Canter Bridge

Mephiboseth, I was recently reminded by an elderly woman, lived half his life in terror. Dropped by his nurse at five years of age, we next find him crippled and living in Transjordan, far from power and—it would seem—from trouble. Though his life in Davidide circles will seldom prove simple, he becomes in 2 Samuel 9 the beneficiary of uncommon kindness.

The biblical text, in this first episode of what some biblical scholars label ‘the history of David’s rise’, shows David realizing in space and time the ‘chesed of God’. Translated frequently as ‘loyal love’, ‘unfailing love’, ‘steadfast love’, and ‘lovingkindness’, this commitment-keeping, persistent, tenacious quality of YHWH’s goodness towards those whom he loves might best be rendered ‘enduring love’. It is celebrated in the psalms by poets who exhaust both temporal and spatial imagery to describe it. YHWH’s chesed, we are told in the one hundred seventh psalm, endures forever. In the following, we learn that it is ‘higher than the heavens’ and accompanied by that trustworthiness that ‘rises to the clouds’.

Here, in the odd tale of Mephiboseth, we find the very human David practicing this remembering love by working out his affection for the deceased Jonathan via the restoration of his surviving son, who might have preferred living out his days in a bit of peace to the summons he received to appear before David in Jerusalem.

David, it must be said, could be as bloody about retribution as the next Ancient Near Eastern monarch. Yet he was also capable of transforming acts of kindness, the enormity of which finds a way to be remembered via inclusion in the history of his reign.

Early in the story, the always-in-the-right-place Siba is quizzed whether Saul has any surviving family members to whom David might show kindness for Jonathan’s sake. ‘Well yes, there is one … ‘ Siba responds, adding the unsolicited detail that ‘he is lame in both feet’.

David might have chucked his good idea right there. ‘Oh, well, then …’, he might have been forgiven for responding. ‘At least I tried …’

Yet he pushes through apparent disqualification to raise a virtual political refugee to the status of a royal son dining at the king’s privileged table.

Chesed does that.