of the guests Jesus names, those who cannot repay the host.
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, read David as a figure of Christ. He wrote that “because David was a type of Christ”, the king's kindness should “serve to illustrate the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards fallen man”. He added that God showed it although He was “under no obligation to, as David was to Jonathan.”
How Readers Weigh the Account
Readers ask what moved the king's kindness and which of the two men told David the truth.
David's kindness kept an oath sworn before GodJohn Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, on 2 Samuel 9:3
John Gill read the kindness of God as a kindness “in imitation of God, or such as he had sworn in the presence of God to show”. He sent the reader back to 1 Samuel 20:14. The narrator gives the same ground when he says that the king spared Mephibosheth because of the oath before the LORD (2 Samuel 21:7).
Saul's heir had reason to fear the new kingJohn Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, on 2 Samuel 9:1
The text bears out the fear, since David answered him, “Do not be afraid” (2 Samuel 9:7).
Mephibosheth stayed loyal and Ziba liedMatthew Henry; Adam Clarke, on 2 Samuel 19
Matthew Henry took Mephibosheth's side at 2 Samuel 19:27: “How much mischief is it in the power of a wicked servant to do to the best master!”
Adam Clarke wrote on 2 Samuel 19:29 that David, “too slightly trusting to his misrepresentation”, had given Ziba the land, and that “Now he finds that he has acted too rashly”. The strongest support in the text is the narrator's own report of the unwashed feet and clothes (2 Samuel 19:24).
Always at the King's Table
The chapter's last word on Mephibosheth is that he always ate at the king's table.
David's kindness began with a question about the house of Saul and ended with Saul's grandson provided for in Jerusalem for life. It held through a slander and a famine. Paul asks the same of the church, kindness grounded in what God has already given.
Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.The command reaches every believer, beyond a king's oath to one friend.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESG, Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0.
- The Septuagint, the Greek text of Lancelot C. L. Brenton's edition.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832)
- John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748 to 1763)
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869)
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