2 Samuel 18:33 Cry Of God!

 ”Then the king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept. And as he went, he said thus: “O my son Absalom—my son, my son Absalom—if only I had died in your place! O Absalom my son, my son!”“

‭‭II Samuel‬ ‭18‬:‭33‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

a. The king was deeply moved: The Hebrew idea of deeply moved implies a violent trembling of the body. David felt completely undone at hearing the news of Absalom’s death.

i. In part, David was so deeply moved because he knew that he supplied the soil this tragedy grew from.

· The soil came from David’s indulgent parenting.

· The soil came from David’s sin with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah, after which God promised David: The sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife…. I will raise up adversity against you from your own house (2 Samuel 12:10-11).

· The soil came from David’s own sinful indulgence of his passions and smaller rebellions against God, which sins and weaknesses were magnified in his sons.

ii. David’s sorrow shows us that it isn’t enough that parents train their children to be godly; they must first train themselves in godliness. “We cannot stand in the presence of that suffering without learning the solemn lessons of parental responsibility it has to teach, not merely in training our children, but in that earlier training of ourselves for their sakes.” (Morgan)

b. O my son Absalom; my son, my son Absalom: David mourned so much for Absalom because he really was his son. David saw his sins, his weaknesses, his rebellion exaggerated in Absalom.

i. “Everything in the story leads up to, and culminates in, this wail of anguish over his dead boy…. Five times he repeated the words, ‘my son.’” (Morgan)

ii. “This surely had a deeper note in it than that of the merely half-conscious repetition of words occasioned by personal grief. The father recognized how much he was responsible for the son. It is as though he had said: He is indeed my son, his weaknesses are my weaknesses, his passions are my passions, his sins are my sins.” (Morgan)

c. If only I had died in your place: David wanted to die in the place of his rebellious son. What David could not do God did by dying in the place of rebellious sinners.

(Guzik)

i. “So in the cry of David, we actually hear the cry of God, for His lost children. His desire to restore, His desire to forgive.” (Smith)

Cry of God!

Smiths comment is something to ponder on!

Can you hear the cry of God over you?

Can you imagine God crying over His Son when He died on the cross for us?

Blessings