What Does II Samuel 17:18 Mean?

The network is compromised: "Nevertheless a lad saw them, and told Absalom: but they went both of them away quickly, and came to a man's house in Bahurim, which had a well in his court; whither they went down." Jonathan and Ahimaaz are spotted and reported to Absalom, forcing them to flee to Bahurim, where they hide in a well covered by a woman who spreads ground corn over the mouth to conceal them. The well becomes a temporary tomb, a place of darkness and enclosure that preserves their lives while the search passes over them.

The image of the couriers hidden in a well recalls the spies hidden by Rahab in Jericho, another narrative in which the preservation of God's messengers depended on the courage of a woman and the providence of God. The woman of Bahurim, unnamed and uncelebrated, joins Rahab in the line of women whose quick thinking and moral courage preserved the purposes of God at critical moments. The narrative honors these women by recording their actions while leaving their names to the knowledge of heaven.

The Lord Jesus Himself was placed in a borrowed tomb, hidden from the sight of His enemies by the stone that sealed the entrance. But the tomb that held the couriers was a place of temporary concealment; the tomb that held Christ was the place where death itself was defeated. The Savior who descended into the earth on Good Friday rose from it on Easter morning, and the well that hid the messengers of David becomes a foreshadowing of the grave that could not hold the Son of David.