April 16, 2020 Bible Study

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Samuel 23-24.

The compiler of this book had a few more stories about David and his mighty men which did not fit into the narrative thread along with the other stories.  I suspect that the stories about the mighty warriors who followed David included here did not have any information which would allow the writer to say, “Oh, that happened in this battle.”  So, instead of sticking them in throughout his narrative and making it appear that they occurred at a different time than they actually did, he put them here at the end.  Something similar is likely true about the story of David’s census and the plague.  The story about the census was included because it explains why David built an altar on the location where the Temple was later built.  Knowing human nature, this story was considered important to counter other stories which were probably going around that the Temple was built upon the temple of some other god, or some other story which made the Temple more holy than God.