Week 82, Day 4: Joab’s plan

Today’s Reading:  2 Samuel 14:1-33

Some thoughts from today’s reading…

Joab recognized that David longed for his son Absalom and so he devises a plan to get David to bring back Absalom.  Joab doesn’t just go and talk to David.  For some reason he sets about getting this elaborate plan together on how to move David emotionally to see the need to bring Absalom back.  I wonder if this plan was enacted because Joab knew David so well that he understood that David would not bring him back without a special kind of nudge.  The widow’s story appears to be designed to pull at David’s heart strings and get him to think with his emotions.  But David perceives that something else is going on with the widow’s story and is able to guess that Joab is behind it.  We will see times later where Joab appears to speak very frankly with David.  For example, when David mourns for the loss of his son Absalom after the rebellion was put down.  Joab confronts David about his weeping and rebukes him for not showing thanks towards his fighting men.  This was a bold step for Joab to do and appears to show how close a relationship he shared with David to be able to approach him in such ways. 

So many times people will do like Joab and try to use emotions to get someone to act in a certain manner.  In this case I am not sure why Joab took it upon himself to spur David to action.  Why was Joab worried about it?  Perhaps it was simply that he wanted to see David happy and not sitting around missing his son.

Question:  How can acting out of emotions be a bad thing?  What problems can result from just following our emotions?

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