After the death of Saul, when David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, David remained two days in Ziklag; And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan his son, and he said it should be taught to the people of Judah; behold, it is written in the Book of Jashar. He said:
"Thy glory, O Israel, is slain uponthy high places!How are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath,publish it not in the streets ofAshkelon; lest the daughters of the Philistinesrejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult." Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you,nor upsurging of the deep! For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,the shield of Saul, not anointed with oil."From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned notback, and the sword of Saul returned not empty."Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and death they were not divided; they were swifter then eagles,they were stronger than lions. "Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,who clothed you daintily in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel." How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! "Jonathan lies slain upon thy high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. "How are the mighty fallen,and the weapons of war perished!" 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 (RSV)
David is lost! He had roamed the Judean wilderness with his band of soldiers. He had crisscrossed the mountains and valleys as a Philistine mercenary. He had learned every nook and cranny, every cave and spring, while being chased by King Saul. But now he is lost! There was no valley so dark or so lonely as this one. It was the valley of death. He entered the valley of the lost because of an announcement: Saul and his son, Jonathan, are dead!
That's the way it comes to us, too. There is the soft but factual voice of the doctor. There is the hysterical voice on the telephone. There is the obituary notice in the newspaper. There is a news bulletin that disaster has struck. However it comes, we begin our journey into the valley.
Sometimes it helps to learn the details. It gives time for the heart to catch up to the mind. How did it happen? David wanted to know, too. But the account of Saul's death is varied in the biblical record. Did Saul take his own life after being wounded in battle with the Philistines, as 1 Samuel, chapter 31 reports? Did an Amalekite kill him upon the request of Saul, as we are told in 2 Samuel, chapter 1, and for which David ordered his execution? Or did the Amalekite only deliver the announcement, but with an attitude that led David to personally kill him, as it reads in 2 Samuel, chapter 4? There is no solution to the difficulties between these reports, except to admit an error. Details or no details, correct or confused, the fact is unaltered: Saul and Jonathan are dead, killed in the throes of war!
David expresses his lostness in the demonstrative practice of Eastern grief. He and his 600 soldiers sit, with clothes torn, filling the air with the loud, Oriental, wail. They refrain from food till sunset. In the time that follows, David puts his feelings into a writing, a lament. We have it in the lesson before us.
This death dirge is of the earliest Hebrew poetry, in this case original with David. Some brief parts of it are missing, however, leading to much discussion about a proper translation. What may be surprising to today's reader is that there is no religious expression in the poem; also that David would grieve so much over the Saul who saw David as his enemy.
From its beginning to its end, this poem is plaintive. Lostness and grief drip from every verse. Personal grief is expressed here, as well as a call for national grief, and even for nature to groan over the loss.
1. The personal loss comes from the death of a friend, Jonathan. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." (2 Samuel 1:26) It is one thing to experience the death of a loved one. It is another to experience the death of a friend, whether that friend be a spouse or a father or someone more distantly related. Friendship is a relationship that runs much thicker than blood. Among friends there is an intercommunication of the psyche, the soul, the whole being. To lose a friend is to lose a part of oneself. It is to walk the valley of the lost.
We know. We have been there. Our arrival in that valley may have been caused by the death of a friend, but personal grief also comes at the loss of a job, or the loss of a limb through illness or accident. It comes when we move from a community, or have a goal unfulfilled. Grief is the experience of shuffling through life as though no sunlight ever enters the valley, and no road markers point the way out. Grief is the experience of being lost within familiar surroundings, living in the same house, sitting at the same kitchen table. Grief is almost a nonphysical experience, because it is untouched by space, and, for it, time stands still.
Grief is experienced alone. Two generations ago, mourning clothes announced grief. Women with broad-brimmed black veiled hats and men with crepe hat bands made it obvious that someone in the family had died. In these days, no one may notice, and the way through the valley may seem so much more lonely. Public smiles hide personal heartache. Pleasant greetings mask inner emptiness. The invitation to dinner, accepted, may never reveal the back pains, the stomach pains, the headaches, or the heavy chest - all physical symptoms that are a normal part of grieving. Grief is experienced alone.
Is there any way out of this valley of the lost? It may seem not. But, for those of you who are walking there now, be assured that the valley does end. Never accept the way you feel now as being the way you will always feel. That feeling will change. You will love your home again. You will enjoy doing the things you used to do. Spring flowers will grow in the valley. Remember not only the friend you lost, but the friends who are still with you. Tell them how you feel and what you are experiencing. Let them step into your valley with you, take you gently by the hand, and lead you out. Let them help you plan for your future, maybe even day-to-day. Map out some activity, some schedule, and let them help you stay with it. Know that your grieving experience is an opportunity to grow. Growing seldom happens without tension and pain and suffering. This is a time for you to stretch yourself, to become more than you are.
You are a Christian. You have experienced the love and support of God before. Depend on him now! To his grieving disciples, Jesus said, "I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you." (John 14:18) He says the same to you now. To the Romans, the apostle Paul wrote, "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38, 39) Those words are also for you now. God walks with you through the valley of the lost. His love supports those who grieve.
2. David doesn't want to do his grieving alone. There is a call here in his lament for national grief. "Thy glory, O Israel, is slain upon thy high places!" Saul and his sons were the glory of Israel. So also our leaders are our glory. They represent us, even though we may not politically agree with them. Just as a whole nation turns out in excitement for a royal wedding, so also the nation should mourn the loss of its leaders. That loss is a calamity for us all. We do not want other nations to rejoice over our sorrow. We do not want captials, such as Gath and Ashkelon or any other, to celebrate our loss. Every leader we have had, has brought something good to us. As David asks the women of Israel to weep for Saul who "clothed them in scarlet" and gave them ornaments of gold," so we have reason to be grateful for all our leaders who govern on behalf of God.
The people of Judah were asked to join in David's lament. He wanted the very words to be learned and recited. He wanted the people to be reminded that they were lost, too, without a leader. And, in what was probably an original triple refrain, David wants the people to mourn the destructiveness and useless killing of war.
We need, also, to walk through the national valleys of the lost. We need to learn and recite some of the accounts of our past. We need to walk silently through the Arlington National Cemetery and take note of the many stark, white, crosses, row upon row. People of all nations need to walk past the gas ovens of the concentration camps and through the bombed-out cities. We need to tell the stories of the Bataan death march. As a nation we need to recite the story of the Civil war, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and the Battle of Bull Run. We need to decry the horribleness of war, to declare it as the supreme manifestation of sin, and to have all war abolished! "Ain't gonna study war no more" ought to be our goal, as the Negro spiritual has it. We need to stand together before our war monuments, and give thought to what they have accomplished and what was settled. We need to consider the loss of the best of our people, and the non-productive use of our natural resources. We need to walk together through the valley of national loss, so that we might come out as better people on the other end.
3. David wants even more than for the people to join in his lament. He wants creation itself to groan over the awfulness of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan in battle. He expects the whole Gilboan mountain to experience the loss. "Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, nor upsurging of the deep!" Stand there as a silent sentinel, David is saying. Cry till there is no moisture left to cry. Join in experiencing the desolateness of the walk through the valley of the lost!
Nature does that sometimes for us. It shares in the depth of the human experience of grief. It asks for all the people of the world to stand together silently in the face of natural disasters. Visitors to Pompeii catch a sense of the great loss that came suddenly upon it at the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. So also we can stand helpless before the reruns, on television, of incidents like the explosion of the first atomic tomb, or the explosion of the spacecraft "Challenger." We can watch for the second, third, tenth time the moving scenes of a Mexico City falling down in an earthquake. We can observe the anniversary of the Colombian disaster by watching the rivers of lava rush through the valleys to devour homes and people.
We can stand together at the edge of these valleys of loss, or walk together through them, and know that something has gone terribly wrong! But among all the debris that comes floating by, there is always something to grasp that is worth keeping. For the Christian, this is the confident reliance on a good and gracious God who walks every valley with us! He walks with us in our personal or national loss, and even when it seems the earth itself has turned against us. Saint Paul says it so well: "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38, 39)