{"id":61296,"date":"2019-08-18T14:28:06","date_gmt":"2019-08-18T11:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=61296"},"modified":"2023-03-13T12:09:23","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T10:09:23","slug":"tenacious-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/tenacious-optimism\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenacious Optimism"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[834,384,451],"acf":{"old_id":"61296","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34245,"related_cahpter":"287","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"David, who once battled lions and bears, now stands up to God","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When David faces Gad and tells him \u201c<em>tzar li me\u2019od<\/em>\u201d (24:14) &#8211; &#8216;it is very narrow for me&#8217; or &#8216;I am in dire straits&#8217; &#8211; his words evoke a sense of helplessness, of being crushed underneath events that can\u2019t be mitigated, or avoided. God Himself decreed a form of suffering; what can David do, but acknowledge his helplessness, and face the pain to come?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But this has never been King David&#8217;s way. When Nathan informed him that his infant son will die because of his affair with Bathsheba, David acknowledged his guilt, but refused to\u00a0 accept God&#8217;s harsh sentence. He prayed for forgiveness until his infant\u2019s death, explaining later that &#8220;while the child was yet alive&#8230; I said, Who can tell? God may be gracious to me, and the child may live\u201d (12:22).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where is this tenacious optimism now? David&#8217;s people are \u2018yet alive\u2019. Why does he meekly accept their coming death?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead of resembling his own earlier conduct, David\u2019s response echoes king Saul\u2019s fatalism in his final confrontation with Samuel. Then, too, a king faced the prophet who anointed him, and said \u201c<em>tzar li me\u2019od<\/em>.\u201d Like David in his conversation with Gad, Saul didn\u2019t argue when Samuel informed him that due to Saul\u2019s failures he, his sons, and many others will die come morning. He accepted God\u2019s judgement and rode on his way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This echo of Saul leaves us with a sense of tragic inevitability: David, we might conclude, has finally become that which he had been selected to replace. After facing the kind of insurrections and oppositions which he himself had brought into Saul\u2019s life, he has apparently lost the very dynamism that set him apart from the king he deposed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But David\u2019s Saul-like resignation doesn\u2019t last. \u201cWhen David saw the angel who was striking down the people\u201d the David of old reappeared. \u201cI alone am guilty,\u201d he told God, echoing his bold admission of guilt when Nathan confronted him about Batsheba. \u201cI alone have done wrong; but these poor sheep, what have they done? Let Your hand fall upon me and my father\u2019s house!\u2019\u201d (24:17)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With these words, the despondent and helpless man gives way to the consummate shepherd we met before David\u2019s battle with Goliath, who once battled lions and bears to protect his flock &#8212; and now stands up to God Himself. David pushes against the walls that force on him a sense of narrowness. And in doing so he breaks away from the predetermined, already-trodden, stories of the past.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":61297,"id":61297,"title":"2sam24-lion and bear","filename":"2sam24-lion-and-bear.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/2sam24-lion-and-bear.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/tenacious-optimism\/2sam24-lion-and-bear\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"2sam24-lion-and-bear","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":61296,"date":"2019-08-18 11:27:56","modified":"2019-08-18 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