Today's Reading: 1 Kings 3:5-9
5 Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, put himself forward and said, "I will be king." So he got chariots and horses [a] ready, with fifty men to run ahead of him. 6 (His father had never interfered with him by asking, "Why do you behave as you do?" He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom.)
7 Adonijah conferred with Joab son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they gave him their support. 8 But Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei and Rei [b] and David's special guard did not join Adonijah.
9 Adonijah then sacrificed sheep, cattle and fattened calves at the Stone of Zoheleth near En Rogel. He invited all his brothers, the king's sons, and all the men of Judah who were royal officials, 10 but he did not invite Nathan the prophet or Benaiah or the special guard or his brother Solomon.
taken from www.biblegateway.com
We don't know exactly how many children David had. The Bible tells us that he had 19 'legitimate' sons (1 Chronicles 3), and that he had many more borne by concubines. While fathers were much less involved with child rearing than they are today, they had the responsibility of ensuring that sons learned the Law and followed the Lord.
David was a busy, successful king, but he was a lousy father. Of his six oldest boys, one raped his sister and was killed by a brother, one tried to take over the kingdom and was killed while he was stuck on a tree, and now Adonijah, the fourth son, has decided that he should be the rightful king. We don't know much about the other three in this group.
In today's text we see Adonijah making preparations to steal the kingship, but again his father did nothing to step in. Later text makes it look like David was unaware of the plot, but as we see in verse 6 there was unusual behavior that David should have noticed.
Most of us dislike conflict and we prefer to ignore it's signs. We hope that others will act like the adults they are and do the right things. Many management problems result from this aversion to conflict, too.
How do you deal with the behavior of others, especially your children, when you see that they are headed down the wrong path? Sometimes we can see that natural consequences will teach the appropriate lesson, but other times we need to step in. Are there places in your life where you need to speak up to avoid a bigger problem in the future?
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