Bible Reading Challenge Blog

I’m a little surprised by David’s reaction to the conspiracy of Absalom.  So, once again we see that Absalom really is a trouble maker.  After 4 years he asks that he would be able to go to Hebron to worship God there.  David gives him permission.  Now, Absalom had set the stage by standing in front of the gates and greeting everyone who entered with an embrace  and a statement that he really should be made the one who judges over the affair of people.  The Scripture states that the people really liked that and really liked him.

As he made his way to Hebron he got the military behind him and David’s primary counselor on his side.  He was to sound the trumpet which was supposed to proclaim that Absalom was being crowned king.  When David hears it he flees Jerusalem afraid that the masses  would turn on him and support Absalom.  Those with David carried the ark of the covenant out of Jerusalem to go with David, but David told them to take it back to Jerusalem. 

We see a bit of a loyalty to the position which was instilled by God in David’s actions.  Remember with Saul  he refused to harm him because he was the king’s anointed.  I think in this instance he may have wondered if God had removed him from power and so didn’t want to go against God’s will.  Let’s see where this takes us.  I am not going to take any rash actions, but I am going to wait and see if God’s plans are revealed to me more fully.  Maybe I’m not supposed to be king anymore.  I don’t want to get in the way of God’s plans.

King David often seems to find himself in situations where people accuse him of wrongdoings but they do so in parable form.  Here an ally of Absalom lines up a woman to ask for a ruling from King David, which in turn would actually be a ruling against him.  David is once against convicted of his sin just as he was in regards to Bathsheba and with the census later on.  As a result Absalom is allowed to return back into the fold.  But as soon as he returns into the fold, or at least two years after he returns to the fold, he starts up trouble.

He burns the fields of the person who got him accepted by David, Joab, because he refused to answer when he called him.  As a result it actually worked!  Absalom is called before David and David kisses him as sign of being accepted.  If you look at vs.25 it is a bit curious that he is described as “beautiful… from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.”  Don’t forget Absalom’s daughter Tamar.  She will come into the story a little later on.  

Absalom becomes a protagonist and Amnon becomes a villain.  We find the latter absolutely smitten by his sister and will not rest until he is able to rape her.  He does.  I’m sorry, but there is a lot of this in David’s family.  Do you notice that it just might be a genetic thing where David’s family thinks that they are somehow entitled to do anything that they want to whomever they want, including the women who say no, this is not what I want.  

I remain encouraged that we live in a time where more  and more it is not normal for women to be treated in this way.   We still do not see complementarity and there is still a double standard which does not affect the man as much as the women, but the awareness of this injustice and the ability for many people in society now to see it as such, is a huge change from where we were even 10 years ago.  But as we read this chapter we see that  women continued to be treated as property who were not able to express their own desires and wishes.  

Good for Absalom in sticking up for his sister, even if it did cause him to go into exile for 3 years.  Notice that David is more upset with the absence of Absalom than he is with the action of Absalom in killing his brother.  David was distraught because he got fake news that all of his sons were dead.  Not sure if that was done to kind of soften the news that only one of his sons were dead.  In any case we find ourselves at the end of this chapter with all of the sons intact except for Amnon.  Notice that the other kings are weeping.  I think the reason for this is that they are terrified of Absalom and want to make sure that they are protected by their father from Absalom.  No one really put together that this was a single concentrated action against one brother who had done another family member wrong.  

A lot happens in this chapter and most of it is not related.  Remember, David rapes Bathsheba and kills her husband.  Chapter 12 begins with the very simple statement that this did not please the Lord.  So God uses David’s prophet, Nathan, to not only accuse him and tell him of his punishment, but also to tell him the story.  Jesus teaches consistently in parables and here we find Nathan doing the same.  He sets David up to fire him up about someone who takes advantage of a poor little lamb.  David tells Nathan that the owner of the lamb who was wronged should be paid double.

That would be nice if the owner were alive, but Uriah was killed.  Nathan accuses David and David takes it.  I mean, he doesn’t try to justify it or even say that it didn’t happen, but rather states that he had sinned against the Lord.  Nathan tells David, that’s okay, you won’t die, but you will be punished.  This is crucial.  David still is punished even though he confesses and says, for all intents and purposes, that he was sorry.  The punishment is not insignificant.  The child who was born of this rape will be killed.  And sure enough, it happens.

Next step is that another child is conceived and born from David and Bathsheba and that is the famous Solomon.  Already early on we read in vs. 24 that “the Lord loved him.”  David wins a crown in the next verses and the chapter ends.  What drama there is in this chapter.  But keep in mind that each step leads us to a recognition that while David is King, God is in charge.  That would be a good thing for leaders to remember.

We find ourselves in the chapter that is probably best known in II Samuel.  David rapes Bathsheba.  We find that she is the grandaughter of Ahithophel, one of David’s most trusted advisers.  She is married to one of his best soldiers, Uriah, who served under Joab who comes up constantly as the leader of David’s army.  I would think that when David commands Joab to basically kill Uriah (draw away from him in battle), that he would not have been pleased at all.  I can’t imagine that happening to a  commander today.  He probably would have had something to say about it.  But Joab’s loyalty is without question.

Apparently also is Uriah’s loyalty as he refused to spend time with his wife while the rest of his men are on the battle field sleeping out in the open.  David’s plan doesn’t materialize and so he is left with not only the rape of Bathsheba, but also with the murder of her husband.  She joins David’s household once her time of mourning was completed.  She was, after all, pregnant with the king’s child. 

Notice that what puts David into action is her message that she was pregnant.  She knew that if Uriah came home and there was a baby it would have been obvious that the baby was not his.  But why would David care as king?  Bathsheba could have dealt with that issue on her own.  There are two ways to think about this: 1 ) David was afraid of Uriah and was concerned that Bathsheba would tell him that the baby was the king’s and then he would have to deal with Uriah, or 2) he actually loved Bathsheba to the point where he wanted to help cover for her so that she would not get the wrath of her husband when it was discovered that she had a baby out of wedlock. 

Regardless in all of this the decision making is completely out of the hands of the one who was the victim.  

David has a good reputation with the nations around him because while he was fleeing from Saul he worked alongside these nations to destroy and conquer the neighboring nations.  The people of the region knew David,  they trusted him, and over time they had built a relationship with him.  But that only lasts a generation.  The king of the Ammonites had died and this king had a good relationship with David.  But his son was given bad advice and told not to trust David and to deal shamefully with the messengers of David who came to give consolation to the son, now the king, who had lost his father, who was the king.  Are you following?

As a result the Ammonites became “odious” do David.  Literally that means that they were hated by David because they treated his people wrongly.  There were battles and alliances formed until the end of the day the Israelites won, as you would expect, and the people in the region had to once again make terms with David.  They could have saved a lot of heartache if they had just trusted that David would have dealt fairly with them.  As a result of all this mess the other nations stopped trusting the Ammonites because they were the ones who dragged them into this mess in the first place.

We read a few times about the lameness of Mephiboshet, who was the last remaining progeny of Saul.  He was the son of Jonathan, David’s closest friend, and David sought him out in order to provide favor to him.  The type of favor that he provided was one where he actively sought out any of the previous king’s family members and wanted to give them what they had in the past.

As you can imagine  this is incredibly unusual.  The normal course of action is to find any of the previous ruler’s family and eliminate them so that they would not be a threat to the current ruler.  But David, in spite of being a serial sinner, has a hear for what God wants.  He always was wanting to be sure that Saul was not harmed, at least not by him.  So  David spends a lot of time and effort to ensure that Jonathan’s son gets favoritism, even to the point where he eats every meal with him.

We find the consolidation of David’s rule and the conquering of the nations that used to strike fear into the hearts of both Israel and Judah.  David subdues the nations, what a great word, and sets up his kingdom with stability and order.

At the end of the chapter you see that things are  in place and it gives you the impression that now we can move to what comes  next, whatever that may be.  Throughout this process you see David amassing a huge amount of wealth not only in conquests, but also in gifts from surrounding countries that wanted nothing to do with David.  

We find ourselves in an intimate conversation between David and God with Nathan being somewhat of an intermediary in that conversation.  David realizes that he is now settled, he has a nice house, but the ark of God, the actually presence of the Lord, is just hanging out in a tent.  That can’t be right.  Let me be sure that God is okay with me building a house for  God.

I hope I was able to follow the conversation correctly that Nathan reflects to David.  God puts a bit of the brakes on David building a house for God until he really understands what is expected of him.  He reminds David of the past and how God led the people of Israel out of Egypt and during that time a tent was perfectly acceptable to God.  God was the one who vanquished all of the foes of the people of Israel, including looking out over David and vanquishing his foes as well.  During that time, a tent was perfectly acceptable.  

But, and I have to check this, it seems like starting in vs.12 that God is saying that David’s offspring will be the one to build His house.  That makes sense because it does turn out to be Solomon who builds the temple.  So here we have the promise that God’s temple will be built, but it will be built not by David, but by his progeny.  There is no understanding that this might be a punishment, but rather just another step in the process to ensure not only the house of the Lord, but also, and almost just as importantly at least for David, the house of David be propitiated.  David accepts the words of the Lord.

The ark of the covenant of the Lord reappears.  Remember, this is considered the actual presence of the Lord, it is that which had to be revered and had been residing in David’s priest’s town Kiriath-Jearim, or as this Scripture states Baale-judah, under the watch of Abinadab.  We haven’t seen him for a while or heard about the ark for a while.  Glad that they are both doing well.  David realizes that he is now settled and it is time for him to get the Lord back into his home so that he doesn’t have to travel as far to worship God.  Let’s bring the presence of the Lord home to Jerusalem.  

They start the trek with much singing and dancing and things are just going great, until they aren’t.  The ark gets jostled a bit and one of David’s men reaches out to steady it.  Apparently you don’t touch the ark, we should have known this, and God strikes down the man who touched it.  David sulks and decides that he doesn’t want to have the ark in his house after all and goes home and leaves the ark there.

No, seriously, that is what happens.  Like a middle school boy who wasn’t allowed to play, he leaves and goes home and sulks…until…he hears that the place where he left it, and the family with whom he left it, are being blessed abundantly by the Lord because, well, God is present wherever the ark is present.  This took place over three months before David realized he better go claim the ark for himself again.

He does so and as he is bringing the ark into Jerusalem he strips off his clothes down to his tidy whiteys and starts dancing before God so that God would be pleased.  He was making a fool of himself, but he didn’t care, he just wanted the Lord to know that he loved Him and was celebrating His presence.  He was dancing as if no one was watching.

Well, his wife, the daughter of Saul, his oldest wife, was watching and she did not approve.  Everyone is going to think that you are a fool.  You are the only one who thinks that I am a fool, everyone else knows who I am, what  I have done, and respects me for it.  The Scripture ends with a foreboding sentence that Michal, the wife who disapproved, did not have children for the rest of her life.  So now David has a home and has God living in his home and things can only get better.