II Samuel 2:6

Look at where David is standing when he says this. Saul is dead. Jonathan is dead. David has just been anointed king over Judah — but only Judah, not the whole nation. The rest of Israel is about to crown Saul's son Ish-bosheth instead, which means David is staring down the barrel of a civil war Matthew Henry. And the very first thing he does with his new authority isn't to consolidate power. It's to send a thank-you note.

The men of Jabesh-gilead had done something dangerous and costly: they'd snuck out under cover of night and stolen the mutilated bodies of Saul and his sons off the wall of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hung them as trophies, and given them a decent burial. David hears about it and says: "may the LORD show you loving devotion and faithfulness, and I will also show you the same favor."

Notice the two-track structure. First he prays — he asks God to repay them with chesed (loyal, covenant love) and emeth (faithfulness, trustworthiness). Then he adds his own promise on top of that: "I also will show you this favor." He's not outsourcing kindness to God so he doesn't have to bother himself. He's saying both things are true — God's blessing and David's own gratitude are going to land on these men.

What's easy to miss: David has every political reason to let Saul's memory rot. Saul hunted him for years. Instead, David treats loyalty to Saul as something to be rewarded, not resented — which tells you what kind of king he intends to be before he's even secured the throne. This sets the tone for the whole David narrative: watch for this same "chesed and emeth" pairing again in 2 Samuel 15:20, and watch David extend this same instinct to Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 9. Where interpreters differ a bit is on Gill's alternate reading — whether "I also will show you this good" refers to a future kindness David intends to do, or is simply this very message itself, the honor of David publicly praising them John Gill. Either way, the verse sits at a hinge point in the book: the last king is buried, the next one is being tested to see if he'll rule with grace or just with grip.

This is roughly 1010 BC, right after the disaster at Mount Gilboa where the Philistines crushed Israel's army and killed Saul and three of his sons, including Jonathan. The Philistines did something meant to terrorize and humiliate: they cut off Saul's head, stripped his armor, and nailed his corpse — along with his sons' — to the city wall of Beth-shan for public display. This was standard ancient warfare psychology: desecrate the defeated king's body to prove his god was weaker than yours and to crush any hope of resistance.

Jabesh-gilead was a town across the Jordan River with a long-standing debt to Saul. Back in 1 Samuel 11, when Saul was a nobody, he was the one who rescued Jabesh-gilead from being besieged and mutilated by the Ammonites — it was the act that first proved he could actually lead. So when their old rescuer's body is hanging on a wall, the men of Jabesh-gilead pay the debt back: they march all night, take the bodies down, burn them (likely to prevent further desecration), and bury the bones under a tamarisk tree, then fast for seven days in mourning.

Meanwhile David is in a genuinely precarious spot. He's been living among the Philistines for over a year, technically a vassal of the Philistine king Achish, and now Saul — his enemy but also Israel's anointed king — is dead. David asks God through the priestly Urim (a way of discerning God's will, essentially casting sacred lots) whether to go up to Judah, and is told to go to Hebron Jamieson-Fausset-Brown. There he's anointed king over Judah alone. The rest of the twelve tribes are about to be claimed by Saul's surviving son Ish-bosheth, propped up by Saul's general Abner — setting up the civil war that fills the rest of this chapter. David's message to Jabesh-gilead is one of his first acts as king: a public, political, and deeply personal statement before the fighting even starts.

The word doing the heavy lifting here is חֶסֶד (chesed, H2617) — usually translated "loving devotion" or "kindness," but it's thicker than the English suggests Strong's. It's not a warm feeling; it's loyal commitment that shows up in action, the kind of love that keeps a promise even when it costs you. It's the word God uses about himself in Exodus 34:6 when he defines his own character to Moses.

David pairs it with אֱמֶת (emeth, H571) — "truth," but really "faithfulness, reliability, something you can stand on" Strong's. Put together, chesed v'emeth is a set phrase in Hebrew — you see it again almost word-for-word in 2 Samuel 15:20 and it echoes God's own self-description in Exodus 34:6. David isn't inventing new vocabulary for gratitude; he's reaching for the exact language the Bible uses for God's covenant loyalty and applying it to what these men did for Saul's corpse.

Then there's טוֹב (tov, H2896), "good" — David promises to show them "this good," the same word used all over the Old Testament for what's genuinely, substantially good, not just pleasant Strong's. And עָשָׂה (asah, H6213), "to do or make," appears twice — once describing what they did ("because you have done this thing," H1697 davar, "thing" or "matter") and once for what David will do. The repetition of "do" matters: this isn't sentiment, it's action answering action. They did something costly; David will do something in return; and God is asked to do something too. Three doers, one chain of loyalty.

There's a quiet but real echo here, not a direct prophecy. David — Israel's anointed-but-not-yet-enthroned king, hunted, wronged, and yet choosing to bless loyalty shown to his dead predecessor rather than exploit the chaos — is a partial picture of a greater King who does the same thing on a much larger scale.

Think about what David is doing: he's rewarding people who honored someone who was, by that point, David's rival and enemy. That's not political calculation, that's generosity that costs him nothing to withhold but shows something about his character. Jesus goes further. He doesn't just reward kindness shown to someone else — he tells his followers to become that kind of person even toward people who are actively hostile: "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" ( Matthew 5:44). And he pronounces a blessing on exactly this posture: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy" ( Matthew 5:7) — which is almost a New Testament restatement of what David is doing here in miniature: mercy shown gets mercy returned.

But the deeper thread is the word itself. Chesed v'emeth — loving devotion and faithfulness — is the phrase God uses to describe his own nature in Exodus 34:6. Every time a human being in the Old Testament extends chesed to another person, they're acting like a small mirror of God's own character. David asks God to be the ultimate source of that reward, then adds his own hand on top of it — which is exactly the pattern you see fulfilled in Christ: he is the place where God's chesed and emeth finally show up in a body, on a cross, aimed at people who did nothing to deserve it and plenty to earn its opposite. John's Gospel will later say Jesus came "full of grace and truth" ( John 1:14) — the same pairing, now walking around in human skin. David hoped God would show this to a handful of loyal men in Gilead. In Jesus, that hope becomes a person, offered to everyone who'll take it.

Here's the uncomfortable question this verse puts to you: when someone does something loyal, costly, or good — and it has nothing to gain you anything — do you notice? David didn't have to send this message. He was in the middle of a leadership crisis, half a kingdom hanging in the balance, plenty of reason to be consumed with his own survival. And yet the first recorded act of his kingship is stopping to say thank you to men who buried the body of his enemy.

That's the cost this verse asks of you: attention and generosity when you have every excuse to be too busy, too wounded, or too strategic to bother. It's easy to thank people who did something for you. It's much harder to notice and bless someone who did something decent for someone who hurt you, or for a cause that isn't yours anymore, or for no audience at all. David saw an act of loyalty to a dead, disgraced king and instead of resentment, he had gratitude. That's not natural. That's chosen.

And notice: David doesn't just wish them well and move on. He prays — asking God to be the deep source of blessing they can't manufacture themselves — and then he backs it with his own hand: "I also will show you this favor." Prayer without follow-through is cheap. Follow-through without prayer is just self-reliance dressed up as kindness. You need both.

So ask yourself today: who has shown quiet, costly loyalty near you — to a person, a cause, a promise — that you've simply failed to notice because you were consumed with your own crisis? What would it cost you to stop, name it, and bless it, both in prayer and in action?

• Lord, show loving devotion and faithfulness — your chesed and emeth — to the people in my life who have quietly done right when no one was watching.
• Forgive me for the times I've been too consumed with my own survival or ambition to notice loyalty and kindness shown to others.
• Teach me to combine prayer with action, like David did — not just wishing people well, but actually showing up for them.
• Grow in me the kind of mercy that extends even toward people connected to those who've hurt me.
• Thank you that your grace and truth aren't just words about your character but a person — Jesus — who showed up for me when I deserved nothing.

• Who has shown costly loyalty near you lately — to you, to someone else, to a cause — that you never stopped to acknowledge?
• Is there someone you've quietly resented for their loyalty to a person or cause you consider your rival? What would it cost you to bless that instead?
• Do you tend to pray for people's good and stop there, or do you follow prayer with your own actual effort, time, or money?
• When was the last time you extended chesed — loyal, costly love — to someone who could do nothing for your career, reputation, or comfort?
• David did this in the middle of his own crisis. What crisis in your life is currently your excuse for not noticing anyone else?