Mephibosheth’s Name
2 Samuel 9
gives us an interesting character: Mephibosheth. Note that in 1 Chronicles 8:34 and 9:40
Mephibosheth is given a different name: Meribbaal. Hopefuly by now you have seen enough name
study with me and the blog to recognize the four dangerous letters on the end
of that name! Meribbaal literally means
“Ba’al is the advocate” – remembering, of course, that Ba’al is one of the
chief gods of the Canaanites. And we
know from the verses in 1 Chronicles that Mephibosheth and Meribbaal are is the
same man because the lineage given fits both.
So what’s going on here?
What
likely has happened is that this man was born into the world and given the name
Meribbaal. It does cause me to ask what
Jonathon is doing naming his son with a name connected to Ba’al – but Jonathon
no doubt learned about Ba’al in Saul’s house with Michal! For his entire childhood this man probably knew
his name to be Meribbaal. But when he
comes to see David, David likely does not tolerate the exultation of Ba’al in
his house. So what probably occurred is
that his name changes as a part of this story we read in 2 Samuel 9.
This
possibility makes even more sense when we consider that Mephibosheth is a name
that literally means “Scatterer of shame.”
Mephibosheth is scattering (or we could say dispersing) the shame of the
family by being elevated to eat at the king’s table. No longer is Saul’s name looked down upon as
a defeated king, but it is now a redeemed name by David’s act through
Mephibosheth. But perhaps more
importantly – and certainly more personally – Mephibosheth is literally
scattering away the shame of being connected to Ba’al when his name is changed
to something new!
I have
always loved the stories in the Bible when a person’s name changes – and
unfortunately I think it is a tradition that was had among the early Christians
that we have lost in recent days. Here
Mephibosheth’s name change is an intentional reminder about an important
faith-based event in his life. Another
great example of this is the Apostle Paul, whose name is changed from Saul
(which means “asked for” – a good name for a Pharisee!) to Paul (which means
“small, humble” – a great name for a Christian!) while recovering from his
Damascus Road experience. Or take the
name change from Simon (which means “He who hears” – a good name for a
follower) to Peter (which means “rock” – a great name for one of the chief
disciples and earlier workers in Christ’s church!) when he met Jesus (see John
1:42).
Name
changes are really cool when done properly – when they indicate experiences of
faith. I have always thought it would be
a really neat concept to retain this practice in the church for adults. When an adult finally understands what it
means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ – when they finally give up the ways of
the world and pursue the ways of God fully – at that time I think it would be
awesome if we had a name changing ceremony and let the person and their close
friends pick a new name for them. Let
them pick a new name that reflects their faith journey or some Christian
concept significant to them.* How cool would it be if we practiced that
(voluntarily, of course) in the church when a person truly was filled with the
Holy Spirit and truly gave up their worldly pursuits for the sake of pursuing
Christ?
David’s Grace
Okay,
enough about the names – although I do hope you enjoyed that line of thinking
today. Let’s move on to one other topic:
grace. David shows an incredible amount
of grace in this passage.
It would
have been easy for David to forget Saul’s name.
Saul tried to kill him. Saul
considered David a threat and an enemy.
David had every human right to ignore Saul’s name once he became king.
Yet, David
does not do this. David remembers Jonathon. David wishes to bring honor to Jonathon and
even Saul. So David seeks out
Mephibosheth and elevates him to his table.
Essentially, this is an act of David telling Mephibosheth that he is to
be considered a member of David’s family for the rest of his life. David takes a family name that could have
been scorned and in a sense grafts it into his own family. That’s grace.
However,
David also shows grace to a person in life who could not provide for
himself. Mephibosheth’s feet were
crippled. He couldn’t provide for
himself. So David does it for him. In fact, David not only provides for him, but
he tells Mephibosheth’s servants to tend the land and provide for the remainder
of Mephibosheth’s family. This is grace
not just to the family of Saul, but it is grace to the lame. David reminds us here in this story that we
are to care for the crippled and for those who are unable to care for
themselves.
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* As an aside, as I was
typing this I realized that to a minor extent I actually did this in my own
life. The word Estauromai is largely
connected with me. If you Google Estauromai,
I am willing to bet that the first 5 hits that you receive are directly connected
to me.
You see,
when I was going through seminary and shortly after becoming a pastor, the
translation of the book of Galatians became very important to me. I hung onto Galatians 2:20: “For I have been
crucified with Christ. It is no longer I
who live but Christ who lives in me.”
Estauromai is literally the expression for “I have been crucified.” I chose that name to be forever linked to my
identity as a perpetual reminder of my nature as a Christian: crucified with
Christ. In fact, every time I log in to
my Gmail account I have to type in the word estauromai! And in retrospect, this has been one of the
most foundational spiritual choices that I have made.
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