Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Samuel 19:34
And Barzillai said unto the king, How long have I to live, that I should go up with the king unto Jerusalem?
2Sa 19:34-40
How long have I to live, that I should go up with the King unto Jerusalem?
Barzillais refusal of Davids invitation to Jerusalem considered
I. A serious consideration of approaching death is peculiarly proper for aged persons. Barzillai, in his reply to David, seems to have the near approach of death chiefly in view. And surely such a view was exceedingly proper and becoming for a person of his age, though he seemed possessed of much strength and vigour. But some circumstances make it peculiarly proper that the aged should make these thoughts familiar and habitual to them.
1. The speedy period of their lives is more certain than that of others. There is a probability that they who are in the prime or morning of their days may continue many years; but there is no probability that the aged should.
2. The infirmities which are peculiar to, or most frequent in old age, make the consideration of death highly proper.
3. The remembrance of the many relations, friends, and acquaintance whom they have survived, should excite this disposition in them.
II. The prospect of a speedy removal out or this world, should wean our affections from it.
1. The prospect of death should make the aged dead to the honours and pleasures of this world.
2. The prospect of death should lead them to get free from the cares of the world, as far as they lawfully can.
(1) Their capacity for business is generally weakened. This is Barzillais reasoning in the verse after the text; Can I discern between good and evil?
(2) If their capacities continue ever so good, they bare more important concerns to mind, and but a little time for them. The one thing needful, the great business relating to their souls and eternity is sufficient to engage all the time which they can spare from that needful rest which old age requires.
(3) The more cares you have upon your hands the more will your dying thoughts be disturbed, and your last Work be interrupted.
(4) By various worldly cares the soul will be less disposed and qualified for the heavenly world. The immoderate love of the world is utterly inconsistent with the love of the Father; and such a love of it as may be regular and allowable in the prime or middle of life, may be immoderate and unjustifiable in old age. (J. Orton.)
I am this day fourscore years old.
Venerable age: its trials and consolations
I. Length of days is a scriptural blessing. It was eminently such under the Hebrew theocracy, where earthly allotments were the perpetual types of spiritual favour. As death was a penalty, so the shortening of human life was counted as a marked expression of the Divine displeasure, as where the Psalmist exclaims: He brought down my strength in my journey, and shortened my days. But I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of mine age. For when Thou art angry all our days are gone. But alway, and through all generations, has the hoary head been counted a crown of glory to the righteous. Old age is not to be associated, as a matter of course, with decrepitude or the decays of nature. It has its own appropriate beauty, as well as youth. Undeniably the aged are entitled to our liveliest sympathies and our most sedulous attentions. They have reached the border land. They stand hovering between two worlds, and must shortly vanish and be no more seen. They are going from us, and we in our turn may require the kindness and attention which we bestow. But there are trials incident to old age, and which no power of human sympathy can avert or permanently relieve.
1. Infirmity of body is one. The vigours of life are failing. The fibre of a constitution which withstood all the assaults of threescore years, and promised well for a longer continuance, suddenly gives way.
2. Another trial of the aged is the altered aspect of society, the absence of contemporaries and companions, and the deepening loneliness of life. To outlive their generation, even by a little, is to walk a solitary path.
3. I will mention but one other trial to which the aged are exposed–that, namely, which lies in the tendency to depression and the decay of natural spirits.
II. The consolations which attend and comfort the aged believer.
1. As a rule, and as a blessedness often attained, the last days of the Christian are his best days, and the end better than the beginning.
2. And, again, the aged saint finds comfort in looking back, and holding in review the way over which he has passed. The retrospection of seventy or eighty years presents God continually in forms and ministries of providential care which are only estimated fully, at the end.
3. Finally, the past revelation of Gods mercy and goodness is the best pledge of eternal glory. (W. F. Morgan, D. D.)
The Sabbath of life
Of the Christian it has been said: The decay, and wasting, and infirmities of old age will be, as Dr. Guthrie called these symptoms of his own approaching death, only the land-birds, lighting on the shrouds, telling the weary mariner that he is nearing the desired haven. It is a favourite speculation of mine that, if spared to sixty, we then enter on the seventh decade of human life, and that this, if possible, should be turned into the Sabbath of our earthly pilgrimage, and spent Sabbatically, as if on the shores of an eternal world, or in the outer courts, as it were, of the temple that is above, the tabernacle that is in heaven. (Dr. Chalmers.)
Lifes Winter
A grateful admirer of Charles Dickens desired to give the great novelist in his old age a token of affection. He gave him a beautiful piece of plate to stand on his dining-table. As first designed, it was to have represented the four seasons. The giver said, however, I could not bear to offer him a reminder of the bleak and cold season, so there were but, the three figures–the types of Hope and Beauty and Bounty. The great man was touched by the beautiful gift, and by the kindliness of the thought that had designed it; but he said more than once or twice, I never look at it but I think most of winter. We may try, by little artificial devices, to rid ourselves of all reminders of lifes winter, but they will be futile. The Christian philosophy of life recognises that we must have our winters, and it gives us strength to face and endure them, a day at a time, assured that the gloomiest winter is but the herald of the spring time that will never fail.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Seeing my time of continuance in this world is but short, it is not advisable to change my habitation, or to give thee or myself any further trouble.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And Barzillai said unto the king,…. In answer to the grateful proposal he made:
how long have I to live; that could not be said with exactness by any; but it might be probably conjectured from the age he was of, and the infirmities that attended him, that he could not live long; it was but a short time he had to be in the world:
that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem? take so long a journey as that, seeing he might die before he got thither; and if he did not, since it could not be thought he should live long, he could not think of it, or judge it advisable at such an age to take such a journey, change his place of abode, and manner of living.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
DISCOURSE: 323
THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE A GROUND FOR INDIFFERENCE TO THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD
2Sa 19:34. And Barzillai said the king, How long have I to live?
GREAT virtues rarely, if ever, exist alone: the soul that gives them birth is actuated by a principle, which is generally, though perhaps not universally, operative. We behold in the history before us an instance of great generosity towards David and his attendants, in their flight from Absalom. And we have a no less amiable instance of modesty in the same character, when David, after the defeat of Absalom, and the consequent restoration of peace, desired to reward the services of his benefactor Barzillai had provided David with sustenance while he lay at Mahanaim; and David now entreated him to come and spend the remainder of his days with him at Jerusalem, that he might repay all his kindness to the utmost of his power: but Barzillai declined the offer, and said, How long have I to live, that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem?
The question, How long have I to live? is proper for us all to put to ourselves at this time [Note: New-Years Day, or on occasion of a Funeral.]: and it will be profitable for us to consider it,
I.
In reference to the things of time
This is certainly its primary import in the passage before us. Barzillai was a very aged man, and intimated to David, that, on account of his great age, he had no longer any relish for the gratifications of sense, nor could he hope to continue much longer in the world; and that therefore it would ill become him to be an attendant at court, when he ought rather to be thinking only of death [Note: ver. 3537.]. In this view the question was most just, and pathetic: and in this view it deserves universal attention.
Our time must of necessity be short
[If we are advanced in life, this truth is obvious; but if we be in the bloom of youth, it is no less certain: for, what is the space of mans life? it is only seventy or eighty years at most: and though that appears long in the prospect, it appears as nothing in the retrospect: every aged man will tell you that his life has passed away as a dream And besides the shortness of life, we must take into the account its uncertainty also: for who can tell what a day, or even an hour, may bring forth? Truly, every man may justly say, There is but a step between me and death ]
From this consideration we may well rise superior to all the vanities of time and sense
[Let us suppose a man condemned to death, and about to be executed in a few hours; What would be his feelings in reference to every thing here below? Would he take much complacency in any thing he possessed, or be much affected with any tidings either of loss or gain? No: the things of time and sense would appear to him in their true colours, and be regarded by him as of little importance: the near prospect of that hour when he must bid an eternal farewell to all of them would shew him their emptiness and vanity. Now this is the feeling which every man should cherish. We say not, that any man should neglect his worldly business, or be forgetful of any relative duty; but that he should have his affections withdrawn from every thing here below, and set on things above: he should be divested of anxious care about the acquisition of earthly things; and, in his enjoyment of them, his moderation should be known unto all men. This is the direction given by St. Paul; and it is founded on the very consideration that is suggested to us in the text [Note: 1Co 7:29-31.].]
Just as this sentiment is in reference to the things of time, it is still more so,
II.
In reference to the things of eternity
In the view of eternity, a thousand years may be represented but as the twinkling of an eye. How long then have any of us to live,
1.
That we should neglect our eternal concerns?
[Have any of us made a covenant with death? or has God said to any of us, as to Hezekiah, I will add unto thy life fifteen years? Is it not, on the contrary, almost a certainty that God has said concerning many who are here present, This year thou shalt die? How then can we think of continuing any longer to neglect our souls? If repentance be necessary for every child of man; if there be no possibility of acceptance for us but by fleeing for refuge to the Lord Jesus Christ; and, if they who die in an impenitent and unbelieving state must perish for ever; then is it folly to defer the concerns of our souls to a more convenient season, which very probably may never arrive. The concerns of time are so utterly insignificant when compared with those of eternity, that to give them a preference in our minds is not folly only, but madness.]
2.
That we should be lukewarm in our attention to them?
[Most men will allow that some attention to the soul is proper: but with the generality, even of those who would be thought religious, the welfare of the soul is only a subordinate and secondary concern. Such lukewarmness however is no less displeasing to God, and injurious to the soul, than total indifference [Note: Rev 3:15-16.]. We are apt to think that a little exertion will suffice for the securing of our eternal interests: but is there so little to be done, that it may be finished in a day? or are we sure that so many days will be added to our life as shall make up the deficiency of our zeal and diligence? Do we find that people in a race have time to loiter? How much less then have we, whose career may terminate so soon? And what have we in life that shall compensate for the loss of our souls? Is there any earthly gratification, even if it could be enjoyed a thousand years, to be compared with the felicity of heaven? Whatever then our hand findeth to do, let us do it with all our might.]
Address,
1.
The young
[You are looking for years to come; but may soon be cut down as a flower. Youth is the time most fitted for holy exercises and heavenly employments Begin then without delay, and remember your Creator in the days of your youth.]
2.
Those in middle age
[You are thinking that you have nearly attained the object of your wishes: but you have found your past attainments vain; and such will be the character of all that you may yet acquire. Temporal duties, we repeat it, are to be performed with diligence; but nothing is of any value in comparison of the soul,]
3.
Those who are far advanced in life
[Say whether Barzillais conduct do not well become you? You feel infirmities; you know that in the course of nature you have but a short time to live: let earthly things then be regarded by you with indifference, and heavenly things increasingly occupy your minds. Familiarize yourselves with the thoughts of death and judgment; and press forward with ever-increasing alacrity to secure the prize of your high calling.
At every period of life, but especially in old age, should we pray with David, Lord, make me to know my end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am [Note: Psa 39:4.]: So teach me to number my days, that I may apply my heart unto wisdom [Note: Psa 90:12.].]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
(34) And Barzillai said unto the king, How long have I to live, that I should go up with the king unto Jerusalem? (35) I am this day fourscore years old: and can I discern between good and evil? can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear anymore the voice of singing men and singing women? wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king? (36) Thy servant will go a little way over Jordan with the king: and why should the king recompense it me with such a reward? (37) Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father and of my mother. But behold thy servant Chimham; let him go over with my lord the king; and do to him what shall seem good unto thee. (38) And the king answered, Chimham shall go over with me, and I will do to him that which shall seem good unto thee: and whatsoever thou shalt require of me, that will I do for thee.
May we not hope that this generous man, who was thus looking forward to the grave, was looking also, with the same eye of faith, as the patriarch did, to Him, who by his promised salvation had sweetened the grave, and taken out all its venom! But how modestly this great man declines the king’s favors; as not only unsuited to his advanced years, but also, as himself being unworthy of them. Doth not this suggest to us, what we are told, the faithful servants of JESUS will say at the last day, when the LORD is summing up to the review their various acts, and labours of love: LORD , (they will say) when saw we thee hungry and fed thee, or thirsty and gave thee drink? Barzillai had truly done so to David, and yet now, when David talks of taking him with him to Jerusalem, he cries out, Why should the king recompense it with such a reward? So JESUS will not only recompense every tittle of the poor testimonies of his people’s love, but will as much surprise them by the sense he expresses of those testimonies, as by the astonishing greatness of the reward. Inasmuch, (saith the LORD) as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me! Mat 25:40 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2Sa 19:34 And Barzillai said unto the king, How long have I to live, that I should go up with the king unto Jerusalem?
Ver. 34. How long have I to live? ] q.d., My breath is corrupt – or, my spirits are spent – my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me, as Job 17:1 . Pedetentim morior, as that old poet Alexis said, I die piecemeal, sensim sine sensu, every day yielding somewhat to death. It is therefore high time for old people to make up their litte bundles, and prepare to begone hence, as Sturmius wrote to Zanchy.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2 Samuel
BARZILLAI
2Sa 19:34 – 2Sa 19:37
To the Young .
People often fancy that religion is only good to die by, and many exhortations are addressed to the young, founded on the possibility that an early death may be their lot. That, no doubt, is a very solemn consideration, but it is by no means the sole ground on which such an appeal may or should be rested. To some of you an early death is destined. To the larger number of you will be granted a life protracted to middle age, and to some of you silver hair will come, and you may see your children’s children. I wish to win you seriously to look forward to the life on earth that is before you, and to the end to which it is likely to come, if you be spared in the world long enough.
The little picture in these verses is a very beautiful one. David had been fleeing from his rebellious Absalom, and his adversity had winnowed his friends. He had crossed the Jordan to the hill-country beyond, and there, while he was lurking with his crown in peril, and a price on his head, and old friends dropping from him in their eagerness to worship the rising sun, this Barzillai with others brought him seasonable help 2Sa 17:23, When David returned victorious, Barzillai met him again. David offered to take him to Jerusalem and to set him in honour there, The old man answered in the words of our text.
Now I take them for the sake of the picture of old age which they give us. Look at them: the intellectual powers are dimmed, all taste for the pleasures and delights of sense is gone, ambition is dead, capacity for change is departed. What is left? This old man lives in the past and in the future; the early child-love of the father and mother who, eighty years ago, rejoiced over his cradle, remains fresh; he cannot ‘any more hear the voice of the singing men and women,’ but he can hear the tones, clear over all these years, of the dear ones whom he first learned to love. The furthest past is fresh and vivid, and his heart and memory are true to it. Also he looks forward familiarly and calmly to the very near end, and lives with the thought of death. He keeps house with it now. It is nearer to him than the world of living men. In memory is half of his being, and in hope is the other half. All his hopes are now simplified and reduced to one, a hope to die and be united again with the dear ones whom he had so long remembered. And so he goes back to his city, and passes out of the record-an example of a green and good old age.
Now, young people, is not that picture one to touch your hearts? You think in your youthful flush of power and interest, that life will go on for ever as it has begun, and it is all but impossible to get you to look forward to what life must come to. I want you to learn from that picture of a calm, bright old age, a lesson or two of what life will certainly do to you, that I may found on these certainties the old, old appeal, ‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth’.
I. Life will gradually rob you of your interest in all earthly things.
Now, I do not ask you to restrain and mortify these things. But I do ask you to remember the end. It is as certain that joys will pall, it is as certain that subjects of interest will be exhausted, it is as certain that powers will decay, as that they now are what they are. All these grave, middle-aged, careful people round you were like you once. You, if you live, will be like them. The spring tints are natural, but they are transient; the blossoms are not always on the fruit-trees.
Think, then, of the End: to make you thankful; to stimulate you; but also to lead you to take for your object what will never pall. All created things go. Only the gospel provides you with a theme which never becomes stale, with objects which are inexhaustible.
Here is a lesson for-
a Thinkers: ‘Knowledge, it shall vanish away.’
b Sensualists: ‘Man delights me not, nor woman either.’ How old was he who said that?
c Ambitious, self-advancing men.
Is it worth your while to devote yourself to transient aims?
Is it congruous with your dignity as immortal souls?
Is it innocent or guilty?
Is the gospel not a thing to live by as well as to die by?
II. Life will certainly rob you of the power to change.
Now this is true in a far loftier way. I need not dwell on the universality of this law, how it applies to all manner of men, but I use it now in reference only to the gospel and your relation to it. You will never again be so likely to become a Christian, if you let these early days pass.
You say, ‘I will have my fling, sow my wild oats, will wait a little longer, and then’-and then what? You will find that it is infinitely harder to close with Christ than it would have been before.
While you delay, you are stiffening into the habit of rejection. Custom is one of our mightiest friends or foes.
While you delay, you are doing violence to conscience, and so weakening that to which the gospel appeals.
While you delay, you are becoming more familiar with the unreceived message and so weakening the power of the gospel.
While you delay, you are adding to the long list of your sins.
While you delay, youth is slipping from you.
Make a mark with a straw on the clay and it abides; hammer on the brick with iron and it only breaks. Youth is a brief season. It is the season for forming habit, for receiving impression, for building up character. ‘The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore shall he beg in harvest and have nothing.’ Your present time is seed time. God forbid that I should say that it is impossible, but I do say that it is hard, for ‘a man to be born again when he is old.’
If you do become Christ’s servant later in life, your whole condition will be different from what it would have been if you had begun when young to trust and love Him. Think of the difficulty of rooting out habits and memories. Think of the horrid familiarity with evil. Think of the painful contrition for wasted years, which must be theirs who are hired at the eleventh hour, after standing all the day idle.
Contrast the experience of him who can say, ‘I Thy servant fear God from my youth,’ who has been led by God’s mercy from childhood in the narrow way, who by early faith in Christ has been kept in the slippery ways of youth.
Of the one we can but say, ‘Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?’ The other is ‘innocent of much transgression.’
I have small hope of changing middle-aged and old men. To you I turn, you young men and women, you children, and to each of you I say, ‘Wilt thou not from this time say, My Father, Thou art the guide of my youth?’
III. Life will certainly deepen your early impressions.
So I point the lesson: ‘Keep thy heart with all diligence,’ and let your early thoughts be bright and pure ones.
Remember that you will never find any love like a father’s and mother’s. Don’t do what will load your memories in after days with sharp reproaches.
IV. Life will bring you nearer and nearer to the grave.
How can such an old age so bright and beautiful be secured? Surely the one answer is,-by faith in Jesus Christ.
Think of an old Christian resting, full of years, full of memories, full of hopes, to whom the stir of the present is nothing, who has come so near the place where the river falls into the great sea that the sounds on the banks are unheard. It is calm above the cataract, and though there be a shock when the stream plunges over the precipice, yet a rainbow spans the fall, and the river peacefully mingles with the shoreless, boundless ocean.
Dear young friends, ‘what shall the end be’? It is for yourselves to settle. Oh, take Christ for your Lord! Then, though so far as regards the bodily life the ‘youths shall faint and be weary,’ as regards the true self the life may be one of growing maturity, and at last you may ‘come to the grave as a shock of corn that is fully ripe.’
Trust, love, and serve Jesus, that thus calm, thus beautiful, may be your days here below, that if you die young you may die ripe enough for heaven, and that if God spares you to ‘reverence and the silver hairs,’ you may crown a holy life by a peaceful departure, and, sitting in the antechamber of death, may not grieve for the departure of youth and strength and buoyancy and activity, knowing that ‘they also serve who only stand and wait,’ and then may shake off the clog and hindrance of old age when you pass into the presence of God, and there, as being the latest-born of heaven, may more than renew your youth, and may enter on a life which weariness and decay never afflict, but with which immortal youth, with its prerogatives of endless hope, of keenest delight, of unwearying novelty, of boundless joy, abides for evermore.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
How long . . . ? Figure of speech Erotesis. App-6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
How long have I to live: Heb. How many days are the years of my life, Gen 47:9, Job 14:14, Psa 39:5, Psa 39:6, 1Co 7:29, Jam 4:14
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2Sa 19:34. Barzillai said, How long have I to live, &c. In a spirit of true wisdom, and becoming moderation, he declined accepting the kings generous offer. The pleasures of a court had no charms for him in that advanced age, being then fourscore years old; his senses and appetites were long since palled, and both music and banquets had lost all their relish. He therefore begged the king to give him leave to wait upon him over the river, and then return to his own city, there to die in peace, and be laid in the grave of his father and his mother.