Today's Readings: 2 Samuel 15 | Jeremiah 19 | Romans 4

Other comments on this day's readings can be found here.

Reading 1 - 2Samuel 15:17-21

"So the king set out, with all the people following him, and they halted at a place some distance away. All his men marched past him, along with all the Kerethites and Pelethites; and all the six hundred Gittites who had accompanied him from Gath marched before the king. The king said to Ittai the Gittite, 'Why should you come along with us? Go back and stay with King Absalom. You are a foreigner, an exile from your homeland. You came only yesterday. And today shall I make you wander about with us, when I do not know where I am going? Go back, and take your countrymen. May kindness and faithfulness be with you.'

"But Ittai replied to the king, 'As surely as the LORD lives, and as my lord the king lives, wherever my lord the king may be, whether it means life or death, there will your servant be' " (2Sa 15:17-21).

"There is Ruth-like quality [Rth 1:16,17] in this asseveration [serious statement] and there is almost an echo of it in the words of Jesus when he says: 'Where I am, there shall also my servant be' (John 12:26). For all of us, in our coming to Christ, the words of David have a special relevance: 'Thou art a stranger and also an exile: whereas thou camest but yesterday...' Sure we were, outside the commonwealth of Israel, having no hope and without God in the world. And we heard the call of the King. Our hearts took fast hold of the things concerning him and the kingdom, and we forsook our former allegiance. So now, 'in death or life,' in 'what place my Lord the king shall be' we follow, that in the end we might be with him for ever" (Harry Tennant, "The Man David" 163).

"The most notable of the 600-plus men of Gath was a man named Ittai who with his companions fled with David when Absalom rebelled. Ittai's words to David are quite extraordinary and again reveal how much Ruth's conversion meant to David. Indeed one is inclined to contemplate whether Ruth had still been alive in the early years of David's life and had been involved in his upbringing. David quite evidently had told Ittai of Ruth's words to her mother-in-