Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Samuel 12-13.

I usually try to stay away from writing about the “obvious” lessons in a passage, but David’s reaction to the illness and death of his son born from his adulterous affair with Bathsheba stuck with me today.  Actually, David’s entire reaction to be confronted about his affair with Bathsheba sticks with me.  First, when confronted about what he did with Bathsheba and to Uriah the Hittite, he did not try to make excuses for his affair with Bathsheba, or make a blustery defense of arranging Uriah’s death.  Instead, David humbly confesses that he had sinned against God.  Then when the son of that affair got sick, David fasted and laid on the ground wearing only sackcloth.  He did this for seven days, refusing to eat or do anything else.  On the seventh day, when he learned that the child had died, he got up, cleaned himself, dressed, and ate.  When asked why he acted this way, David answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ ²³ But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again?”  The point here is that all too often we wait until after it is too late to express our desire to be with our loved ones, or to seek God’s intervention.  Instead, we should follow David’s example and throw ourselves on God’s mercy before bad things happen.  The lesson I see here for me is this: I foresee bad things coming for many people, now is the time for me to fast and pray for God to change the course of judgement I see Him sending.  Perhaps, He will change His mind, perhaps He will show me how to get people to turn to Him and change the path they are on.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Samuel 8-11.

Early in the discussion here about David’s conquests the passage mentions that he conquered the Moabites and killed 2/3rds of them (the way the passage describes how he decided who to kill and who to let live seems odd and I may be misreading how it would have worked out).  The thing about this which strikes me is that David had taken his parents to the king of Moab for protection when he was fleeing from King Saul.  In addition, his great grandmother, Ruth, was a Moabite. Yet, here he is described as killing the majority of them.  I suspect we are missing this a part of the story here.

I find it interesting that when King David asked after a descendant of King Saul whom he could be kind to in honor of Jonathan, Jonathan’s son was described as living in a town whose name could be translated as “Nowhere”.  Which makes me wonder if the name given was intended to indicate the actual town name, or to indicate that King David took Jonathan’s son from Nowheresville (as we would express it today) to the royal palace. In fact, that is the point of this story, whether Lo Debar was an actual place, or just “Nowheresville”,  this story is here to tell us that King David took Jonathan’s son from the obscurity to which his crippled state condemned him to the heights of society, all out of David’s love for Jonathan.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Samuel 4-7.

Upon being made king over all of Israel, and no longer just king of Judah, King David moved his capital to Jerusalem.  Of course to do so he had to first conquer Jerusalem, which had held out against the Israelites since the time of Joshua.  The other aspect of this passage, and really the entire account of David’s military career, is the way in which it both credits his military brilliance and his reliance on God’s guidance.  When the Philistines attacked him, the passage tells us that he inquired of God on how he should respond and then again when the Philistines attacked a second time.  In both cases, the writer gives me the impression that King  David made good tactical and strategic decisions because he sought and followed God’s guidance.

I want to write about King David’s two efforts to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.  The first time, King David gave up on bringing the Ark to Jerusalem when one of his allies was killed because he touched the Ark while trying to keep it from falling off of the cart they were transporting it on.  David became frightened and angry when this happened.  So, King David left the Ark in the care of a Philistine who had allied himself with David.  When King David was told a few months later that the man he left it with, and everything he had, had been blessed, David moved the Ark the rest of the way to Jerusalem.  This bit has always confused me, but I realized today what it tells us.  David was afraid that Uzzah had been killed because God was angry that he, David, was moving the Ark to Jerusalem.  He left the Ark with Obed-Edom as a test.  If things went badly, King David would have known to return the Ark to where it had been.  Since things went well, David chose to move the Ark the rest of the way into Jerusalem.  However, in the meantime, King David had learned that the Ark should be carried, not carted.  Using this new information King David moved the Ark into Jerusalem.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Samuel 1-3.

I am reminded of the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, by retainers of King Henry II.  In one form or another, Henry II inquired whether someone would rid him of “this meddlesome priest,” which led four of his retainers to kill the Archbishop.  David’s actions here, and later, would mean that no one who was part of his court would think that killing his opponents would lead King David to reward them unless he had explicitly ordered it.  Perhaps the lengths David went to send this message were extreme, it is one from which rulers who wish to be godly would be wise to learn.  I am returning to this after a few hours to add something which occurred to me.  David reacted so extremely to the messenger who claimed to have killed King Saul, and later the men who killed Ish-bosheth, in part because of how brutal King Saul was.  King David reacted brutally to those who killed his opponents to communicate to everyone that he was not going to treat his opponents as brutally as King Saul had done, and at the same time he communicated that this did not make him weak.

I find the story of Abner’s attempt to come over to supporting King David interesting.  If one does not pay close enough attention, it appears as if Abner betrays Saul’s son, Ish-bosheth, because of hurt feelings.  Perhaps it was, but there was more to it than that.  After Abner reached out to King David, David responded by demanding that Michal, King Saul’s daughter who had been given to him in marriage and then, after David fled from King Saul’s attempts to kill him, to another man in marriage.  It was Ish-bosheth who gave the orders for her to be taken from her second husband and given back to David.  This tells us that if Joab had not killed Abner, Israel would have united under King David sooner, and with a greater degree of unity.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 28-31.

We see King Saul’s complete desperation leading into his final battle in today’s passage.  One of the first things he had done as king was to drive all of those who communicated with the dead out of Israel.  Now as he faces battle against overwhelming forces he seeks one to consult the spirit of Samuel because he can get no answer from God by any of the means at his disposal.

SIDENOTE:Actually, I find it interesting that the passage tells us King Saul could not no reply from the Urim.  The Urim was to be kept with the Thummim in the high priest’s ephod and we know that Abiathar took the ephod with him when he fled to David.  Further, Abiathar used the ephod to divine God’s will for David.

So, why was King Saul so desperate?  It seems likely that the men following David were not the only potential members of King Saul’s army who had not responded to his call to arms.  Which resulted in King Saul’s army being much smaller than he expected it to be.  In any case, it shows that King Saul had recognized the failure of the path he had chosen, but had no idea how to change direction.  Once again, King Saul makes the wrong decision.  Of course, by this point I am not sure that he had left himself any way to make the right decision, but I do believe that as long as we live we may turn to God and beg His forgiveness.  If King Saul had done that here, he would probably still died in the coming battle, but the people of Israel might have suffered less.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 21-24.

When we compare Ahimelek’s reaction to David arriving in Nob by himself with what happened later when King Saul summoned Ahimelek and his family before him, we get a pretty clear idea that King Saul was comparable to many modern day totalitarians in that he used fear to rule over the people of Israel.  It seems clear that Ahimelek feared that David had come to him under orders from King Saul to kill him.   I want to interject here that I have been struggling with what I wanted to write about this passage for some time now.

The relevance of this passage for us finally hit me when I wrote the previous paragraph.  Despite the fact that King Saul could be viewed as an evil ruler, David refused to kill him when offered the opportunity.  David recognized that King Saul was God’s anointed king over Israel and was therefore unwilling to kill him, even though David himself had been anointed by God to replace King Saul.  David knew that God would remove King Saul in His own time and was willing to wait for God to act.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 18-20.

The stories told here are recounted so as to communicate to us how God was with David, but they tell us some other things about both David and King Saul.  First, reading between the lines we can see that David treated those around him well, leading them to love him.  This led King Saul to be jealous of David, which tells us that King Saul did not treat people similarly.  Both Saul and David were charismatic people who others just naturally liked and looked to for leadership.  But as time went on, people came to fear King Saul, whereas David became ever more beloved (something which we see continue when he became king).  I think I have touched on this before, but I want to point out that King Saul’s behavior towards David (and as we later see towards others) reflects his abandonment of and by God.  Actually, it is even more than that.  King Saul had come to see his leadership of Israel as being about him, not about what was best for the people of Israel.  Leaders who see their position as being about what’s in it for them, hate and fear anyone else who is loved by the people, especially when that person focuses on the best interest of the people.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 16-17.

There is one aspect of the account of David and Goliath that I can not quite decipher.  The account reads to me as if David was trying to shame one of the warriors into fighting Goliath.  Certainly, the account makes it clear that his brother thought that was what he was doing.  Yet, as soon as he was brought before King Saul, he volunteered to fight Goliath himself.  The conclusion I have always reached is that David tried to instigate someone else in to fighting Goliath because, since he was not a member of King Saul’s army, he could not volunteer to do so himself.  Or, perhaps, he felt that, also since he was not a member of King Saul’s army, it would be inappropriate to volunteer himself.  In either case, that changed when King Saul summoned him to an audience.

What is clear from the account is that David did not believe it required a mighty warrior to defeat Goliath.  He was convinced that God would be on the side of whoever confronted Goliath on behalf of Israel.  David was cocky and arrogant, but he was not conceited.  He thought that, with God on his side, he could defeat Goliath, but he also thought that just about anybody else could do so, with the same qualifier.   And he was right.  The lesson here is not that David was a great hero of God, although he was.  David was confident that he could defeat Goliath because Goliath had defied God.  In the same way, we can be confident that we can defeat those who defy God today.

I want to make one more point about David’s confidence.  He was confident that he could defeat Goliath, but he did not depend on doing it with just one stone.  He prepared for the possibility that he might fail on his first attempt, or even on his second, third, or fourth attempt.  When David armed himself to go out against Goliath, he did not just grab one stone.  He gathered five stones.  David planned for this battle. He did not just stand there and sling a stone at Goliath.  He ran towards him.  As I read the story, I imagined David running towards Goliath with the intent of ducking and running past him if the first stone missed.  David had faith in God, but he also had a plan.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 14-15.

I really struggled with what to write today.  I like the story of Jonathan going over and attacking the Philistine outpost accompanied by only his armor bearer.  So I thought I might write about that, but I could not figure out what to say.  I like the account of what happened when Saul commanded that no one in his army eat until they had complete victory and Jonathan did not hear so ate some honey. But again I was not quite sure what to write.  There are a couple of other things in this passage that I thought might be a good focus, but could not figure out how to start from them.

Finally, I looked closer at the interaction between Samuel and King Saul after the defeat of the Amalekites and knew that was the place to focus.  When Samuel arrives, Saul greets him by saying that he had done what God had instructed him to do.  I had never noticed before that King Saul actually thought he had done what God had desired.  He believed this despite the fact that Samuel had told him that God wanted him to kill all of the Amalekites and all of their livestock and King Saul had taken their king prisoner and plundered the best of their livestock.  After King Saul had made all of his excuses for not having done so, Samuel tells him the thing which we must always remember: “To obey is better than sacrifice.”  Really this runs directly counter to a saying which is common today.  The saying is, “It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.”  The point of that latter saying is that, if you know that they will refuse permission, don’t ask for permission, do it anyway and ask for forgiveness afterwards.  King Saul thought that because he was going to sacrifice the animals it was OK that he did not immediately kill them, that he could take advantage of this to further cement his position.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.