I. We have in this passage a remarkable instance of the spirit of true patriotism, all the more remarkable because, in one sense, patriotism is not quite the word to apply to Ittai, for he was a stranger and an alien, though a naturalised Israelite. In him we have a singular instance of that devotion to a person which will always be the leading characteristic of the Christian life. The legalist may be devoted to a system; the moralist may be devoted to an idea; the real Christian will be devoted to a Person,to the person of a living Christ.
II. Ittai was the kind of man that David wanted, and he is the kind of man that Christ wants now. There are many people ready enough to make the Lord Jesus Christ a kind of stepping-stone to help them into heaven. If they can make a convenience of Him and He can serve their purpose in a dying hour, it is all very well. It is not such as these the Lord wants. The "citizens of heaven" are men who are partakers of their Master's nobility.
III. It was the fact that David had received him as an exile that first bound Ittai's heart to him. We also are strangers and exiles. Christ gives us a home. Our adoption into His family should be a motive power which will bear us through all the shocks of the battle of life and make us "more than conquerors through Him that loved us."
W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons,1st series, p. 168.