Gospel Reflections #1037: Our Emotional Wounds and Self-Preservation

2 Samuel 3:27 ‘When Abner returned to Hebron, Joab asked to speak to him in private and lured him inside the city gate; there he stabbed Abner in the stomach and killed him, avenging the blood of his brother Asahel.’

This passage describes a particularly bloody assassination in the history of the unification of the Kingdom of Israel, in which Joab, David’s general, ambushed and murdered Abner, the former commander-in-chief of King Saul’s house.

 Following the death of King Saul, Israel had split into the ‘Kingdom of Judah (South)’, led by David, and the ‘Kingdom of Israel (North)’, which supported Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth.

The man holding the reins of power in the northern regime was the renowned general Abner.

However, Abner came into conflict with Ish-Bosheth, who was little more than a puppet king, and signed a peace treaty with David in Hebron to hand the kingdom over to him.

This enraged Joab, David’s right-hand man and general.

During the ‘Battle of Gibeon’, Joab’s swift-footed younger brother Asahel had caught up with Abner; having ignored Abner’s warnings, he was killed in the ensuing skirmish.

To Joab, Abner was the ‘murderer of his brother’.

Although Joab used ‘avenging his brother’s blood’ as a pretext, in reality it was also a political assassination intended to safeguard his own position.

Had Abner joined David’s camp, there was a high probability that Joab would have lost his position as commander-in-chief of the entire Israelite army; thus, Joab eliminated his rival.

Hebron, the scene of the assassination, was a ‘city of refuge’ (a sanctuary where those who had committed manslaughter were protected from retaliation) as prescribed by the Law.

Although Abner’s killing of Asahel was akin to an accident in the heat of battle (self-defence), Joab trampled even on the rules of the sanctuary and killed him by treacherous means—a sneak attack.

Rather than accepting facts as they are, we tend to interpret them through our own perspectives and emotions.

When our own prejudices and assumptions take the place of facts, and this is combined with a desire for self-preservation, rational thinking becomes difficult.

We may sometimes suffer emotional wounds so deep that we long for revenge, yet God has clearly stated that vengeance belongs to Him alone.

All we can do is take our emotional wounds to God just as they are, pour out our hearts to Him, and then entrust the rest to Him.

Our God is a God who will neither leave us behind nor forsake us.

AUTHOR'S BIO: This Gospel Reflections page is written by Masae San, who resides in Hiroshima, Japan. Masae is a dedicated student of the Bible with a deep passion for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She shares her daily reflections on Gospel perspectives to reach out to others and spread the message of God's true love through a Christ-centered approach. We are sharing her insights here so that you, too, can experience the joy that comes from knowing and understanding the true Gospel and the love of God through Jesus Christ.