What Does II Samuel 19:40 Mean?

The crossing is completed: "Then the king went on to Gilgal, and Chimham went on with him: and all the people of Judah conducted the king, and also half the people of Israel." The political dimensions of the restoration are now visible: Judah has come in full strength, but only half of Israel has participated in the escort. The numerical imbalance between the two groups will produce the conflict that erupts in the following verses and that will ultimately lead to Sheba's rebellion in chapter 20.

The detail that "half the people of Israel" accompanied the king indicates that the restoration is incomplete. The full unity of the nation, twelve tribes marching together behind their legitimate king, has not been achieved, and the fractures that Absalom's rebellion exposed have not been healed by his defeat. The return to Gilgal, the place of beginnings, is therefore a beginning that carries the marks of an unfinished reconciliation.

The church of Christ is similarly divided by the fractions that sin produces, but the King who leads His people home is building a unity that no rebellion can permanently fracture. "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." The prayer of Jesus for the unity of His people is the promise that the incomplete reconciliations of history will give way to the perfect union of eternity, when every division is healed and every faction is absorbed into the one body of the one Lord.