November 5, 2019: Day 52 – II Samuel 21

And you thought that Goliath was the only giant in the Bible.  Well, not so much as we saw when David slew Goliath that he was battling with the Philistines, and here in this chapter we see that the Philistines were good friends with those who were quite large in size, what the Bible calls giants.  But before we get to that Scripture we see that David tries to make right with the Gibeonites, not because he has a choice, but because it is the only way to get rain to fall on the land.

People in our country are speaking of reparations for those who just a few generations back were slaves in our country.  Every time I say that phrase it causes me to wonder how in the world were we able, as a country, to allow other people to serve as slaves, as if they have less value than other people.  Churches actually were on the forefront of supporting this.  I believe that reparations are very much in order.  If you look at what Princeton Theological Seminary did recently in order to address the topic of reparations it is pretty significant.  Here is a link if you are interested in the details.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/26/us/princeton-seminary-slavery-reparations-trnd/index.html

Once those reparations are made by David then we see in vs.10 that the rains fall down from heaven.  Now, these reparations were the lives of the family of Saul who had tried to destroy the Gibeonites in a sort of genocide.  Mephibosheth was spared, once again Jonathan’s son, so David was pleased.  The people of Israel go out to battle against the giants of the Philistines and David gets tired and it really worries his people.   They forbid him from going into battle again.