Why were the blind and lame not allowed to "enter the house" (2 Samuel 5:8)?

At the end of verse 8 we read: “The lame and the blind hated of David's soul … ! Therefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.” Who is it that speaks like this? It is David himself. How he differs from Christ in this point! Coming into the world, the Lord Jesus did exactly the opposite: “Blind men see and lame walk” (Matt. 11:5). He cannot meet a single one of these unfortunate souls but what His love and His power unite to give healing. Even when His wrath, divine wrath, is expressed, is it not marvelous to see it opening up the floodgates of His grace? “And Jesus entered into the temple of God, and cast out all that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold the doves. And He says to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of robbers. And blind and lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them” (Matt. 21:12-14). His wrath and indignation are expressed in the zeal of God's house which devoured Him (Ps. 69:9), but He purifies His house, not to prevent the blind and the lame from entering it like David, but in order to introduce them there by healing them. We find a second example in the parable of the great supper. All the guests excused themselves from coming. “Then the master of the house, in anger, said to his bondman, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring here the poor and crippled and lame and blind” (Luke 14:21). The master's anger against his guests results in seating the blind and the lame at the table of his great feast.

But if David and his men come to Jerusalem, the stronghold of Zion was still in the hand of the enemy, as it had hitherto been. Whatever might be the conquests of Joshua, whatever might have been achieved afterwards, in the very middle of the land, in the centre of Jerusalem itself, there frowned this stronghold held by the Jebusites; The time was come to mark a most important change. It was impossible that the kingdom could be according to God unless Zion were wrested for the king from the enemy who had thus daringly defied His people; and David felt this in all its force. He was keenly alive to the dishonour that was done to God by the very heart and citadel of the kingdom belonging to an accursed race of Canaan. There they proudly and at ease, by long possession in their fortress, laughed all assailants to scorn. Hence, when David comes before it, they say to him, "Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither." A most stinging taunt to the warrior king! The blind and the lame were sufficient to keep the stronghold against David and his men. That is, the place was so excessively strong by nature, perhaps also so fortified by the men of Jebus, that they had conceived it to be impregnable. "Nevertheless David," as the Spirit of God says so calmly — "Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion: the same is the city of David. And David said on that day, Whosoever gets up to the gutter, and smites the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain." David was not only too sensitive to the taunt, but could not rise above it. All flesh is grass, and its glory as its flower. Generous as David was, he was wounded and resented the insult on those innocent of it. "Wherefore this day the blind and the lame shall not come into the house." We know how the grace of the Lord Jesus reversed this. The blind and the lame were just the people that did come into the house when He was there. But David was not Jesus. The king felt things after a too human sort. The Lord Jesus only and always went or came in a way perfectly suitable to God and His grace.

A. The blind and the lame seem to have been set as a taunt to the anointed of Jehovah on the supposed impregnable fortress of Zion; and David felt it with all indignant ardour. They were the hated of his soul. Nevertheless Joab took the hill of Zion on David's behalf, the centre of his kingdom, and the prize that secured his own place of command. All in man's hand fails. How blessedly does the Lord contrast with it, Who, when He cast out those that made Jehovah's house a den of thieves, received blind and lame that came to Him in the temple, and healed them!

The various passages of this chapter correspond to other passages in First Chronicles, which sometimes gives us additional details concerning these events. The capture of Jerusalem is related in 1 Chronicles 11:4-9. In our present chapter the Jebusites say to David: “Thou shalt not come in hither, but the blind and the lame will drive thee back” (v. 6). They were so sure of their walls and of their impregnable stronghold that they did not judge it necessary to use sound, healthy men to repel the king's attack; even these disabled people would be well sufficient for this task, they thought. “But David took the stronghold of Zion” (v. 7). Not another word about it; the project succeeded as simply as if it had cost nothing. In effect, this victory costs God nothing. This is how He will fight all man's enmity against Himself and against His Anointed. What divine irony! “Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us!” God answers: “He that dwells in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision!” (Ps. 2:3-4).

David is indignant at these outrageous words of the Jebusites and his indignation is according to God. When we see the world occupying God's domain while yet the enemy of Christ, our hearts moved by the Holy Spirit may well be filled with indignation. We can ardently desire that the Lord might at last have the place that is His by rights, that He be no longer scoffed at by the world which has rejected Him, and that His reign may be established on earth after the judgment of the living nations. To feel thus is in order.

Having driven out these evil men, Jesus dispensed mercy to the very people they would have kept outside. The blind and lame were forbidden to approach in Leviticus 21:18, and 2 Samuel 5:6-8 records David's sentence against them: he said, they "shall not come into the house." The great Son of David had now arrived in Zion, and He reverses David's action. The kind of folk that were "hated of David's soul" were loved and blessed that day. The sordid money-changers had misrepresented the God whose house it was, and caused men to blaspheme His name: in healing the needy, Jesus rightly represented the very heart of God, and in result there was praise. Even the children were found crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" They had caught up the cry from the older folk.

But now the blind and the lame come to Him to be healed. "He healed their diseases and forgave their iniquities." Both these classes were the hated of David's soul — the effect of the taunt upon David (2 Sam. 5:6-8). How blessed the contrast in the Son of David! He turns out the selfish religionists from the temple, and receives there the poor, blind, and lame, and heals them — perfect righteousness and perfect grace.

Though Israel had anointed David king, when he went to Jerusalem the inhabitants (Jebusites) were quite haughty in refusing him entry into the city. They told him that the blind and the lame would have sufficient power to drive them away (v.6). There is a lesson here typical of the future establishing of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus. The spiritual blindness and lameness of many in Israel will seem to be in formidable opposition to the blessed Lord of glory. Will it be so great that the true King of Israel cannot overcome it? When He came in grace to Israel, He showed His living power in healing the blind and the lame. Will He be any less capable when He comes in great power and glory? Jerusalem's opposition was nothing to David. He took the city and from that day it has been called "the city of David" (v.7).

In the N.A.S.B. verse 8 is translated "And David said on that day, Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him reach the lame and the blind, who are hated of David's soul, through the water tunnel." When the gates were barred, the watercourse was a way of entering the city that the Jebusites overlooked. How true is this typically also. The fresh water supply is typical of the living word of God. If we attack evil in the vital power of God's word, it cannot withstand us. The blindness of Israel to the truth of God, and their lameness as to walking in the paths of righteousness have been great obstacle to the blessing of the nation. If the blind and the lame of Israel will not bow to the authority of the Lord Jesus in order to be healed, then the opposers, remaining blind and lame will be "hated of his soul," and bear their well deserved judgment. "Therefore they say, The blind or the lame shall not come into the house." While many in Israel will be saved in the coming day of the Lord's glory, yet two thirds, remaining in unbelief, "will be cut off and die" (Zech.13:8). They will never know the blessing of the house of God.

But again the Jebusite, the "treader-down," has been at work, and the Lord used the term to express the condition of Israel's city during the times of Gentile supremacy: "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." (Luke 21:24.) Thus the Jebusite period has come back, and will last until the true David shall come in power. But what is that which has maintained Jebusite dominion over the place of Israel's and Jehovah's throne? But one answer is possible here: it is sin which alone can have done so, the sins of God's people themselves. And so inveterate has sin proved in their case, that the Jebusite may seem justified in his taunt, "Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither," as much as to say, "David shall not come in hither." Here is, indeed, the real question. Blind has Israel been as to all God's dealings with them: lame, for any walking in paths to which the voice of God for so many generations has been calling them! Well might it seem as if their doom were settled now, and their hope gone. Yet the very name of Zion is a perpetual reminder of promise that abides and which will be fulfilled yet in David's victory. God has said of Zion, "Here will I dwell, for I have desired it": it is the "fixed" place of His abode.

The smiter of the Jebusite must smite, therefore, the blind and the lame, and reach the watercourse, the stream of living water. Let us note, however, that in the text the order of the two latter is inverted: the watercourse is the way of reaching the blind and the lame, as spiritually it surely is. It is remarkable that it has been found quite recently that by the watercourse (by its subterranean channel) the place of the citadel can yet be, though with difficulty, reached. Thus nature bears testimony with Scripture still. David, therefore, takes the stronghold and dwells in it, and builds it up anew. And he goes on and becomes great, for the God of hosts is with him: the higher kingdom and the lower are now united.

David, the king of Judah in Hebron for seven years and a half, becomes the king of all Israel upon Ishbosheth's death And now David is no longer the man of faith who, himself the head of the armies of Israel walking in dependence upon God, guided the enterprises which the circumstances of Israel required of faith; but he is a king who can exalt whom he will The man very soon appears, the energetic man, but not the man of God. "Whosoever getteth up to the gutter," the king said should be rewarded; "he shall be chief and captain" (2 Sam. 5:8). Joab goes up, and he has natural claims upon David.

It was David the King who took possession of Zion. But the blind and the lame that were in it were abhorred by him, the grace that could deliver such from their bondage was not in him, its manifestation awaits the coming of "Great David's greater Son." He has already been, and as He walked in His temple, Zion's true but unrecognized King, and "THE BLIND AND THE LAME CAME TO HIM, and He healed them" (Matt. 21:14). And when His kingdom shall be established in Zion, "the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, and the lame man shall leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing" (Isa. 35:5-6).