1 Chronicles 13:6
To Baalah, that is, to Kirjath-jearim (see Joshua 15:9-11; 1 Samuel 4:7; 2 Samuel 6:2; where the name is spelt with a final yod instead of he). A third name of this same place, Kirjath-baal, is found in Joshua 15:60; Joshua 18:14. Probably the present 'Arms, a ruin (i.q. Kirjath-arim, Ezra 2:25) on the brink of the valley of Sorek, may be the place. We read in Joshua 9:17-27 how the men of Kirjath-jearim had been made by Joshua "hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation, and for the altar of the Lord." Hither to this Kirjath-jearim the ark had been conveyed from Bethshemesh (1 Samuel 7:1, 1 Samuel 7:2), and here it "abode" long time, "for it was twenty years." Perhaps the word "abode" in this passage may be equivalent to abode unmoved (1 Samuel 14:1-52.18, 19). For though the chronology from the death of Eli, through the remainder of Samuel's career and of Saul's, seems almost hopelessly uncertain, yet it would appear certain that the interval exceeded twenty years, to the time that David now takes in hand to bring home, as it were, the ark. The ark of God, the Lord. Though the Authorized Version of this passage is better and cleverer than that of the parallel (2 Samuel 6:2), yet it is left somewhat obscure. The comma should follow the name God. Jehovah sitting upon the cherubim then follows as a clause in apposition, while the last three words (as the name is called, rather than whose name) state that clause to contain "the Name of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 10:8; Deuteronomy 31:9; 1 Samuel 4:4; 1 Samuel 5:3; 1 Samuel 6:8). Bertheau, following Thenius, proposes to change the Hebrew שֵם into שָׁם. But there are abundant objections to this.
1 Chronicles 13:7
They carried; the Authorized Version of the parallel "they set" But the verb is the Hiph. of רָכַב, a word carrying more of majesty in its use (Deuteronomy 33:26; Job 30:22; Psalms 18:11; Psalms 68:1-35:38; Isaiah 19:1). A new cart. The stress laid on the newness of this cart, the term being twice repeated in the parallel passage, may justly remind of Mark 11:2; Matthew 27:60 (see 'Speaker's Commentary' on 2 Samuel 6:3). The house of Abinadab. There is no mention of Abinadab that would indicate that he still lived, even when twenty years before, the ark was placed in his house. Eleazar was his eldest son (1 Samuel 7:1), and was "sanctified to keep the ark of the Lord." Uzza and Ahio were possibly sons of Eleazar, and not sons of Abinadab, and Eleazar's younger brothers. The Septuagint translates Ahio, and accordingly reads, "Uzza and his brethren drave the cart."
1 Chronicles 13:8
Played before God. The Hebrew word is the Piel of שׂחק, the root of which, from the simplest meaning of "to laugh" (and with the two appropriate prepositions used for laughing with an expression of derision or contempt), through the two further meanings of "sporting" and "jesting," passes to the signification of dancing" (1 Samuel 18:7; Jeremiah 31:4). Its deepest idea seems to be "to make merry," and to savour of the very same ambiguity attaching to that idiom with ourselves. The parallel of this passage exhibits "before the Lord." With all their might. See the evident mistake of the parallel ("on all manner of instruments made of firwood," literally, with all firwoods) through similarity of the Hebrew characters. Cymbals and… trumpets. Of the five names of musical instruments, the same in number in both passages, the first three are the same in the Hebrew, but these last two are different words, וּבִמְצִלְתַּיִם וּבַחֲצֹצְרוֹת here for וּבִמנַענִעים וּבְצלְצליִם A variation of this particular kind again indicates with some decisiveness the different character and the number of the sources from which the writers of the Books of Samuel and those of Chronicles took.
1 Chronicles 13:9
The threshingfloor of Chidon. For Chidon, the parallel place has Nachon; possibly these are two names of the same place, or one form is a corruption of the ether; but there is nothing to determine for us which. Owing to the meaning of Nachon being "prepared," the version of Aquila is "to the prepared threshingfloor," with which the Jonathan Targum agrees, and (for this Chronicles passage) the Joseph Targum gives אֲתַר מְתַקַּן. The threshing-floor was a circular plot of hard ground, from fifty to one hundred feet in diameter, on which the oxen trampled out the grain. Threshingfloors evidently often became landmarks, and helped to designate places (Genesis 50:10; 2 Samuel 24:16). The oxen stumbled. In the parallel place the Authorized Version renders "shook it." The Hebrew verb is the same ( שָׁמַט) in both places. Its elementary meanings are "to strike" and "to throw down." Perhaps the meaning is near the Vulgate rendering, calcitrabant, and equivalent to the rendering, became restive.
1 Chronicles 13:10
There seems some little uncertainty as to why Uzza was to blame in a desire that would appear both praiseworthy and instinctive, to steady the ark or save it from actually falling. Uzza was probably not a priest or Levite, and it is so distinctly said his sin consisted in putting his hand to the ark, that perhaps the direction of Numbers 4:15 may be sufficient account of the matter. Special injunction had been given (Exodus 25:14,Exodus 25:15) that the poles with which to bear it should not be taken out of the rings, but be always stationary there. If we suppose that it was not a question of the ark being absolutely overthrown, but simply of its riding unsteadily, his presumptuousness would not have the further defence of an instinctive impulse.
1 Chronicles 13:11
Displeased. The Hebrew root. ( חָרָה) betokens a mixture of anger and grief. It is the word used of Jonah (iv. 1, 9), and perhaps our English word "vexed" or "hurt," would convey its meaning. Had made a breach; literally, had broken forth a breaking forth on Uzza; i.e. had fiercely broken forth on Uzza. There are many exactly analogous uses of both verb and noun in the Hebrew. To this day. This phrase, also found in the parallel place, indicates the lapse of time from the historical point of time to the point of record.
1 Chronicles 13:13
Obed-edom the Gittite. That Obed-edom is called "the Gittite," i.e. of Gath-rimmon, a Levite city of Dan (Joshua 21:24), might probably indicate that there was another Obed-edom, from whom to distinguish him. Such a one would appear readily to offer in the name of Obed-edom, son of Jeduthun, a "Merarite Levite" (1 Chronicles 15:18-24; 1 Chronicles 16:5, 1 Chronicles 16:38; 1 Chronicles 26:4-15). But the difficulty occurs that an expression in this last quotation seems to identify him with the Obed-edom of 2 Samuel 6:11; and the last sentence of our next verse. If they are one and the same, it has been suggested that marriage might account for the Merarite living in a Kohathite city (see 'Speaker's Commentary' on 2 Samuel 6:10).
HOMILETICS
1 Chronicles 13:1-14 -The chapter of reverse; or, the good enterprise of a good man overthrown in a day.
Before viewing this chapter in any detail, there is a general impression which it makes, and that, though general, yet not vague, but of a commanding sort. Here is, so to put it, a certain day in a man's life, an important day, one looked for and consecrated to high end. It rose bright and its joy spread. With intense activity the work is set about, and it is at all events designed and superintended by a good man, though it is not possible that he should, in his own person, carry out every detail of it. That great day ended in disappointment and disaster. And though the proximate cause of this reverse of all that was intended, hoped, and prayed for is plainly enough told, the providence that permitted it in place of preventing it seems obscure. Such days happen in not a few lives, not least in the lives of men in exalted and responsible position. They produce sometimes a wounded spirit, a sense of aggravation and of intense disappointment and grief. Large thought, large care, large love, seem to have been thrown away and rebuffed. And though fault may have been, yet that fault, the fault of a mere subordinate, visits its worst effects upon the chief persons involved in the enterprise, or on a whole community, or upon both. It may throw some light on such disappointments and catastrophes in our own experience or under our own immediate observation if we view them at a little greater distance and as they befell others. Notice, then —
I. THE ENTERPRISE ITSELF AND THE NATURE OF IT. It is to bring again the ark to some place of right, of honour, of influence.
1. To bring it back to the royal city was only to give it
Even the ark out of sight was only too liable to be proportionately out of mind. There is, therefore, nothing of the nature of a mere empty demonstrativeness in the activity of David and his people. Of national, historic, and revealed sanction, what they sought to do that day was the proper thing to do. Again, it was something more than merely the becoming thing to do.
2. It was a holy thought and a holy deed. For the ark was a symbol of the highest kind; it spoke to all who knew of it of the Divine presence. To bring such a remembrancer into the midst of the nation and to its metropolis was to put it also at its moral centre, and where it would radiate forth innumerable rays of light and truth and warmth. Here placed, it taught
3. It was a course tending to the higher health of all to bring that ark back. Not mere addition to ecclesiastical pomp and furniture and display, nor to a pervading and penetrating sense of the awful and the infinite in contact with human life, it brought in benigner influences as well. Hope for the sinner; pardon for the penitent; soothing to save from despair; bright and happy thoughts of the supreme Father. That mercy-seat and overshadowing cherubim served to break up into welcome radiancy what would otherwise be the insufferable blaze of the eternal Light himself. It is like an infinite nature parting itself into those attributes by which alone partial and finite creatures like ourselves can in any wise lay hold upon it with comfort. Mere soothing, mere comforting, mere subduing influences will not necessarily minister to the higher education of either individual or community, but such influences as these must do so. And the known and offered mercy of God, just so fenced as it is, must be all pure gain to those who look to it and live in it.
II. THE FAILURE AND THE PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES OF IT. Though to the eye that looks on the outside only it might then have seemed, and may now seem, that it was not altogether necessary that failure should have been allowed to be the result of the day and of what happened upon it, yet:
1. as matter of fact, this was the verdict, very decisively pronounced by the person who bore the principal part in the transaction, and apparently no objection, no remonstrance is made by any others, and they were many, involved in the loss. That the outer reason was not very patent, and the obstacle not very physical, may make the difficulty the worse. Nervous complaints may be largely compounded of fancies—these their chiefest ingredients—yet they are, as matter of fact, not a whit the less real; they are the stubbornest to hold their own, and most indocile to argument or to persuasion. Much more are conscientious complaints untractable, and justly so. Force will not drive them, persuasion will not conquer or stifle them, their reason is deep-hidden within themselves. And something of this kind must have been at the heart of the matter when David found himself so appalled and so stricken by a certain kind of impression which he received upon the death of one person—an event which must have been, in all ordinary aspects, one of the commonest sights for David. That the failure, therefore, arose from the unseen and the intangible forces that were set active confessedly by the death of one man made by no means a less real, less serious obstacle, but rather the reverse.
2. The failure was very unexpected. It certainly was very unexpected as matter of fact. But it was also unexpected in the further degree that, if it had been thought of—if it had entered into the passing stream of thinking of any one, it would have been at once carried. out of the current and surrendered itself to the nearest eddying. For
3. The failure was of a sort to have many and wide effects and also cross-effects. How much thinking of friend and foe would be stirred! How many tongues of friend and foe would allow themselves licence! How would the matter be viewed from one point and another! Its relation to the king and what he had so fervently desired—to the people and their recent union under one king, would be eagerly scanned. The ill omen would be quickly discerned by those who wished ill to David or to Israel. And many a sincere heart would share the pain and anxious doubt and the fear of David himself. There can be no doubt that the greater the previous interest and enthusiasm in the undertaking, and pious zeal towards it, so much severer now the stroke and the shock to all concerned.
II. THE POSSIBLE USES AND EXPLANATION OF THE FAILURE. In default of being able to assign any one positive reason for the disappointment of this day, and for the fact that it fell heavy on those apparently free from blame and inspired with all good feeling and purpose it is ever open to us to notice results. We may reverently track consequences of Divine judgments and providence, and thence gather something of their origin, even where it would be most irreverent to dogmatize on these causes, to challenge the equity or to criticise the disposition of them. The deepest sorrows, the bitterest griefs, the keenest strokes which fall upon the humble and the wise, are ever found to lead to conduct similar to this in our actual life. When the severest has passed, and we are recovered but a little from the shock, we begin to cast about to inquire with solemn self-searchings what hidden fault there was in ourselves, to what great danger we were drawing near, heedless and unwitting, and at least what residuum of good we may derive out of so much evil and suffering. This is right conduct personally, and to follow the lines of such a practical analogy may help us see our way through many a deep thicket of the world's dark history. We never do right when we would "do wrong that good might come." But God ever does right and kindness when he directs trouble upon us, upon our very head, into our very heart, that good may come of it. It is his to chasten, and he chastens for our profit. And thus, when we have seen Uzza, the rash offender, suffer what must have been the just reward of his deeds, and he is passed away, we can but return to ask what lesson the deep and widespread disappointment had for all the rest, high and low. In what significant moral sense of this kind did this disaster find its root? And the answer is of this kind.
1. It may very possibly have been that outward zeal exceeded discretion and sincere piety.
2. It may have been that David and those high ecclesiastical officers with whom lay the ultimate responsibility had not given sufficiently careful instruction to those who only served, and had neglected to copy the well known minuteness and accuracy o! their old and revered Law. If so, they had failed of their duty in very high and significant respects.
3. It is certain that, for sanctified uses, this event must have deepened the solemn fear and respect toward the ark and him of whom it told throughout all the people far and wide who had lost some of that essential reverence for it during its long absence.
4. The disaster and disappointment were not a final loss. The delay of "three months" taught fear, raised hope, chastised self-trust, and helped educate to religion a whole people and their priests and king.
1 Chronicles 13:1, 1 Chronicles 13:2, 1 Chronicles 13:4.-The rule that makes a willing people.
These verses discover to us the first, or some of the first, things which David did on finding himself now ruler over an entire and united people. And they serve to illustrate in particular, not merely the good and wise thing which he did, of which we shall speak hereafter, but the good and wise manner in which he set about doing it. Many a promising career has been spoilt by neglecting to observe the method which David now pursued, and diligently pursued, when the career that Providence may have opened has been of the same nature, namely, that of ruler or leader of men. Notice —
I. THE HIGH ESTIMATE SET UPON NATIONAL AND RELIGIOUS HARMONY. The ruler now evidently bids for no mere outer form of this, but for the presence of the deep, genuine spirit of it in his people. The captains and all the leaders and all the congregation if all these will think, and love, and determine, and do the same things, he will be satisfied, and his heart will rejoice. Though possibly he might have been in policy compelled to take less than this and effect or at least accept a compromise, it is this for which he makes his first bid, and that a sincere and hearty bid. The mere acknowledgment of so great a principle was a happy inauguration of his own kingship and a favourable omen for his reign. He had learnt not a little of the intrinsic value of this harmony in previous affliction of his own, in observation of how things had gone in the notorious absence of it with Saul, and partly in his own experience while he ruled over only a portion of the people. And having now gained the opportunity, he seizes it almost eagerly, he sanctifies it by an immediate practical honouring of it, and does his best not to lose early or needlessly so great and splendid an offer of Providence. Who can estimate the value of the act of a man already known as a good man, and occupying the place of a great man, when he thus sees the opportunity of advertising before a whole nation (not the individual quality of individual character, which haply might claim retirement for its perfection, best blossom in the dark and be "born to blush unseen," but) that intrinsically good and Heaven-born principle which the arbitrary disposition and the despot would have made it their first endeavour to trample underfoot and hide out of the way? The man who stamps a beneficent principle of this kind with royal approbation—with that most royal kind of approbation which belongs to exalted and wide moral influence—is one of the very chiefest of the benefactors of his kind, and honours his own nature and its Author at the same time. His deed is one of the best in kind, most multifarious in good effect, and most far-reaching in place and lime. The fashion of the selfish, the haughty, the arbitrary, is the contrary—to smother with jealous fear for themselves and their supposed influence the growth of opinion and private judgment the co-operation and the sympathy of the many, while they love their obedience best when it is the blindest.
II. THE RATIONAL WAY TAKEN TO OBTAIN THAT HARMONY. This was shown in two degrees. David is not a leveller. He knows well the principle of hierarchy, which nature itself illustrates in every direction, but nowhere more than in the gift and circumstance of man. These distinctions he does not affect to ignore or to despise. So
1 Chronicles 13:3-Religious resolution based on regretful memories
David certainly wishes to make a contrast, and a decided one, between the days and the administration of Saul and those of himself; for it was ripe time, both that such contrast should be made, and made patent to all the nation. Yet, as we have read what he says and does, we do not take the impression that he desires to make that contrast ostentatiously, invidiously, or with any degree of triumphant antipathy toward his predecessor. What he does desire is to make it effective and real. Indeed, though we cannot hold David responsible for the way in which things went in the days of Saul, and for the neglect and dishonour shown to the ark as well as to not a few other of the observances of religion, yet his tone falls on our ear with something of the sound of self-reproach. And although it is impossible that he could in deep earnest have held himself responsible for those things—to profess it could have amounted to mere affectation—yet for all this we observe that he now speaks as though he would voluntarily include himself in his measure amongst the number of those involved in the fault and certainly in the disastrous consequences of it. He classes himself and those whom he is exhorting in the one common number of those who, let the causes be what they might, had long lived in neglect of some of the highest exercises and privileges of their religion. May we not justly set this down again to the forgiving temper and delicate feeling and refined nobility of spirit in David, to which his treatment of Saul had already often borne witness while Saul yet lived and though he was his bitterest foe? Therefore is it that David now abstains from making any needless, any profuse references to the chief causes of the irreligion of the past reign. He does not at all enlarge upon the conduct of the arch offender, though in the necessity of things he mentions his name. Two simplest sentences tell the tale of what weighs deeply on his heart: "Let us bring again the ark of our God to us: for we inquired not at it in the days of Saul." Let us notice —
I. THE RESOLVE UPON IMMEDIATE AMENDMENT, AND THE IMMEDIATE PROCLAMATION OF IT. We cannot doubt that the mind of David was made up, that his resolution was formed. He is no sooner king of the whole people than he acknowledges the necessity of the presence and the ark of the God of the whole people. "Arise, O Lord, into thy rest, thou and the ark of thy strength:" this is his heart's earnest prayer. And he does not merely "in secret" pray, but takes the responsibility of exhortation. He does not smother his convictions, nor utter them with bated breath, nor hope others will take them up and work them out while he slumbers; but he has the courage of his convictions, and as it were in the audience of the whole people, he rouses their sense of duty and calls them to a practical, even though tardy, repentance. Clear duty is always to be honoured by prompt attention to it and by prompt summons of others to it. And it is to be observed with painful consequence that it is clear interest, clear policy, clear present gain, that too often wins this prompt attention, rather than clear duty in those very highest forms of it which the pure acts of religion involve. First then, the own prompt thought of David, and secondly, his unshrinking call to others, bespoke a genuine religion in this matter in him. He is baulked by no shamefacedness, by no timidity of such as sometimes seem to think that their religion requires apologizing for, and that they may rule it rather than be implicitly ruled by it. But David betrays the real spirit of thorough amendment, and, though the waters of repentance should need to run deep and very deep, they will safely bear a man through them.
II. THE FAITHFUL PRESENCE OF ONE OF THE GREATEST HELPS TO THE AMENDMENT OF PRACTICAL REPENTANCE, namely, a frank admission and public confession of the exact facts of the case. Nothing is a surer deterrent for a repentance that might be than an unwilling facing of the exact state of things. Nothing augurs more surely that the repentance will die off with the transitoriness of a "morning cloud" than that it be unaccompanied by an uncompromising confession, or be accompanied with but a feeble, partial confession. But the assertion now made without fear of contradiction is of the most unequivocal: "We did not inquire at it in the days of Saul." As though in our own days a man highly placed and of authority says of himself, and involves a large number of others in the assertion, while he looks them steadfastly in the face, "We were never on our knees;" "We forgot to pray;" "We lived long, perilous, anxious years without prayer." To tell myself honestly my own greatest sin, and make confession thereof to one's own soul argues two things —
However that sin was to be shared, and whoever might be justly charged with being chiefly answerable for it, the nation Israel could not be brought in guilty of a greater or more suicidal sin than that of neglecting "to inquire at the ark." Well may we imagine that unmeasured pathos, sincerest self-condemnation, underlie this confession, "For we inquired not at it in the days of Saul."
III. THE ENTIRE ABSENCE OF ANY APPARENT DISPOSITION TO EXPLAIN AWAY THE SIN. No excuse is suggested, no palliation is hinted. The bare fact announced seemed as though to make each one who heard, as well as him who had spoken, hold his breath. There is no offer on the part of David to point to what, so far as fact was concerned, he might justly have pointed—the clear, bad example of Saul, and the distracted, divided, worried nation, chief thanks to Saul. Adam, as the most natural thing in the world, early in the world as he was, attempted to push his sin a step further, though to fix it on Eve; and Eve acted after an exactly similar type. But David seems now to teach how convinced, utterly, he is that no such subterfuge can be anything but the subterfuge of an hour. He seems to know well what Ezekiel declared with such unsparing directness, none should elude it, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Were there a hundred manifest explanations, a hundred plausible excuses of the fact that Israel for a generation or for one year does "not inquire at the ark," not all these will for one moment deliver Israel from its own inevitable loss, all the worse because self-inflicted, all the more cruel because ushered in by high precedents. And let there be a sin attaching to any one of us, a favourite, a besetting sin; and let us be able to give a hundred explanations and a hundred palliations of it. These hinder our confession, but do not help our soul; they hinder our estimate of our own sin, but lessen not its malignant nature; they hinder our likely breaking free, for ever free, but do not compensate for our not being free.
IV. THE ILLUSTRATION PRESENTED OF THE DUTY OF BREAKING AWAY THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE FROM COMPLICITY WITH OTHER MEN'S SINS. Whatever was David's share in the sin and the loss of the nation that had not for so long a time "inquired at the ark," now there comes for him the time when he has to consider the position he holds with regard to the matter, no longer as a private citizen and as an individual man, but as successor to Saul, and first man in the realm. It is found by some one of the hardest things, not simply to break down their own habits, but to break through others' precedents. Any number of anomalies are condoned and are still permitted to exist because they have existed, and perhaps existed long. But the anomalies of sin against God and sin against man can never be justly condoned on this principle, come they recommended by any number, any length, any kind of precedents. In nothing, perhaps, is the force of precedents more willingly felt, more tamely succumbed to, than in matters of religion and religious significance. And it is here that they should least of all be honoured thus. "To the Law and to the testimony" must they be brought. The ark has been neglected; the Bible has been unstudied, unmeditated; the closet of prayer has been unfrequented. It has got fashionable "to forsake the assembling of ourselves together;" and it is considered wit to level gibe and sarcasm against God's great ordinance of preaching. To break through all this and subvert it, and begin afresh before the eye of man requires strong conviction, real religion, great courage. David frees himself with few enough words at the expense of his predecessor from any complicity with his career. He sees the steps that may be retraced, the evil courses that may be reformed, and the mischief that may be repaired, and he gives himself no rest till the great task is begun and concluded. With him in this matter to see is to conquer.
1 Chronicles 13:12.-A mortifying stumble sanctified.
On the threshold of his reign David desired to dean act especially right, and on the threshold it seems that he is destined to encounter in that very attempt failure and keenest disappointment. With enthusiastic faith in the ark, it is his heart's first and deepest desire to bring it again home—at least to some place more like permanence and honour. And in the bringing of it, through no apparent fault of his own, the enterprise fails, disastrously and fatally. This issue he must feel equivalent to a personal and very severe rebuff. Yet there is scarcely room to doubt that honest motive, religious feeling and principle, and an ardent faith dictated his desire and attempt. And as little room is there apparently to doubt that David reckoned on the helpful protection of Providence against whatever could be called accident, and from his heart prayed for it. The facts, however, of that day's journey and work we know; and they stand in painful contrast to what we had hoped. All the circumstances we do not know, and there may be explanations not given us which would easily mitigate our surprise and account for what happened. It may be that David did omit to give the most proper directions, and to urge the needful cautions, and to implore solemnly the Divine blessing. He may have been a little too confident of the mere act itself, a little too trustful in the good intentions of himself, and a little too uplifted because of the unanimous sentiment of all whom he had consulted. A stumble over the threshold may be very mortifying, very humbling, but no doubt it has often saved infinitely worse calamity further on. The very badness of an omen may turn confidence into care, and will work well for a cause, if it call special attention to some fact, or principle, or aspect of the whole matter liable to be overlooked or insufficiently regarded. Perhaps in the present instance, did we but know all, this might sufficiently explain all that at first looks hard on David and an ill encouragement for his pious zeal. Passing, therefore, interesting but uncertain conjecture, it is open to us to study some of the known and ascertained results of that same day and that same bitter experience of David. The passage before us proclaims plainly some of these, and proffers a leading illustration of the principle of present loss compensated by spiritual results. Notice —
I. THE BIRTH OF A DEEP RELIGIOUS FEELING OF FEAR OF GOD IN DAVID. "He was afraid of God that day." David was not like a very young man; still less was he like a very young man with little knowledge, and who had been stinted of opportunity of gaining experience. Much of this he had already accumulated, and especially of the kind that had brought lessons of God and his providence near to him. There is not a little evidence going to indicate that David had a certain predisposition to religious thought and feeling. There is a wonderful absence of indication of the contrary. His mind had largely opened to Divine manifestation, his thoughts frequently roved among the thoughts and ways of God. Dangers and actual sufferings and fears had often brought him into near converse with the kindness and watchfulness of the "chief Shepherd," of whom he knew how to speak so well. Perhaps it had never struck him (and perhaps it would have never struck us except for this incident) that there remained for him something especial to learn of God in a very different kind of direction from all before. His impressions of God were all most grateful, as well they might be. He had found God a "Sun and a Shield"—Light, Warmth, and Protection. He had found God one who "had lifted him up on high," and "had not suffered him to be cast down," nor "his foes to rejoice over him." He had been in earthly trial and persecution much, but in heavenly favour more, and in a wonderful assurance of all that gave him "boldness of access" to God. And he had not yet learned the other side—not, indeed, of the benevolent character and beneficent working of God—but the other side of himself, which might greatly need another sort of manifestation of the Divine power. Though he had often seen God's justice and his anger, and had said, "God is angry with the wicked every day," he had never felt these, nor had dreamed that he was such that the time might come that he would have to feel them, and his experience become enlarged by so much as this," My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments" (Psalms 119:120). To know a fear of God is one of. two things for the child of God. It is either to know the fear of one's own sin in honest earnest; or to catch one humbling, overwhelming sight of the contrast between the finite and erring nature of the creature man and the infinite perfection of God. As Adam first "was afraid;" as Jacob "was afraid" when he woke from that transporting dream; as Peter was afraid in the presence of the mighty Master of miracle; so was David now "afraid of God." There were slight differences of detail in each case, and differences of form, but the fundamental facts were identical, and they were two in one—a sinful creature seizing a moment's real idea of the all-holy Almighty! And this was the birth of a deep religious feeling in David which he never forgot, and which no doubt served the rest of his life many a valuable end.