LEARNING
READ 1 Chronicles 12:18
Then the Spirit came upon Amasai, chief of the Thirty, and he said, “We are yours, O David; and with you, O son of Jesse! Peace, peace to you, and peace to the one who helps you! For your God is the one who helps you.” Then David received them, and made them officers of his troops.
MEDITATE
I’d never heard of Amasai, as I sat in the pastel pink Sunday school room next to a belching oil furnace in the basement of our church.
Gideon, Samson, Saul, and David? Absolutely. But Amasai? Never.
By all rights, someone should have introduced Amasai to me when I was a boy because we know just one thing about him: he led a famed, maybe notorious, group of warriors simply called The Thirty—like World War II’s Dirty Dozen, made famous in a movie whose poster read, “Train Them! Excite Them! Arm Them! … Then turn them loose on the Nazis!” Amasai was a war hero and that’s all I needed to know.
When “the Spirit clothed Amasai” (that’s how the Hebrew reads literally, so I translated the verb with “clothed”), I knew exactly what to expect: Amasai, clothed with the Spirit, would fight. Like Gideon, who defeated the Midianites when the Spirit clothed him. Like Samson, who slaughtered the Philistines when the Spirit rushed on him. Like an angry Saul, who cut down the Ammonites when the Spirit came upon him.
So why didn’t anyone in Sunday school teach me about Amasai? Why? Perhaps because in this episode, at least, he seems like an underachiever, a weakling, even a coward. He doesn’t pull out his sword. He doesn’t hop into a chariot. He doesn’t whirl a slingshot and—pop!—fell a giant with a single smooth stone.
This is so disappointing to the boy in me who wants the Spirit to prompt action, action—A-C-T-I-O-N—as our high school cheerleaders used to spell out, urging our beleaguered and outmanned football team to victory, or at least to a less humiliating defeat.
So is there something else that a twelve-year-old boy could appreciate? I think there is.
Here’s the story. Some Israelite men come up to King David, who questions their loyalty. “If you have come to me in friendship, to help me, then my heart will be knit to you,” David says, “but if you have come to betray me to my adversaries, though my hands have done no wrong, then may the God of our ancestors see and give judgment.” Touchy? Maybe, but probably not without cause. David understands jealousy, rivalry, violence—frankly, the dynamics of the schoolyard. And right now, those dynamics have come to a head, and tensions are high. Into this breach steps an inspired Amasai—not to fight but to wax poetic:
We are yours, O David;
and with you, O son of Jesse!
Peace, peace to you,
and peace to the one who helps you!
For your God is the one who helps you.
It works. Without hesitation, “David received them, and made them officers of his troops.” David didn’t just shuffle his sandaled feet and say, “Okay, you can stay.” Amasai’s poem was so effective that David put his potential enemies in positions of power.
Why? Why was David driven by this poem to take such unusual measures?
Because this inspired poem is spun out of the cloth of David’s own history. This poem, in short, tells David that Amasai and his men are, without a doubt, on his side, flesh of his flesh, bone of his bones. Clothed with the Spirit, Amasai speaks a piece of hard-edged poetry that resurrects Israel’s traditions—David’s traditions. For example, the tandem pairing of “David” and “son of Jesse,” which seems innocent enough, actually takes us back to a surly and mean (that’s actually how he’s described in the Bible) man named Nabal. In a moment of utter disloyalty, this surly and mean man refused to give food to David’s men, asking instead, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse?” (1 Samuel 25:10). Amasai adopts this pairing but transforms it into a pledge of loyalty to David, son of Jesse.
Even the threefold “Peace, peace to you, and peace to the one who helps you” in Amasai’s poem recalls the story of Nabal. David had told his men exactly what to say to Nabal: “Thus you shall salute him: ‘Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have’” (1 Samuel 25:6). Three peaces. One shared history.
You might not expect to discover a pocket of inspiration in the book of 1 Chronicles. Even the name, with its reference to measurement—chronos—sounds deadly. But—wham!—smack in the middle of the book, the Spirit clothes Amasai. And—pow!—what we learn!
The Spirit works through a person who knows history. When Amasai speaks, he appeals to a shared history with David. Amasai must have paid attention in Sabbath school.
Second, the Spirit transforms—you might say redeems—that history into something of exquisite relevance to the event at hand. In Amasai’s case, a shared history, a negative tradition transformed into something positive, provided the thin strand that made peace possible. We, too, need to study so that the Spirit can use that knowledge in our world.
The Spirit takes the lighter path to peace. Amasai and The Thirty may have been great warriors, but they’d have been no match for David and his armies. A slingshot wouldn’t have done it. A sword wouldn’t have cut it. The Spirit, therefore, averted a bloodbath by inspiring a lighter, more intelligent, informed path to peace. Anyone who’s been vulnerable in the schoolyard or church, at the office or at home, knows how important that sort of inspiration can be.
REFLECT
PRAY
Holy Spirit
Make me timely
essential
relevant
Not relevant for its own sake—but substantial
Not optional—but essential
Not trendy—but timely
Rooted in the time-tested traditions of faith
Essential
Relevant
Inspired
Amen
