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"Well, old Shimei, you won't find a customer here. You had better be off." "No; but do, please do, please, let me in," supplicated the Jew. "I want to speak to his Excellency, the governor." "The governor is in bed, and asleep." "I can wait until he awakes." "Then wait where you are."
The one sudden flash of the old nobleness which he has shewn in pardoning Shimei, he himself stultifies with his dying lips by a mean command to Solomon to entrap and slay the man whom he has too rashly forgiven.
However, it makes a more piquant and dramatic picture to represent Shimei as a type of the wretch of insolence and servility compact, with a tongue ever ready to be loosed against the unfortunate, and a knee ever ready to be bent to the strong. "There is not a character in the world which has so bad an influence upon it as this of Shimei.
"Ananias" keeps still and winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they take in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow. If you meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears "Rab-shakeh," an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out what good sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not." No, no, keep your temper.
But as to Shimei, Solomon commanded that he should build him a house, and stay at Jerusalem, and attend upon him, and should not have authority to go over the brook Cedron; and that if he disobeyed that command, death should be his punishment. He also threatened him so terribly, that he compelled him to take all oath that he would obey.
Now Adonijah had for his assistants Joab the captain of the army, and Abiathar the high priest; and the only persons that opposed him were Zadok the high priest, and the prophet Nathan, and Benaiah, who was captain of the guards, and Shimei, David's friend, with all the other most mighty men.
Before, however, he crossed, several interesting interviews took place. Shimei, who had cursed so shamelessly on the day of misfortune, was forgiven, and received the promise of protection; Mephibosheth was restored to the king's favour, and his old place at the king's table; and, what specially concerns us at present, David had his final parting with Barzillai.
The preacher's view of the character of Shimei, and of his behaviour to David, is hardly that, perhaps, of a competent historical critic, and in treating of the Benjamite's insults to the King of Israel he appears to take no account of the blood-feud between the house of David and the clan to which the railer belonged; just as in commenting on Shimei's subsequent and most abject submission to the victorious monarch, Sterne lays altogether too much stress upon conduct which is indicative, not so much of any exceptional meanness of disposition, as of the ordinary suppleness of the Oriental put in fear of his life.
It is true, when sins are pardoned, they are fully pardoned in God's court, and that obligation to condemnation is taken away, and the pardoned person is looked upon as no sinner, that is, as no person liable to condemnation because of these sins; for being pardoned he becometh just before God; yet we dare not say, but conscience afterward, being alarmed with new transgressions, may mistake, as people suddenly put into a fight are ready to do; nor dare we say, that God will not permit Satan to upbraid us with those sins, which have been blotted out long ago, as he suffered Shimei, who was but an instrument of Satan, to cast up to David his blood-guiltiness, which had been pardoned long before.
The son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, the son of Israel. And his brother Asaph, who stood on his right hand, even Asaph the son of Berachiah, the son of Shimea, The son of Michael, the son of Baaseiah, the son of Malchiah, The son of Ethni, the son of Zerah, the son of Adaiah, The son of Ethan, the son of Zimmah, the son of Shimei,
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