2 Samuel 4:10
The reward for good news
- The gospel’s word בְּשֹׂרָה besorah · good news
- The gospel’s word בָּשַׂר basar · to bear tidings
Original
Translations
when someone told me, ‘Look, Saul is dead,’ and thought he was a bearer of good news, I seized him and put him to death at Ziklag. That was his reward for his news!
When one told me, saying, Behold, Saul is dead, thinking to have brought good tidings, I took hold of him, and slew him in Ziklag, who thought that I would have given him a reward for his tidings:
when one is declaring to me, saying, Behold, Saul is dead, and he was as a bearer of tidings in his own eyes, then I take hold on him, and slay him in Ziklag, instead of my giving to him [for] the tidings.
전에 사람이 내게 고하기를 사울이 죽었다 하며 좋은 소식을 전하는 줄로 생각하였어도 내가 저를 잡아 시글락에서 죽여서 그것으로 그 기별의 갚음을 삼았거든
전에 한 사람이 내게 고하여 이르기를, 보소서, 사울이 죽었나이다, 하며 좋은 소식을 가져온 줄로 생각하였으나 내가 그를 붙잡아 시글락에서 죽였나니 그는 자기의 소식으로 인해 내가 자기에게 보상을 주리라고 생각하였느니라.
Commentaries
Matthew Henry on 2Sam 4:8-12 as a whole
A person may be glad to obtain his just wishes, and yet really regret the means by which he receives them. He may be sorry for the death of a person by which he is a gainer. These men shed innocent blood, from the basest motives. David justly executed vengeance upon them. …
Read the whole commentary →Wesley
Nothing on this verse itself.
Read the whole commentary →
Note
David remembers a man who thought Saul's death was good news and expected to be paid for bringing it. This one verse holds both the verb and the noun , and here the noun means not the news itself but what a messenger is given for it.
After Saul's death his son Ish-bosheth reigned over Israel while Judah followed David (2 Samuel 2:10). Two of Ish-bosheth's raiding captains, Rechab and Baanah, killed him on his bed at midday, cut off his head and brought it to David at Hebron. They wrapped the murder in pious words: "Today the LORD has granted vengeance to my lord the king against Saul and his offspring" (2 Samuel 4:8). David answered with an oath by the LORD "who has redeemed my life from all distress" (2 Samuel 4:9), and reminded them of the Amalekite who had come to Ziklag (2 Samuel 1:2–16). That man had also treated Saul's death as welcome news, and had even claimed to have killed Saul himself. David had him put to death; now he did the same to the two men who had murdered "a righteous man in his own house" (2 Samuel 4:11).
The verb is khimvaser: the piel participle of basar with the preposition meaning like, so that the man came as one bringing good news. The Hebrew adds "in his own eyes." The goodness of the news was his own calculation. The noun besorah comes at the end of the verse, and in context it means the reward a bearer of news could expect. The Septuagint translates it with the plural of , the New Testament's word for the gospel. In older Greek that word first meant exactly this: the reward given to someone who brought good news.
The last clause is short and can be read two ways, and the translations divide over it. The KJV has the Amalekite as the one "who thought that I would have given him a reward for his tidings," that is, it names what he hoped for. The BSB reads David's words as grim irony: "That was his reward for his news!" (2 Samuel 4:10): his death was the payment he received. The LSV goes its own way: instead of my giving to him for the tidings. In Korean, the 흠정역 follows the KJV and the 개역한글 reads as the BSB does. The Hebrew relative word can point back to the man or to what David did to him, so both readings are possible. Either way the verse turns on the gap between the reward he expected and the one he got.
Matthew Henry draws out David's mind: "A person may be glad to obtain his just wishes, and yet really regret the means by which he receives them" Matthew Henry. David wanted the throne, but not a throne bought with murder. In Henry's words, "He would not be beholden to any to help him by unlawful practices" Matthew Henry.
The Amalekite reckoned up what his news would earn him. Paul does the opposite sum with the gospel: "What then is my reward? That in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge" (1 Corinthians 9:18). News brought for a reward, and news given away without price: that is the distance between this verse and the gospel.
Source
- Jewish translators at Alexandria, The Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) — 3rd–1st century BC. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, often quoted by the New Testament writers. It mostly renders בָּשַׂר (basar) by εὐαγγελίζομαι (euangelizomai) (2 Samuel 18; Psalms 40:9, 68:11, 96:2; Isaiah 40:9, 52:7, 61:1), and calls the reward for news εὐαγγέλια at 2 Samuel 4:10. English: Brenton (1844).