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Updated: June 29, 2025
Dean Colet said afterwards that he felt as if he had been called to the death-bed of Israel, or of Barzillai the Gileadite, especially when the old man, in the Oriental phraseology he had never entirely lost, said, "I thank Thee, my God, and the God of my fathers, that Thou hast granted me that which I had prayed for."
Listen to poor old Barzillai, and hear him piping: "I am this day fourscore years old; and can I discern between good and evil? Can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? Wherefore, then, should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king?"
Barzillai knew that David's court was no place for him; he had been bred on the mountains of Gilead, and his habits suited only a simple country life. The court might be better, but he could not fit into it. But there was his boy Chimham; take him, he was young enough to bend and mould. Now this is true in a far loftier way.
These were Barzillai the Gileadite, and Siphar the ruler among the Ammonites, and Machir the principal man of Gilead; and these furnished him with plentiful provisions for himself and his followers, insomuch that they wanted no beds nor blankets for them, nor loaves of bread, nor wine; nay, they brought them a great many cattle for slaughter, and afforded them what furniture they wanted for their refreshment when they were weary, and for food, with plenty of other necessaries.
It says much, therefore, for Barzillai, that amidst his great possessions, he still kept the free, open, happy disposition of youth. That he did so, is due amongst other reasons to the fact that he was a generous man.
To the very town where they had all dwelt under their father's roof, were these hapless ones dragged and their bodies ignominiously exposed upon the wall until they should waste away a custom utterly abhorrent to all humanity, and especially to the Hebrews, whose strongest desire might be expressed in the words of the aged Barzillai, "Let me die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father and mother."
"There is nothing," says Socrates to Cephalus in the Republic, "I like better than conversing with aged men. It is to such an aged traveller that we are introduced in the person of Barzillai the Gileadite.
"Why, here's a blessed old Barzillai!" His face was beaming like that of an enthusiastic numismatist who stumbles upon a rare Commodus or an authentic Domitian. There were several people present of his own way of thinking; but some, even among those, felt very ill afterward from their efforts to repress their laughter.
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