Jonathan: David's Covenant Friend (8): Jonathan Strengthens David's Hand in God (I Samuel 23:16-18) by Rev. Martyn McGeown
I. The Need for This Strengthening
II. The Strengthening Itself
III. The Fruit of This Strengthening
Dale Ralph Davis: “Of course, Jonathan’s presence itself would have been a great comfort and refreshment for David. Yet our personal presence does not have the abiding encouragement that God’s sure word does. We best encourage not by being cuddly with people but by reminding them of the promises of God. Encouragement from God for the people of God comes from the word of God. I am not depreciating the helpfulness of the personal touch or care, but in an age that wallows in ‘caring’ and ‘sensitivity’ on every hand believers need to know that solid encouragement comes not from emotional closeness but from God’s speech” (I Samuel: Looking on the Heart, p. 239).
Alfred Edersheim: “It was thither that in the very height of these first persecutions, Jonathan came once more to see his friend, and, as the sacred text emphatically puts it, ‘strengthened his hand in God.’ It is difficult to form an adequate conception of the courage, the spiritual faith, and the moral grandeur of this act. Never did man more completely clear himself from all complicity in guilt, than Jonathan from that of his father. And yet not an undutiful word escaped the lips of this brave man. And how truly human is his fond hope that in days to come, when David would be king, he should stand next to his throne, his trusted adviser, as in the days of sorrow he had been the true and steadfast friend of the outlaw! As we think of what it must have cost Jonathan to speak thus, or again of the sad fate which was so soon to overtake him, there is a deep pathos about this brief interview, almost unequaled in Holy Scripture, to which the ambitious hopes of the sons of Zebedee form not a parallel but a contrast” (Old Testament Bible History, p. 492).