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2 Samuel 16:16-19 – Hushai

Ahithophel’s gives his second piece of advice at the beginning of chapter 17. He urges Absalom to let him gather 12,000 men and pursue David that very night when David is weary and discouraged. All he will need to do is attack David, and everyone else will panic. Once David is killed, the resistance to Absalom’s rule will be over. The advice seemed right in the eyes of Absalom and all the elders of Israel. That’s because it was good advice humanly speaking! If the objective is to defeat David – which it is – then that would have been the best way to do it. Yet there is a double agent in the camp.

Hushai was one of those we looked at last week – at the end of chapter 15. He thought commitment to David looked like leaving Jerusalem. But David told him no – you’ll be more useful to me where you are. So Hushai had gone back to the city. Absalom had rightly been suspicious. He asks him in verse 17: ‘Is this your loyalty to your friend?’ In verse 16 Hushai greets Absalom with the words: ‘Long live the king!’ Absalom takes it that Hushai is referring to him. But actually, for Hushai, David is still king. So when he says, ‘Long live the king’, he’s probably referring to David – even if Absalom doesn’t take it that way. It’s the same when Hushai says in verse 18 – ‘for whom the LORD and this people and all the men of Israel have chosen, his I will be, and with him I will remain’. Who had God and all the people chosen? David! Even at the end of verse 19 when Hushai says: ‘I will serve you’. It’s literally: ‘I will serve in your presence’. So Hushai never tells Absalom he will be loyal to him, or that he’s switched loyalty from David. But without telling a lie he manages to convince Absalom that he’s on his side. Because it is always wrong to tell a lie. Unlike Hushai, it seems that the woman in chapter 17 who hides the men in the well does lie. But as Matthew Henry says, although the woman did well in concealing them, ‘we know not how to justify her further concealing them with a lie’. ‘We must not do evil that good may come of it.’

Question

  1. Why is Ahithophel’s advice good?

Prayer Points

  1. Pray that we would be faithful to do what’s right even when it’s difficult.
  2. Use prayer points from your congregation.
  3. Pray for family matters.