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Defeating the Philistines... Twice - 2nd Samuel 5:17-25

The uniting of northern and southern Israel was big news to their neighbors, especially the Philistines. TB says that the scattered several tribes throughout the Israel territory were easier to control than a large, united Israel under a single king. Probably hoping that not everyone was willing to fight under David, the Philistines “spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim.” David apparently left his new private estate and moved into a stronger hold position, probably to draw the Philistine armies away from his family but also because very few Israelites were willing to fight and die to defend David’s private estate, so moving more inland, the Philistine army would make it everyone’s problem, and therefore Israel would be more likely to fight. But David knew that the Philistines were there to fight, so he “inquired of the Lord” asking if he should go fight the Philistines and if so “wilt thou deliver them into mine hand?” I like that this “deliver into mine hand” is also a phrase us...
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Taking Jerusalem - 2nd Samuel 5:1-16

Now that Saul’s son was dead, the northern tribes called “Israel” had no king, te elders had a dilemma and decided to go to David and ask him to be the king over the entirety of Israel, consisting of all the northern tribes as well as the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin that he was already king over. The elders give 4 reasons why they want David to be their king. First, “we are thy bone and thy flesh,” meaning that they are all Israelites by heritage, all descending from Abraham. Second, when Saul was king, David was his military leader and had many victories. Third, he was already a king over Judah and Benjamin, so he already has those qualifications. And fourth, God anointed him to be “captain over Israel.” David accepted and the elders anointed David king over Israel in Hebron. It says that David was 30 years old and that he reigned for 40 years. TB explained that these probably weren’t exact numbers because they are “complete” numbers in Hebrew, which is interesting to me b...
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Rivals - 2nd Samuel 4

Now that Abner is dead, the people allied with Saul’s son sees the writing on the wall and knows that he can’t be even close to the kind of leader that Abner was. They knew that they were at war with David, the knew that David won his wars, and it’s possible that they even knew that David was anointed by God to be the next king over Israel, so they do the only logical thing, they kill Saul’s son, the king of the northern tribes called Israel. They are so sure that they were right to kill this man that they cut off his head and brought it to David, I’m sure believing that they would be rewarded. To be fair, I think that this is probably how it would have worked with any other leader at that time, so they weren’t wrong to assume that this would benefit them because I’m sure that’s what they’ve seen and understood their whole lives. Unfortunately for them, David was no ordinary leader, so he has these two men who did this, who are brothers by the way, he has them executed. Technically, ...
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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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