Escape The Sword

Then Abner called to Joab and said, "Shall the sword devour forever? Do you not know that it will be bitter in the latter end? How long will it be then until you tell the people to return from pursuing their brethren?" 2 Samuel 2:26

Abner was the general of the army of Israel, and Joab was the general of Judah’s army. There was a great division in the land since the death of King Saul. Most of Israel followed Saul’s son Ishbosheth, who Abner had made to be King. Judah, David’s home tribe, followed him and the kingdom was divided. The scenes that follow Abner’s cry out to Joab get worse and worse, as we vividly imagine the suffering caused by these very angry people. We witness murder, betrayal, revenge, jealousy and other forms of hatred on the historical pages of 2 Samuel. The tragedy comes into focus even more when we realize that the people fighting are all cousins called by God to represent Him to the world. They failed miserably simply because they could not resist fighting each other long enough to put away anger and forget old rivalries.

Many people have asked how God could allow this to go on. After all these were God’s people. How far they had fallen in just a few generations from the mighty warriors of Joshua who kept the Lord’s command as they claimed the promised land, to two groups of people who had put their personal hatreds ahead of the greater good; the love of God.

They had indeed forgotten the mandate of God written in Deuteronomy 6:4-7 which says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” How careful we must be never to fall into the trap of hatred and envy. Of course in our niceness we can be really good at covering up these feelings we may harbor, but deep down we often hold on to things that bothered us about people in the past. It’s even possible that we had been wronged by someone and that person never apologized. We then hold that against them, never being released from the wound, and suffering for years with the pain of it. That’s how Joab and Abner lived. They knew no other life and in the end it was the very thing that killed them.

Let’s learn to live a better life than these two men and their followers by hearing and obeying the instructions they ignored. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31-32) This lesson will most assuredly lead to a life of love and peace that overcomes and defeats all the ugliness and hatred that is thrown at us. We won’t be devoured, because we put down the sword that we held against the neck of the one we were angry with and developed a relationship with them based on the love of Christ. Instead of pursuing our brethren we love them and obtain a lasting peace that the sword can’t give us.