Matthew Poole and continuators on 2 Samuel 14:14

14 For we must needs die , and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again : neither doth God respect any person , yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him .

Heb. In dying we shall die, i. e. we shall certainly and suddenly die all of us, both thou, O King, who therefore art obliged to take due care of thy Successor, who is Absalom; and Absalom, who, if he do not die by the hand of Justice, must shortly die by the necessity of Nature: and Amnon too must have died in the common way of all flesh, if Absalom had not cut him off. Therefore, O King, be not implacable towards Absalom for nipping a Flower a little before its time of fading, and restore him to us all before he die in a strange Land.

Which is quickly drunk up and buried in the Earth, and cannot be recovered.

To wit, so far as to exempt him from this common Law of dying. But this version seems not to agree with the Scripture Phrase: for the accepting of a person is never to my knowledge expressed in Hebrew by Nasa Nephesh, which is the Phrase here, but by Nasa Panim, every where. The words therefore may be rendred either thus: yet God will not take away, or doth not use to take away (the Future Tense oft noting a continued act, as [illegible: 1 word] observe) the soul, or souls, or lives of men, to wit, by violence. God doth not severely and instantly cut off offenders, but suffers them to live till they die by the course of Nature; and therefore so shouldst thou do too. Or, rather thus: yet God hath not taken away his soul or life, the Pronoun, his, being understood here, as it is in many other places, and as being easily supplied out of the context. So the sense is, God hath hitherto spared him, and did not suffer his Brethren to kill him, as in reason might have been expected; nor hath God himself yet cut him off for his Murther, as he oft doth with persons who are out of the Magistrates reach; but hath hitherto preserved him even in a Heathenish Land. All which are intimations that God would have him spared.

Or, but hath devised means, &c. i. e. hath given Laws to this purpose, That the manslayer who is banished should not always continue in banishment, but upon the High-Priests death return to his own City. Whereby he hath shewed his pleasure, that the avenger of Blood should not implacably persist in seeking revenge, and that the manslayer should be spared. Or rather, thus, but thinketh thoughts, or, but hath designed, or, therefore he intendeth that he who is banished (to wit, Absalom) be not (always) expelled or banished from him, i. e. from God and from his People, and from the place of his Worship, but that he should return home to him. So the sense is, That God by sparing Absaloms life in the midst of dangers, did sufficiently intimate, that he would in due time bring him back to his Land and People. Even as in our Days and Land, Gods miraculous preservation of the Life of our present Sovereign in so many and great dangers, was a pledge and presage that God intended sooner or later to restore him to his Kingdoms.

Marginal references: Or, [illegible: 1 word] God hath [illegible: 1 word] taken [illegible: 1 word] his life, he [illegible: 1 word] also [illegible: 1 word] means, & [illegible: 1+ letters].