2 Samuel 1:18

The use of the bow,

I.

Activity is a valuable solace for sorrow:--The people were very grieved; for Saul and Jonathan, the king and the crown prince, were slain. David indulges their grief: he writes them a plaintive song which the daughters of Israel may sing. But to take off their minds from their distress he at the same time issues the order to teach the children of Judah the use of the bow, for activity is an effectual remedy in the time of sorrow. Certainly the opposite of it would tend towards blank despair. Do not be tempted to brood over your affliction. Do not shut yourself up alone to ruminate upon the great ill that has befallen you, so as to nurse your wrath against God: this can do you no good whatever. You have heard of Alexander Cruden. Perhaps you do not know that he was crossed in love, and met with certain other trims which drove him nearly mad; and yet Alexander Cruden did not become insane, for he engaged upon the immense work of forming a concordance of sacred Scripture. This work kept him from becoming altogether insane. A valuable solace for sorrow is activity, especially, I think, in reference to new work. The poet Rogers tells us of a rich man in Venice who was the subject of despair, and became such a hypochondriac that he went down to the canal to drown himself; but on the way he was met by a poor little boy who tugged at his skirts, and begged for bread. When the rich man called him an impostor, the boy besought him to come home with him, and see his father and mother who were dying of starvation. He went up into the room, and found the family literally perishing for lack of food. He laid out the money which he had in his pocket in making them all glad with a hearty meal, and then said to himself that there was something worth living for after all. He had found a novel enjoyment, which gave a fresh motive for living. I would like to ask you who have suffered a great trouble whether the Lord may not be pressing you by this means into a new path of delight, directing you to a fresh method of glorifying God and doing good to your fellow-men.

II. An admirable use of disaster is to learn its lessons. What was the disaster? Saul and Jonathan had been shot by archers. The Philistines were evidently strong in the use of the bow; but Saul's army was short of archers, and so they were not able to smite the Philistines at a distance. Before they came to close quarters, where Israel might have been a match for Philistia, the arrows of the Philistines had reached their king. Had they known how to use the bow, they might have been conquerors; and therefore David hastens to teach the men of Judah the use of the bow.

1. Find out where your weakness is. Search and see. Is it a sin beguiled? Is it some point where you ought to have been guarded, but where you have been unwatchful? Is it weakness in prayer? Is it neglect of the word of God? Is it indifference to Divine truth? It is coldness of heart? Or what is it? If you have been defeated, there is a cause for it. If you have been cast down and brought low, say unto God, “Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me.”

2. Learn the way to victory. David judged that if they were defeated by the bow they might yet win by the bow. It is right to learn from our adversaries. There is something to be learnt from Satan. If he goes about, let us be diligent; if he seeks whom he may devour, let us seek whom we may save; and if he watches carefully to find out our weak points, let us watch those whom we would bless to find out how we may best reach their hearts.

3. A call to action--to general action. Saul had a little standing army, and did not drill all the nation for war; but David says, “I will teach all my own tribe the use of the bow.” Now, whenever a church begins to get low, dull, stupid, then it is time to teach the children-of Judah the use of the bow, and to wake them all up to holy enterprise. It was the glory of the Moravians that all their members were missionaries; and such ought to be the glory of every church: every man, woman, and child in the church should take part in the battle for Jesus. This, by God's grace, is the cure for spiritual decline: teach the people the use of the bow.

III. A noble monument to a friend is to imitate his excellencies. When Jonathan and David communed together they fixed the meeting by Jonathan shooting certain arrows: it is evident that Jonathan was a man who greatly favoured the use of the bow; and though his father did not largely introduce it into the army, yet Jonathan was well skilled therein. “Well then,” says David, “in memory of Jonathan, instead of piling up a great monument, we will teach the children of Judah the use of the bow.”

IV. It is great advantage to believers to learn the use of the bow spiritually. There is the bow of prayer. Its use has not gone out of date; but I wish that all of us knew how to shoot the arrows of the Lord's deliverance much better than we do. Holy men of old would pick out an arrow, and when they had chosen it they knew how to use it. They knew what they wanted, and they prayed for it. They fitted their arrow on the string: that is to say, they took God's promise, the promise that answered to their desire, and fitting the one to the other, they took straight aim at heaven, and watched the flight of the arrowy petition. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The song of the bow

David, after the bloody battle of Gilboa, in which he lost his old enemy, Saul, and his dear friend, Jonathan, infused into the hearts of the people a spirit of national pride. The words in the text, “the use of,” you will notice are not in the original; they are supplied, carefully printed by our translators in italics, to show that they are an interpolation, from the supposition that they were wanted to mark the sense of what followed. In fact, they are not needed. “The Bow” is the title of the poem which is then given, and it would rather read, “Also he bade them teach the children of Israel the song of the bow,”--the bow, by which their King and Prince had been slain; the bow, dear to the poet's memory as the means by which the young prince, Jonathan, had saved his friend's life, in that tender story when the unwitting lad through its instrumentality warned him; the bow, by which they were to assert and maintain their nationality. So he taught them not only the use, but he taught the song of the bow. Song filtrates and refines, gives passion and fervour to national feeling, and this, though so old, is a very wonderful song--surely one of the most pathetic and wonderful of all elegies, and it furnishes the key, and gives the fulness to that most wonderful of all funeral wails, the Dead March in Saul. The bow became representative of every kind of furniture of war. Just as bread stands for every kind of food in the Hebrew, so also the bow represents every kind of furniture for war. He turned, therefore, the death of Saul in his song into the means of bringing all the energies, the glowing patriotism of the land, upon national defence. He roused and concentrated the military spirit, and taught them the use, while he taught them the song, of the bow. History is inspiring. The bow, in Scripture, stands for something more than the mere engine of earthly war. Joseph was not a soldier, but it is the grand commendation of his character that “his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the mighty God of Jacob.” And you will notice that in the Bible no name becomes permanently great, no name is recorded of sterling and lasting worth, which is not moved by the Spirit of God, and which does not represent a firm compliance with His will. God spoke to each of these old heroes, God separated each, usually early in life. The heart looked up, knew the voice, owned it, and followed it. Life is no more matched and mastered without a struggle, without discipline and endeavour, than you are likely to be accomplished in your service of arms without training and trial. You know we speak of a Standard Bearer, and somebody has said that that means stand hard, and bear well.

2. The Song of the Bow is, therefore, a song of war. In the old Hebrew fashion, this is full of the grief of life. Nature is called, as it were, to put on mourning for the illustrious dead; “Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be on you no dew,” no refreshing shower, no bubbling desert spring. It is as if the plants and the woods were called to join in the melancholy wail, and the very flowers to sigh forth their grief; and it is so that in a great and sorrowful deprivation, trees and herbs, flowers and forests are called to sympathise with human sorrow; the rose to blush mournfully, and the anemone and the hyacinth to speak forth in their floral leaves the tokens of grief, what conquers, what overcomes this. The Song of the Bow is not only the song of battle, discipline, and trial, but a song of victory and triumph. In Christ we adore the God of resurrections. We see Him, indeed, whose bow was made quite naked in the sight of all the tribes; “there brake He the arrows of the bow, the spear, the shield in the battle;” there “He brake the bow, and snapped the spear in sunder.” Verily, when I think of the death of Christ and His resurrection, I feel that we may teach the children the Song of the Bow. Life is, indeed, full of resurrections. In many a floral and insect world she seems to exhibit something of the gospel of the resurrection, and hangs over the grave “resurrection lights.” From repulsive shells which look forbidding to the eye and the touch, emerge creatures delicate and beautiful, bursting their harsh black prison, and on gossamer wings soaring and sailing through light and air. Out of the body of crawling worms comes forth the winged splendour of the butterfly; it spun its shroud, its coffin, its grave, and so prepared for its resurrection; then, instead of creeping on the earth, and feeding on the dust, it indulges its variable flight and sucks the pollen from the fragrant flowers. (E. Paxton Hood.)

It is written in the book of Jasher.--

Lessons from a lost book

Without entering into the controversy on “the book of Jasher,” let us consider the text as it is presented in our version. We have in the text an illustration of--

I. The combination of the poetical and the practical in one person. Where will you find a truer, sweeter, deeper, more gifted poet than David? Where will you find a more natural and soul-moving lyrical outburst of grief than this over Jonathan? Tennyson's tender and touching, delicate and profound, and, to bereaved hearts, unspeakably precious “In Memoriam” is poor compared with this Davidic ode. Yet the poet, in his sorrow and his dirge, is wise, forecasting, politic, practical. With the bow and arrow Saul and Jonathan had been slain, so David would have the children of Judah well trained in “the use of the bow.”

1. When the poetic is unpractical, merely dreamy, unsubstantial, vain, it loses all true worth--ceases, indeed, to be poetry; for the poet, as the name indicates, is a maker, a creator.

2. When the practical is dissociated from the poetic, it becomes dreary, unexalting, ignoble. When men aim at the merely utilitarian, they miss even their own low mark. We need the ideal, the poetic, in combination with the practical and utilitarian, to attain to completeness and symmetry. “The use of the bow” and the use of the lyre must go together, if we would have a symmetrical order of things--a cosmos.

II. the disorder of human nature. Saul and Jonathan are slain. The earth has not yet absorbed their blood. A deep, genuine, sacred sorrow is wailing in sad minor key through the soul of David. Surely it is a most pathetic, reverent time with the poet king! Yet he must give instructions as to “the use of the bow.” Sorrowing for the absent ones removed by skilful archers, yet he deems it prudent to have the children of Judah made skilful archers, that they in their turn may make wives widows, happy children orphans, and take other Jonathans away from other Davids. There must be some “cursed obliquity” in human nature; the normal must have given place to the abnormal, ere this could have come to pass. The Biblical narrative of human apostasy is, we believe, the key to the enigma.

III. The impermanence of human works. Where is “the book of Jasher?” Who knows it? What did it contain? Was it in prose or poetry? Was it dialectical or didactic? We know something of the theories concerning it; but with any theory we must feel how impermanent are human doings. Suppose it means:

1. A book by some one named Jasher. Well, who was he? What was his character? What was his book about? Where now is all the treasure of his heart and brain, which he poured forth in his book? Alas! Jasher, we condole with thee.

2. A book for the regulation of equity between man and man. How sad that any attempt, even the feeblest, to rectify the disordered state of human affairs, should fail! Surely, in any normal state, any effort to promote equity should succeed and be remembered. But even such a book is not permanent.

3. A book in which the heroic deeds of righteous men were recorded. That must live !A righteous man--how grand! But what adjective is adequate to set forth “the heroic deeds of a righteous man”? A righteous man and heroic worker--surely the book that speaks of such must live! Alas, no! This book of the heroic deeds of the upright has gone.

IV. The permanence of life, as contrasted with its temporary human records. “The book of Jasher” is no more; but the men and their deeds of whom it contained records, they are not no more; the men live, the influence of the deeds lives. Books pass away, men endure; records of deeds are soon lost, the influence of deeds lives on. Do not write a poem; live a poem. Trouble not about the record of the life; but be careful of the life. “The book of Jasher” may be unimportant; but the life of Jasher is of incalculable importance, perhaps to many, certainly to Jasher. (William Jones.)

The book of Jasher

There is great diversity of opinion as to “the book of Jasher,” or, as it is given in the margin, “the book of the upright.” It is mentioned only here and in Joshua 10:13. Here are some of the opinions concerning it which seem to us more or less probable:

1. That it was a book of upright or authentic records or chronicles, probably those of the high priest, and from which much of the Old Testament history was compiled.

2. That Yashar “is better taken as a collective term for Israelites, like y'sharim in Numbers 23:10; Psalms 111:1; and so translated Book of the Israelites, i.e. national book” (Fuerst). The same theory is put thus by Mr. Aldis Wright: “The book of Jasher. .. so called because it contained the relation of the deeds of the people of Israel, who are elsewhere spoken of under the symbolical name Jeshurun.

3. That it was a collection of state poems, written by some one named Jasher, and probably a continuation of “the book of the wars of Jehovah” (Numbers 21:14).

4. Others assert that it was a collection of national songs, and in proof of this allege that Yashar is equivalent to Hashshir, the song or poem.

5. That the book of Jasher contained the deeds of national heroes of all ages “celebrated in verse, and included Joshua's victory over the five kings of the Amorites (Joshua 10:1.), and David's lament over Saul and Jonathan.

6. That it was a choice collection of ancient songs, and was called “the book of the just or upright,” because it celebrated the praise of upright men. We may fairly conclude that it was written in verse “from the only specimens extant, which exhibit unmistakable signs of metrical rhythm”; but with regard to the contents nothing can be confidently affirmed. We ought also, perhaps, to call attention to the difference of opinion as to the meaning of “the bow.” Instead of supplying the use of, as the translators of the A.V. have done, some would read “the song of the bow.” “He bade them teach the children of Judah the bow,” i.e. the “following threnody, which was so called either because Saul was shot by an archer, or because the bow of Jonathan is here celebrated (verse 22). Others regard “the bow” as the name of some musical instrument. (William Jones.)