Baptized
2 Samuel 19 tells of the return of David to Jerusalem after the defeat of Absalom. Interestingly, it is said that Judah brings David back over the Jordan river, and a number of individuals who cross over to meet David are explicitly named. To properly show their repentance and receive David back, Judah first had to repudiate their rebellion and identify with David in his exile. These river crossings are very obviously a kind of baptism, a union with David in his exile and therefore his restoration.
A wise Benjaminite (Phil. 3:5) might have preached in Gilgal that day:
Men of Judah, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into David were baptized into his exile? We were separated therefore with him by baptism into exile, in order that, just as David was revived from the pit by the glory of Yahweh, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in an exile like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a restoration like his. We know that our old self was exiled with him in order that the rebellious nation might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer belong to rebellion. For one who has been exiled has been set free from rebellion. Now if we have been exiled with David, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that David, being revived from the pit, will never be exiled again; exile no longer has dominion over him. For the separation he endured he endured to rebellion, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to rebellion and alive to Yahweh in David.
Let not rebellion therefore reign in this nation, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to rebellion as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from exile to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For rebellion will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
As it happened, the more foolish Benjaminites Sheba and Shimei did not heed this warning.
Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. (Heb. 13:13)
Picture source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simon_Bening_%28Flemish_-_Border_with_Shimei_Throwing_Stones_at_David_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Scott Moonen
March 27, 2016 at 2:46 pm
Come to think of it, Saul-Paul was himself once a Shimei. . .
Scott Moonen
March 28, 2016 at 5:54 am