IV.

There remains still a fourth and a last element in Barzillai’s honoured, life and happy old age—­his attitude towards God.

Though we are never distinctly told so, we cannot doubt that he was a religious man.  And as it was in gratitude to God for all that He had done to him, that he first showed kindness to God’s anointed, so it was in the same humble and trusting spirit that he accepted old age, and all that it involved when it came.  That is by no means always the case.  Are there not some, who, as they look forward to the time of old age, if God should ever permit them to see it, do so with a certain amount of dread?  They think only of what they will be called upon to abandon—­the duties they must give up, the pleasures, so dear to them now, they must forego.  But to Barzillai, the presence of such disabilities brought, as we have seen, no disquieting thoughts.  He could relinquish, without a sigh, what he was no longer fitted to enjoy.  He desired nothing but to end his days peacefully in his appointed lot.  Enough for him that the God who had been with him all his life long was with him still.

Happy old man!  Who does not long for an old age, if he is ever to see old age, such as his?  But, if so, it must be sought in the same way.  Every man’s old age is just what his own past has made it.  If, in his days of health and vigour, he has lived an idle, careless, selfish life, he must not wonder if his closing years are querulous, and bitter, and lonely.  But if, on the other hand, he has devoted himself to good and doing good, if he has made the will of God his rule and guide amidst all the difficulties and perplexities of his daily lot, then in that will he will find peace.  God wilt not forget his “work and labour of love” (Heb. vi. 10):  and in him the old promise will be once more fulfilled—­“Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you:  I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry and will deliver you” (Isa. xlvi. 4).

[1]In view, however, of the difficulty of reconciling the two passages, and of the fact that Shobi is not mentioned elsewhere, it has been conjectured that for “Shobi the son of Nahash” in 2 Sam. xvii. 27, we should read simply “Nahash,” see Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible, art.  “Shobi.”

[2]Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, ii., p. 154.

ADONIJAH

BY REV.  ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.

It is notorious that the sons of devout men sometimes prove a curse to their parents, and bring dishonour on the cause of God.  When Eve rejoiced over her first-born, she little suspected that passions were sleeping within him which would impel him to slay his own brother; and the experience of the first mother has been repeated, though in different forms, in all lands and in all ages.  Isaac’s heart was rent by the deceit of Jacob, and by the self-will of Esau.  Jacob lived to see his own sin repeated in his sons, and he who deceived his father when he was old and blind, suffered for years an agony of grief because he had been falsely told that Joseph, his favourite son, was dead.