Mephibosheth the son of Saul came down to meet the king.
Mephibosheth an enigma of motive
And Mephibosheth, also, the son of Saul, came down to meet the king. Our too otiose English is unjust to Mephibosheth; or else it has taken Mephibosheth’s infirmity in his feet much too seriously. Mephibosheth was not so crippled in his intellect, at any rate, as to stay in Jerusalem till the king came home. He was too eager for that to congratulate the king on his victory. We all know how the mind overmasters the body, and makes us forget all about its lameness on occasions. And Mephibosheth was at the Jordan all the way from Jerusalem almost as soon as Shimei himself. Four hundred years before, just at the same place, when the inhabitants of Gideon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai, they did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles old and rent and bound up, and old shoes and clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them, and all the bread of their provisions was dry and mouldy. And Joshua said, Who are ye, and whence come ye? And they said, From a very far country thy servants are come, because of the name of the Lord thy God. And Joshua made a league with them, to let them live; and the princes of the congregation sware unto them. And all that about Joshua and the Gibeonites came back to David’s mind when he saw Mephibosheth lifted down off his ass. For Mephibosheth had not dressed his wooden feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes for grief, so he said, from the day that the king departed. Nor had he taken time to-day to make himself decent for such a journey, such was his joy that the king was coming back again to Jerusalem, Yes, but what came of thee that morning, Mephibosheth? asked David. I looked for thee. I was afraid that in the overthrow some evil had befallen thee. Thou art not able to bear arms for me; but thy father so strengthened my hands in God that to have seen the face of his son that morning, and to have heard thy voice would have done for me and for my cause what thy father did. My lord, said Mephibosheth--but “the tale was as lame as the tale-bearer.” Ziba had stolen his ass just as he was mounting him to come with the king--and so on. David did not stoop to ask whose ass this was that Mephibosheth had got saddled so soon this morning. Say no more, Mephibosheth, said David, as he saw Jonathan’s son crawling so abjectly before him. Dr. Kitto complains of David’s “tart answer” to Mephibosheth. But if David was too tart, then with what extraordinary and saintly sweetness Mephibosheth received the over-tartness of the king. “Let Ziba take all my estates to-day forasmuch as nay lord the king is come again in peace to his own house.” No, there was nothing cripple in Mephibosheth’s intellects. “Mephibosheth was a philosopher,” says Dr. Parker. “I find no defect of his wits in Mephibosheth,” says honest Joseph Hall. And the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the Lord’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul. (A. Whyte, D. D.)
Self-interest the parent of ingratitude
In poor Mephibosheth’s case, it would seem as if his early and lifelong infirmity, taken along with the hopeless loss of his brilliant prospects, had all eaten into his heart till he became the false, scheming creature that David found him out to be. Hephaeston loved Alexander, while Craterus loved the king. And Jonathan was like Hephaeston in this, that he loved David at all times, whereas his son Mephibosheth resembled Craterus in this, that he preferred David on the throne to David off the throne. Jonathan strengthened David’s hand in God in the wood of Ziph; but Mephibosheth, like another classical character, fled the empty cask. How Mephibosheth’s heart had overflowed with gratitude to David when the royal command came that he was to leave Machir’s house:in Lo-debar, and was henceforth to take up his quarters in the king’s house in Jerusalem! All Mephibosheth’s morosity and misanthropy melted off his heart that day. But such was Mephibosheth at the bottom of his heart that, as he continued to eat at David’s table, Satan entered into Mephibosheth and said to him in his heart that all this was by original and Divine right his own. All this wealth, and power, and honour, and glory. But for the bad fortune of his father’s royal house on Mount Gilboa, all this would to-day have been his own. “Ingratitude,” says Mozley, “is not only a species of injustice, it is the highest species of injustice.” And the ingratitude of Mephibosheth grew at David’s table to this high injustice, that he waited for both David and Absalom to be chased out of Jerusalem, that, he might take their place. There is no baser heart than an ungrateful heart. And it was Mephibosheth’s ungrateful heart that prepared him for the baseness that he was found out in both at the flight of David and at his victorious return.
“The virtues were invited once
To banquet with the Lord of All:
They came--the great ones rather grim,
And not so pleasant as the small.
They talked and chatted o’er the meal,
They even laughed with temp’rate glee;
And each one knew the other well,
And all were good as good could be.
Benevolence and Gratitude
Alone of all seemed strangers yet;
They stared when they were introduced
On earth they never once had met.”
Dean Milman says that the writings both of Tacitus and Dante are full of remorse. And it is, as I believe, in our own remorse that we shall find the true key to Mephibosheth’s heart. When a government goes out of power, when a church is under a cloud, when religion has lost her silver slippers, and when she walks in the shadow of the street, and when any friend has lost his silver slippers--then we discover Mephibosheth in ourselves, and hate both him and ourselves like hell. And commentators have taken sides over the case of Mephibosheth very much as they have found that contemptible creature skulking in themselves, and have had bitter remorse on account of him. “I am full of self-love, fear to confess Thee, or to hazard myself, or my estate, or my peace. .. My perplexity continues as to whether I shall move now or not, stay or return, hold by Lauderdale, or make use of the Bishop. I went to Sir George Mushet’s funeral, where I was looked at, as I thought, like a speckled bird. .. Die Dom.
I find great averseness in myself to suffering. I am afraid to lose life or estate. Shall I forbear to hear that honest minister, James Urquhart, for a time, seeing the stone is like to fall on me if I do so?” And then our modern Mephibosheth has the grace to add in his diary, like the book of judgment: “A grain of sound faith would easily answer all these questions:--I have before me Mr. Rutherford’s letter desiring me to deny myself.” And though you will not easily believe it; the author of that letter himself has enough of Jonathan’s crippled and disinherited son still in himself to give a tang, and more than a tang, of remorse to some of his best letters. “Oh, if I were free of myself! Myself is another devil, and as evil as the prince of devils. Myself! Myself! Every man blames the devil for his sins, but the house and heart devil of every man is himself. I think I shall die still but minting and aiming to be a Christian man!” This, then, is the prize for finding out that enigma of motive, Mephobosheth’s hidden heart. This is the first prize, to receive of God the inward eye to discover Mephibosheth in our ourselves. (A. Whyte, D. D.)
Mephibosheth. .. had neither dressed his feet nor trimmed his beard.--
Regard for personal appearance
There is a very suggestive story told of Napoleon when his army was in dire need, retreating from Moscow in 1813. The soldiers were ragged, dirty, starved, and unkempt, and it seemed to be impossible to present the smart and orderly appearance which usually characterises troops on the march. But in the very heart of their necessity one of the generals came before Napoleon one morning as nearly attired as if for parade. The Emperor’s commendation was instant: “My General,” he said, “you are a brave man!” Napoleon was a man of the keenest and clearest insight, and he could read a character through a trifle. He knew perfectly well that a man who put care and energy and precision into a courtesy would not be lacking upon the field. Is not the story suggestive of the finer characteristics of the Christian life? Real Christian heroism manifests itself in trifles. How do we finish our speech? Into what kind of dress do we put our courtesies? In what form and manner does our service express itself? Are we as scrupulous and painstaking when little demand is made upon us, as we are amid the crises and heavier battles of life? Christian heroism is not only an affair of great conflicts, it also manifests itself on those smaller occasions when so many people relax both effort and desire. (Hartley Aspen.)