2 Samuel 18:31

Note

At last the Cushite arrives and speaks his first words: "May my lord the king hear the good news" (2 Samuel 18:31). Here basar (בָּשַׂר) appears in the hithpael, a form found nowhere else in the Old Testament, and it makes the subject not the one who brings the news but the one who receives it: the king.

Ahimaaz had announced the victory, sidestepped the question about Absalom, and been told to stand aside (2 Samuel 18:30). Then the Cushite comes. His message, too, begins with what God has done: "Today the LORD has avenged you of all who rose up against you!" When the king asks his one question, the Cushite answers indirectly but unmistakably: "May the enemies of my lord the king and all who rise up against you to harm you be like that young man" (2 Samuel 18:32). The king climbs to the room over the gate, weeping: "If only I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" (2 Samuel 18:33).

The form is yitbaser, the hithpael imperfect, third person masculine singular, used here as a wish. Everywhere else the verb is piel, to bring news; only here does it turn toward the receiver, to be given news. Word for word: let my lord the king be brought tidings. The Septuagint renders it with a passive of euangelizomai (εὐαγγελίζομαι), and the verb's passive turns up in the New Testament too. When Jesus answers the disciples of John the Baptist, the poor stand as the subject of that passive: in Greek they are "evangelized," the ones to whom the good news comes. The BSB renders it, "the good news is preached to the poor" (Matthew 11:5).

The KJV gives the line as a curt announcement, "Tidings, my lord the king," and the 흠정역 follows it. The LSV reads let tidings be proclaimed, my lord, O king. The BSB comes closest to the hithpael's wish and its receiving sense, "May my lord the king hear," and adds good, as it does in most verses of this scene. The 개역한글 puts it as a report: I have news to give my lord the king.

Matthew Henry is hard on David's grief for so graceless a son, yet he ends by asking: "may we not, in David, perceive a shadow of the Saviour's love, who wept over, prayed for, and even suffered death for mankind, though vile rebels and enemies" Matthew Henry.

David wished he could die in his rebellious son's place, and the wish could not be granted. The gospel is the news that this wish has been fulfilled from God's side: "Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous" (1 Peter 3:18), the King's Son dying for rebels. And like the king before the Cushite, the one who hears the gospel stands where this verb puts him: not as the maker of the news but as the one who receives it.