2 Samuel 3:34-36

The Voice

³⁴    Your hands were not bound;
        your feet were not chained.
    You have fallen
        as one falls among the wicked.

And the people wept again over Abner’s grave.

This song reminds us that David may be the writer of many psalms, and that David is a great warrior, musician, poet, and soon, a great king. David is also a person of great contradiction—not perfect, by any means—but a man of oversized loves and passions who must generally have his heart in the right place, since we’re reminded again and again that God loves him. He is powerful, and people in his way do tend to have horrible things happen to them. But he respects the dead, and sometimes, as with Saul, grieves in ways that feel—all these centuries later—authentic.

³⁵After the ceremony, the people came to David and tried to convince him to eat something that day, but he turned them away because fasting until evening was part of the mourning ritual.

David: May the True God punish me severely if I taste bread or anything else before the sun sets.

³⁶The people noticed that he honored Abner by fasting, and they approved—as they approved of everything their king did.

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