By Jack Wyman

He was labeled, pitied, dismissed, ignored and ostracized.

Crippled was the word—and the stigma. “Disabled” and “challenged” hadn’t been invented.

He was a young man with a difficult name and a difficult life.

Mephibosheth. He was royalty—once upon a time. He was the son of one king’s best friend—the grandson of another. When word spread that King Saul and his son Jonathan had been killed in battle, Mephibosheth’s nurse ran to escape with the five-year-old boy in her trembling arms. As she hurried, she suddenly dropped the child.

The Bible says simply, “and he became crippled” (II Samuel 4:4). This defined his tragic fate and desperate life.

No more was spoken or written of the boy. One may suppose that this is all that could be said of him. Three thousand years ago, being crippled automatically consigned you to the margins of life. There was no future, no rehabilitation, no hope. He may have been the son of the valiant and pure Jonathan—King David’s friend who was closer than a brother—but he was known as the cripple.

Too bad, so sad.

Added to this humiliating handicap was the ruthless fact that victorious kings had a habit of eliminating their foe’s family. Mephibosheth may have been Jonathan’s son; he was also Saul’s grandson. Saul, once David’s gracious benefactor, turned mortal enemy. Best to not hang around.

Years later, David must have been thinking of happier days when he and Jonathan were together. Whatever prompted him, the king asked a surprising question.

“Is there anyone in Saul’s family still alive; anyone to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

Show kindness?

“For Jonathan’s sake?”

Really?

Yes, it turns out, there is. He’s a long-forgotten son of your dear friend. He’s living in an isolated wilderness, at the home of a kind man and his family who took him in.

“Yes, one of Jonathan’s sons is still alive. He is crippled in both feet” (II Samuel 9:4).

This mighty king, schooled in war, eliminating his adversaries wholesale, was now seeking an opportunity to be compassionate.

In these bloody and turbulent times, surrounded still by enemies, David wishes to show kindness to “anyone” who might possibly have survived the purge of Saul’s reign. Saul, after all, had attempted to kill David several times. His jealousy grew into an evil obsession.

The king who had not forgotten Saul’s treachery, chose instead to remember his son’s profoundly loyal friendship. It is for Jonathan’s sake; it is to honor a promise made long ago to his precious friend, that David chooses kindness in the midst of harshness.

Jonathan had once asked David to treat his family with “the faithful love of the Lord” (I Samuel 20:14). David would fulfill that pact, made in an open field, with God alone as witness.

Mephibosheth is not called by name; he’s identified by his condition. No one would ever forget he was a cripple. Nor would he. His name? It means “a shameful thing.”

David sent an entourage to get Mephibosheth and bring him to the palace. This young man didn’t know why the king had brought him here. He didn’t know what to expect. He bowed low before David.

“Greetings Mephibosheth.” The king addressed him by name. He looked beyond his disability, beyond his tragedy, and beyond the stigma. He looked into the humble countenance of his friend’s son and saw not a cripple, but a man, created in the image of God.

“I am your servant,” Mephibosheth answered.

“Don’t be afraid,” David said. “I intend to show kindness to you, because of my promise to your father Jonathan” (II Samuel 9:7).

A promise made, a promise kept. A friendship lost too soon, but never forgotten. This is not retribution, this is compassion; it is not cruelty, it is magnanimity; it is not condemnation, it is invitation.

David gave to Mephibosheth all the land once belonging to his grandfather Saul. He gave him Saul’s servants. And then the king told him, “And you will eat here with me, at the king’s table” (emphasis added).

Mephibosheth, startled, looked up at David, his eyes glistening with the first rays of hope he’d ever known. “Who is your servant,” he asked the king, “that you should show such kindness to a dead dog like me?”

It was a rhetorical question, asked in unbelieving wonder and gratitude. Deserving nothing, Mephibosheth expected nothing. Being nothing in his own eyes, he’s somebody special in the king’s eyes. Now, in an instant, he’s been given everything. Forsaken to a barren land of hopelessness, rejection, and regret, he’s suddenly raised up and brought to the bountiful royal table of the king.

David loved Jonathan. He would now welcome and love his son. The king would treat Mephibosheth, “like one of the king’s own sons” (II Samuel 9:11).

As the story closes, we are again reminded that this man Mephibosheth—given hope, promise, and adopted into King David’s family and seated at his table— “was crippled in both feet” (II Samuel 9:13).

Why say that again? Why remind us?

To let us know that Mephibosheth, though still crippled, is no longer “a shameful thing.” By grace and kindness, he’s a child of the king. And to the king, he’s flawless.

Lost in sin, man dwells as an outcast in a barren land of hopelessness, crippled by his moral and spiritual depravity. Unable to save and restore himself, he is a shameful thing.

God saw us, loved us, and made a way back for you and for me. He “saved a wretch like me.”

You and I have been redeemed by the gracious love and sacrifice of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

He calls us by name.

We have been adopted into his family, and welcomed to his table.

No longer lost or estranged, no longer shameful, we are God’s sons and daughters.

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