Loyalty that waits for convenient weakness to collapse

When the elders of Israel came to David at Hebron to submit themselves, they came with flowery reasons: 'Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh... the Lord said to thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel.' Yet Maclaren cuts through their rhetoric with surgical precision: 'it had taken the elders seven and a half years to feel the force of these reasons, and probably their perceptions would still have remained dull if Abner and Ishbosheth had lived.'

Here is the nature of human loyalty stripped bare. The elders had known David was their brother, had seen him lead Israel's armies even under Saul, had heard the word of Elohim concerning him—all this while Ishbosheth reigned. But loyalty that is 'disloyal as long as it durst' is no loyalty at all. They waited not for conviction but for convenience. They submitted when the weak phantom-king was assassinated and Abner lay dead.

Yet David's response reveals something far nobler than vengeance. He 'made a league with them before the Lord,' ending the civil war with 'complete amnesty' rather than bloodshed or reproaches. The covenant was made before the Lord—not dependent upon the ark's physical presence at Hebron, but upon the consciousness of God's presence itself. This is magnanimity born not of weakness but of strength, a king who understands that a nation reunited by grace endures longer than one bound by the sword. David's greatness lay not in forcing loyalty, but in receiving the tardy submission of his people and binding them to himself through covenant made in the sight of Yahweh.