2 Samuel 18:19

Note

On the day Absalom's revolt ends, Ahimaaz son of Zadok asks to run to the king with the news. What he wants to carry with basar (בָּשַׂר) is framed not first as a battle result but as an act of the LORD.

Absalom had proclaimed himself king in Hebron and taken Jerusalem, and David had fled (2 Samuel 15:10–14). In the forest of Ephraim David's men won the day; Absalom, caught by his head in an oak, was killed by Joab and his armor-bearers (2 Samuel 18:9–15), though David had told his commanders, "Treat the young man Absalom gently for my sake" (2 Samuel 18:5). Ahimaaz had already risked his life as David's runner during the revolt, hiding in a well to get word through (2 Samuel 17:17–21). It is like him to ask to run again.

The verb is va'avaserah, the piel imperfect first person singular with the cohortative ending: "and let me bear the news." Joined to the "let me run" before it, the request is: let me run and bring the king word. Notice that the Hebrew makes the king, the one who receives the news, the direct object of the verb. The New Testament's euangelizomai (εὐαγγελίζομαι) can work the same way: Luke says that Peter and John, returning to Jerusalem, were "preaching the gospel in many of the Samaritan villages" (Acts 8:25), and in the Greek the villages themselves are the object, as though the places were evangelized.

The content of the news is that "the LORD has judged him out of the hand of his enemies." When the verb shaphat, to judge, is used with "out of the hand of," it pictures a judge who takes the side of the wronged party and rescues him from the grip of those who held him down. The KJV renders it "the LORD hath avenged him of his enemies," and the BSB keeps the same sense while adding the word good: "tell the king the good news that the LORD has avenged him of his enemies" (2 Samuel 18:19). The LSV reads YHWH has delivered him out of the hand of his enemies. The Korean versions both choose vengeance: the 흠정역 follows the KJV, and the 개역한글 says the LORD has repaid the king's enemies. Vengeance and deliverance are not two different readings so much as two sides of the same verdict: punishment for the side that did wrong, rescue for the side that was wronged.

Matthew Henry reads Ahimaaz's first words to the king, when he bowed and blessed the LORD, as a kindness: "By directing David to give God thanks for his victory, Ahimaaz prepared him for the news of his son's death" Matthew Henry. He adds that the more our hearts are enlarged in thanksgiving, "the better disposed we shall be to bear with patience the afflictions mixed with them" Matthew Henry.

The news Ahimaaz wants to carry has the shape that good news has in Isaiah and in the New Testament. It announces not something people must do but something God has done, and what God has done is a just verdict that sets the wronged free. Paul says the same of the gospel: in it "the righteousness of God" is revealed (Romans 1:17). That God is righteous could be heard as a threat; here, as in the gospel, it is the reason the news is good.