For those of you that may be wondering about what this web site is all about perhaps it would be best to start with the meaning of its name: Meph’s Table is short for: “Mephibosheth’s Table.” Mephibosheth is a real person born a few thousand years ago to a lineage well documented in history. No serious historian denies his existence. His breath and form are verified both by the largest body of known historical records and archaeological evidences. In some senses there is greater proof he existed than the great Caesar! There is no question he lived. The story isn't that he lived, rather it is how he ever did.
Mephibosheth had the “misfortune” to be born the son of the King’s only heir, Jonathon. Misfortune because, when the King, Saul, had died Jonathon would have been made king but he too had perished in battle. The death of Mephibosheth's grandfather wasn't just a token to mourn it was a point of intense fear. A rival warlord had claimed the throne and Mephibosheth, through virtue of his lineage, became the only remaing claimant to the throne. At the news of the King’s death Mephibosheth was only an infant and incredibly vulnerable. His very life was sure to welcome the transported vengeance of the new king and the lord's need to eliminate any potential challenge to the throne.
Thus, Mephibosheth, a small five-year old secured a violent threat to life. In a moment, he would have been concerned with making mud, chasing small bugs, and trying to save them in his room and then, like that last thought before waking up-- it was gone. He was in danger and he didn't know it but his nursemaid did. When the shocking news came of the king's death she was holding Mephibosheth. She may have been sitting on the floor playing with blocks,he in her lap, or maybe carrying him from room to room as children that age will require. No one knows but, we do know with the child in her arms she made to flee as soon as the news met her ears. There was no time for packing or getting his toys. Only time enough to try and catch little Mephibosheth tightly into her arms and run. She knew the danger and it swept over her like a pale of a storm and in her haste to flee that very moment, she did that which she regretted her whole life: She dropped the young Mephibosheth from her arms. And he fell.
Mephibosheth's fall was as long as a convict's gaze upon the motion of a gavel felling upon a judge's bench. In that moment, the five-year old child was condemned to a life of bounds no five-year old in all their energy and verve could ever imagine possible. Due to his fall, this young boy would most certainly be crippled for life. Perhaps, if only...maybe, if his nursemaid had taken the time to stop and get the help he would have needed after such a fall? But no, there was no time, they had need to flee! What is a child's legs if he be dead and in the ground? Those feet don't run either. Or, it could be the fall was so great that nothing could be done anyway. Certainly, the love of the nursemaid cannot be questioned as she could just have abandoned young Mephibosheth’s life the moment she heard he was a pariah. Nevertheless, Mephibosheth's life-- oh the mourning! Can you not see the great helplessness of that babe! Do you see yourself trying to catch him in his fall? Yet your reach just misses him. There, twisted and broken, laying on the earth unable to rise, weeping and heaving as if he had saved all his emotions for that very moment his life becomes doubly dangerous. Not only would that tear stained young boy that just met the space beyond reach grow to live life as a marked man but as one indefensible and completely,utterly unable. Yet it was many years later that Mephibosheth was to truly learn the peril he faced, the peril that a child may not know, but an adult would, the peril of this potential cripple usurper.
2 Samuel 4
