Bible Reading Challenge Blog

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.  

Finally the kingdom of David has begun and we get some of the details of time associated with that.  He was king over Judah for 7 years while Saul and his son were in charge in Israel.  He then was king over the united kingdom for 33 years after that.  All the tribes of Israel came to him and agreed to make him king and anointed him king at Hebron at the beginning of this chapter.  

From there we get a very curious and actually disturbing scene of David taking over Jerusalem specifically against the blind and the lame because, as the Scripture states: “The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.” because “David hates” the blind and the lame.  He occupies the city and drives them out of the city and did not allow them to inhabit that city.  Most commentators ignore these verses, but to me they only confirm that David was a serial sinner in so many different ways and did not represent the kingdom of God that the God which he worshiped wanted.  

Now David’s old friends, the Philistines, remember after he killed Goliath and was on the outs with Saul, he used to run with them and was actually embraced by them, until they went to battle directly against Saul.  Well, now they are looking to go to battle directly against David and we have two reports of battles where David conquers them.

What we find in this chapter is David taking over as king and consolidating his rule against the Jebusites in Jerusalem and against the Philistines in the adjoining territories.  He builds his house and only now realizes in vs.12: “David then perceived that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of the people of Israel.”  It seems to my count that this might be the 4th time that he was anointed king from Samuel to this chapter.  Maybe it takes a few times for it to stick.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for the family of Saul, it does.  Paul’s son is really bummed out because his general, who was protecting him was killed, so he goes and takes a nap.  That’s pretty good strategy.  While he was napping two of the soldiers, they were probably generals in that they were in charge of people, came in and killed Saul’s son Ishbaal, you know, the one who was napping.  

They were pretty proud of themselves, as those who had killed Saul were, and cut off the head of the son and brought it before David with a lot of pride and expecting quite a bit of reward.  David reacts as we would expect by killing these two men who killed the sitting king of Israel  while he was napping and buried the body of the son of Saul while stringing the bodies of the two men on the walls of the city.  Hopefully things start to get better for the people of God real soon.

The protagonist in this chapter is really Abner, who was the commander of Saul’s army, and had really kept the family of Saul in power through Saul’s son Ishbaal after Saul’s death.  But we begin the chapter by reading that  Saul’s family was getting weaker and David’s kingdom was getting stronger.  As a result Abner can read the writing on the wall and decides to make peace with David and swear allegiance to him so that the two kingdoms, Judah and Israel, can once again be reunited under one king, which would be king David.

David demands that if he were to agree to this then he wanted his old wife back, Michal, who was presently married to Paltiel.  The king of Judah, Saul’s son, sends Michal back to David with Paltiel weeping behind her the whole way.  This serial sinner David begins his exploits of taking women away from their husbands and claiming them as his own early on his kingdom.  This is replayed when David takes and rapes Bathsheba.  

So while Abner and David have a peace treaty signed not everyone is on board, especially that family who had lost loved ones in battle against Abner.  This family, Joab and his brothers, coax Abner to a corner and kill him in cold blood.  David is distraught and refuses to eat until the time of mourning is over which is supposed to show that he had nothing to do with the killing.  The story will continue next chapter as Saul’s family continues to fall apart and David’s reign gets even stronger.  So the glue that held Saul’s family together, Abner, is dead.  Everything will now unravel.

We have a bit of a divided kingdom here as David is anointed king by the people of Judah.  He gives thanks to the people of Jabesh-Gilead since they took a risk and buried the body of Saul.  Even though at the point of Saul’s death he was a sworn enemy of David, still he was king of Israel.  It is only when the current reigning king was dead could David be anointed.  

But, Saul had children and the commander of Saul’s army placed one of his children in control of Israel instead of David.  His name was Ishbaal which means man of shame.  That is appropriate since he was placed in power not by the Lord God, but by a commander in the military.  So now you had those who followed David from Judah and those who followed the man of shame from Israel.  This can be confusing if you are not careful.  Judah is the southern part of what we consider Israel today, and what is called Israel in this Scripture is the northern part of current day Israel.

The two sides meet at Gideon and decide to have a UFC fight and no one really wins it.  So instead they just get into a basic old fashioned war.  David loses 19 soldiers and Saul’s son loses over 300.  It does seem that David won this battle.  Here is a map of the kingdom which is now divided.  This will mark the conflict that will be cover David’s reign.

David gets the news of Saul’s death and he is distraught in a number of different ways.  First of all, look at the story that the Amalekite brings to David.  Keep in mind that David had just finished pursuing the Amalekites (vs.1) who had raided their camp and taken their women and children.  So this Amalekite comes to David and reports that Saul had been killed and he witnessed the whole thing and took his crown and amulet to David.  You know he was hoping for an atta boy.  Instead he got a sword right through him because he raised his hand against the Lord’s anointed.  See why I thought David could never go into battle against the Israelites?

David weeps, fasts, and teaches people a new song.  Here is a song that is supposed to be similar to what was taught.  Who knows, but I see David weeping as he sings this.  

We come to the end of the chapter and we come to the end of the life of Saul.  He does go into battle against the Philistines and he loses that battle handily, to the point where he and his sons are all killed.  Israel was conquered and Saul was able to see that he did not have a chance so instead of being taken alive he asked his trusty armor bearer to kill him.  That didn’t go over well, he said no, so Paul killed himself and the armor bearer also killed himself.  

Notice when the Philistines realized that they had killed King Saul.  It wasn’t until the next day in vs. 8.  They took his body and cut off his head and used it as a trophy to display for whoever would see that they were able to do this.  They also attributed their victory to one of their gods, Astarte, who happened to be the goddess of war and sexual love.  They put  Saul’s body in her temple.

There were some Israelites, we assume, from Jabesh-gilead who saw the atrocities the Philistines were committing and they took down Paul’s body and those of his sons and gave them the proper cremation burial and fasted as they were supposed to.  So ends the life of Saul, but also of his son Jonathan which, as we will see later, really bothers David.