Session 5 – Lesser Known Women of the Bible; A Wise Woman, 2 Samuel 20: Mark Lanier, 11/10/24

Women Lesson 5
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[00:00:00] For those of you who don't know, we're doing a series on lesser-known women of the Bible, and today we're doing, uh, this lady right here. I'm joking. This is, this, this is a computer-generated image of just made-up people. So, uh, w- we don't know what anybody would've looked like in, you know, the Bible. Uh, but here's your introduction for what it's worth.

Cinderella... Uh, question. Quiz time. What do all of these have in common? Cinderella. I'm gonna have to get closer 'cause I can't see which ones [00:01:00] I put up here. That's Sleeping Beauty, uh, Little Red Riding Hood, uh, Rapunzel. "Rapunzel, let down your hair." Um, that's, uh, Snow White, and, uh, that's Hansel and Gretel.

Now, what do they all have in common?

They all came out of German folklore. They all... Oh, bless you, my friend. They, they all came... Unless you're, like, taking them to throw away. Don't throw them away. I-- They can be cleaned. They all came out of German folklore, and they're all part of the Brothers Grimm. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, uh, put together a collection of German folklore.

They were famous linguists. They actually contributed to German language development. They also [00:02:00] studied law, worthy of noting. But they put together a, a collection of works that's still published today, the Brothers Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales, things of that nature, and they were famous for putting the, the, the tagline at the end of their fairy tales, "They all lived happily ever after."

Life ain't a Disney movie. We don't all live happily ever after. You don't go through a struggle in life and then when it's over, live happily ever after. Generally, you got more struggles coming down the road. It is... Is that Van? Oh, hi

It is, for example, King David. Okay? Now, King David is the kinda guy that you would think [00:03:00] is pretty model. Let's see if he lived happily ever after. Spoiler alert, he didn't. But I wanna talk about lesser-known women of the Bible, and one of them that we're gonna talk about this morning is in the King David storyline.

So here's how we're gonna do it. We're gonna put it into a context and give you the storyline. Then I wanna talk about a contrast between the lesser-known woman we're gonna be talking about and a, a rogue fella that are set up in the text to be in contrast to each other. And then we'll take our points for home, or the moral of the story.

This is not a fairy tale. This is a real-life event. And so let's get into the storyline. If you recall King David, King David, uh, uh, uh, in Israel, he starts out, and it's not a bad little thing. I mean, his first big [00:04:00] score is David versus Goliath. That's a high point. That's a good point. And so David versus Goliath.

Then he takes a little dip because Saul's trying to kill him. That puts him on the run. That puts him at, at, at, uh, antagonistic to Saul, but David remains faithful. David knows he's been anointed to be the next king, but that's in God's timing. So David's not gonna be the one who kills Saul. Saul's the king.

When God's done with Saul, God will take care of Saul. So David doesn't let his, his, uh, uh, followers take out Saul. David doesn't take out Saul. He honors the king, but it's a really tough life with David on the run. But then Saul dies, and David is made king. And David at first reigns from Hebron, and then he goes and he wins and, and takes Jerusalem from the Jebusites, and I mean, he [00:05:00] is killing it.

He's victorious over the Philistines. It's all coming up roses until it's not There comes a time where he sends the troops out to battle. He doesn't go join the troops. He stays at home. He goes out at home, gazes down over the roofs of the houses below his, sees Bathsheba on the roof bathing, gets Bathsheba to his palace, seduces her, has, um, uh, sex with her, impregnates her, and then he's gotta deal with the consequences of his sin.

Rather than confess his sin and deal with it the way he should, as Pastor Jared talked about, that Hebrew shuv, turn around. Rather than [00:06:00] doing that, what does he do? He basically has Joa-- uh, uh, um, has, uh, Joab, his general, kill Uriah, or have him killed, the husband of Bathsheba, so he can cover it up and make it look like the baby was the dad's This is the beginning of a stark downfall for David.

Nathan the prophet says that, "David, the sword will not depart from your home. Your home life is not gonna be a good life." And in fact, it's not. David's got a host of wives and concubines, and so he's got a host of children that many of which are half-sibling to each other And so he's got a, a, a son, Absalom, who's got a [00:07:00] sister Tamar and a half-brother who is enamored and lusting over his sister.

And so the half-brother figures out how to, in essence, rape, without being accountable, his half-sister. And Absalom, the full brother, doesn't like it and plots over a multi-year period careful revenge. And it goes from bad to worse because as David hasn't done anything about it, Absalom then contemplates how to have a coup and to take over the kingship from David.

And so David, recognizing that, that there's trouble afoot, doesn't even have the courage to stand and fight his son. David just gathers those around him that he [00:08:00] trusts, save for a few plants he's, he's left behind in Jerusalem are sent back, and David goes across the Jordan and with his ragtag... And Absalom comes in and sets up shop.

Absalom-- Thank you, Linda. Um, Absalom... Oh, wow

I didn't even know anybody was there. I can say. Um, and so David is living away trying to figure out what to do. Absalom has got the army. He's trying to figure out how to take dad out

And so, uh, they finally come to battle, and in the battle, David says to Joab, his general, "Look, go do the stuff, but don't let anything happen to my son." So Joab goes into [00:09:00] battle and wins the battle, but kills Absalom anyway

And I'd love to say as David goes back into Jerusalem, they all lived happily ever after. They didn't Now, to understand more of this story, one of the hardest parts for us when we read the Bible is to read it in its ancient cultural context. But it's also difficult for many of us to read it in its ancient physical context.

We, we, we, we know geography in the US pretty well, but we don't know the geography of Israel. And because this is no fairy tale, because this is real history, the geography matters in the stories. I mean, just think about it in the small ways. Everybody always [00:10:00] goes up to Jerusalem. Well, not because Jerusalem was north of everywhere, it's 'cause it was up on a hill, so you go up to Jerusalem.

There are geography facts and geographical terms and, and in fact, there's a good argument that can be made for physical theology, as John Monson calls it. Uh, in '76 when I started studying this stuff in earnest, uh, um, Walter Brueggemann came out with a book, The Land, talking about how critical the land is to the theology of the Old Testament.

So David goes back to Jerusalem. Now, if we throw the Middle East up on a map, what we're talking about is just this small rectangular area down here. That is Israel. But when you think about Israel at this time, you need to remember it's not the United States of America. It's not even the united tribes of Israel.

You've got 12 [00:11:00] tribes, and this Israel is a loose confederation of those 12 tribes. But you, you... These 12 tribes, loosely, have sibling rivalry that rivals almost Cain and Abel. If you were here two weeks ago, we talked about the Benjaminite civil war, where Israel went against Benjamin because of what had happened to the concubine at Gibeah.

This is not a, a, a united country by any stretch of the imagination. You can divide up the land and figure out which tribe went where, and you can put all of the tribes over there. Uh, the tribe of Levi, by the way, um, Levi is actually not in any certain place. They've got 48 scattered cities throughout.

These are Levitical priests and, and other, uh, servants, uh, of the temple and, and of service to [00:12:00] God. But you've got Dan, uh, you've got Gad, you've got Reuben, and this huge area down here is Yehuda. It's Judah

And so with Simeon tucked into a little bit here. But this is a huge area, Judah. On the other hand, if you look at Benjamin, it's a small area just north. If you look at Reuben, it's an area over here. Now Joseph, I've got up here three times because Joseph actually has two half tribes. He's got Manasseh, which was divided up into two separate areas, and he's got Ephraim, which is right here, in this hill country of Ephraim.

And so you've got Asher up there, you've got Naphtali, you've, you've got all of these different tribes, and they don't always like each other. And one in particular that [00:13:00] stands out, Simeon as well, but it's right here. This, uh, uh, uh, whoa, here we go. Right here, Judah. Judah doesn't really get along with hardly anyone else.

David is from Judah. North of Judah is Benjamin. The Benjaminites are the ones that

rebelled, would not go along with the rest of Israel in disciplining Gibeah. By the way, I'm, I'm going into a little too much detail perhaps, but because of the difference in the way the countries were set up politically, it's very common, in fact, it was very typical in that day and age, and it's set up this way biblically as well, if a citizen of a [00:14:00] community sins and violates society's norms, the entire community would be held accountable for the sins of that person.

And it's the way the community enforced discipline. So when the men of Gibeah did not respond to the concubine being raped to death The answer is for all of Gibeah to be held accountable for the sins of those few people. That's very anti-Western thought. We think you find who did it and you punish them.

They didn't think that way and it wasn't set up that way. They-- you punish the community for not keeping their citizens in line. And then when Benjamin would not allow that community to be punished, all of Benjamin gets punished. So Israel goes to war against [00:15:00] Benjamin and wipes out almost all of their women and children over the death of one woman And then they have 600 Benjaminite men left, and they figure, "Hey, we're gonna lose a whole tribe here if we don't do something.

We don't wanna be the 11 tribes of Israel." So they just take women that have no desire to do it and grab those women from another town to give to the Benjaminite men. And when they don't have enough, they tell the Benjaminite men, "Hey, just go hide in the bushes during the spring festival and grab a virgin."

I, it, it's deplorable what happened in Israel before there was a king. And canonically, that's set up, and, and it follows in the text by Ruth, where the first verse of Ruth says there's a man in Bethlehem named [00:16:00] Elimelek. Bethlehem's in Judah. There's a man in Bethlehem named Elimelek, which means, in Hebrew, my God is king, and he treats women properly.

And it's a story of women being treated properly and in a holy way, and it contrasts with that story that ends Judges. And so that's what we dealt with several weeks ago, but now we're into the, the kingship of David. And the animosity between these hasn't totally gone away. King Saul was a Benjaminite.

King David is a Judahite. And so this, this conflict between them is something that, that is, is huge. So now David's son, Absalom, rebels, takes the capital, sends David on the run. David, [00:17:00] by the way, made Jerusalem the capital. Jerusalem's right here on the border between Judah and Benjamin. It was not occupied by any tribe prior to David conquering it.

The Jebusites still had it. It was even called Jebus or Yebus in the Hebrew by, by some. So you've got the Jebusites here. They've been conquered. David puts the capital there as kind of neutral territory because he wants the capital in a place where all of these folks won't say, "Hey, he just stuck it down in Hebron," where he'd been hanging out as king.

So politically, he tries to put it in a neutral place. We don't pick these nuances up in the story because the story is not something that we're thinking of in its ancient political and physical forms. When David hustles out, he can't hustle down to Judah because Absalom [00:18:00] arguably has Judah. So where's David gonna go?

He leaves Jerusalem, and the text says he goes to Mahanaim And that's up here in the territory of Gad, near the Jabbok River, where, uh, Jacob wrestled with the angel. And so David goes up there, and then ultimately David's army and Absalom's army have the fight. Absalom is slain, and David is ready to go back to Jerusalem Ancient roads.

There were two ways back to Jerusalem. This is the Jordan River. Option A, cross the Jordan River, come down through Manasseh, come down through Benjamin, hop into Jerusalem. Option B, you go south through Gad where you are, cut over through Reuben, and pick it up right [00:19:00] there about Jericho and go into Jerusalem.

David chooses option B. He goes south and then cuts over. So he doesn't go through these multiple territories. He really only goes through one other than where he was as he bops in. I'd like to give you the text of, of the pertinent parts of this story. Now, uh, it's just a picture of the Jordan River. All the men of Israel came to the king, and they said to the king, "Why have our brothers, the men of Judah, gotten to bring the king and his household across the Jordan?"

Why do you have these fellas from down here coming up to escort you across the Jordan instead of someone from the north?

How come they get to escort David and his men? And the men of [00:20:00] Judah said to the men of Israel, this Israel is being used as a term for the northern territories that are non-Judah Simeon territories. All the men of Judah answered the men of Israel, "Hey, he's our close relative. Why are you angry? It's not like we're making-- getting paid for this."

We're doing this for free. We're looking out for our guy." And the men of Israel said, "Well, we have 10 shares in the king. We got 10 tribes. So we have more than you. Why are you getting to be the ones? Why are, why, why aren't we the ones who say, 'Hey, let's bring back King David?'" But the words of the men of Judah were fiercer.

They're harder in the Hebrew, harder than the words of the men of Israel, and it could denote [00:21:00] basically, "You wanna fight about it?" Really? Come on. Or as Clint Eastwood would say, "Make my day." Now, there happened to be a worthless man whose name was Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjaminite. A Benjaminite And he blew the trumpet and said, "Okay, then we have no portion in David.

We're out. We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. Every man back to his own territory. Forget this goober

I'm leaving

So all the men of Israel withdrew from David, and they followed Sheba, the son of Bichri. But [00:22:00] the men of Judah followed their king steadfastly from the Jordan to Jerusalem Now, if you try to picture this, here is a border town right now between Benjamin and Judah. In fact, if you go there, you-- there, there's a road sign right there that says, uh, uh, on the road, "Benjamin that way, Judah that way."

This gives you an idea of what this territory was about so that you've got it in your brain. So David returns to Jerusalem, and this is an AI image of Jerusalem at the time of David, and it's stinky, but I couldn't do any better, sorry. I mean, they didn't really have, like, these thatched domes and stuff like that, but at some point my AI skills are only so good.

David said to Abishai... Now, first of all, David's not real happy with Joab. He told Joab, "Go [00:23:00] whip Absalom's people, but save my boy." And he doesn't know for certain that Joab's the one who killed him, but he did know for certain somebody did. So now he's kinda got Joab in military time out. He says to Abishai, "Sheba, the son of Bichri, will do us more harm than Absalom.

Take your lord's servants and go after him, lest he get himself to fortified cities and escape from us." David doesn't realize it till he gets back, but he gets back. He's trying to figure out how to deal with the ten concubines that Absalom had defiled. He's trying to... And it occurs to him, "Oh man, we got a problem with, with, uh, uh, Sheba."

So to Abishai, "Go get him." And so Abishai does. He chases him all the way to, uh, Tel is an Arabic word. It references these mounds. And, and in the, um, [00:24:00] history they were called Tels, they were called mounds before people realized what they were. They're ancient cities where the dirt has blown over so much that it now looks like it's a mountain.

But it's layers and layers and layers of cities and s- that have been, uh, set down. This is Abel-Beth-Maacah, which is where he was. This means that he was chased all the way from the area of Benjamin down here, all the way up to the very northern border of Israel. By the way, this Tel is being excavated right now, and so this is a picture of the excavation going on.

Sheba passed through all the tribes of Israel to Abel-of-Beth-Maacah, and all the Benjamites assembled and followed him in. They went into the city. The city walls have started being excavated [00:25:00] from the Iron Age time when this was taking place. And it's fascinating to see the excavation, and you can go on the website for this because they post th- their dig reports on the website.

But anyway, all the men who were with Joab... You say, "Joab, how is he the general again?" Well, Joab did not like Abishai being put in his place. So when very few people were looking, he comes over and grabs him by the beard to hug him and drops his sword into his left hand and kills him. Knifes him. Drops him by the side of the road bleeding out.

Meanwhile, the army's passing by. Uh, whoa Whoa. And it's holding up the progress of the army, so someone covers him up and throws him in a ditch

So Joab, give you an idea of who he is. [00:26:00] Joab comes and besieged Sheba

and the Bichrites in Abel of Beth Maacah. They cast up a mound against the city, and it stood against the rampart, and they're battering the wall to throw it down. They're gonna hold that city accountable for holding up the rebel Sheba. Then a wise woman called from the city, "Listen, listen. Tell Joab, 'Come here that I may speak to you.'"

Joab comes near her. Woman says, "Are you Joab?" He says, "I am." She said to him, "Listen to the words of your servant." And he answers, said, "I'm listening." She said, "They used to say in former times, 'Let them but ask counsel at Abel,' and so they settled a matter." In other words, our town is not just some northern [00:27:00] hinterland.

We were important for being a source of wisdom for Israel and, and a place to get answers. And he said, uh, and she said, "I am one of those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel. You seek to destroy a city that's a mother in Israel. Why will you swallow up the heritage of the Lord?" Joab said, "Hey, you got me confused with someone else.

Far be it from me. Far be it that I should swallow up or destroy. That's not true. But a man of the hill country," remember I showed you the hills of Benjamin, "a man of the hill country of Ephraim," those hills continued into Ephraim, "called Sheba the son of Bichri has lifted up his hand against King David.

Give him up alone, and I'll withdraw from the city. Do your job. [00:28:00] You're a city. I'll hold the city accountable if you don't do your job." Woman said to Joab, "Hang on. We'll throw his head over to you in a few minutes."

By the way, um, show you in a minute. So the woman goes to all the people in her wisdom. They cut off the head of Sheba, the son of Bichri. They threw it out to Joab. So Joab blows the trumpet. They dispersed from the city, every man to his home. Joab returned to Jerusalem to the king. Now, in the dig there, one of the things that they've actually found is a head that was decapitated from the rest of the body.

Now, don't get me wrong, that's not the fossilized head. It's a real miniature, and it's not even an echo of the story. I just think it's absolutely hilarious that in that town, one of the few things they found is the head of this guy, um, that, that was, uh, uh, just sorta lying there. Humorous. All right, the storyline.

Now, [00:29:00] let's go into some detail and look at the contrast here because there's some lessons that... to, to be learned from this story. So I'm gonna throw it up in English and in Hebrew because I want us to talk a little bit about it in some detail. There happened to be a worthless man whose name was Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjaminite.

He is a worthless man.

Beliya'al in Hebrew is worthless. It means something's just useless. It's not good for anything. It's occupying space. It's using natural resources. It's eating food, but it ain't doing anything of use. It has value of zippo [00:30:00] And if you are not taking the things that you have at your disposal and putting them to use to further God's aims In biblical terms, you're worthless, even if you've got all the money in the world

Let me give you a couple of places where this word's used in the biblical text. In Judges 20:13, "Therefore give up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah." I told you this story about the concubine who was raped to death, and the people of Israel showed up after she-- her body had been chopped into 12 pieces and sent out to all of the Israel tribes.

Um, Israel shows up and tells Benjamin, "Give us the worthless fellows in Gibeah." Doesn't mean they didn't have a bank account. [00:31:00] It means they are not living for the God that they need to be living for and putting themselves to good use. They are, in biblical terms, worthless, good for nothing. 1 Samuel 2:12, the sons of Eli, Eli being the priest, were worthless men.

They're worthless because they don't know Yahweh You wanna be useful for Yahweh? You need to know Yahweh. You don't wanna be useful for Yahweh? You don't know Him. You're worthless. 1 Samuel 25, "Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow Nabal, for as his name is, so is he." Nabal in Hebrew means a fool.

And this was the fellow where David had asked Nabal for, uh, uh, [00:32:00] some help feeding his army. And Nabal says, uh, "No." And Nabal's wife, Abigail, gets to David just in time before David sends his army just to take what he should have been entitled to, because they'd been doing protection services for Nabal and his sh- and his flocks for, uh, an extended period of time.

But she calls her husband a worthless fella who earned his name of being a fool

Becky?

2 Samuel 23:6, "Worthless men are all like thorns that are thrown away. You can't even hold onto them with your hand." That's the quality of life where you do not know the Lord, where you are not using what you have to further His kingdom. And that's the [00:33:00] situation with Bichri, a worthless man. So you got the worthless man heading north, held up in the town of a wise woman from the city.

A wise woman. Chakam in Hebrew is the word for wise. Chakam, um, uh, is, um, an adjective in this form. It can be used as a, as a verb as well. Um, but chakam, uh, wise Let me talk about that word for a moment because we, we need to remember something. The Hebrew of the Old Testament has about... Let's see. Hebrew has about 6,000 different words that are just used.

That's it. Average person back then probably had a [00:34:00] vocabulary of about 2,000. I'm not including names. Names bumps that up a little bit. But that's all. You wanna memorize the vocabulary of the Old Testament? That's it. You got it all. You got all the hapax legomena. You got all the words that only appear once.

You got it all You and I statistically have an average active vocabulary we use of between 20 and 30,000 words. And the odds are, if you're a college graduate, you're competent with about 50,000 English words Now, that's one reason why there are so many different translations of the Bible, 'cause you gotta pick and choose which word's gonna best fit the context.

Different people have different ideas. But it's also one reason it's so hard to ever translate something [00:35:00] and, and, you know, w- one of the things we always have to guard against when we read the Bible is using the substantive theory of mathematics on the language. If you say, "I don't even remember what that is," it doesn't matter.

It just means every time you see one word doesn't mean it means that the same thing all the way through the books So let's look at this word wise. She's the wise woman, and I'm not gonna give you all of the definitions of, of what that word means, but know that that winds up doing service for 10 plus English words Wise.

It can mean skillful in technical work. A tailor, um, a stonemason, a silversmith. In Exodus 28:3, God tells Moses, "You shall speak to all the skillful whom I filled with a spirit of skill [00:36:00] that they may make Aaron's garments." That's just the word wise. You shall speak to all the wise whom I filled with a spirit of wisdom that they make Aaron's garments.

It's referencing skill. Or how about this? It also means wise in the administration of affairs. So when Joseph comes and interprets Pharaoh's dreams, and Pharaoh says, "Wow, what should I do about it?" Joseph says, "Therefore, let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man and set him over the land of Egypt."

Somebody who can administer this stuff well. Someone who's good and skillful at administering in practical ways. Uh, or take Solomon, for example, something that's often misunderstood because of the way we treat the language. Solomon, God said to him, "Behold, I now do according to your word. [00:37:00] Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you."

That word wise, we often say there was nobody wiser than Solomon, and we're thinking morally and religiously and discerning the heart of God. Well, I got news for you. There are a ton of people wiser than Solomon. This guy married a bunch of pagan women

But this is talking about how he would rule as a king. See, just a couple of verses before this in verse nine, he-- God says, "What would you like?" In, in the sleep, in his dream. He says, "Give your servant," this is Solomon, "an understanding mind to govern your people that they m- that I may discern between good and evil."

An understanding mind is what he asked for. Uh, it's the word lev, heart. But to govern [00:38:00] your people so that I can discern between good and evil, because who can govern this great people? He knows the problems between north and south. I-- after Solomon, the next one to come along, there's a civil war, and the north and south irrevocably break from each other.

But Solomon keeps them together like no king ever could. He was wise beyond those before him and wise beyond those after him in the sense of administering the affairs Wise can also mean shrewd, crafty, or cunning. I told you the story about A- uh, about Absalom's sister Tamar being seduced or raped, actually.

She wasn't seduced. She was never complicit. Amnon, that's the m- that's the son who raped her, had a friend whose name was Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David's brother, and Jonadab was a very [00:39:00] crafty man. He's the one who devised the whole plan to get her in there so she could be raped. But that word translated crafty is the same word, wise

Um, Job 5:13, when Eliphaz, a friend of Job's trying to help Job understand what he's done wrong. He says that God catches the wise in their own craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end. You know, wise, chakam, can mean crafty. Um, it can also reference wise ethically and religiously, and this is the way we think about it.

This is the kind of wisdom that, that supersedes all the others. This is what James has in mind when he says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God." This is, is the wisdom that you find especially in what we would call [00:40:00] wisdom writings of the Bible, the Proverbs, for example. Um, this is, this is, uh, a, a, a perspective, God's perspective on the world, we could say.

Proverbs 10:1, "A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother." That doesn't mean a crafty, cunning son. That doesn't mean that Jonadab's dad was so proud of him for figuring out how to get the, the girl raped. You know, this wise here, chakam, means, uh, uh, uh, morally and religiously and wise in a godly way, and it's the opposite set up here in, in, uh, a Hebrew parallel structure.

It's the opposite of someone who's foolish And bring sorrow to his mother. Or Proverbs 12:15, "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise person listens to advice." Again, that's a, that's a godly [00:41:00] wisdom use of the word. The wise of heart's called discerning. Sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness.

That's that same thing. Now, look at these. Skillful in technical work, wise in the administration of affairs, shrewd, crafty, and cunning, or ethically and religiously wise. Where do we have this wise woman in this story? There was a wise, uh, i- it's a chachmah because that's just the feminine ending, uh, the, the H sound at the end.

There was this wise woman from the city. Now, look at what it says. "Listen. Listen." You know the Shema, Shema Yisrael, hear, O Israel? That's this word. It's, uh, shim'u, shim'u in this form. Listen. Listen. U is an imperative form. Listen. Listen. She's up on the wall. She's [00:42:00] yelling down to the troops that have besieged the city and built the rampart and are banging with the...

You know, they're trying to break through. She says, "Hold on. Listen."

Tell Joab, come here. Now this word tell, emer in the Hebrew is again, that oo sound. It's an imperative. She's ordering them, but what we lose in the English is she adds na at the end, which is a polite word, please. So what she's really saying is, "Please go tell Joab." She's being very polite here, and this is part of her being wise.

She's using speech that is sweet, the, the way the Proverbs would call it. Please tell Joab to come here so that I can, uh, talk to him. I need to speak to him, please. And, [00:43:00] and this, that I may speak, um, in the Hebrew, you've got a PL form here. That's the Dagesh in there. Um, you've got a PL form a- and it's written with this is my desire.

So the Hebrew idea is not just I desire to speak to him, but it's r- it's, it's, it's emphasizing it. I really, really, really wanna speak to him, please. It's very important to me. So you've got this wise woman who's calling out, trying to get their attention. Listen. Listen. Please tell Joab to come here. I really, really, really need to talk to him Then where do we go?

So Joab comes nearer, and the first thing she does is make sure it's him. She says, "Are you Joab?" Whoops. "Are you Joab?" He says, "Yo."

So she said, "Listen to the words of your servant." [00:44:00] And I love this word here, "amatecha" in the Hebrew. An amat is, is, um, um, it's a very humbling word. It's, it's, uh, it, it's translated servant, but it's basically someone who, who, who, who is down here and you're up there. Okay? So I, I'm, I'm, I'm not claiming to be boss of you, as my kids would say when they were little.

"You're not the boss of me." Um, and he answered and said, "I'm listening." She says, "They used to say in former times, 'Let him but ask counsel at Abel.' This is what our city is, and we would settle a matter, and that's the way it went down. And I'm one of those. I am peaceable. I am faithful

Uh, and, and, and, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a renegade. I'm not fighting against you. I've got no reason to. I [00:45:00] am a peaceable person. I am a faithful person. I'm trying hard to do what's right and so is my city You're trying to destroy a city that's so important and, and, and, and is producing good people.

And Joab says, "Hey, uh, no, no, no, no, no. That's not true. I'm not here to destroy the city. I'm here for bickery." And the woman says, "Well, hang on. If that's all you need, he'll be right down."

Wise woman. Then this wise woman goes into the people in her wisdom. Now, that may mean that she actually had an administrative job there, but it certainly means that this wisdom with her is something that's not deceitful. It's not crafty cunning. It's honest, and it's [00:46:00] right, and it's the exact opposite of bickery.

And they cut off the head of Sheba. They ... And this word threw it out. I mean, they literally, they just hurl it over. It, it says, "And they hurled it over to him." They threw it over the wall. Incoming. Bam!

And that contrast between worthless that leads to death and wise which leads to life is what we should be getting from this story because we've gotta decide how to live, and that's why the moral is important. So I grabbed a few more uses of the word in a wise religious sense, a wise-- a way that reflects, in fact, this wise woman who can teach us so much, and I'll use them for our points for home.

First, Proverbs ten:eight, [00:47:00] "The wise of heart will receive commandments, but a babbling fool will come to ruin." That could be the theme verse for this story

I've gotta make a decision how to live Will I receive the commandments of God? Will I receive what is right and good Or will I be more intent on what I have to say?

You know the word for barbarians? It's an onomatopoeia word in the Greek, barbar, because that's what they thought those people sounded like when they talked. Barbar, barbar, barbar, barbar, barbar. Barbar, barbar, barbar. Just babbling. Babbling idiots. Do I wanna just be a [00:48:00] babbler? Not if I'm wise. How about Proverbs 12:18?

"There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." Don't we see that with this wise woman?

the idiocy of bickery sword thrusts or slice The wisdom of the woman healing for the city is she did what the city should have done for the crime, so the city wasn't held accountable

One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless. That turns away from evil, that's the Hebrew shuv that Pastor Jarrett talks about from Second Chronicles seven, fourteen. It's this idea that we-- [00:49:00] one who is wise turns away from evil, but a fool, they don't have a course to follow.

They're just out there freelancing life by their own whims and desires. Now, I only have three points for home because that's just the way I always do it, but I thought about a fourth one at the risk of, like, breaking my mold. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he's deemed intelligent.

And I just thought that was an appropriate way to end class. So I got nothing more to say, but let me bless you in the name of Jesus, and I look forward to seeing y'all next week. Lord, in the name of Jesus, I ask your blessings on those who hear this message, that you will stir up in us a desire to hear this real-life story and understand [00:50:00] the contrast between how we can live and how we should live.

We want your wisdom, Lord, the wisdom you had from before the creation of the world We want the wisdom that you offer us because we wanna live bringing glory to your creation and bringing glory to your kingdom and bringing glory to your name. We pray through our Lord Jesus. Amen.