670
Patriarchs and Prophets
delay. To the priests, who were to forward it by their sons, Hushai sent
the message: “Thus and thus did Ahithophel counsel Absalom and the
elders of Israel; and thus and thus have I counseled. Now therefore ...
lodge not this night in the plains of the wilderness, but speedily pass
over; lest the king be swallowed up, and all the people that are with
him.”
The young men were suspected and pursued, yet they succeeded
in performing their perilous mission. David, spent with toil and grief
after that first day of flight, received the message that he must cross
the Jordan that night, for his son was seeking his life.
What were the feelings of the father and king, so cruelly wronged,
in this terrible peril? “A mighty valiant man,” a man of war, a king,
whose word was law, betrayed by his son whom he had loved and in-
dulged and unwisely trusted, wronged and deserted by subjects bound
to him by the strongest ties of honor and fealty—in what words did
David pour out the feelings of his soul? In the hour of his darkest trial
David’s heart was stayed upon God, and he sang:
[742]
“Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!
Many are they that rise up against me.
Many there be which say of my soul,
There is no help for him in God.
But Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me;
My glory, and the lifter up of mine head.
I cried unto the Lord with my voice,
And He heard me out of His holy hill.
I laid me down and slept;
I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people,
That have set themselves against me round about....
Salvation belongeth unto the Lord:
Thy blessing is upon Thy people.”
Psalm 3:1-8
.
David and all his company—warriors and statesmen, old men and
youth, the women and the little children—in the darkness of night
crossed the deep and swift-flowing river. “By the morning light there
lacked not one of them that was not gone over Jordan.”