The Spilt Water—2Sa_14:14
In the wise woman of Tekoah’s address to David, this beautiful and touching passage occurs—“For we must needs die, and are as water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.” Joab could scarcely have found an advocate better suited than this woman to make the desired impression upon the king’s mind. What could be better calculated to gain the attention of a poet like David than the beautiful images which she employs, and which are fully equal to any that he himself ever uttered. There is scarcely anything in all literature finer than the image we have quoted; and if we, with our comparatively dull intellects, are impressed at once by the exquisite beauty and pathos of this expression, how keenly must it have been appreciated by him—the great master of solemn thought and poetical expression? We conceive that we behold him start upon his throne when these words fall upon his ear—and he feels at once that no common woman is before him. She had previously used another image, fine, indeed, and striking, but eclipsed by this. She had compared the prospective death of her only surviving son to the quenching of her last live coal—“They shall quench my coal that is left, and shall not leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the earth:” and now, again, death is compared to water, which being once lost upon the ground can be gathered up no more. The idea is, that there is no recovery of the life once lost, no return from the cold desolations of the grave. This idea is common in the Old Testament, though nowhere else expressed by the same image. It occurs, however, less frequently in the Psalms than might be expected, whereas, the instances in the book of Job are numerous, and some of them very striking. The following have considerable analogical, but not literal resemblance to the one which now engages our attention.
“As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.” Note: Job_7:9-10.
“Man dieth, and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not.” Note: Job_14:10-12.
“The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him.” Note: Job_20:9.
The most striking of the analogous passages which occur in the writings of David himself, is in Psa_78:39. “He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.”
Even this image is in Job—“O remember that my life is wind.” Note: Job_7:7.
Beautiful as these images are, appealing as they do to our sympathies and consciousness—are they true? That is, are they in conformity with the later revelation, in which no such passages as these are to be found, and in which the restoration of the body is distinctly declared? Do they not rather express the obscurity of that earlier light, which, although it eventually grew on to the perfect day of the Gospel, was in many things obscure at the beginning, and although it faintly disclosed the immortality of the soul, is thought scarcely to have revealed the resurrection of the dead? If revealed, it is certainly revealed obscurely. The mere question, whether it be revealed at all, or not, shows this. It was, therefore, probably one of those doctrines which were purposely left obscure until the fulness of time should come—until the risen Redeemer had become the first-fruits of them that slept. We think that this doctrine is to be found in several passages of the early books of the Old Testament Scriptures, which were not so understood by Jews themselves, but which we are enabled so to understand by the later light of the Gospel—as in that word of the Lord to Moses, from which Christ himself declares that this doctrine might be inferred, Mat_22:32. And in the more certain light of later prophecy, this comfortable doctrine, though not very distinctly declared, is so clearly indicated, that the Jews themselves believed nearly all that we believe in this great matter, by the time our Lord appeared, although there were those by whom it was still denied. It was drawn from the completed canon of the Old Testament, and was not, perhaps, a matter of ancient popular belief, like the immortality of the soul. The belief existed—and that belief must have been drawn from the Old Testament—must have been a revelation; for there was no other source from which the Jews could derive a doctrine (seeing that it was a true doctrine) not held by any other people, not discoverable by the human understanding, and one at which indeed philosophy curled its lip in proud disdain.
It therefore may be, that the woman of Tekoah meant what her words literally indicate, and expressed the popular belief of her time—that life returned not to the dead. But, blessed be God, it is not so. The very contrary to what she said is the fact. We must needs die—but are not as water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. It shall be gathered up—
“Wherever slept one grain of human dust,
Essential organ of a human soul,
Wherever tossed, obedient to the call
Of God’s omnipotence, it hurried on
To meet its fellow particles, revived,
Rebuilt, in union indestructible,
No atom of his spoils remained to Death.”
Again—
“Each particle of dust was claimed: the turf
For ages trod beneath the careless foot
Of men, rose organized in human form;
The monumental stones were rolled away;
The doors of death were opened; and in the dark #
And loathsome vault, and silent charnel house,
Moving, were heard the mouldering bones
That sought their proper place. Instinctive every soul
Flew to its clayey part: from grass-grown mould,
The nameless spirit took its ashes up.”—Pollok.
Yet in returning to the words of the woman of Tekoah, it must be confessed that such expressions being in their very essence poetical and figurative, must not be pressed too closely for matters of doctrine. They may prove the existence of a doctrine or belief—but not the absence of a doctrine or belief. They take the lower and obvious sense of facts as they appear, and go not into the higher sense of unseen and unexperienced things. Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” supplies a case very much in point. The poet certainly knew and believed in the immortality of the soul—he knew the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and probably believed in it. Yet in his poem, the subject of which might seem naturally to suggest the production of these doctrines, there is not one word bearing the slightest reference to either; and if, in a distant age, inferences as to the belief of the British people, were drawn from that poem alone, it might, with as much probability as in the case before us, be inferred that they possessed no knowledge or belief of either doctrine. But the fact is, that the poet had only to deal with the external and social aspect of his subject; and although he knew there were higher and remoter aspects, his pointed object did not require him to extend his view to them. In a great variety of phrases and images he illustrates the idea that man shall no more return to the relations he has filled, and the position he has occupied—shall never recover the very form of life which he has laid down.
Indeed, all Gray’s images and illustrations, so much admired and so often quoted, are but expansions and variations of the words of Job: “He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.” Here, on the words “shall come up no more,” an elaborate old commentator Note: Joseph Caryl, Exposition, with Practical Observations on the Book of Job. London, 1676. A work in two immense and closely-printed folio volumes, of about 4700 pages together, now very scarce. remarks—“No! That is sad news indeed, to go down into the grave and come up no more. Are all the hopes of man shut up in the grave? And is there an utter end of him when this life ends? Shall he come up no more?… What he saith, it is not a denial of a dying man’s resurrection to life, but of his restitution to the same life, or to such life as he parted with at the grave’s mouth. They who die a natural death do not live a natural life again; therefore he addeth in the next verse, He shall return no more to his house, He does not say absolutely he shall return no more, but he shall return no more to his house: he shall have no more to do with this world, with worldly businesses or contentments, with the labors or comforts of the creature, or of his family; he shall return no more to his house.”
A portion of this fine old expositor’s remarks upon the next clause, might make one persuaded that Gray had read his ponderous volumes, with which he might certainly have employed himself to much more advantage than by reading Crebillon’s romances upon a sofa, which was his idea of supreme enjoyment. The words are, “Neither shall his place know him any more.” On which Caryl observes, “When a man lives and comes home to his house, his house (as it were) welcomes him home, and his place is glad to entertain him. As in the psalm, the little hills are said to rejoice at the showers, so when a man comes home, his house and all he hath have, as it were, a tongue to bid him welcome, and open arms to receive and embrace him; but when he dies he shall return no more, and then his place shall know him (that is, receive him) no more.”
Autor: JOHN KITTO