1 Kings 2:8-9

And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei, the son of Gera.

David and Shimei

David’s death-bed has never been without its own difficulties to thoughtful and reverential readers. For Shimei with all his good and his bad uses comes back again to David’s death-bed to tempt and to try David, and to discover what is in David s dying heart. The death-bed sayings of God’s saints have a special interest and a delightful edification to us; but David’s last words to Solomon about Shimei--we would pass them by if we could. Three or four several explanations of those terrible words of David have been offered to the distressed reader by able men and men of authority in such matters. I shall only mention those offered explanations, and leave you to judge for yourselves. Well, some students of the Old Testament are bold to take David’s dreadful words about Shimei out of David’s mouth altogether, and to put them into the mouth of the prophet who has preserved to us David’s life and death. Those awful words, they say, are that righteous prophet’s explanation and vindication of the too late execution of Shimei by Solomon after his “reprieve,” as Matthew Henry calls it, had come to an end with the death of David. Others again, and they, too, some of our most conservative and orthodox scholars, say to us that the text should run in English in this way: “Hold him not guiltless; at the same time bring not his hoar head down to the grave with blood.” You will blame me for my too open ear to such bold scholarship; and you will think it very wrong in me to listen to such evil men. But the heart has its reasons, as Pascal says, and my heart would stretch a considerable point in textual criticism to get Shimei’s blood wiped off David’s death-bed. Another interpretation is to take the text as it stands, and to hear David judicially charging Solomon about a care of too long delayed justice against a blasphemer of God and the king. And then the last explanation is the most painful one of all, and it is this, that David had never really and truly, and at the bottom of his heart, forgiven Shimei for his brutality and malignity at Bahurim, and that all David’s long-suppressed revenge rushed out of his heart against his old enemy when he lay on his bed and went back on the day on which he had fled from Jerusalem. You can choose your own way of looking at David’s death-bed. But, in any case, it is Bahurim that we shall all carry home, and carry for ever henceforth, in our hearts. We shall have, God helping us, David’s Bahurim-mind always in us henceforth amid all those who insult and injure us, and say all manner of evil against us falsely; and amid all manner of adverse and sore circumstances, so as to see the Lord in it all, and so as to work out our salvation amid it all. And the Lord will look upon our affliction also, and will requite us good for all this evil, if only we wisely and silently and adoringly submit ourselves to it. (Alex. Whyte, D. D.)

The sins of godly men

There are three ways in which David may have been influenced in giving this dying injunction to his son--

I. As the agent, unconscious or otherwise, of Divine justice. We cannot conceive this measure as being the consummation of a Divine purpose, it had apparently so much about it of human plan. The Almighty’s power, when exerted in support of justice, has always been certain and direct in its action, without any reference to contingencies. A man’s punishment ,never precedes his crime, nor is inflicted without one. With God it is all justice or all mercy; no half measures. No sparing for a time in uncertainty or doubt as to our guilt, begetting in us a sense of false security, till suddenly the knell of.doom sounds on our deafened ears. How different from man’s punishment this. The very manner of Shimei’s death is the greatest argument against its having been ordained by God (verses 36-46.) David’s conduct in giving this dying injunction to his son may have been influenced--

II. By a conscientious desire to administer human justice, according to the will of God. David, we are told, was a man of God, one after His own heart. How; then, with such clear perceptions of the Divine attributes, can we conceive of him as acting in this matter conscientiously and with cool judgment, in the full belief of the harmony of his decree with Almighty rectitude? To do so is to dishonour the unswerving uprightness of God’s justice, or to depreciate David’s experiences and knowledge of the Divine character. We would rather be left to our final alternative in--

III. Regarding his injunction as prompted by revenge. As a man he forgave Shimei at the time of his crime, which, then, should have been utterly effaced from his memory. Heavenly justice, if not satisfied, would have taken its own way of vindicating itself, without further action on David’s part. With David as a man of God and Israel’s law-giver, we must utterly disconnect this act, and attribute it entirely to a flaw in his character, which, at the last, reasserted its natural power in antagonism to Divine grace. In nothing, during life, do men differ so greatly as at death. The weakest on earth often enter the gates of heaven triumphant. While yet in the flesh, one foot is firmly planted on the threshold of the mansion prepared for them. On the other hand, the spiritual giant now is frequently then but as a timid and fearful child; often, indeed, appearing to lose his entire spiritual existence in the fearful struggle which Satan and his earthly nature keep up in endeavouring to wrest another soul from heaven to people the wilderness of hell. (R. Liswil, B. A.)