When the Mighty Fall the Wicked Rejoice - 2 Samuel 1-4

2 Samuel 1:19-20 (ESV Strong's)
19 “Your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places!
How the mighty have fallen!
20 Tell it not in Gath,
publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon,
lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,
lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult.

When the Mighty Fall the Wicked Rejoice.

The above passage is the begging of King David’s lament after he heard about King Saul and Jonathan’s death.   “Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” is a powerful phrase.   Saul was not a good king.  But, David recognized, on a repeated basis, that God had anointed him and he was God’s representative.   This is why, on multiple occasion, David did not take Saul’s life, even through his men wanted him to and urged him to.   David knew that Saul was God’s choice to lead the people.  So, when he fell in battle, David honors him with this lament.   We see in this the power of God representative nature in leadership.  God puts someone in leadership to show others who God is and how God acts.   Saul failed at this and died as a result.  Never-the-less, he was still that representative.  David begins his lament, not actually singing the praise of Saul, but, rather, in anguish over what the wicked will say about God’s representative falling.   David knows the wicked rejoice when the godly man falls.  Unlike the wicked, the Godly are not to rejoice when others fall:

Proverbs 24:16-18 (ESV Strong's)
16 for the righteous falls seven times and rises again,
but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.
17 Do not rejoice when your enemy falls,
and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles,
18 lest the LORD see it and be displeased,
and turn away his anger from him.

We do not do well, in the Christian church, when others fall.  We tend to kill our own wounded.  We need, instead, to lament that the wicked see it, but that we can still honor God through it.   We have to make sure what when the “mighty fall,” we are there to pick them up.   The righteous, according to Proverbs, will fall.  They will fall many times.   But, through the power of the Spirit and the humility of the soul, they will rise again.   We need to realize that the wicked rejoice in these times.   The believers should solider up during this times and help the mighty return to battle.