ADONIJAH
BY REV. ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
It is notorious that the sons of devout men sometimes prove a curse to their parents, and bring dishonour on the cause of God. When Eve rejoiced over her first-born, she little suspected that passions were sleeping within him which would impel him to slay his own brother; and the experience of the first mother has been repeated, though in different forms, in all lands and in all ages. Isaac's heart was rent by the deceit of Jacob, and by the self-will of Esau. Jacob lived to see his own sin repeated in his sons, and he who deceived his father when he was old and blind, suffered for years an agony of grief because he had been falsely told that Joseph, his favourite son, was dead.
Probably few men have known domestic sorrows, so many and so great, as those which befell David. He shared, in all its bitterness, the misery of a parent who sees his best hopes disappointed, and who is racked with anxiety as to what his wayward boy will do next, sometimes wishing that before such dishonour had befallen him his son had been laid to rest under the daisies, in the time of infant innocence. David's eldest son, Amnon, after committing a terrible crime, was assassinated by his brother Absalom. In his turn, Absalom, the fairest of the family, rebelled against his own father, and was killed by Joab, as he hung in the oak. Chiliah, or Daniel, died we know not how, and then Adonijah, the fourth son, the eldest of those surviving, followed in Absalom's footsteps.
Adonijah's sin appears at first sight so unnatural that, in justice to him as well as for our own instruction, we should try to discover the sources whence this stream of evil flowed which was so bitter and so desolating in its results.
This is not an easy task, because the full details of his life are not recorded. There are, however, no less than three evil influences hinted at in these words: "His father had not displeased him at any time, in saying, Why hast thou done so? and he also was a very goodly man, and his mother bare him after Absalom" (1 Kings i. 6). Taking them in reverse order: Heritage, Adulation, and Lack of Discipline, were three sources of moral peril, and these would tend to the ruin of any man. Let us think of each of these, for they are not extinct by any means.
We know very little of Haggith, but she was probably a dancing girl who made her way to the front by her ambition and beauty. From her and from his father we may assume that Adonijah inherited a tendency to ambition and self-conceit such as Absalom inherited from the union of David with Bathsheba. It is one of the laws of life that "like produces like," Evidence of this constantly appears in the lower animals, in the speed of the racehorse, in the scent of the hound, and so forth. This asserts itself in men also. We often notice what we call a "family likeness." Tricks of manner, and various mental qualities such as heroism, statesmanship, mathematical or artistic talent, descend from parents to children, and sometimes reappear for generations in the same family. This cannot be due to example alone, because the phenomena is almost as frequent when the parents die during the child's infancy. Similarly, moral tendencies are transmitted, and the Bible gives us many examples of the fact. The luxury-loving Isaac, who must have his savoury food, just as his son, Esau, who would sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, Rebekah, who, like her brother Laban is shrewd and cunning, sees her tendency repeated in her son Jacob, who needed a life of discipline and prayer to set him free from it.
In more senses than one "the evil which men do lives after them." A drunkard's son, for example, is often conscious of an inbred craving which is a veritable disease, so that he is heavily weighted as he starts out on the race of life. This solemn and suggestive fact that the future well-being of children depends largely on the character of parents, should give emphasis to the adjuration in the wedding service—marriage, therefore, is to be honourable in all, and ought not to be engaged in rashly, "thoughtlessly, or lightly, but advisedly, reverently, and in the fear of God." The law of moral heritage makes parental responsibility a solemn trust, while, in so far as it affects those who inherit bad or good tendencies, we are sure that the Judge of all the earth will do right. But it must never be forgotten that even a bad disposition need never become a dominant habit. It is something to be resisted and conquered, and, it may be, by the grace of Him who is faithful, and will not suffer any of us to be tempted above what we are able to bear. Our tendencies are Divine calls to us to recognise and guard certain weak places in the citadel of character, for it is against these that our enemy directs his most persistent and vigorous attacks.
Unhappily, Adonijah's natural bias was made the more dangerous by the atmosphere of the court, where flatterers naturally abounded—for "he was a very goodly man," physically a repetition of Absalom, the Adonis of his time. We may also fairly surmise that his parents were guilty of partiality and indulgence in their treatment of him, for David would love him the more as one who revived the memory of his favourite Absalom, the idol of the people, distinguished for his noble mien and princely bearing. Courtiers, soldiers, and people all flattered Adonijah, and Joab, the greatest captain of his age, next only to the king, was his partisan, the more so because he neither forgot nor forgave David's reproaches after the death of Absalom. Even Abiathar, who represented the younger and more ambitious branch of the priesthood, joined in the general adulation, until Adonijah, intoxicated by vanity, set up his own court in rivalry to that of his father, and when he moved abroad was accompanied by a stately retinue of chariots and horsemen, and fifty foot attendants gorgeously apparelled.
No doubt every position in life has its own peculiar temptations. The ill-favoured lad, who is the butt at school and the scapegoat at home, is in serious danger of becoming bitter and revengeful, and of growing crooked in character, like a plant in a dark vault, which will have no beauty because it enjoys no sunshine. But, on the other hand, physical beauty, which attracts attention and wins admiration, especially if it is associated with brilliant conversational gifts, and great charm of manner, has befooled both men and women into sin and misery. Many a girl has been entrapped into an unhappy marriage; and many a lad, moved by a vaunting ambition which overleaped itself, has fallen never to rise: like Icarus, when his waxen wings melted in the sun.