2 Samuel 18:25
News in his mouth
- The gospel’s word בְּשֹׂרָה besorah · good news
Original
Translations
So he called out and told the king. “If he is alone,” the king replied, “he bears good news.” As the first runner drew near,
And the watchman cried, and told the king. And the king said, If he be alone, there is tidings in his mouth. And he came apace, and drew near.
And the watchman calls, and declares [it] to the king, and the king says, “If [he is] by himself, tidings [are] in his mouth”; and he comes, coming on and drawing near.
파수꾼이 외쳐 왕께 고하매 왕이 가로되 저가 만일 혼자면 그 입에 소식이 있으리라 할 때에 저가 차차 가까이 오니라
파수꾼이 외쳐 왕에게 고하매 왕이 이르되, 그가 만일 혼자면 그의 입에 소식이 있느니라, 할 때에 그가 빨리 와서 가까이 다가오니라.
Commentaries
Matthew Henry on 2Sam 18:19-33 as a whole
By directing David to give God thanks for his victory, Ahimaaz prepared him for the news of his son's death. The more our hearts are fixed and enlarged, in thanksgiving to God for our mercies, the better disposed we shall be to bear with patience the afflictions mixed with them. …
Read the whole commentary →Wesley
Nothing on this verse itself.
Read the whole commentary →
Note
David sits between the gates waiting for word from the battle. When the watchman calls out that a man is running alone, the king reads the sign at once: if he is alone, he is carrying news. In the Hebrew the noun stands here with no word for good attached to it.
David had fled from Absalom across the Jordan to Mahanaim (2 Samuel 17:24). He meant to march out with his army, but the people would not let him risk himself, so he stood by the gate while the troops went out by hundreds and by thousands (2 Samuel 18:2–4). Now he sits between the outer and inner gates, and the watchman has climbed to the roof of the gateway to look out over the wall (2 Samuel 18:24). Far off, a single man is running.
The king's reasoning is sound. A beaten army comes back in a scattered crowd of fugitives. A man running by himself has been sent, and a man who has been sent carries a report. The Hebrew puts it in two words, besorah befiv, "news in his mouth." It does not say whether the news is good or bad. The reader already knows that Absalom is dead; the king does not.
The KJV keeps the Hebrew's openness: "there is tidings in his mouth." The LSV does the same, and so do both Korean Bibles: the 흠정역 says 그의 입에 소식이 있느니라, the 개역한글 그 입에 소식이 있으리라. The BSB has "he bears good news" (2 Samuel 18:25), supplying the word good, likely because besorah usually means welcome news and because that is plainly what David hopes. Set side by side, the open Hebrew and the BSB's reading show something true about waiting: the heart of someone who waits for news runs ahead and hopes it will be good. In the next two verses the king's hope only grows (2 Samuel 18:26–27).
Wesley explains where David is sitting. City gates then were large and thick, and for safety there were two, an outer and an inner one: "Here he sat, that he might hear tidings when any came into the city" Wesley. Even a king cannot make news; he can only wait at the gate for it to arrive.
David had to watch a figure on the horizon and guess what was in his mouth. Paul, speaking of the gospel, uses the same picture from the other side: "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, "the word of faith we are proclaiming" (Romans 10:8). The news that David waited for anxiously at the gate is, in the gospel, news that has already arrived and is spoken close at hand.