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Michal & Abner - 2nd Samuel 3:12-39

Even though Abner’s having sex with a concubine that belonged to the king was an obvious power grab, he was still furious that the king had a problem with and so vowed to do everything he could to make David king over all of Israel. So he contacts David and asks if he’s willing to make an alliance. David says yes but only if he returns Michal, Saul’s daughter and David’s first wife, to him. It says that David then sent a message to Saul’s son, the king, demanding the return of Michal to him. I don’t know the dynamics of the message being sent and all that but David messages the king, and the king sends Abner to get her from the man that her father married her off to. While returning from her other husband’s house, her husband followed behind her crying. I took this to mean that he really loved her and was devastated that she had to leave and I really didn’t like that, just another woman being used as a pawn, but TB had some interesting explanations that makes me feel a little bit bette...
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Harem - 2nd Samuel 3:1-11

The inevitable war that happened between the “house of Saul and the house of David” didn’t start with that battle between Abner and Joab, but that certainly didn’t help. TB noted that this is worded like a civil war, but it really wasn’t all encompassing combat that impacted all civilians. He said it was more like both sides trying to gain alliances and loyalty from different villages, and there were some skirmishes between the armies but it didn’t really spill into the civilian world. Verses 2-5 go into the “house of David” and says that David had 6 sons while living in Hebron, I supposed during that 7 ½ year period by 6 different wives. David started himself a harem, which TB says was to be expected by ancient kings in those days and I just can’t help but wonder how God looked at the treatment of his daughters by these guys and was anything but disappointed. The harem concept is important because not only did David establish his own, but also because Saul’s 4th son had inherited his ...
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Pointless Battle - 2nd Samuel 2

There are two things that happen in chapter 2 and they both really have to do with David and Saul’s youngest son vying for the kingship over all of Israel. David asks God, presumably through the Urim and Thummim, where he should go, and the answer is to Hebron in the land of Judah. So he took his wives there and the men of that city “anointed David king over the house of Judah.” The men also tell David that the people in the city of Jabesh-Gilead had taken Saul’s body. TB says that this Jabesh-Gilead was technically aligned with the northern kingdom of Israel but pretty isolated because they were part of the massacred when the whole battle against Benjamin, so they were aligned but loyalty was thin. So David reaches out to them and praises them for taking Saul’s body. TB says that this was a bid to see if they would switch loyalties from the northern kingdom to David in the south. It seems like there is some contradictory information in verses 8-11, which says that Abner crowned Saul’...
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Passing the Love of Women - 2nd Samuel 1:17-27

It’s hard to understand why Jonathan had to die as well as his father Saul in order for David to be king, especially considering it appears that Saul’s 4th son survived, why couldn’t that had been Jonathan? I looked up what happened to that surviving son, and google says that he survived and was proclaimed king over the northern tribes of Israel by Abner and ruled for about 2 years and then was murdered in his bed by his own military captains. So ultimately that son had to die too in order for David to rule over the entirety of Israel. Even though Jonathan had already pledged loyalty to David as king, he was planning to be his second in command, maybe over time the temptation would have been for Jonathan to take back what rightly might have been considered his place as king, or it’s possible that even if Jonathan never did that, the people who didn’t want David as their king might not have given him their loyalty and/or plotted against him so reinstate Jonathan to where THEY thought he...
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Amalekite Lies - 2ns Samuel 1:1-16

Two things were happening simultaneously, the battle between the Philistines and the Israelites, which David supported the side of the Philistines even though they didn’t let him fight with them, and the other thing happening at the same time was David’s killing of the Amalekite raiders and the recovery of his people and their property. These two events coinciding was not an accident as surely the Amalekites waited until David had left his city so that they could attack it while it was undefended. During the Philistine/Israelite war, Saul, Jonathan and his entire household were killed. After David had been back home 3 days, a man came to him from Saul’s camp. It seems that this man sought David out purposefully whereas I initially thought he was just fleeing and was found by David’s men and captured. David asks where he’s coming from and the man answers that he has escaped from the camp of Israel, indicating that this man fought on the side of Israel, which is interesting considering h...
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Defeat - 1st Samuel 31

Going back to the war between the Philistines and the Israelites, the Philistines attack and beat the Israelite army where three of Saul’s sons were killed, Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchi-Shua. Interestingly, TB points out that Saul’s 4th son Ishbosheth and Abner’s names are missing from among the dead, meaning that they almost certainly weren’t there because we see their names come up later. The Philistine archers shoot and Saul is mortally wounded, meaning he knew he wasn’t going to survive, plus his sons are dead and his position is being overrun. He asks his armor bearer to kill him because he knows that if he’s captured alive, it’s going to be very bad for him, the armor bearer declines, TB suggests that it’s because, like David, he knows that Saul is God’s anointed and he won’t sin against God in that way. Saul takes matters into his own hands and falls on his own sword and dies. Interestingly, the armor bearer falls on his sword and dies as well. TB says that this is because anc...
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Pursuit - 1st Samuel 30

It turns out to be quite fortunate that Achish sends David and his men home from the war because when they get back to Ziklagt hey find their city burned and all their women and children gone. Turns out while they were gone, the Amalekites had raided their city, taken what they wanted, burned the rest and took the women and children with them. Kind of a full circle moment for David because this is exactly what he’d been doing to them with the main difference being that David killed all their women and children, and the Amalekites didn’t kill any of David’s people. TB asked the question is this was because the Amalekites were just kinder, more gentle people. The answer was that no, they weren’t, but David had wreaked such havoc on their cities and killed so many of their people, that the Amalekites needed new people to repopulate with. I also wonder what the Amalekites long term strategy was here. Surely they attacked Ziglak now because they had been watching for them to go off to war...
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