Daily Devotionals

Devotional: January 31st

ITTAI OF GATH

And Ittai answered the king, and said: As the Lord liveth, and as my lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether for death or for life, even there also will thy servant be. - 2 Samuel 15:21

Look at the picture of that Philistine soldier, as teaching us what grand, passionate self-sacrifice may be evolved out of the roughest natures. Here they are, "faithful among the faithless"; as foreign soldiers surrounding a king often are, notably, for instance, the Swiss guard in the French Revolution. Their strong arms might have been of great use to David, but his generosity cannot think of involving them in his fall, and so he says to them: "I am not going to fight; I have no plan. I am going where I can. You go back and ’worship the rising sun.’ Absalom will take you in, and be glad of your help. And as for me, I thank you for your past loyalty. Mercy and peace be with you! "

It is a beautiful nature that, in the depth of sorrow, thinks more of dragging other people into it than of its own fate. Generosity breeds generosity, and this rough Philistine captain breaks out into a burst of passionate devotion, garnished in soldier fashion with an unnecessary oath or two, but ringing very sincere, and meaning a great deal. As for himself and his men, they have chosen their side. Whoever goes, they stay. Whatever befalls, they stick by David; and if the worst come to the worst, they can all die together, and their corpses lie in firm ranks round about their dead king. David’s heart is touched and warmed by their outspoken loyalty; he yields and accepts their service. Ittai and his noble six hundred tramp on, out of our sight, with all their households behind them. Analyze their words, and do you not hear, ringing in them, these three things, which are the seed of all nobility and splendor in human character - a passionate, personal attachment, issuing in spontaneous heroism of self-abandonment, and in supreme satisfaction in the beloved presence? And these may spring up in the rudest, roughest nature. A Philistine soldier was not a very likely man in whom to find refined and lofty emotion. He was hard by nature, hardened by his rough trade; and unconscious, at the moment here, that he was doing anything at all heroic or great. Something had smitten this rock, and out of it there came the pure refreshing stream. For Ittai and his men the one thing needful was to be beside him in whose eye they had lived, from whose presence they had caught inspiration; their trusted leader, before whom their souls bowed down. So then his vehement speech is the pure language of love.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men, but there is a day coming when the spurious mushroom aristocracy of power and the like, that the world has worshiped, will be forgotten - like the nobility of some conquered land, that is brushed aside and relegated to private fife by the new nobility of the conquerors; and the true nobles, God’s greatest - the righteous, who are righteous because they have trusted in Christ - shall shine forth like the sun " in the kingdom of My Father."

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