Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Samuel 20-22.

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After describing the war against Sheba the writer summarizes those officials who were closest to David.  After that he lists events in no particular time order.  For example, we do not know if the incident with the Gibeonites occurred before or after Absalom’s rebellion.  The same is true of the wars against the Philistines.  We don’t know if those were before or after Absalom rebelled.  For that matter, we do not know if the incident where Abishai saved David’s life occurred before or after the incident with Bathsheba.  I bring it up because it is one of several examples throughout these accounts about the debt which David owed to his nephews Abishai and Joab.  Despite his repeated frustrations with them, Joab and Abishai served David well for most of his life.

However, I want to focus on the song of David recorded here.  I love the images David draws with his words.  They make me wish I had the talent to produce illustrations.  They evoke powerful and awe inspiring images in my mind.  The first couple of lines makes me see a castle on the side of a cliff overlooking the sea, with waves crashing against the base of the cliff.  David writes, “I call upon the Lord,…, and I am saved from my enemies.”  And then he writes, “In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I called. From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry came to His ears.”  Both of those speak of how God may seem far away, but He will respond to our cries out of His love.  Then David writes a series of lines which tell us how God’s anger over the abuse of those He loves causes earth and heaven to tremble.  How He marshals the forces of nature to come to those who rely on Him in trouble and save them.

All of that strikes me every time I read this passage, but today I saw something else, but at first it bothered me.  After those wonderful images, David writes, “The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness:…”  He says that in a couple of different ways, implying that God saved him because he was such a good man.  Which seems to run contrary to the teaching found elsewhere in the Bible that none are righteous, that all have sinned.  He then talks about how God shows His goodness in response to our goodness and shows Himself two steps ahead of those who think to outsmart Him.  Then David comes to the part which makes it make sense.  David writes that God is a shield for those who take refuge in Him and that it was God who made his way blameless.  David tells us that the righteousness which he ascribes as the reason God saved him was a gift from God Himself.  David was not righteous because he was better than others, David was not righteous because he did not sin.  David was righteous because God made him righteous.

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