feeble shall be as David." In this, as in other instances, he was a man
and were sometimes ready to stone him, he resented these provocations with very little of personal application or concern; but instead of using his interest in heaven to summon plagues upon them, he made it his business to stand in the gap, and by his intercession for them, to turn away the wrath of God from them; and this not once or twice only, but many times.
And yet we must observe that, though Moses was the meekest man in the world, yet when God's honor and glory were concerned, no one was more warm and zealous: witness his resentment of the golden calf, when, in a holy indignation at that abominable iniquity, he deliberately broke the tables. And when Korah and his crew invaded the priest's office, Moses, in a pious wrath, said unto the Lord, "Do not respect their offering." He that was a lamb in his own cause, was a lion in the cause of God: anger at sin as sin is very well consistent with reigning meekness. Nor can it be forgotten that though Moses was eminent for meekness, yet he once transgressed the laws of it. When he was old, and his spirit was provoked, he spoke unadvisedly with his lips, and it went ill with him for it, Psa. 106:32; which is written not for imitation, but for admonition—not to justify our rash anger, but to engage us to stand on guard at all times against it, that he who thinks he stands may take heed lest he fall, and that he who has thus fallen may not wonder if he come under the rebukes of divine Providence for it in this world, as Moses did, and yet may not despair of being pardoned upon repentance.
3. David was a pattern of meekness, and it is promised that "the feeble shall be as David." In this, as in other instances, he was a man after God's own heart. When his own brother was so rough upon him without reason, "Why did you come down here?" how mild was his answer. "What have I done now? Is there not a cause?" When his enemies reproached him, he was not at all disturbed at it. "I, as a
deaf man, heard not." When Saul persecuted him with such an unwearied malice, he did not take the advantage which Providence seemed to offer him, more than once, to revenge himself, but left it to God. David's meek spirit concurred with the proverb of the ancients: "Wickedness proceeds from the wicked, but my hand shall not be upon you." When Nabal's churlishness provoked him, yet Abigail's prudence soon pacified him, and it pleased him to be pacified. When Shimei cursed him with a bitter curse in the day of his calamity, he resented not the offense, nor would hear any talk of punishing the offender: "So let him curse; let him alone, for the Lord has bidden him;" quietly committing his cause to God, who judges righteously. And other instances there are in his story which evidence the truth of what he said: "My soul is even like a weaned child." And yet David was a great soldier, a man of celebrated courage, that slew a lion and a bear, and a Philistine—as much a ravenous beast as either of them —which shows that it was his wisdom and grace, and not his cowardice, that at other times made him so quiet. David was a man that met with very many disquieting and disturbing events in the several scenes of his life, through which, though they sometimes ruffled him a little, yet, for the main, he preserved an admirable temper, and an evenness and composure of mind which was very exemplary. When, upon the surprise of a fright, he changed his behavior before Abimelech, and counterfeited that madness which angry people realize, yet his mind was so very quiet and undisturbed that at that time he penned the 34th Psalm, in which not only the excellency of the matter, and the calmness of the expression, but the composing of it alphabetically in the Hebrew—speaks him to be, even then, in a calm frame, and to have very much the command of his own thoughts. As at another time when his own followers spoke of stoning him, though he could not still the tumult of his troops, he could those of his spirit, for then he "encouraged himself in the Lord his God." As to those prayers against his enemies which we find in