2 Samuel 17:15 - Meaning and Application

We must now leave David’s enemies congratulating themselves on what looked like a sure victory. They had followed Hushai’s advice and likely sent out a call to all the tribes of Israel to gather at the appointed place. Next we find David’s friends trying to warn him so that he could change his plan and stay safe.

Hushai told the priests, Zadok and Abiathar, what had been decided in the council (2 Samuel 17:15). But he does not seem to have been sure that Ahithophel’s advice had truly been set aside. So he was anxious that, if he did not act quickly, the king and all his men might be destroyed (2 Samuel 17:16). Maybe Hushai had been called in only to give advice (2 Samuel 17:5), and left before the final decision was made in favor of his plan (2 Samuel 17:14). Or he may have feared they could later change their minds. In any case, it was wise to prepare for the worst and get these precious lives out of danger.

Absalom had placed such strict guards on every way into Jerusalem that it was hard to get this needed message to David. The two young priests who carried the news had to slip out of the city by En-rogel, which some say means “the fountain of a spy.” Jerusalem was in a sad state when two faithful priests could not even be seen coming into the city.

A poor young woman was sent to pass on the instructions, likely while going to the well as if to draw water (2 Samuel 17:17). If she had carried the message by spoken word, she might have mixed it up. Still, God can use an uninstructed girl as a reliable messenger and carry out his wise purposes through what the world sees as weak and unimportant.

Yet Absalom’s spies were watchful, and a boy saw the priests and reported it to him: “A young man saw them and told Absalom” (2 Samuel 17:18). Knowing they had been seen, the messengers hid in a friend’s house in Bahurim, the same place where David had recently rested (2 Samuel 16:14). There they were hidden in a well, which may well have been dry in the summer heat (2 Samuel 17:18).

The woman of the house cleverly covered the mouth of the well with a cloth and spread grain on it to dry, so the men searching for them did not notice the well at all (2 Samuel 17:19). If they had known, they would have searched it. She did well so far, but we cannot defend her further step of hiding the men with a lie (2 Samuel 17:20). We must not do wrong so that good may come from it.

Still, the messengers were protected, and the searchers went back to Absalom without finding them. It was a mercy that Absalom did not, at once, attack their fathers, Zadok and Abiathar, as Saul had attacked Ahimelech for helping David. God restrained him. Once the messengers were safe, they reported everything faithfully to David (2 Samuel 17:21), along with the advice that he should not delay, but cross over the Jordan at once, since he seems to have been near it already. Some think that there, looking back toward Jerusalem from the land east of the Jordan, he wrote Psalms 42 and 43 (Psalm 42:6).